#f&b

The dragon that hatched for you had come from one of Meleys’ eggs, laid in the old warmth beneath the Dragonpit stones long before your mother took the Red Queen away from King’s Landing for the last time. Corlys had called it a sailor’s omen when the egg quickened in your cradle chamber on Driftmark, because the shell had been smooth as wet pearl, veined through with red and deep violet, as if someone had trapped dawn inside a storm cloud. Your mother had only laughed at that and said dragons did not care for sailors’ omens, nor for men naming every miracle after themselves. When the hatchling split the shell, the creature came out pale as moonlit foam, with a narrow skull, long limbs, black horns, and wing membranes streaked with crimson. The scales along the spine gleamed with a nacreous luster in daylight, white at one angle, rose-gold at another, and almost bruised purple beneath cloud. You named the dragon Velaryx, a name that pleased your father too much and made your mother roll those violet eyes, but even Rhaenys admitted the sound suited the creature. Velaryx grew lean and fast, never as massive as Meleys, never as brute strong as Vhagar, but quick in the air, brutal on a dive, fond of vanishing into cloud and coming down with the sun behind those pale wings. The smallfolk of Driftmark called Velaryx the Pearl Wraith after the first time your dragon came out of sea mist over Hull and sent half the fishing boats scattering as if the Stranger had learned to fly.

By the time the Dance became more than ravens, council mutterings, and men with old grudges finding new names for them, Velaryx was no hatchling. Neither were you. Your mother had died with Meleys at Rook’s Rest, fire and blood and betrayal folded into one red ruin, and whatever soft places had still existed in you were buried with her. Men looked at Corlys and saw the Sea Snake, old and grand and still dangerous enough to make younger lords swallow before speaking. They looked at Rhaenys while your mother lived and saw the Queen Who Never Was, a woman who had outlasted insult with dignity and made the realm remember what it had denied. When they looked at you, they saw a prize before they saw a rider. That had always been the idiocy of men in war: they looked at a dragonrider and still found a way to think first of marriage beds, inheritance, hostages, and wombs. If stupidity were coin, half the lords of Westeros could have purchased Valyria stone by stone.

You had flown for the blacks because your mother’s blood demanded it, because your father’s house had been bound to Rhaenyra by marriages, oaths, ships, graves, and because there was no clean place left to stand. The Reach burned in patches beneath you that autumn. Fields of wheat and barley lay crushed under hoof and boot; hedges were torn apart for firewood; villages shuttered themselves at the first cry of wings. Lord Ormund Hightower had marched from Oldtown with his banners, his spears, his mounted knights, his pious confidence, and the green flame of Aegon’s claim fluttering over his host like a sickness. He had Lord Hightower’s wealth, Oldtown’s pride, and more Reach swords than any man needed unless the gods had cursed him with ambition. Worse, he had Daeron Targaryen.

Prince Daeron was younger than many of the men who shouted his name, but Tessarion was no child’s toy. The Blue Queen had changed the war along the Honeywine. You had heard the reports before you saw the proof yourself: cobalt wings over the river, copper claws shining through smoke, blue flame pouring down onto men who had thought Lord Ormund beaten. Daeron had been named daring after that, knighted by Ormund with the Valyrian steel sword Vigilance, and everyone from Oldtown to King’s Landing had swallowed the tale as if songs won wars by themselves. Songs did not show burned hands. Songs did not show horses shrieking with their entrails in the mud. Songs did not show boys pissing themselves when a dragon’s shadow crossed the sun. Songs did not show the rider afterward, blood at the mouth from biting his tongue during a dive, shaking so hard he could barely unfasten his gloves. Songs were cowardly little things.

You found Daeron three days after the Honeywine, when Ormund’s host moved north and east, swollen by victory and slowed by wounded men. You had meant to harry them, not break them. Velaryx could strike at scouts, supply wagons, baggage trains, horse lines. Your father had taught you that a fleet was not beaten only by sinking ships. Sometimes one burned ropes, spoiled water, lamed draft animals, and left proud men starving in their armor. A host on the march was just a fleet dragged onto land, and land made fools of sailors and knights alike.

The first pass went beautifully. Velaryx came down out of a low bank of cloud with wings tight and throat bright, and the baggage carts at the rear of the column burst into white-red flame. Oxen screamed. Men scattered. The banners of three lesser houses vanished behind smoke. You heard horns below, frantic and overlapping, and you leaned forward against the saddle, knees locked, gloved hands steady on the dragon’s spines. The wind tore at your braid. Ash hit your cheeks. Below, the Green host lurched like a stabbed beast.

Then Tessarion came.

The Blue Queen rose from beyond a ridge with a scream that cut through smoke and steel alike. Tessarion was smaller than Velaryx but viciously quick, colored like twilight over deep water, cobalt scales lit by the coppery gleam of claws, crest, and belly. Daeron rode well. That was the most irritating part. The boy did not sit Tessarion like some perfumed princeling tied to a saddle and praying not to die. He rode as if he listened with his bones. When Tessarion banked, he moved with the turn. When your dragon rolled away from blue fire, Daeron followed before you had finished cursing him.

“Up,” you shouted, and Velaryx obeyed.

The sky became teeth, flame, wingbeats, and terrible speed. Velaryx climbed hard, pale body flashing against the cloud, then snapped sideways as Tessarion lunged from below. Blue fire spilled past your left side close enough for heat to slap through leather and mail. Velaryx shrieked, not from pain but fury, a sound inherited from Meleys’ blood, and answered with a burst of fire white at the heart and red at the edges. Tessarion twisted away. For a moment you saw Daeron’s face across the gap, young and strained under soot, silver hair whipped loose from its tie, eyes fixed on you with horror and resolve tangled together. The boy knew who you were. Of course he did. Every dragonrider knew the others, if only because there were so few of you left and fewer every moon. The gods had created dragons, and men had immediately decided the best use for them was murdering cousins. Civilization, as usual, had a splendid sense of humor.

You could have run. You knew that even then. Velaryx could outclimb Tessarion if given clean air. But below, the wagons still burned, and Ormund’s rear line was collapsing into itself. Another pass could ruin his supplies for days. Another pass might starve the Hightower host before it reached stronger ground. So you turned back.

That was where the scorpions came in.

Later, men would say Tessarion took down Velaryx. Men liked clean stories. They liked a young prince with a blue dragon and a brave victory. They liked making war into a tapestry because tapestries did not stink. The truth was messier and uglier. Tessarion drove Velaryx lower with blue flame, and as your dragon swerved away from those jaws, a hidden scorpion bolt launched from behind a screen of half-burned carts. The bolt did not pierce the heart or skull. It struck the webbing near Velaryx’s right wing joint, punched through membrane and muscle, and tore a ruin wide enough for daylight to pour through. Velaryx screamed so loudly the sound seemed to split the sky. You felt the whole body jolt beneath you.

“Hold,” you snarled, as if rage could stitch a wing together.

Velaryx tried. Gods, your dragon tried. The wounded wing beat once, twice, crooked and failing. Tessarion came in too close, and Velaryx caught the Blue Queen across the chest with claws, ripping cobalt scales free in a bright scatter. Tessarion screamed in turn, blue flame spilling wild, and Daeron pitched forward in the saddle as if struck. For one mad instant, the two dragons were locked together, falling through smoke, claws raking, tails lashing. Velaryx bit Tessarion’s neck crest and tore copper-bright flesh. Tessarion’s fire washed over Velaryx’s shoulder. You smelled burned scale, burned leather, burned hair, and then there was no sky left.

The ground came like a thrown mountain.

You survived because Velaryx took most of the impact. That was the kind of debt no rider ever repaid. You remembered mud, crushed grass, the taste of blood, and the terrible silence after a dragon stopped screaming. You were still half tangled in saddle straps when men came running, though none came close at first. Even injured, Velaryx snapped at the nearest horse and bit through its neck with a wet crack. The remaining animals reared and threw riders. You cut yourself free with shaking hands and slid down the hot slope of your dragon’s shoulder, landing badly, one knee almost giving beneath you. Your sword was still at your hip. Your left arm burned from shoulder to wrist. Your ribs felt as if some giant had closed a fist around them.

“Back,” someone shouted. “Back, you fools, the beast still lives.”

Velaryx did live. Barely. The right wing lay twisted, the membrane torn, the shoulder smoking where blue fire had touched scale. The great pale head lifted as you staggered in front of it, and one silver-violet eye found you. There was pain there. Rage too. Confusion. A dragon was not a horse, no matter what maesters wrote after sniffing ink too long and mistaking themselves for useful. A dragon knew. Velaryx knew the sky had been stolen.

You turned with your sword drawn when the first Green men approached. “Come closer and feed my dragon,” you said.

Some of them believed you. A few had enough sense to look at Velaryx’s teeth and reconsider their devotion to King Aegon. Then the line parted, and Lord Ormund Hightower rode through on a dark horse with white socks, armor smoke-stained, green cloak torn at one edge, and a blade at his side that did not look like ordinary steel. Vigilance. Even before anyone named it, you knew Valyrian steel by the way it caught light, dark ripples moving under the surface as if water had been folded into metal. Ormund was not young, but not old either, a man in his strength, broad through the shoulders, with a face made stern by habit rather than ugliness. His eyes were pale and watchful. He looked less like a court lord than you expected and more like a man who had discovered long ago that command was mostly deciding which disaster should be allowed to happen first.

Behind him, Daeron had dismounted from Tessarion. Blood ran from the prince’s hairline, and one arm hung wrong against his side. Tessarion crouched beyond him, bleeding from the neck, chest heaving, bright blue scales scored by Velaryx’s claws. The young prince looked at Velaryx, then at you, and whatever triumph men would later sing about was nowhere on his face.

Ormund raised one gauntleted hand. His soldiers halted.

“You are Lady Y/N Velaryon,” he said.

“You are standing too close.”

His gaze flicked to Velaryx. “So it seems.”

“My dragon is alive.”

“For the moment.”

You took one step toward him, sword still raised. Men shifted. Spears lowered. Velaryx growled behind you, deep and ragged, a furnace sound dragging through ruined lungs. Tessarion answered from the far side of the field with a wounded hiss. The whole world smelled of blood and scorched grass.

Ormund did not draw Vigilance. That was clever of him. “Put down your sword.”

“No.”

“I would rather not have you shot full of quarrels in front of your dragon.”

“Then do not order it.”

His mouth tightened, but something like respect passed through his eyes. Not kindness. Not mercy. Those were soft names people gave themselves after the hard decisions were already made. Respect was colder and more useful. “You are beaten, Lady Velaryon.”

“My dragon still breathes.”

“And my prince’s dragon still stands. Neither of them will survive another command given in anger.” Ormund looked past you toward Velaryx again. “You know that.”

You hated him for being right. It would have been easier if he were stupid. A stupid man could be provoked, tricked, led by pride into slaughter. Ormund Hightower sat his horse and measured the field, your wound, Velaryx’s wound, Daeron’s injury, Tessarion’s lowered head, the ring of soldiers, the smoke from his own ruined wagons. He was not thinking of glory. He was counting costs.

Daeron stepped forward, pale under the blood streaking his temple. “Lord Ormund,” he said quietly, “the dragon should not be slain.”

You looked at him then, really looked. The boy sounded winded. His right hand trembled, though he tried to hide it. There was soot across his mouth. He had almost died, and the first clear words he offered were not for vengeance.

Ormund did not glance back. “No one has given that order, Your Grace.”

“See that no one does.”

Your laugh came out harsh and broken. “How noble. Shall I thank you for not butchering what you could not kill cleanly?”

Daeron flinched. Ormund did not.

“You may thank him by living,” Ormund said. “Yield your sword, my lady. I give you my word you will not be harmed if you do.”

“Your word as a Green?”

“My word as Lord Hightower.”

That should not have mattered. It did anyway. There were old houses whose words carried weight even when you despised the cause they served. House Hightower had stood before dragons came to Westeros. Oldtown had seen kings rise, rot, and become songs. Ormund was your enemy, but he was no sellsword captain pawing at a ransom prize. You looked back at Velaryx. The great eye watched you, lid flickering. Blood, dark and steaming, ran beneath those pearl scales into the trampled grass.

You lowered the sword.

A murmur moved through the Green soldiers, relief dressed up as discipline. Ormund dismounted before taking the blade from you himself. That surprised you. He did not let some hedge knight snatch it from your hand. He stepped close, met your stare, and accepted the weapon hilt first when you offered it with as much contempt as your aching arm could manage.

“If Velaryx dies,” you said, “you will learn how much trouble one unarmed woman can cause before your men finish the job.”

“I do not doubt it,” Ormund replied.

That was your first true conversation with him. Not exactly the stuff singers would choose for romance, but singers were cowards and fools, and most romance began in less honest places.

They did not chain you that day. Ormund had you carried, which was humiliating enough to make you consider biting someone, but your left side had gone numb by then and pride did not mend cracked ribs. Daeron insisted on sending his own healer to Velaryx, as if dragon wounds were something a man could stitch with linen and hope. The healer could do little, but Daeron stayed near the dragons while the Hightower beast handlers and terrified grooms cleared the field. You watched from a canvas litter as the prince approached Velaryx with empty hands and a face too solemn for his years. Velaryx hissed smoke at him. Daeron stopped, bowed his bloody head as one dragonrider to another, and backed away.

Ormund saw you watching.

“He is not cruel,” he said.

“He rides for usurpers.”

“He rides for his brother.”

“Those are not different things.”

“No,” Ormund said after a moment. “Often they are not.”

That should have been the end of it. You should have remained a hostage in a guarded tent, traded eventually for prisoners, ships, coin, promises, or some uglier bargain struck by men who loved you but still saw the board before they saw the blood on the pieces. Instead, war did what war always did. It dragged. It thickened. It turned every simple thing into a knot.

Your first days as Ormund’s prisoner were fever and pain. The healers found no deep break in your skull, but your ribs were cracked, your left arm burned, and bruises flowered across your body in black, blue, and yellow. Your tent stood near the center of the Hightower camp, close enough to Ormund’s command pavilion that no man could approach without being seen. Two guards watched the entrance at all hours. They were polite, which was almost worse than cruelty because it gave you less to sharpen yourself against. The first time one called you “Princess,” you told him that you are no princess. The second time, he remembered. The third time, he brought broth and looked as if he expected thanks, because the Reach produced wheat, wine, and men in desperate need of applause for basic competence.

Velaryx lived.

That was the first thing you asked every morning and the last thing you demanded every night. At first no one answered quickly enough. Then Ormund learned that withholding the answer made you impossible. After the fourth cup you threw, he came to your tent himself, ducking beneath the flap with the weary expression of a man who had led armies, negotiated alliances, seen dragonfire, and still discovered that one furious captive could sour his whole camp.

“Velaryx fed today,” he said without greeting. “A bullock. Half of one, in truth. The dragon would not take more.”

You were sitting upright against cushions, sweating through a linen shift, hair unbound and tangled down your back. Your arm was bandaged. Your ribs hated breathing. “Fed by whose hand?”

“No hand. We dragged the carcass within reach and then withdrew before your beast decided Hightower men were sweeter.”

“Velaryx prefers horse.”

“I will inform the quartermaster that our cavalry is now dragon fodder.”

That startled a laugh out of you. It hurt. You hated him for that too, naturally. There were only so many things a person could hate at once, but you were making a disciplined effort.

Ormund looked at you with faint surprise, then glanced at the shattered cup near the tent pole. “Must everything become a missile?”

“Bring worse pottery.”

“I will have wooden cups sent.”

“I’ll find something heavier.”

“I believe you.”

That was the second conversation.

The negotiations began through ravens. Ormund wrote first to Dragonstone, then to Driftmark, then to whatever lord or captain could reach your father fastest. He did not parade you before his host, did not force you to write begging letters, did not send a lock of hair, bloody ribbon, or any of the other theatrical garbage men performed when they wanted cruelty to look like strategy. He wrote formally. Lady Y/N Velaryon lived. The dragon Velaryx lived but would not fly soon, if ever. Lady Velaryon would be treated according to birth and honor. Lord Corlys Velaryon was invited to discuss exchange.

Your father’s first answer was short enough that Ormund read it twice, perhaps hoping more words would appear through force of irritation.

“You may tell Lord Hightower,” Corlys had written in a hand still strong despite age, “that if harm comes to my daughter, I will close the sea around Oldtown until his grandchildren learn hunger as a cradle song.”

Ormund folded the letter and looked at you across the table in his pavilion. By then you could walk, though not far, and you had demanded to hear every word sent in your name. He had allowed it because he was either fair-minded or had concluded refusal would lead to more broken objects. Both were possible.

“Your father has a gift for warmth,” Ormund said.

“He likes to make good impressions.”

“I asked for an exchange.”

“He offered you a prophecy.”

“A threat.”

“With my father, the distinction is mostly decorative.”

Ormund’s mouth moved, not quite smiling. He had removed his armor for the evening. In a dark green doublet, with smoke washed from his hair and the day’s blood cleaned from his hands, he looked more like what he was: lord of the oldest and richest house in the Reach, uncle’s nephew to queens and kings, a man raised under the shadow of the Hightower and the Starry Sept’s memory. There was power in him that had nothing to do with armies. A steadiness. A discipline that did not need shouting to prove itself.

“You speak as if you admire him,” Ormund said.

“I do.”

“And resent him.”

“I do.”

“That seems uncomfortable.”

“Family usually is.”

He nodded once, accepting that. You found yourself studying him as he turned toward the map table. Colored markers sat over the Reach roads, rivers, towns, and holdfasts. The Honeywine curled in ink. Oldtown stood marked with a tower sign, a little carved flame set beside it. Dragonstone and Driftmark lay far away on another parchment weighted down by a dagger. Men had been moving pieces across maps for the whole war, pretending carved wood could keep them from smelling corpses.

“Why show me these?” you asked.

“You know the roads.”

“I know the coasts better.”

“You know dragon range better than any of my captains.”

“Ask Daeron.”

“I do. He is young.”

“He beat me.”

Ormund turned back. “Tessarion, a scorpion hidden behind burning wagons, and your own refusal to retreat beat you. Daeron knows that. So do I.”

You did not answer at once. Praise from an enemy was a strange thing. Too much felt like mockery. Too little felt like insult. Ormund had an irritating habit of choosing exactly enough.

“You speak very gently of your prince,” you said.

“He was my ward before he was the realm’s darling.”

“He is your weapon now.”

His expression cooled. “He is a boy in a war made by men older than him.”

“That has never stopped men older than him from using boys.”

“No,” Ormund said, and the word landed with more weight than agreement. “It has not.”

You looked away first. That annoyed you too. The man was becoming a collection of small annoyances: too calm, too perceptive, too careful with your dignity, too willing to admit unpleasant truths without using them to excuse himself. A proper enemy should make hatred easy. Ormund Hightower was failing at his appointed task.

Weeks passed. The war shifted around you. Ravens arrived with reports of castles changing hands, burned mills, lords declaring too late and too loudly, towns paying for banners they had never chosen. The Hightower host moved by stages, slow but disciplined, its wounded carried in wagons, Tessarion recovering enough to fly short circuits over the column. Velaryx could not fly. That wound did not heal as cleanly as men pretended wounds should. The membrane closed in ugly ridges, but the wing joint remained stiff, and your dragon dragged that side when turning. A dragon grounded was a grief so large it made human language look cheap.

Ormund allowed you to visit Velaryx once you could walk without nearly fainting. Six guards came with you, though they kept a respectful distance after Velaryx lifted that pale head and showed teeth as long as daggers. Your dragon had been moved to a burned pasture ringed with wagons, chains, and prayers. The chains were mostly theater. If Velaryx truly thrashed, half the camp would die before anyone stopped it. Still, Ormund kept his men from cruelty. No hooks. No teasing. No brave fools with spears trying to prove themselves. The first soldier who threw a stone at Velaryx lost two fingers to Ormund’s justice before your dragon could remove anything more useful.

You knelt beside Velaryx’s head and pressed both palms to the warm scales above the jaw. “I know,” you whispered in High Valyrian. “I know, sweet terror. I know.”

Velaryx rumbled, a low sound like stones moving under tide. Smoke leaked from one nostril.

“You are a bad patient.”

The silver-violet eye narrowed.

“Do not give me that look. You are. You always have been. Do you remember when you bit the maester on Driftmark?”

Velaryx breathed hot air into your hair.

“He deserved it,” you admitted.

A soft tread sounded behind you. You did not turn. “If you brought more guards, they are wasted.”

“I brought meat,” Ormund said.

You looked back. He stood beyond the safest reach of Velaryx’s neck, one hand resting near Vigilance but not on it. Behind him, men hauled a dead horse from a cart. A mercy, or a bribe. With lords, the two were often siblings.

“You waste horseflesh on an enemy dragon,” you said.

“I waste nothing. A fed dragon is less inclined to eat men I still need.”

“Practical.”

“Always, when possible.”

Velaryx’s nostrils flared. The dead horse was dragged closer. Ormund dismissed the men before they began trembling themselves into mistakes, then remained while Velaryx burn and tore into the carcass with a wet crunch. Uncooked blood spread dark over pale grass.

“You do not look away,” you observed.

“I have seen dragon feeding before.”

“Not like this.”

“No,” he admitted. “Not this close.”

“You should be afraid.”

“I am.”

That made you glance at him.

Ormund’s face remained composed. “Only a fool would stand before a living dragon and feel nothing.”

“There are many fools in your camp.”

“In every camp.”

“You included?”

“Frequently. I try not to make a religion of it.”

The words should not have warmed you. They did. Not sweetly. Nothing about that time was sweet. It was more like finding one dry room in a flooded castle, then resenting the room for existing because now you knew shelter was possible.

After that, Ormund visited Velaryx with you when duties allowed. At first you thought it was strategy. Perhaps it was. He asked questions about dragon temper, healing, appetite, wing strain, flame after injury. You answered some and ignored others. He never pressed too hard. He had a commander’s patience, which was different from a saint’s patience and far more dangerous. Saints waited because they believed suffering improved people. Commanders waited because timing killed more reliably than force.

Daeron came too, once Tessarion could land without favoring the foreleg Velaryx had raked open. The prince approached with humility so sincere you wanted to dislike it and could not quite manage.

“I am glad Velaryx lives,” Daeron said.

“You sound surprised.”

“I did not know if the wound would take fever.”

“Dragons do not die to please men’s expectations.”

“No,” he said softly. “They die because we bring them to war.”

That silenced you. Ormund, standing beside you, looked at the prince with something paternal and pained moving behind his eyes.

“You nearly killed my dragon,” you said.

Daeron looked down. “Yes.”

“I nearly killed yours.”

“Yes.”

“Do you apologize for war, Prince Daeron?”

“No.” His voice was steadier then. “I apologize for being glad I lived when your dragon fell.”

A clean answer. Painfully clean. You had no weapon for it.

“Then keep your apology,” you said. “You may need it later.”

Daeron bowed and withdrew. Ormund watched him go.

“He is better than his side deserves,” you said.

“Most young men are better than the banners that claim them.”

“Were you?”

He breathed out through his nose, almost amused. “No. I was worse. I wanted glory.”

“And now?”

“Now I want victory.”

“That is worse.”

“Yes,” Ormund said. “It is.”

The third letter from Corlys offered exchange of noble prisoners taken at sea, ransom in gold, and the return of two Hightower cousins captured by black loyalists near the Mander. Ormund rejected it. The terms were not equal, he said. A dragonrider of your blood could not be balanced by coin and cousins. Your father’s fourth letter was less polished. Your fifth week in the camp ended with Corlys threatening to send ships against every green-aligned harbor from Oldtown to the Arbor. Ormund answered that Oldtown was well defended and that any attack on the city would put you in greater peril, which was both true and manipulative in the tidy way statesmen adored.

“You use me as a shield,” you said after reading the copy.

“I use you as leverage.”

“Prettier word. Same stink.”

“You prefer I lie?”

“I prefer you return me.”

“To what? Dragonstone? Driftmark? Another saddle? Another sky full of kin trying to burn kin?”

“That is not your choice.”

“No,” he said. “It is not.”

Yet he did not send you back.

The closeness came in pieces, which was probably how it survived. Anything sudden would have been too easy to distrust. Ormund began by letting you dine in his pavilion instead of your guarded tent, because you were a lady and because eating alone made you feel like an animal being kept for inspection. The first meals were hostile. You spoke only when necessary. He offered news without requiring gratitude. You corrected his maps when coastlines were wrong, because bad maps offended you more than silence helped you. He had the gall to thank you.

“You have marked Cape Wrath too far north,” you told him one evening, leaning over the parchment despite your sore ribs. “And that inlet is deeper.”

“You know this from memory?”

“I was raised by Corlys Velaryon. I knew tides before I knew embroidery.”

“That must have disappointed septas.”

“Everything about me disappointed septas.”

“I find that easy to believe.”

You looked up. “Was that meant to insult me?”

“No. Them.”

Your mouth twitched. His eyes followed the movement before he looked back at the map. You noticed. Captivity narrowed the world, and in a narrow world, every glance grew larger.

Another night, rain battered the pavilion roof so heavily that the maps had to be rolled away from leaking seams. The camp sank into mud. Men cursed outside. Somewhere, a mule screamed as if personally offended by weather. You sat near the brazier with a cup of watered wine, wrapped in a cloak because the damp made old bruises ache. Ormund entered late, soaked across the shoulders, smelling of rain, leather, and smoke. He removed his gloves finger by finger, slower than usual.

“Bad news?” you asked.

“Always.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the only answer war gives consistently.”

He poured wine and did not water his own. His face looked drawn in the firelight. Not weak. Never that. But tired in a way men rarely allowed women to see unless they mistook them for furniture.

“You lost men,” you said.

“A foraging party. Ambushed near a mill.”

“Black loyalists?”

“Hungry villagers, by the look of it. Perhaps both. These lines become thin.”

You watched him drink. “Will you hang them if you catch them?”

“If they killed soldiers, yes.”

“You say that as if it costs nothing.”

“It costs plenty. That does not change the answer.”

“You could choose mercy.”

“I could. Then the next village learns that killing Hightower men carries no price.”

“You sound like my father.”

“I will try to recover from the insult.”

“You sound like every lord who has ever explained why corpses are necessary.”

His gaze cut to you then, not angry, but close. “And you sound like every dragonrider who has seen men scatter beneath wings and decided the view from above cleans the killing.”

That struck. You set the cup down. “Careful, Lord Hightower.”

“I am tired of careful.”

“Then you are tired of being alive.”

For a moment, rain filled the silence. Ormund looked at you, and something changed there. Not softened. Changed. The air between you had carried anger before, suspicion, grudging humor, political assessment, the strange intimacy of two people trapped on opposite sides of a war neither could stop. This was different. Rawer. You felt it under your skin before either of you named it.

“I know what dragonfire does,” you said, lower now. “I have smelled men after it. Do not make the mistake of thinking I feel clean because I flew higher.”

His jaw worked once. “No. I should not have said that.”

“But you believe it.”

“I believe power excuses itself with height, titles, law, blood, gods, necessity. Mine does. Yours does. Your queen’s does. My king’s does. Every man in this war has dressed murder in silk and asked history to admire the tailoring.”

You stared at him. “That was almost honest.”

“It happens occasionally. I try not to let it spread.”

A laugh escaped you before you could stop it, small and tired and real. He watched you as if the sound had done him some private harm.

After that night, he stopped pretending not to want your company. You stopped pretending not to expect his. The guards remained, because the world had not turned gentle just because two enemies had discovered conversation. Ormund still sent ravens demanding terms your father would never accept. You still watched every road for a chance to run. But he began bringing you books taken from some Reach sept’s traveling chest, histories mostly, a few volumes of Valyrian fragments copied by maesters who had never heard the words spoken aloud. You mocked the errors in the margins. He read them later, and the next day he asked why you had called one translation “an insult to goats.”

“Because goats are useful and the translation was not.”

“That seems fair.”

You spoke of Driftmark, though never too softly. You spoke of your mother only once at length, and that was after a raven brought word that men in green camps had begun using Rhaenys’ death as proof that dragons could be killed, that queens could fall, that black courage was mortal. You had gone very still when Ormund read that report aloud. He stopped halfway through.

“Continue,” you said.

“I need not.”

“Do not treat me like glass.”

“I would not insult glass so severely.”

“Read.”

He did. His voice did not flinch, which was a mercy. When he finished, you stood and walked out into the cold.

He found you beside Velaryx, though the hour was late and the guards were furious about it. Your dragon slept in fits, injured wing tucked wrong, pale body rising and falling with slow breaths. Clouds covered the moon. The campfires made dull red stars across the field.

“My mother deserved a better death,” you said.

Ormund stood a few paces behind you. “Yes.”

“She was worth ten of every man who shouted for Aegon or Rhaenyra.”

“Yes.”

“She should have been queen.”

A longer silence. Then, quietly, “Perhaps.”

You turned then. “Careful. That sounds like treason.”

“It is history. Often the same thing, depending on who wins.”

You hated that your throat tightened. Hated that he had not offered some Green answer about rightful succession, lawful kings, Viserys’ sons, Alicent’s blood, and all the other polished bones men set out when they wanted a feast of excuses. He simply stood there, cloak dark in the night wind, and allowed your grief to exist without trying to conquer it.

“She taught me not to bow my head when men mistook patience for defeat,” you said.

“I can see that.”

“She would hate this.”

“Being captive?”

“Being fond of you.”

The words came out before fear could stop them. There it was, then. Ugly, dangerous, alive. The silence afterward felt like standing in a dragon’s open mouth.

Ormund did not move closer. That restraint struck harder than any advance could have. “And are you?”

You could have lied. It might even have saved you. “Yes.”

His eyes closed briefly, as if something in him had been confirmed and condemned in the same breath. “That is unfortunate.”

“You have a gift for romance.”

“I have a gift for recognizing disasters.”

“Most men call that cowardice when women do it.”

“Most men are idiots.”

That nearly made you smile, but the ache in your chest was too large. “Do not make me regret telling you.”

“I will likely make you regret many things before this war ends,” he said. “But not that.”

He stepped closer then, only one pace, enough for the firelight from the nearest guard post to catch the silver at his temples and the hard line of his mouth. You realized you had been thinking about his mouth for days. During councils. During dinners. While reading letters from your father threatening to unmake him by sea. A ridiculous, inconvenient fixation. The world was collapsing, dragons were bleeding into the mud, and your mind had chosen a widowed Hightower lord with enemy banners as its next act of treason. The body had no dignity. None.

“You should go back to your tent,” he said.

“You should stop telling me what I should do.”

“I am responsible for your safety.”

“You are responsible for my imprisonment.”

“Yes.”

The honesty went between you again, blade-bright and cruel. You moved first. Not far. Just enough that the hem of your cloak touched his boot.

“I know what you are,” you said.

“Do you?”

“Enemy. Captor. Lord. Widower. Father. Soldier. Liar when duty requires it. Honest when it hurts enough to be useful.”

“That is quite a list.”

“I am not finished.”

“No?”

“No.” You looked up at him. “You are also not as cold as you wish to be.”

Something flickered across his face. “And you are not as untouchable as you pretend.”

You should have stepped back. Instead, you said, “No.”

His hand rose slowly, giving you time to refuse. When his fingers touched your cheek, the contact was almost unbearably careful. A thumb brushed the edge of your jaw, not claiming, not commanding. Testing reality, perhaps. Ormund looked like a man facing an army he understood far better than this.

“If I kiss you,” he said, voice roughened, “you must know I am not setting you free afterward.”

No pretty lie. No pretending desire dissolved chains. No foolish attempt to make captivity into a song.

Your breath trembled once. “If I kiss you, you must know I am not surrendering.”

His gaze dropped to your mouth. “No. You would not.”

You kissed him because you chose it, because war had taken your mother, your sky, your dragon’s wing, your father’s peace, and you would be damned before you let it take every hunger that still belonged to you. Ormund held himself still for the first heartbeat, perhaps giving you one last chance to turn this into a mistake with an escape route. Then his hand slid into your hair and his mouth opened under yours, controlled at first, then not. The kiss was not sweet. It had too much restraint breaking inside it. He tasted of wine and rain. You tasted blood where your lip had split days earlier and reopened against him. He made a low sound when he noticed, anger or want or both, and pulled back enough to look at you.

“You are bleeding.”

“You have seen worse.”

“That is not permission to ignore it.”

“You talk too much.”

He laughed under his breath, and then you kissed him again to stop it.

Nothing more happened that night. That mattered later. He walked you back to your tent himself, with the guards staring hard at anything else because soldiers were not always clever but they did possess a survival instinct. At the entrance, Ormund paused.

“Lock your tent from within,” he said.

“You never gave me a lock.”

“I will have one brought.”

“You trust me with a lock?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

His gaze held yours. “Because you should have a door no man enters without leave.”

It was such a small thing. That was why it cut. Grand gestures were easy for powerful men. They could throw gold, horses, jewels, castles, fleets, and call it devotion when it was mostly inventory. A lock in a war camp, given to a prisoner by the man who kept the guards outside, was not freedom. It was not enough. But it was something real. That was the rotten trick of tenderness. Even when insufficient, it remained tenderness.

The lock came before dawn.

After that, the camp knew without knowing. Servants always knew. Guards knew. Daeron knew, though the prince had the decency to look embarrassed rather than judgmental. Ormund’s captains suspected and became careful with your name. A few men muttered. One knight made the mistake of saying too much within earshot of Ormund’s steward and found himself reassigned to latrine pits for a fortnight. Nobody needed to tell you. The smell was evidence enough.

The negotiations worsened. Corlys offered more. Ormund demanded guarantees that could not be granted. Safe passage for Hightower ships through waters your father did not wholly command. Release of prisoners Rhaenyra’s men would not trade. A pledge that Velaryx would not be used against the Green host again, which made you laugh aloud when Ormund read it to you.

“You asked my father to chain the sea,” you said.

“I asked him to chain one dragon.”

“You asked him to chain me.”

“Yes.”

The word struck harder than denial would have. You stood near his writing table, one hand braced against the carved edge. Outside, the camp was settling into dusk, all low voices, cook smoke, clatter, and distant groans from the wounded tents. Ormund had dismissed everyone else. The pavilion felt too warm.

“And if he agrees?” you asked.

“He will not.”

“If he does.”

Ormund’s face was unreadable. “Then I would have to decide whether my honor or my king’s cause commands me more strongly.”

“Do you have an answer?”

“No.”

“You always have an answer.”

“Not for you.”

The words settled into the space between you. You could hear the brazier crackle. A moth battered itself stupidly against a lantern, because every creature in the world apparently wished to die in fire sooner or later.

“My father will come for me,” you said.

“I know.”

“He will not stop.”

“I know that too.”

“He will burn your fleets if he must.”

“I have considered it.”

“You speak as if this is a weather report.”

“If I speak otherwise, I may do something foolish.”

You looked at him. “Such as?”

His eyes lifted to you, and that was answer enough.

The second kiss was not outside beneath cold stars. It was in his pavilion, with rain threatening again and maps rolled shut, with your father’s letter lying open between you like a judgment neither of you planned to obey. You crossed the space first again because you needed that truth preserved. Ormund had power over your body in every public way that mattered. Guards, camp, ravens, road, ransom. But not this. Not the step. Not the yes. Not the hand you placed against his chest when you reached him.

“Tell me to leave,” he said.

“This is your pavilion.”

“I will leave it.”

“You are very determined to be noble at inconvenient times.”

“I am trying to avoid becoming the worst thing you could later say of me.”

That steadied you more than seduction would have. “Then listen carefully. I am not asking for freedom as payment. I am not mistaking your bed for a peace treaty. I am not helpless because your guards stand outside. I know exactly where I am.”

His breathing changed.

You continued, because he needed to hear it and because maybe you did too. “I want you. That is all. That is enough. Do not dress it in pity. Do not ruin it with guilt before it has even happened.”

Ormund stared at you for a long moment. Then he said, low and almost bitter, “You are going to undo me.”

“Probably.”

His laugh was brief and broken. Then he kissed you.

This time, restraint did not survive long. He kissed like he commanded, not carelessly, never that, but with attention so complete it felt like being studied and consumed at once. His hands settled at your waist first, then drew you closer when you did not pull away. Your fingers worked at the fastenings of his doublet with less grace than impatience, and he made a sound that might have been your name if his mouth had not been against your throat. You felt the old ache in your ribs and ignored it until he noticed the catch in your breath and stopped at once.

“No,” you said, furious with your own body.

“Your ribs.”

“My ribs are not invited to give counsel.”

“Unfortunately, they are attached to you.”

“You are impossible.”

“I have been called worse by better men.”

“Not better women?”

His gaze darkened. “No.”

That should not have pleased you. It did. You tugged him back by the open collar of his shirt, and he came this time without argument. He undressed you slowly enough to make you want to curse him, but his care was not hesitation. It was reverence with teeth. Each lace loosened, each layer eased away, each pause asking without words whether you remained with him. When your shift slipped from one shoulder, his hand hovered before touching the burn scar left by Tessarion’s flame along your upper arm. Not ugly, not to him. You saw that before he bent his head and pressed his mouth near the edge of it.

“She marked you,” he murmured.

“Tessarion?”

“Yes.”

“Velaryx marked her worse.”

His lips moved against your skin. “I saw.”

“You sound proud.”

“I sound grateful Daeron lived through it.”

There was that truth again, inconvenient as a stone in the shoe. You touched his face and made him look at you. “I am glad he lived.”

Ormund closed his eyes for one breath, and when he opened them, something inside him had yielded.

The bed was narrow for two people and too plain for a lord of his station, a campaign bed built for function rather than pleasure. Later, that would seem fitting. Nothing about the first time between you had the softness of court. There were no silk curtains, no music, no perfumed sheets, no illusion that the world outside had paused out of respect for desire. Armor stood on a rack nearby. Vigilance lay within reach. Rain began tapping against the pavilion roof. Men laughed somewhere outside, then fell silent as an officer barked at them. The war remained. It did not politely excuse itself.

Still, for a while, it did not get to have you.

Ormund learned your body as if haste would be an insult, and when patience became too much, you told him so with your hands, your mouth, the arch of your back, the blunt demand of his name. He did not smile then. He looked wrecked, which was better. His control frayed by degrees, and watching it happen gave you a fierce, wicked satisfaction. Here was Lord Hightower, commander of armies, wielder of Vigilance, keeper of ravens and terms and guarded tents, undone by the sound you made when his mouth found the hollow beneath your jaw. Good. Let the realm have that written down somewhere between battles and betrayals. Let some maester choke on the footnote.

When he finally joined you, it was with one last pause, forehead pressed to yours, breath rough, one hand braced beside your head.

“Tell me no,” he said, almost pleading. “If there is any part of you that means it.”

You took his face between your hands. “I mean yes.”

That was enough. It had to be. The rest belonged to skin, heat, the rain, the quiet breaking of names against each other. He was careful until you demanded less care. He was controlled until you took that from him too. Pleasure came not as softness but as force, a living thing that drove thought out and left only the body’s bright, merciless truth. For a little while, you were not Corlys Velaryon’s daughter, not Rhaenys Targaryen’s surviving blood, not the Pearl Wraith’s rider grounded by blue flame, not a hostage, not a bargaining piece in a civil war that had devoured sense and kin alike. You were only yourself, alive in the dark, held by a man who should have been nothing to you but enemy and had somehow become the one person in the camp who looked at you and saw the whole of the ruin, not merely the value of what could be ransomed from it.

Afterward, Ormund did not speak for a long time. He lay beside you with one arm around your waist, fingers spread over your stomach as if anchoring himself. His breathing steadied slowly. You listened to the rain and the distant restless sounds of the army. Your body felt loose and sore and strangely calm. That would pass, you knew. Everything passed except consequences.

“You are thinking too loudly,” you said.

His chest moved against your back in a quiet exhale. “I was under the impression thoughts were silent.”

“Yours are not.”

“What am I thinking?”

“That you have done something unforgivable.”

His hand stilled. “Have I?”

You turned enough to look at him. In the dim light, he looked older, but not weaker. Just stripped of the armor command put on men even when they were naked. “Do you want absolution from your prisoner?”

“No.”

“Good. I would charge too much.”

His mouth curved faintly, then faded. “I want to know whether you will hate me.”

“I already hated you.”

“Yes. You made that clear.”

“I do not hate you for this.”

His eyes searched yours. “And tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow I may hate you for several things. Your letters. Your banners. The guards outside. The fact you still have my sword. The fact Velaryx cannot fly. The fact my father will grieve and rage and threaten the sea into obedience. But not for this.”

He absorbed that as if it hurt. “You divide matters very cleanly.”

“No. I divide them because if I do not, they eat each other.”

Ormund lifted one hand and brushed hair back from your face. The gesture was so domestic it nearly frightened you. Battle did not. Dragonfire did not. Tenderness, apparently, was where courage went to embarrass itself.

“My first wife died in childbed,” he said suddenly.

You went still.

He looked past you, not hiding but not meeting your eyes either. “Years before the war. Lyonel was already old enough to remember her. The younger ones less so. Bethany barely. I had thought grief would make me gentler. Instead, it made me efficient. There were children to raise, accounts to settle, Oldtown to rule, kin to answer, ships to count, walls to maintain, men to command. Grief became another duty. That is not a noble confession. It is only true.”

You touched his wrist. “Did you love her?”

“Yes.” No hesitation. “Not as songs insist men love women. Not madness. Not worship. But partnership. Familiarity. Trust. The comfort of being known before entering a room.”

“That is not lesser.”

“No,” he said softly. “It was not.”

You nodded. Jealousy would have been childish and useless, and you had no patience for either. “I am not trying to replace a ghost.”

“I would not ask it.”

“Good.”

His gaze returned to you. “And you? Has there been someone?”

“Men have tried.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the only one worth giving.” You shifted onto your back, looking up at the tent roof. “I had offers before the war. Velaryon blood, Targaryen blood, a dragon, my father’s favor. I was a feast table men circled while pretending they had come for prayer. Some were handsome. Some were kind. A few even spoke to my face instead of my inheritance. I did not want them enough.”

“And me?”

You looked at him. “You are inconvenient enough to be interesting.”

He huffed a laugh, then leaned down and kissed your shoulder. “A devastating compliment.”

“You should treasure it.”

“I shall have it carved on my tomb.”

“You may need a large tomb. My father might send several pieces home.”

His amusement faded, but not entirely. “Your father will despise me.”

“My father despised men for breathing too close to his ships. Do not feel special.”

“I am keeping his daughter.”

The words went cold between you.

There it was, dragged out at last.

You sat up slowly, pulling the sheet over your chest. Ormund did not reach to stop you. He sat up too, bare to the waist, hair disordered, face now fully Lord Hightower again except for the mark your mouth had left near his collarbone.

“What does that mean?” you asked.

He was silent long enough for anger to wake.

“What does that mean, Ormund?”

“It means the negotiations are failing.”

“You are failing them.”

“Yes.”

“On purpose?”

“Yes.”

The word hit worse than shouting.

You left the bed. The movement pulled at your ribs, but you welcomed the pain. It gave you somewhere clean to put rage. You found your shift and dragged it over your head. Your hands were shaking, not from fear. Ormund stood, reaching for his own clothes, but stopped when you turned on him.

“Do not,” you said.

He froze.

“You do not get to touch me while saying that.”

His jaw tightened. “I know.”

“Do you? Because you were inside me less than a quarter hour ago and now you speak of keeping me like a castle you took by siege.”

The flinch was small but visible. “That is not how I meant it.”

“I am rapidly losing interest in what you meant.”

“I do not plan to return you to a war that will put you back on a dragon before the wounds close, if Velaryx ever flies at all.”

“You do not decide that.”

“No. I do not have the right.”

“And yet.”

“And yet,” he said, voice lower, rougher, “I will not hand you back to men who will use you better than I have.”

You laughed then, once, ugly and incredulous. “Better? You think this is better?”

“I think I can keep you alive.”

“I did not ask you to.”

“No. You asked me not to insult you. So I will not. This is selfish. It is political. It is desire. It is fear. It is every foul thing men mix together and call judgment. I want you here. I want you alive. I want you away from the next field where dragons tear one another apart for crowns that will sit on skulls.”

“You want.”

“Yes.”

The bluntness took some of the air from the room.

Ormund stepped closer, slowly, stopping well outside reach. “I also know what you are. Enemy. Captive. Rider. Daughter. Woman. Proud enough to walk into flame if anyone tells you the ashes are forbidden. I know that if I send you to Corlys, you may never forgive me for the delay. If I keep you, you may never forgive me at all.”

“You make it sound tragic. That is convenient.”

“It is not tragedy. It is choice. Mine. And I will bear the cost.”

“How noble,” you said, each word bitten clean. “How very lordly of you to bear the cost of my captivity.”

“I deserve that.”

“You deserve worse.”

“Yes.”

The agreement enraged you because it left no wall to strike. You wanted excuses. You wanted command. You wanted him to become simple. Instead he stood half-dressed in lamplight and accepted your anger as if it were overdue debt.

“My father will come,” you said.

“I know.”

“Rhaenyra will demand answer.”

“She may.”

“Velaryx will heal.”

“I hope so.”

“If my dragon flies again, no chain in your camp will hold me.”

His eyes lifted. “I know that too.”

“Then you are a fool.”

“With you, increasingly.”

You hated the warmth that moved under the anger. Hated it enough to pick up his wine cup and throw it at him. He moved aside just enough for it to miss his head and strike the map table, spilling red wine across the Reach.

For one heartbeat, neither of you spoke.

Then Ormund looked at the stained maps and said, “That was a very old Arbor vintage.”

“Bill my father.”

His laugh came unwillingly. Then he stopped, because you were not laughing.

“I need to leave,” you said.

“The tent?”

“No. This pavilion. Before I say something I cannot forgive myself for softening later.”

He nodded. “I will escort you.”

“No.”

“The camp is dark.”

“I know where the guards stand.”

“My lady.”

The title sounded different now. Not formal. Not distant. Almost a plea.

You looked at him from the entrance. “You had better write carefully, Lord Hightower.”

Then you left him there.

The camp air was cold enough to bring sense back in pieces. The two guards outside Ormund’s pavilion looked startled and then aggressively blank. Good men, perhaps. Or cowards with manners. Same result. You walked past them toward Velaryx’s enclosure instead of your own tent, and neither dared stop you. Behind the cart ring, your dragon lifted that pale ruined head from sleep before you spoke. Velaryx always knew.

You pressed your brow to the warm scales of the jaw and finally shook. Not crying. You refused that. Your body shook because fury needed somewhere to go and had found bone. Velaryx rumbled beneath your hands, smoke curling around your shoulders like a living cloak.

“He means to keep us,” you whispered in High Valyrian.

The dragon’s eye opened fully. In it, the campfires reflected like a hundred tiny burnings.

“I know.”

Velaryx growled.

“I know.”

The wing shifted, dragging against the ground with a sound that made your stomach turn. Not yet. Not soon. But someday, perhaps. Dragons were stubborn creatures. So were you. Meleys had given that to Velaryx, and Rhaenys had given it to you.

Across the camp, in the pavilion you had left, Ormund sat alone until the lamps burned low. He did not summon wine to replace what had been spilled. He did not call for a servant to clean the map. Red spread across the parchment roads, soaking into inked rivers and little painted hills, turning the Reach into something closer to truth. At last he dressed properly, fastened his doublet with steady hands, and sat at the writing table.

The first sheet he ruined after three lines.

The second after seven.

On the third, he stopped pretending diplomacy would save him from saying the thing plainly.

Lord Corlys Velaryon, Lord of the Tides, Master of Driftmark,

Your daughter lives and remains under my protection. Velaryx lives also, though the dragon’s wing is not yet fit for the sky. You have offered gold, prisoners, safe passage, threats, and promises in turn. I have considered each with the seriousness owed to your name, your grief, and your power upon the seas.

I will not return Lady Y/N to you.

He paused there. The quill hovered. Outside, the army muttered in its sleep. Somewhere far off, Tessarion cried out, a low blue note in the dark. Velaryx answered, rougher, deeper, wounded but alive.

Ormund closed his eyes briefly.

Then he continued.

This is not because I misunderstand the consequence. I know what insult this gives House Velaryon. I know what wrath it invites from you. I know also that any word I choose may appear as theft dressed in courtesy, and perhaps that judgment will stand. I will not insult either of us by pretending this choice is clean.

Your daughter was taken in battle after nearly killing Prince Daeron and Tessarion, and after burning my host’s supplies with a courage that would have been praised in every hall of Westeros had the banners beneath her been green. Since that day, Lady Y/N has been treated according to rank. No harm has been done by my order, nor will any be done while I command. Yet rank is not the whole of it. She is not cargo to be weighed against coin. She is not a gull to be released into a storm because the sea demands its own.

Another pause. His hand tightened around the quill.

If returned now, she will be sent again into war. You may deny this. I would not believe you. She would not allow any of us to believe it. Your daughter is too much Rhaenys Targaryen’s blood and too much yours to sit safely behind walls while others burn. That valor honors you. It may also kill her.

The words blurred for a moment. He blinked once, hard, and wrote on.

I do not ask your forgiveness. I do not expect your restraint. Send what answer you must. Send ships, curses, ravens, knives, or silence. I will receive them as Lord Hightower must. But understand me clearly: I will not trade her back to the fire.

Ormund Hightower, Lord of the Hightower, Defender of Oldtown

He sanded the letter, sealed it in green wax, and pressed the Hightower mark deep.

Only after the seal cooled did he allow himself to look toward the dark beyond the pavilion, where you stood with your wounded dragon beneath the camp’s dying stars, neither free nor broken, grieving and furious and alive.

By dawn, the raven would fly.

By dawn, Corlys Velaryon would have a new enemy.