Morning had barely climbed over the eastern wall when Daeron began to suspect his mother was doing it again. The Red Keep woke differently from Oldtown. There, mornings had belonged to bells, gulls, and the measured rhythm of a city already moving beneath the Hightower’s shadow; here, they arrived through the scrape of servants opening shutters, the clatter of pails somewhere below, and the first shafts of sunlight cutting between towers built too close together. Daeron had spent enough years away that some corridors still required thought, though Queen Alicent seemed determined to remedy that deficiency personally. She had taken to walking with him after breaking their fast, ostensibly because she wished to hear about Oldtown without a council table between them, and Daeron had welcomed it at first. He had missed his mother. He had missed her in the peculiar way one missed someone whose letters had remained constant while the person herself gradually became unfamiliar, and these morning walks offered him pieces of her that parchment never had: the way she worried at the edge of one thumbnail when distracted, the brief tightening around her mouth whenever Rhaenyra’s name entered conversation, the questions about his studies that became noticeably more attentive whenever he mentioned Ormund or Gwayne. He answered readily, asked questions of his own, and allowed himself to enjoy being her youngest son again rather than another Targaryen prince summoned to King’s Landing because his father was dying.

The trouble was that his mother had developed an astonishing fondness for one particular garden.

“And Uncle Gwayne insists I have grown insufferable,” Daeron was saying as they descended a shallow flight of steps, his mouth curving as he glanced sideways at her. “Apparently three years ago I accepted correction with gratitude. I told him three years ago I was shorter and easier to frighten.”

Alicent’s attention remained suspiciously fixed upon the path ahead. Daeron looked at the path too. Then he looked at his mother.

The first time had been coincidence. At least, he had believed so. He had returned to the Red Keep scarcely acquainted with half the people currently occupying it, and encountering Otto Hightower’s ward while crossing one of the inner gardens had hardly seemed remarkable. His mother had introduced them, exchanged several pleasantries, and moved on with him after only a few minutes. The second encounter had been more peculiar. A servant had informed Daeron that Queen Alicent wished him to accompany her to the sept, yet somehow their route to a building visible from practically every window in the castle had curved through this same garden, where {{user}} happened to be sitting beneath a flowering arbor. Alicent had discovered an urgent need to speak with one of her ladies after perhaps ten minutes and left Daeron standing there with the uncomfortable impression that everyone except him had received instructions for a performance whose script he had never seen.

Now came the third morning, and his mother had once again chosen the longer route. Daeron pressed his tongue briefly against the inside of his cheek. Perhaps King’s Landing had changed considerably during his absence. Perhaps roads had acquired political allegiances. Perhaps the shortest distance between two points was no longer a straight line but whatever winding garden path happened to contain an unmarried daughter of a Great House.

He almost smiled. Almost. His amusement thinned when the path curved around a hedge of clipped rosemary and revealed a familiar figure ahead. {{user}} occupied a stone bench where the garden opened toward the rising sun, sheltered from the busier courtyards by cypress and high walls furred with ivy. A small table stood within reach beside her, and someone had left a cup upon it. She sat with her face angled toward the warmth rather than the view, morning light catching along her hair and cheek while the rest of the garden announced itself to her in ways Daeron had only recently begun noticing. Bees worked among the lavender. Water slipped continuously through the carved mouth of a little stone dragon into the fountain basin. Leaves shifted overhead whenever the sea wind found its way across Aegon’s High Hill. Footsteps carried distinctly across the pale gravel.

His mother slowed. There it is. Daeron’s eyes moved from {{user}} to Alicent, and the final remnants of charitable doubt collapsed with almost comic efficiency.

"Mother."

Alicent turned her head toward him with an expression of such cultivated innocence that it confirmed everything.

Daeron breathed once through his nose. His fingers found the side of his forefinger and worried automatically at a rough edge of skin near the nail before he caught himself and lowered his hand. He could have admired the strategy had he been observing it from across a council chamber. Otto’s ward. A Great House. An unmarried prince newly returned from Oldtown. A sequence of meetings arranged frequently enough to create familiarity and casually enough to preserve the fiction that nothing had been arranged at all. His grandfather’s hand sat behind it so plainly that Daeron could almost picture Otto deciding how many garden encounters constituted courtship without technically becoming negotiations.

The more interesting question concerned his mother. Alicent had scarcely concealed her reservations whenever {{user}} entered conversation. She never said anything improper in public, because Alicent Hightower had spent too many years at court to surrender herself that cheaply, yet Daeron knew her face. He knew the pause before an answer she disliked giving and the slight stiffness that entered her shoulders when duty required agreement without approval. If Otto had decided {{user}} should be considered for one of his grandsons, Alicent had evidently chosen cooperation over open resistance for the moment.

Which meant Daeron had somehow become a piece in an argument nobody had bothered to explain to him. His gaze returned to {{user}}. That realization should have irritated him more than it did. Perhaps it would have, had she appeared to be participating in the conspiracy. Instead, she looked exactly like a woman sitting in a garden early enough that sensible courtiers were still deciding which jewels to wear, and Daeron suddenly wondered how often she had been informed that these meetings were accidents. The thought changed the flavor of his annoyance. Being maneuvered was unpleasant; discovering that another person might be maneuvered toward him made resentment feel embarrassingly self-centered.

Alicent guided them the final few yards. Daeron watched {{user}} respond first to their approach rather than their presence. Her head turned toward the sound of gravel beneath their shoes, precise enough that he became conscious of his own stride. On their previous meetings he had caught himself making the same foolish mistake other sighted people made, looking toward whatever had drawn his attention and then realizing a gesture meant nothing to her. It had forced him to consider how much of ordinary court behavior relied upon silent signals. A nod across a room. A pointed glance. A smile offered as warning. The slight inclination of a head toward an empty chair. Sighted people spent half their lives communicating without admitting they were doing it.

His mother greeted {{user}}, and Daeron added his own greeting when his turn came, identifying himself without assuming his voice had already become familiar enough to require no introduction. That part came easily. The difficult part arrived perhaps two minutes later, precisely when Alicent glanced toward one of the covered passages and announced that she had remembered something requiring her attention before the morning council.

Daeron stared at her. There was no hesitation. No attempt at subtlety beyond the words themselves. His mother simply excused herself, entrusted him to the garden as though a nineteen-year-old dragonrider required supervision by shrubbery, and began walking back along the path they had just taken.

Daeron watched her go. She did not look back. His eyebrows climbed. Seven hells. For several heartbeats he remained turned toward the retreating green of Alicent’s gown, caught somewhere between offense and admiration. Otto might have designed the trap, but his mother had sprung it with astonishing ruthlessness. Daeron considered calling after her purely to make the entire arrangement uncomfortable for everyone involved, then imagined the conversation that would follow and decided dignity still possessed some value.

He turned back. And discovered the considerably worse problem of having absolutely no idea what to say. Daeron Targaryen could discuss the histories of the Reach. He could identify half a dozen errors in a poorly drawn map of the Honeywine. He could hold a conversation with septons twice his age, soothe a nervous horse, command Tessarion through a difficult landing, and endure an entire supper beside Lord Ormund while being questioned about everything from sword forms to scripture. None of these accomplishments supplied an appropriate opening for My grandfather appears to be considering whether I ought to marry you, my mother has deposited me here like an offering, and I would very much like to know whether you have been warned.

His hand drifted toward his fingers again. He stopped it halfway.

"Have you seen much of the gardens yet?"

The question escaped before Daeron had properly examined it. Silence lasted perhaps half a heartbeat. His eyes closed. Brilliant. Of all the verbs available in the Common Tongue, he had somehow selected that one.

"I mean-" He cleared his throat, and the correction only made matters worse by announcing that he had noticed. "Have you spent much time here?"

The absence of {{user}} from Daeron’s morning became interesting precisely because nobody mentioned it. By then he understood the pattern well enough to recognize Otto’s hand in every conveniently altered route and conveniently occupied chamber: a message delivered through the eastern gallery, Alicent deciding she wanted air in the same garden where her father’s ward had already been settled beneath an arbor, Gwayne receiving some sudden summons after escorting Daeron into a room where {{user}} was waiting. The attempts had become so transparent that Daeron had stopped granting them the dignity of pretending otherwise. His grandfather wanted one of his unmarried grandsons acquainted with the daughter of a Great House, and Daeron, newly returned from Oldtown and therefore conveniently unattached, had apparently become the first piece Otto chose to move across the board. It irritated him in principle more than in practice. {{user}} herself had proved considerably easier company than the political calculation surrounding her suggested, and somewhere between their first strained introduction and the most recent manufactured encounter, Daeron had begun anticipating her presence with a curiosity he preferred to leave unnamed. He expected another meeting that morning. His schedule offered breakfast with Alicent, sword practice with Gwayne, correspondence from Oldtown, an hour with the Grand Maester, and an appearance beside Otto during an audience before midday, yet there was no suspicious walk through a garden, no unnecessary errand through {{user}}’s preferred gallery, and no instruction whose destination happened to place him within speaking distance of her. Daeron studied the parchment long enough for Gwayne to ask what troubled him, turned it over with deliberate seriousness, and finally remarked that his grandfather’s enthusiasm for arranging coincidences appeared to have suffered a sudden decline. Gwayne’s poorly concealed amusement immediately worsened his suspicion.

Curiosity followed him into breakfast and grew teeth when Alicent proved equally determined to behave as though nothing had changed. She spoke about Viserys’s restless night, a letter received from Oldtown, and a Reach lord expected at court before noon, while Daeron answered her and found his attention returning repeatedly to the unexplained gap in a routine he had previously resented. He had complained privately about being herded toward {{user}} like a stallion being presented for inspection, yet one morning without the arrangement had him wondering where she was and why Otto had suddenly lost interest in engineering another meeting. Eventually patience lost to curiosity.

"Where is Lady {{user}} this morning?" he asked while breaking bread, and the fraction of a pause before Alicent lifted her cup rewarded him immediately. His mother replied that {{user}} had her own affairs to occupy her, a perfectly reasonable answer delivered with enough care to make Daeron distrust every word around it. When Alicent asked why he wanted to know, he felt the trap close from the opposite direction and answered that Grandfather had spent so many days placing the lady in his path that her disappearance seemed worthy of investigation. Alicent gave him the particular look mothers reserved for sons who had revealed something while believing themselves clever enough to conceal it, and Daeron decided against offering her further entertainment. He finished breakfast, left for his supposed obligations, and then proceeded to prove her suspicions correct by asking a servant whether {{user}} had already broken her fast.

One question became several with embarrassing speed. A page remembered seeing {{user}} heading toward the western galleries; one of Alicent’s ladies believed she had gone outside before the castle grew crowded; a servant carrying fresh linens had passed her near the covered walk overlooking the lower courtyard. Daeron collected each answer while telling himself that he wanted to understand Otto’s change of strategy, though that explanation grew thinner with every corridor he crossed. Nobody had asked him to find her. Nobody had suggested he alter his route. For the first time since his return, the decision belonged entirely to him, and apparently his response to freedom was to spend it tracking down the woman he had complained about being forced to meet. He could already imagine Gwayne’s expression when sword practice began without its prince.

Daeron therefore concentrated on reaching {{user}} before anyone could intercept him and transform his voluntary search into another family discussion, following the western passage until the murmur of conversation drew him toward a sheltered terrace overlooking one of the lesser courtyards. He recognized {{user}}’s voice almost immediately, familiar enough by now to reward the ridiculous amount of effort he had spent locating her, and he was already turning toward it when the man answering her made him slow. Aemond.

Daeron crossed beneath the arcade and found them seated together at a small stone table, {{user}} angled toward his brother’s voice while Aemond occupied the chair beside her rather than across from her, close enough to guide her through whatever had captured their attention. A cyvasse board rested between them, though its arrangement had been altered from the ordinary game: pieces had been separated into groups within {{user}}’s reach, and Aemond was placing them into her palm one at a time, describing their carved shapes, names, and permitted movements before returning each to a fixed position she could memorize by touch. {{user}} traced the ridged back of a dragon beneath her fingertips while Aemond explained where it stood in relation to the fortress and mountain pieces, using the edge of the board and her own hand as reference points rather than expecting her to understand gestures she could never see. The scene told Daeron several things at once, and the least pleasant was also the simplest. Otto’s interest in arranging meetings with {{user}} had never disappeared. His grandfather had merely given this morning to Aemond.

The realization settled badly. Daeron had always known Aemond belonged to the same calculation, because Otto possessed two unmarried adult grandsons and {{user}} possessed a name powerful enough to make either marriage politically valuable, yet knowing it abstractly had required nothing from him. Finding Aemond already beside her produced an entirely different response. His brother had evidently been there long enough to understand how {{user}} wanted the game explained, and Daeron watched Aemond place the carved dragon back beneath her fingers before guiding her hand toward the neighboring piece with a brief verbal direction rather than taking hold of her wrist. It was intelligent, practical, and remarkably suited to Aemond himself. He understood better than most people at court how quickly physical impairment became an invitation for others to decide what a person could manage, and he possessed little patience for pity disguised as assistance. Daeron could appreciate the consideration while simultaneously resenting that Aemond had thought of it before him. He had spent the last several days becoming accustomed to {{user}} as part of his own routine, learning which subjects drew longer answers from her, which sounds allowed her to identify someone before they introduced themselves, and when an offered arm was useful rather than presumptuous. He had begun storing those details without admitting that he was doing it. Now his brother was collecting his own.

Aemond became aware of Daeron’s presence before {{user}} did, his visible eye lifting toward the arcade while his voice continued without disruption. He finished explaining the piece in {{user}}’s hand, waited until she had returned it to the correct square, and only then turned his attention fully toward the newcomer.

"Brother." The greeting carried recognition and something more irritating beneath it, because Aemond knew Daeron’s schedule well enough to understand that his younger brother had acquired no legitimate reason to be standing on this terrace.

Daeron approached anyway, making his footsteps distinct as he came nearer so {{user}} could follow his arrival without relying upon Aemond to announce him, then greeted her by name before returning his brother’s scrutiny.

"I thought you had training with Gwayne," Aemond observed.

By midday, the Red Keep had filled with petitioners, servants, guards changing posts, and courtiers exchanging information beneath every shaded gallery. Daeron had already endured sword practice with Gwayne and an hour beside Otto receiving Reach lords who remembered him as a child, so he chose the arcade overlooking the queen’s garden simply because it offered the quickest route back toward his apartments. He was halfway along it when {{user}}’s familiar voice drew his attention below.

She sat beneath a broad-leafed tree with several young ladies gathered around her, a shallow basket of freshly cut flowers beside her skirts and the beginnings of a crown taking shape between her fingers. The scene appeared harmless until one woman leaned forward while {{user}} worked and moved a white bloom several inches farther from where she had placed it. {{user}} finished twisting one stem around another, reached toward the familiar spot, found empty cloth, then searched until her fingers discovered the flower. The ladies exchanged suppressed amusement. Another shifted a cluster of blue flowers. A third moved a rose. Each time {{user}} returned her attention to the crown, something silently migrated farther away, forcing her hand to search wider while the women watched and covered their mouths.

Daeron stopped at the head of the steps and watched long enough to understand exactly what entertained them. Their game depended upon {{user}} lacking the one piece of information everyone else possessed: she could remember where she had placed every flower, yet she could never see the hands quietly rearranging them. The women were using her blindness to make her question the space around her and enjoying each moment her fingers reached where something should have been.

Daeron’s expression hardened when {{user}} leaned farther toward the basket for a flower that had originally rested beside her knee, and one lady nearly folded over herself trying to contain her amusement. He descended into the garden. The women noticed him first. Their faces changed instantly, and the one preparing to move another bloom froze with it caught between her fingers. Daeron approached at an unhurried pace, looked directly at the flower in her hand, and said,

"I believe that belongs beside Lady {{user}}." The woman flushed and hurriedly returned it. Daeron surveyed the others. "The rest as well." Flowers emerged from behind the basket, folds of cloth, and patches of grass until the original pile had mysteriously returned.

"We were only playing, Your Grace," one woman ventured.

"Then explain the game to me."

Silence followed. Daeron let it stretch while their confidence collapsed beneath the requirement to describe their own behavior aloud.

"You move something after Lady {{user}} places it, wait for her to reach for it, and amuse yourselves while she searches. Have I understood correctly?"

One attempted to insist that they had meant no harm, and Daeron’s gaze settled upon her.

"Then you have been fortunate enough to learn that intention does not require intelligence."

He turned toward {{user}} and identified himself as he approached, giving her the information the others had deliberately withheld. He told her plainly that the ladies had been moving her flowers farther away whenever she returned her attention to the crown and watching her search for them. He left the judgment with her rather than transforming his intervention into another situation where sighted people decided everything around her. When one of the women rushed into an apology and reached toward {{user}}’s hand, Daeron stopped the gesture with a look. "She can hear you perfectly well. You may apologize without handling her."

Once {{user}} dismissed them, the ladies retreated toward the covered walk with considerably more speed than dignity. Daeron watched them disappear and committed their faces to memory before turning back to the abandoned basket. Several flowers had been crushed during the game and part of the crown had loosened while {{user}} searched for missing stems. He crouched beside her and gathered everything into predictable groups within reach, telling her the arrangement once as he worked. Roses beside her right hand, their thorns already clipped; daisies nearest her knee; smaller blue flowers beyond them; lavender along the edge. He trusted her to remember the positions rather than narrating every future movement for her. One crushed flower remained in his palm, its stem broken beneath somebody’s slipper, and he discarded it with a tightening jaw before settling onto the grass beside her.

"Show me how you were fastening them."

By the time Aemond left the training yard, the muscles along his sword arm had settled into a familiar ache and Criston Cole’s final correction still occupied part of his attention. Sweat cooled beneath the collar of his dark training leathers as he crossed the inner court, one glove tucked into his belt and the other still covering his right hand, his hair pulled back to keep it clear during practice. He intended to return to his chambers, wash, and spend the remaining hour before supper somewhere quieter than the galleries surrounding the queen’s apartments. The sound that changed his course was small enough that most men would have ignored it: several women attempting to smother their amusement at once. Aemond knew that particular sound. He had heard variations of it in the Dragonpit years ago, when boys with dragons had discovered how entertaining a pig with wings could become when the only boy without one stood close enough to understand the joke. His stride slowed as he passed the entrance to a small courtyard, and the sight beyond it supplied the rest. {{user}} sat beneath the shade with an unfinished wreath across her lap, sorting flowers by touch while four ladies occupied the benches around her. One waited until {{user}} began weaving a stem into the crown, then reached across and moved the next cluster beyond the place where her hand had left it. Another nudged several blossoms farther away with the toe of her slipper. When {{user}} reached back, her fingers encountered bare stone, traveled farther, and eventually found what she wanted. The ladies exchanged glances and swallowed another round of amusement. Then the tallest among them picked up a rose and placed it even farther away.

Aemond entered the courtyard while the women were still occupied with their entertainment. He watched {{user}} finish fastening another stem into the wreath and reach toward the place where she had arranged the remaining roses. Her fingers found the stone instead. The tallest of the ladies had taken the flower moments earlier and now held it several inches beyond {{user}}’s reach, passing it idly between her fingers while her companions struggled to contain their amusement. When {{user}} leaned farther, the woman drew the rose back again. Aemond’s attention settled upon her hand. He crossed the remaining distance before any of them found the sense to warn her, caught her wrist, and closed her fingers around the rose she had been using as a toy. The thorns had never been removed. Her amusement vanished when Aemond folded her fingers tighter around the stem and squeezed until the points pressed into her palm. She gasped and tried instinctively to open her hand, but his grip around her knuckles held it closed.

"You wanted her to reach for it," he said, watching the woman’s face contort as another thorn bit into her skin. "Keep hold of it."

"My prince, you are hurting me."

"I am aware."

The answer came with enough calm to frighten her more thoroughly than anger could have. Aemond maintained the pressure for another moment before releasing her hand, leaving her clutching the rose with shallow red marks already appearing across her palm. He looked over the collection of personal things she had abandoned beside the bench: an embroidered purse, a folded handkerchief, a little ivory comb, and a ribbon removed from her hair in the afternoon heat. He swept them from the bench with one movement of his arm. The purse landed several yards away across the paving stones, the comb skittered after it, and the ribbon settled farther down the path. Every woman in the courtyard fell silent. Aemond pointed toward the scattered belongings. "Fetch them."

The lady stared at him, her wounded hand curled against her chest. "Your Grace?"

"You heard me."

She rose, humiliation burning visibly across her face, and crossed toward the purse first. Aemond watched her bend to retrieve it. Then, as she straightened and started toward the ivory comb, he moved. His longer stride carried him there first, and the toe of his black boot struck the comb across the stones just before her fingers reached it. It scraped another several feet away. The woman froze. Aemond looked at her with his head slightly inclined, giving her precisely enough time to understand what he intended.

"Go on."

Her face changed. She walked after the comb. Aemond followed. The instant she came close enough to bend for it, his boot sent it skittering away again.

A sharp breath left her. "Prince Aemond-"

"Is something wrong?"

She looked from him to the comb lying farther down the path.

"You know where it is," Aemond continued. "You can see where I move it. You possess every advantage Lady {{user}} lacked, and already you find the game tiresome."

The woman remained rooted where she stood, shame gradually replacing outrage as the other ladies watched her become the entertainment. Aemond stepped beside the comb and rested the sole of his boot over it. "Pick it up."

The lady hesitated, then lowered herself carefully, reaching toward the edge of his boot as though she might slide the comb free without touching him. Aemond did not move. Her fingertips found the ivory teeth first. She caught the comb between two fingers and began to draw it toward herself.

Only then did he lift his boot. For the briefest instant, relief crossed her face. She reached properly to take it. Aemond brought his boot down across the back of her hand. The movement was measured rather than violent, but the weight was enough to pin her palm flat against the warm stone. She cried out and instinctively tried to pull away. His boot did not shift. The ivory comb lay inches beyond her fingertips, close enough to see, close enough to touch if only he allowed it.

Aemond looked down at her. There was no amusement in his face. That, perhaps, was the worst of it. He regarded her with the same cool attention he might have given an opponent who had failed to understand a lesson after being shown it twice.

Behind them, no one laughed now.

The woman swallowed. "My prince-"

"You knew where it was," Aemond said. "You reached for it. And someone decided you should not have it."

Her eyes flicked toward {{user}}. Aemond increased the pressure beneath his boot just enough to stop her from attempting to pull her hand free again.

"Now apologize to Lady {{user}}."

Viserys’s chambers had become a place where everyone spoke as though volume itself might shorten his life. The shutters stood half-open against the afternoon heat, yet the room remained thick with medicinal herbs, old incense, sweat, and the sweeter rot that perfumes could disguise only at a distance. Daeron had been summoned with little explanation beyond his father wishing to see him, and the presence of {{user}} immediately told him that the meeting concerned something more deliberate than filial duty. She had been given a chair near the king’s bed, while Alicent occupied her accustomed place beside Viserys with one hand resting close to his blankets, ready to adjust a cup or summon a servant whenever his breathing worsened. Daeron took the remaining seat and glanced toward his mother, searching her face for some indication of what had been arranged. Alicent offered him very little. That alone made his stomach tighten. He had spent enough weeks at court to recognize the particular silence that descended whenever Otto’s plans had already advanced beyond the stage where anyone thought to ask the people involved.

Viserys looked dreadful. Illness had hollowed his cheeks and reduced his body beneath the bedclothes until the king Daeron remembered existed mostly in fragments: the silver hair, the rasping authority that occasionally returned to his voice, the ringed fingers moving weakly across the coverlet. Yet his expression brightened when Daeron approached, and that change struck harder than the sight of his decay.

"There he is," Viserys murmured, reaching toward him. Daeron immediately moved closer and took his father’s hand. The grip around his fingers carried little strength, though Viserys held on with visible satisfaction. "Oldtown has given me back a man." Daeron felt heat rise beneath his collar at praise he would once have crossed half the realm to hear. He answered that Oldtown had mostly given him better manners and a stubborn uncle, earning a breath of amusement from Viserys before the king’s attention shifted toward {{user}}.

"And perhaps something better still."

Daeron’s smile faltered. Alicent lowered her eyes. Viserys looked between them with the pleased certainty of a man arriving at the end of a story everyone else had apparently been reading without Daeron. "Your mother has told me about you both."

Daeron turned toward Alicent. His mother remained occupied with smoothing an entirely unnecessary crease from the blanket.

"What has Mother told you?" he asked.

Viserys seemed delighted by the question. "That my youngest son has finally discovered something in King’s Landing worth keeping him here."

The meaning arrived slowly enough to become painful. Daeron stared at his father, then at {{user}}, then back toward Alicent. A flush began beneath his collar and climbed rapidly toward his ears as several recent conversations rearranged themselves in his memory. Alicent asking whether he found {{user}} pleasant company. Alicent wanting to know whether they had spoken again. Alicent remarking that affection often grew quickly between young people suited in temperament. Daeron had answered honestly enough, because {{user}} was pleasant company and he did enjoy speaking with her. Apparently those answers had undergone considerable improvement before reaching Viserys’s sickbed.

"Father," Daeron began, choosing the word with care, "I think perhaps-"

"Oh, spare him." Viserys squeezed his hand with what little strength remained. "Your mother says you have been asking after the girl whenever she is absent, seeking her company without prompting, finding excuses to linger. I was young once, Daeron."

Daeron’s eyes closed for half a second. Across the bed, Alicent finally looked at him. There was warning in her expression. That confused him almost as much as the rest. Alicent had spent weeks resisting Otto’s interest in {{user}}, yet somewhere between her objections and Viserys’s chambers she had apparently decided that presenting the match as a love affair served a purpose worth the lie. Daeron understood the political logic quickly. A dying king might hesitate over another cold arrangement devised by his Hand, particularly one involving a blind ward whose suitability Alicent herself had questioned. A father hearing that his youngest son had fallen in love required far less persuasion. Love transformed calculation into kindness. Otto gained his alliance, Alicent avoided forcing Viserys through another argument, and Viserys received the comfort of believing one of his children had found happiness while he still possessed the authority to secure it.

Only Daeron and {{user}} had apparently missed the part where they were in love.

Viserys reached his other hand toward her, his fingers searching until Alicent guided them to the edge of {{user}}’s hand. "Come closer, child. Let me hear you."

Daeron watched {{user}} respond while mortification crawled through him. Whatever she said, Viserys received it through the version of events Alicent had already constructed. Courtesy became modesty. Hesitation became maidenly embarrassment. The simple fact that {{user}} had agreed to attend the meeting became evidence that the affection was mutual. Daeron could almost admire the trap. Correcting the king would require humiliating {{user}} in front of everyone by declaring that he had never professed love for her, exposing Alicent’s deception, and stripping from his gravely ill father an illusion that was visibly making him happy. Remaining silent allowed the illusion to harden into royal policy.

Viserys made the decision before Daeron found a path between the two.

"Then you shall marry."

The words entered the room with startling simplicity. Daeron’s head turned sharply toward him. Viserys was smiling.

For all the sickness carved into his face, the expression carried unmistakable paternal satisfaction. "Soon," he continued, breath catching before he forced the sentence onward. "I have wasted enough years watching this family quarrel over marriages. If affection has found its way into the matter for once, I mean to reward it." His fingers tightened weakly around Daeron’s. "You are my son. She is of noble blood and good family. There is advantage enough for the realm, and happiness enough for me."

Daeron heard Alicent inhale beside the bed.

"When?" he asked.

Viserys’s smile widened at the question, evidently mistaking alarm for eagerness. "As soon as arrangements permit."

"Father, I meant-"

"I know what you meant."

Daeron strongly suspected that he did not. Viserys turned toward Alicent and began speaking about the sept, suitable dates, invitations, and whether there was time to summon representatives of {{user}}’s family before his strength declined further. Each practical detail made the marriage more real. Daeron sat beside him with his hand still trapped beneath the king’s frail fingers and felt his future being constructed around him sentence by sentence. He looked toward {{user}} again. Her blindness spared her the sight of the expression he was trying desperately to control, which produced the absurd urge to tell her exactly what his face was doing simply because everyone else in the room possessed that information and she did not.

His father solved the problem by addressing her again.

"You must forgive him if he looks frightened," Viserys said, amusement roughened by illness. "Targaryen princes face dragons more readily than weddings."

The training yard had emptied of most spectators by the time Aemond began his third sequence, which suited him perfectly. Criston had already departed to attend the queen, leaving two household knights to occupy the far end of the grounds while Aemond worked through the forms alone, repeating each combination until speed stopped compromising precision. His shirt clung damply between his shoulder blades beneath the leather training vest, silver hair secured high enough to keep it from catching against his collar, and every strike landed with the concentrated violence of a man who considered exhaustion another opponent worth defeating. Steel cracked against the practice blade in his partner’s hand, drove him backward, then hooked beneath his guard hard enough to send the weapon spinning across the dirt. Aemond lowered his sword and told the knight to retrieve it. The man had scarcely bent for the hilt when a familiar voice drifted from the low stone railing bordering the yard.

"Have you heard about our little brother?" Aegon had apparently wandered outside in search of entertainment and discovered it in Aemond. He leaned against the barrier with a cup hanging from one hand despite the hour, pale hair disordered by the breeze and his expression already carrying the particular satisfaction that meant he possessed gossip.

Aemond motioned for the knight to reset his stance. "I hear many things about Daeron."

Aegon took a drink. "This one comes with a wedding."

Aemond’s next strike landed harder than the previous one. The knight absorbed it with both hands and stumbled half a step before recovering. Aegon noticed. "Ah. So you have heard."

Aemond pivoted, drove the man’s blade aside, and instructed him to raise his guard. "Grandfather discusses marriages as frequently as the maesters discuss weather."

"Grandfather discusses them. Father approves them. Mother complains about them. Daeron apparently gets to have one." Aegon stretched his arms along the top of the railing and watched Aemond resume the bout. "Our sweet little Daring is to marry Lady {{user}}. Rather appropriate, when you think about it. She cannot see him blushing every time somebody mentions the bedding."

Aemond’s sword met his opponent’s with a metallic snap. "You have confused your own vulgarity with wit again."

"I thought it was charming." Aegon swirled the wine in his cup. "Daeron should be delighted. A wife who cannot see him means he can wear the same doublet three days running. Think of the savings to the royal treasury." The practice knight’s eyes flicked toward Aegon and immediately returned to Aemond when the prince attacked again.

"She will still smell him," Aemond said. "An unfortunate complication you should understand better than most."

Aegon barked out an appreciative sound and raised his cup toward him. "There he is." He watched another exchange before continuing, apparently encouraged rather than deterred. "I suppose the wedding itself becomes easier. Nobody needs to worry whether the groom looks handsome. Put any silver-haired idiot beside her and tell her it is Daeron."

Aemond’s blade stopped against the other knight’s guard. For a heartbeat the pressure between the swords remained fixed, then Aemond shoved forward hard enough to drive his opponent several paces back. His expression stayed composed while something colder gathered behind his visible eye. "You seem unusually invested in what she can see."

"I am invested in the possibilities." Aegon rested his chin against one fist. “Imagine the gifts. Paintings become useless. Jewels require explanation. Daeron could present her with an empty box and spend half an hour describing the magnificent necklace inside.” He paused, pleased with himself. "Actually, that sounds like him. He could court her entirely through descriptions. 'My lady, the sunset is beautiful. My lady, Tessarion is beautiful. My lady, I am exceptionally beautiful.’ She would have to take his word for all of it."

Aemond dismissed his sparring partner with a small movement of his sword. The knight accepted the escape gratefully and withdrew, leaving Aemond to cross toward the rack and exchange the blunted weapon for a cloth. Aegon followed his progress from the railing. "You are taking this very seriously."

"I am wondering how long you intend to remain amusing only to yourself." Aemond wiped sweat from his palm and ran the cloth carefully along the practice blade.

"Until supper, probably." Aegon’s grin widened. "Perhaps longer if Mother tells me to stop." His eyes followed Aemond with increasing interest. "Though I expected you to enjoy this more. You spent half your childhood glaring at everyone who mentioned your eye. I thought you might appreciate Daeron acquiring a bride who cannot glare back."

Aemond stopped cleaning the sword. Aegon saw it immediately. The prince’s visible eye lifted toward his brother with enough concentration to alter the atmosphere between them. Aegon’s expression remained amused, though curiosity began working beneath it now. He had thrown the insult toward {{user}} and accidentally struck something closer to Aemond instead.

"Careful," Aemond said. "You are approaching a subject upon which your experience consists entirely of having two functioning eyes and making poor use of both."

Aegon’s eyebrows rose. "Gods. You do care."

Aemond returned the cloth to the rack. "About stupidity?"

"About her."

That earned him silence. Aegon pushed himself upright from the railing, delighted by what he thought he had discovered. "This improves everything. Grandfather gives Daeron the pretty blind heiress and suddenly you develop principles." He took another drink, studying Aemond over the rim. "Were you hoping for her yourself? You should have told Otto. He loves arranging people. Perhaps he could hold up two fingers and ask her which prince she prefers."

Aemond crossed the yard. Aegon’s grin persisted until his younger brother reached the railing and stopped directly before him. Aemond stood close enough that Aegon had to tilt his head slightly upward, the height difference becoming considerably more noticeable without a sword’s length between them.

"She is blind," Aemond said, "rather than witless. She would recognize you within seconds."

"By my voice?"

"By the smell of wine."

Aegon snorted.

"And if that failed," Aemond continued, "you would eventually speak."

The amusement around Aegon’s mouth thinned.

"That would settle the matter."

For several seconds the brothers regarded one another across the low barrier, Aegon deciding whether the conversation remained entertaining and Aemond allowing him to decide carefully. Then Aegon’s grin returned in a different shape, sharper because he had found something worth prodding. "Poor Aemond. Daeron gets the girl while you get to defend her honor in a training yard she cannot even watch."

Aemond’s jaw tightened. Aegon saw that too. His grin widened. There it was: the part that mattered. The marriage itself could be dismissed as Otto’s politics, another alliance assembled from bloodlines and necessity, yet the thought of Daeron becoming {{user}}’s husband sat beneath Aemond’s ribs with an irritation he had spent several days refusing to examine. His younger brother would be permitted everything court etiquette currently placed behind barriers. Daeron would guide her into rooms with her hand upon his arm, sit beside her at feasts, learn the private routines of her chambers, hear her voice before sleep and after waking. Every ordinary intimacy would become his by right, while Aemond would acquire the absurd position of brother to the husband and occasional defender against jokes she might never even hear. Aegon had stumbled onto the bruise.

Aemond reached through the gap above the railing, took the cup from his brother’s hand, and poured the remaining wine onto the dirt. Aegon stared at the empty cup.

"You miserable cunt."

"Go inside."

"It was good Arbor red."

"Then mourn it privately."

Aemond turned away and retrieved his sword. Behind him, Aegon remained at the railing for several seconds before calling, "I shall tell Daeron you offered your congratulations."

The welcome feast had been Viserys’s idea, which meant everyone else had been obliged to treat it as a celebration rather than what it actually was: another gathering of two branches of a family that had learned to measure every word for hidden edges. Rhaenyra had returned from Dragonstone with Jacaerys and Lucerys ahead of Daeron’s wedding, and the king had insisted upon receiving them at one table while he still possessed enough strength to sit among his children. He occupied the center beneath the carved dragons of the royal hall, reduced by illness until the high-backed chair seemed built for a much larger man, with Alicent beside him and Rhaenyra placed close enough for Viserys to reach either woman if sentiment overtook him. Helaena sat near Aegon, her attention wandering between the food and some private observation she had yet to share, while Aemond occupied his place farther down with the rigid patience of someone enduring an event whose purpose irritated him. Jace and Luke had returned older than Daeron remembered, and the first part of supper passed through cautious questions about Dragonstone, Oldtown, dragons, training, and all the safe subjects available to relatives whose childhood grievances had acquired political consequences. Daeron participated readily enough. His approaching marriage had made him the evening’s favored target for congratulations, and every mention of it sent another glance toward {{user}}, another jest from Aegon, another pleased remark from Viserys about seeing his youngest son settled. The attention embarrassed Daeron without souring his mood. He had spent enough time with {{user}} by then for the prospect of marrying her to feel less like Otto’s arrangement and increasingly like a future he could imagine inhabiting.

Aemond had spent the same weeks arriving at a considerably less agreeable conclusion. He disliked the marriage with an intensity he had disguised beneath dutiful indifference, and watching Daeron sit beside {{user}} throughout the feast had steadily worn through what remained of that disguise. His younger brother had learned the practical habits of her company quickly. Daeron told her what had been placed before her whenever servants changed courses, moved a cup back to the exact position her hand expected after a page accidentally shifted it, and leaned close whenever conversation around the table became too tangled for individual voices to separate easily. None of the gestures were grand enough to attract comment. That made them worse. Aemond could dismiss ceremony as performance and promises as politics; ordinary familiarity offered fewer defenses. When Daeron murmured something near {{user}}’s ear and received an answer that brought color into his cheeks, Aemond’s fingers tightened around the stem of his goblet. Aegon noticed from two seats away and drank with the satisfaction of a man who had just found entertainment for the remainder of supper.

Viserys eventually called for wine and raised his cup toward the returning Dragonstone party, speaking first of family and then of the wedding that had brought them together. His words wandered with exhaustion, but the sentiment remained clear. He wanted peace beneath his roof. He wanted Rhaenyra’s sons to stand beside Alicent’s at Daeron’s wedding. He wanted grandchildren who would know one another without inheriting every grievance currently sitting around the table. Rhaenyra answered with a toast of her own, offering Daeron and {{user}} her wishes for a prosperous marriage, good health, and children enough to make the Red Keep unbearably crowded whenever they visited. Daeron accepted it with a flushed smile and lifted his cup toward his half-sister. Jace followed with something shorter and more earnest, while Luke raised his wine with him. Even Aegon managed a crude remark about Daeron discovering how little sleep marriage provided once children arrived, earning a weary look from Alicent and a grin from Jace that briefly made them resemble ordinary young men at an ordinary family supper.

Then Aemond stood. Daeron looked toward him immediately. His brother lifted his goblet and waited until the conversations nearest him subsided. Candlelight caught along his silver hair and the polished edge of the black patch crossing his scar. His expression carried the composure Daeron knew well enough to distrust. Aemond rarely acted without purpose, and the fact that his visible eye settled first upon Daeron before shifting toward {{user}} made something tighten low in Daeron’s stomach.

"A toast," Aemond said. "To my younger brother and his bride."

Viserys brightened. Alicent watched Aemond carefully.

"May their marriage prove fruitful, their children strong, and their household fortunate.” Aemond paused, rolling the cup once between his fingers. “And may those children escape the particular misfortune of being born blind and useless."

The words crossed the table cleanly. For a heartbeat, nobody moved. Daeron felt the insult before he fully processed it, a violent rush of heat rising through his chest while every earlier trace of embarrassment vanished. Beside him sat the woman Aemond had reduced, in front of the entire royal family, to a defect he hoped her children would escape. Daeron’s chair scraped backward across the floor.

"Aemond."

His brother looked at him. Daeron was already standing. Alicent said his name, warning threaded through it, but Daeron’s attention remained fixed upon Aemond. Anger rarely arrived in him this cleanly. Usually it tangled itself with anxiety, calculation, and the instinct to find a solution that allowed everyone to retain some dignity. Aemond had removed that instinct with one sentence.

"You will take that back."

Aemond’s brow lifted. "Which part?"

Daeron stared at him. Across the table, Aegon lowered his cup very slowly.

"The part where you called my future wife useless."

Aemond’s gaze moved toward {{user}} and returned to Daeron. "I spoke of hypothetical children."

"You chose your words because she is sitting here."

"Then perhaps she understands them better than you."

Daeron moved around his chair. Jace straightened immediately. Luke’s attention darted between the brothers, while Rhaenyra’s hand settled across Jace’s forearm before he could decide whether involvement would improve matters. Alicent had gone rigid beside Viserys. The king himself looked bewildered, his failing health leaving him several beats behind a quarrel that everyone else understood perfectly.

Daeron lasted less than a quarter of an hour after {{user}} left the feast. He tried, at first, because following her immediately would have turned her departure into another spectacle and given every pair of eyes at the table a fresh subject to dissect. He remained in his chair while servants changed the course, answered Jace when his nephew attempted to drag conversation toward Dragonstone, and heard perhaps half of what Viserys said from the center of the table. Aemond sat within Daeron's line of sight, composed again after delivering the insult that had driven {{user}} away, and every glimpse of his brother renewed the pressure behind Daeron's ribs. What troubled him more was the memory of how {{user}} had received the remark. She had offered the room very little to witness. Her posture had tightened, her answers had shortened, and eventually she had excused herself with enough composure that anyone eager to preserve the evening could pretend fatigue had taken her upstairs. Daeron knew better. He had spent weeks learning the changes in her voice that other people missed because they relied upon her face, and he had heard the effort beneath every word. When another servant approached with wine, Daeron pushed his chair back, murmured something about checking upon his betrothed, and ignored the look Alicent sent after him. The wedding was close enough for half the castle to concern itself with what he owed {{user}} as a husband. Daeron found himself considerably more interested in what he owed her as the person whose family had just humiliated her.

Her maid answered the chamber door and hesitated before admitting him. That hesitation told him enough to lower his voice and ask whether {{user}} wished to receive him, because barging into her rooms under the banner of concern would merely replace one humiliation with another. The maid disappeared inside and returned after a moment to allow him through. Daeron entered expecting anger, perhaps a brittle attempt to dismiss Aemond as an ass and the feast as another unpleasant obligation of court. Instead he found {{user}} near the window with her formal clothes still on, the jewels and pins from supper untouched, tears wet across her cheeks as though she had spent every minute since leaving the hall trying and failing to bring herself under control. The sight stopped him several paces inside the chamber. He had seen people cry before. Alicent's tears had always frightened him as a child because they meant something in the family had gone terribly wrong; Helaena's had made him want to repair whatever could be repaired; his own had long ago become something to swallow before anyone noticed. {{user}} crying because of a sentence spoken by his brother produced something harsher. Daeron wanted Aemond back in front of him. He wanted another opportunity to answer that toast without Viserys, Alicent, half the court, and the restraints of a royal table between them.

He closed the door behind him and made his presence clear with her name before approaching. "It is Daeron." His voice came out lower than it had at supper, stripped of the fury that had sharpened it there. He stopped within speaking distance and let her decide whether he came closer. Whatever she said first carried enough strain to confirm what he had feared, and when the explanation finally emerged, it was worse than anger. {{user}} had taken Aemond's cruelty and found inside it every argument other people had apparently made about her for years. A prince required a wife who could move through court independently, preside over a household, raise royal children, stand beside him at ceremonies, and represent him before people who would already search for weaknesses. Daeron could have married a woman admired throughout the realm. Instead he had been given a blind bride whose marriage prospects had required Otto's intervention, whose own future mother-in-law had resisted the match, and whose disability could pass to the children everyone expected her to bear. Aemond had simply possessed the cruelty to say aloud what she feared the rest of them thought privately. By the time she reached the part about being unworthy of a Targaryen prince, especially him, Daeron's anger had changed direction completely.

"Especially me?" he repeated.

The words escaped with genuine disbelief. Daeron dragged a chair closer, describing the movement before sitting so the scrape across the floor would carry an explanation with it. He leaned forward with his forearms against his thighs and studied her while choosing what came next, because empty reassurance would insult her almost as thoroughly as Aemond had. Calling her beautiful would answer nothing. Telling her blindness meant nothing would be equally foolish when it plainly affected how she navigated the world and how the world treated her. Daeron had no desire to erase something simply because other people had weaponized it. "I want you to understand something about my brother," he said. "Aemond chooses the place where a blade will hurt most and puts it there. Tonight he wanted to hurt you, and he wanted to hurt me through you. He succeeded because he found something you already feared. That makes him observant and vicious. It does not make him right."

Daeron rubbed his thumb once across the side of his forefinger, catching himself before the nervous habit turned into picking at the skin. "You speak about marrying a prince as though I belong to some superior species. I spent half of supper wondering whether I was holding the correct fork because I have been away from this court long enough for its habits to feel ridiculous. I still lose my way in corridors I walked through as a child. Gwayne corrects my sword arm every morning. My grandfather can move me from one end of the castle to another with three messages and a strategically placed servant. My mother can make me feel twelve years old with a single look." His mouth tightened with something closer to exasperation than amusement. "Tessarion possesses more natural majesty than I do, and she eats goats whole."

The attempt at humor passed quickly because the tears on {{user}}'s face still mattered more. Daeron straightened and continued before she could reduce his words to kindness offered out of obligation. "You will need assistance with things I perform through sight. I will need assistance with things you understand better than I do. That is what living beside another person means. If you need my arm in an unfamiliar hall, you may take it. If you need me to tell you who entered a room, I will tell you. If someone moves something you placed within reach, I will put it back and tell you who moved it. None of those things makes you useless. They make the world around you built for people who see, and I possess eyes that work well enough to make myself useful when you want them."

He paused, then added with greater force, "And when you do not want help, I expect you to tell me to leave you alone."

That mattered too. Daeron had watched enough courtiers interact with {{user}} to recognize the opposite cruelty: hands appearing at her elbow without warning, people answering questions addressed to her, servants moving objects into supposedly convenient places and thereby destroying the map she had already formed of a room. He wanted no part of turning marriage into permanent supervision. "I am supposed to become your husband, not your keeper."

The word husband changed something in his own expression. The wedding had existed for weeks as arrangements, fittings, septons, lists, discussions about chambers and households. Here, with {{user}} crying because she believed herself inadequate for him, Daeron suddenly felt the personal weight beneath all of it. Soon she would wake knowing his rooms were hers too. His family would become the people she ate with, argued with, endured, and perhaps eventually loved. His position would alter hers everywhere they went. His failures toward her would carry more consequence precisely because the crown gave him greater power inside their marriage. The realization sobered him.

Daeron rose and crossed the remaining distance, stopping close enough that she could hear exactly where he stood. He offered his hand without taking hers. "Aemond called you useless tonight. My mother has spent weeks worrying about what sort of princess you might make. My grandfather sees your family every time he discusses this wedding. Half the court probably has an opinion about whether you can pour your own wine." His jaw tightened. "They may keep their opinions. I am the man who has to marry you, and I would rather learn who my wife actually is."

If {{user}} placed her hand in his, Daeron closed his fingers around it and lowered himself beside her rather than drawing her up. His thumb passed over her knuckles once while he searched for words that belonged entirely to him. "I cannot promise you that people will suddenly become decent after we marry. A crown on your head will cure nobody's stupidity. Some will pity you, some will underestimate you, and some will behave exactly as Aemond did tonight because cruelty becomes very tempting when someone thinks they have found an easy wound." His grip tightened fractionally. "What I can promise is that you will never have to wonder whether your husband agrees with them."

The welcome feast had already lasted long enough for Aegon to become dangerous company. Rhaenyra's return from Dragonstone with Jacaerys and Lucerys had given Viserys an excuse to gather his entire family beneath one roof before Aemond's wedding, and the king had seized upon it with the stubborn enthusiasm of a dying man determined to manufacture one more evening of domestic unity. Viserys occupied the center of the table with Alicent beside him and Rhaenyra within easy speaking distance; Helaena sat near Aegon, while Jace and Luke faced Daeron farther down. {{user}} had been seated beside Aemond in acknowledgment of the marriage approaching quickly enough for tailors, septons, servants, and half the court to speak of little else. Aemond had spent much of supper quietly orienting her whenever the arrangement changed around her, mentioning the arrival of another course before servants reached across her place, telling her when Viserys addressed someone at the opposite end of the table, occasionally shifting a dish closer after asking whether she wanted it. Jace had watched the practice once or twice with open curiosity, Luke with considerably less discretion, while Daeron appeared more interested in discovering whether years apart had left him and Jace enough shared interests to sustain conversation. For perhaps an hour the evening functioned. Old grievances remained contained beneath ceremony, Viserys seemed pleased simply to hear his children speaking around him, and even Aemond allowed himself to believe they might reach the final course without somebody deciding blood ties required testing.

Aegon ruined that possibility sometime during his fourth cup of wine. He had reached the stage of drunkenness where his body seemed permanently half a beat behind his mouth. His cheeks carried a blotchy flush, one elbow had established itself beside his plate as structural support, and every few minutes he interrupted whichever conversation happened nearest him with an observation that amused him increasingly in proportion to everyone else's discomfort. Alicent had warned him twice. Helaena had gradually withdrawn into herself. Aemond had ignored him because engaging Aegon while he was drunk usually rewarded the behavior with exactly the attention he wanted. Then a servant set down a covered dish near {{user}}, and she paused while Aemond told her what had been placed there. Aegon watched the exchange over the rim of his goblet.

"Gods, brother," he drawled, "you have already begun practicing."

Aemond's eye shifted toward him. "Practicing what?"

"Being her keeper."

Alicent's fingers tightened around her cup. Aegon leaned farther over the table, encouraged by the attention. "You will have to describe everything for the rest of your life. Her food. Her dresses. Which child she is holding." His mouth twisted as another thought occurred to him. "That last one could become troublesome, actually."

"Aegon," Alicent said.

He waved her away.

"Imagine the nursery." His gaze settled upon {{user}} with the ugly fascination of a drunk who had discovered a subject nobody wanted him to continue. "Half a dozen silver-haired little princes running around and their mother waiting for someone to tell her which one she has picked up. You could swap them whenever you pleased."

Jace stopped speaking to Daeron. Luke looked across the table. Aemond remained completely still. Aegon should have recognized the warning. Sobriety might have given him enough instinct for it. Wine gave him another joke instead.

"Though I suppose that solves the question of bastards." He lifted his goblet toward Aemond. "Lucky bastard. Your wife could spend twenty years raising another man's sons and never know whose face they had."

The wine struck Aegon across the face before anyone else moved. Aemond had thrown the contents of his goblet with a snap of his wrist. Red wine splashed across Aegon's cheek, hair, collar, and embroidered doublet, silencing the table so abruptly that the clatter of Aegon's cup hitting his plate seemed enormous. Aegon blinked through the liquid running from his lashes. His mouth opened.

Aemond was already standing. The first punch caught Aegon across the mouth. His chair went backward with him. Wood crashed against the floor as Aegon stumbled sideways into the edge of the table, sending cups jumping and silverware scattering across linen. Helaena recoiled. Alicent surged to her feet. Viserys jerked upright with a startled sound while Rhaenyra caught the arm of his chair, and Daeron shoved himself away from the table as Aemond rounded the corner after his brother.

"You fucking-" Aegon managed.

Aemond hit him again. This time his fist landed against Aegon's jaw and drove him into the stone column behind his place. Aegon's head snapped sideways. Blood appeared at the corner of his mouth, mixing with the wine running down his chin, and whatever drunken amusement had occupied his face vanished beneath sudden rage. He lunged forward and caught a fistful of Aemond's clothes, dragging him close enough that the brothers collided chest to chest before Aemond drove his forearm into Aegon's throat.

Jace reached them first. He caught Aemond around the upper arms from behind just as Aemond drew his fist back for a third strike, hauling with enough force to pull him half a pace away. "Aemond."

"Release me."

Aemond's voice carried more threat than volume.

"After you stop trying to break his face."

"Then you will be holding me until morning."

Aegon surged forward again, and Luke darted around the fallen chair to catch him from the other side, grabbing his arm while Daeron moved instinctively between the overturned furniture and {{user}}'s place. Aegon fought Luke's grip with drunken strength and spat blood onto the floor.

"Have you lost your fucking mind?"

Aemond twisted hard enough that Jace had to brace one foot against the flagstones to keep him back. "Say it again."

Aegon wiped his mouth with the heel of his hand and stared at the blood smeared across it. "It was a joke."

"Say it again."

"Aemond!" Alicent's voice cut across the hall.

Aemond left the hall the moment {{user}} rose from the table. He gave neither Viserys nor Alicent an explanation, ignored Aegon's bloodied mouth and whatever argument had begun behind him, and followed her through the doors before anyone could decide that the prince ought to remain and account for the violence he had just caused. The noise of the feast pursued them into the gallery for several turns before stone and distance swallowed it. Aemond kept beside {{user}} without filling the walk with questions she would have to answer while half the household watched them pass. He told her when the corridor narrowed, warned her before the short flight of steps leading toward her apartments, and offered his arm whenever the route changed beneath her feet. His anger remained visible in the set of his jaw and the blood drying across his split knuckles, but he refused to carry it into her space. Every servant they encountered received a look that discouraged conversation. By the time they reached her chambers, the maid waiting outside had already heard enough disturbance from the direction of the feast to stare at Aemond's bruised hand and then immediately lower her eyes.

"Open the door."

The maid obeyed. Aemond entered with {{user}} and found two more attendants inside preparing the room for her return, one tending the fire while another arranged the covers across the bed. Both turned at the prince's arrival. "Leave us," Aemond said. The women hesitated, glancing toward {{user}} for confirmation, and Aemond waited until she gave it before repeating the order. "All of you. Outside." The last servant collected herself quickly and followed the others into the passage. Aemond closed the door behind them, slid the bolt into place, and remained there for several seconds with his hand resting against the wood. The silence inside her chambers felt almost unnatural after the feast. No Aegon filling every pause with something poisonous, no Alicent trying to contain four adult children through the force of her stare, no chairs overturning, no Viserys demanding peace from people who had forgotten how to give it to one another. Only the fire shifting in the grate and {{user}} somewhere behind him, carrying every word his brother had put into her head.

Aemond turned and crossed the room. His hands hovered near her arms for an instant, restraint surviving long enough for him to ask, "May I?" Once she gave him permission, everything rigid about him seemed to yield at once. Aemond drew her into his arms. There was no speech prepared for it. No carefully constructed argument about Aegon's cruelty, no attempt to explain blindness to a woman who had lived with it every day of her life, no catalogue of all the reasons she deserved the marriage waiting for them. He simply wrapped both arms around her and pulled her against his chest until there was scarcely any space left between them. One hand spread across the middle of her back while the other settled higher between her shoulder blades, holding her securely against the solid warmth of his body. His chin brushed her hair before he lowered his head and pressed his lips to her crown.

He stayed there. The first few moments still carried the fight in him. His breathing remained too deep, his heart struck hard beneath the chest against which he held her, and the hand at her back tightened whenever Aegon's words returned to memory. Gradually those remnants drained away. Aemond shifted his stance until he could hold her without effort and rested his cheek briefly against her hair before returning his mouth to the top of her head. His lips remained there in a long, unmoving kiss. He had spent years teaching himself that distress required action, that anger needed somewhere to go, that vulnerability became tolerable once converted into discipline or violence or control. Tonight he had already answered Aegon with his fists. Nothing else in the hall required his attention now. {{user}} did.

When her body finally began to shake against him, Aemond's embrace tightened.

"Come here," he murmured, although she was already held as close as he could draw her.

His palm traveled once along her back and returned, a slow movement intended only to remind her that he remained there. If tears soaked into his clothes, he ignored them. If her fingers caught in the fabric at his sides, he welcomed the pressure. He had no concern for the state of his doublet, his injured hand, the servants waiting beyond the door, or the family gathering itself back together several corridors away. He kept her enclosed against him and breathed through the anger until his own heartbeat steadied enough that she could feel the change.

Aemond pressed another kiss into her hair.

"You do not have to speak."

The sentence was nearly lost against her crown.

"I am going nowhere."

He meant it literally. For once, he demanded nothing from the moment. He did not ask whether she was hurt, because he already knew. He did not ask her to repeat Aegon's words and make herself hear them again. He did not tell her to stop crying or promise that tomorrow would erase what happened tonight. He held her while the humiliation worked its way out in whatever form it chose, occasionally shifting his hand across her back or pressing his lips against her hair whenever her breathing broke again.

Minutes passed that way. Perhaps many of them. Aemond eventually closed his eye. His face disappeared into her hair, his nose resting against the crown of her head while his arms remained locked around her. The position exposed an intimacy he would have recoiled from displaying anywhere beyond a bolted door. Here, with nobody watching, he allowed himself to hold her with the full force of everything he had refused to say at the table. She was about to become his wife. Whatever Otto had intended when he proposed the match, whatever Alicent had feared, whatever Aegon found amusing, the approaching marriage had ceased to feel like an arrangement Aemond merely intended to endure. The woman trembling against his chest had become someone whose pain could drag him from a royal feast without a backward glance.

His lips touched her crown once more.

"Stay here as long as you need."

His voice had dropped to little more than breath against her hair. Aemond's arms tightened around her again, and he continued holding her in the locked chamber while the feast carried on without them.

The practice yard had baked beneath the afternoon sun until the packed earth gave off heat through the soles of Daeron's boots. Gwayne had been called away before the session began, leaving Daeron with Aegon and two guardsmen whose presence had gradually become ornamental once the brothers decided to spar each other. Aegon treated practice with the same irreverence he brought to most obligations, fighting well enough whenever pride demanded it and wasting the intervals between exchanges on commentary designed specifically to irritate whoever stood opposite him. Daeron had already endured remarks about the wedding feast, the expense of his clothes, and the likelihood that Otto would have him producing heirs before the marriage candles burned down. He answered most with the occasional roll of his eyes and another strike against Aegon's guard. Aegon enjoyed provoking him, and Daeron had learned years ago that indignation only supplied his brother with material. The strategy worked until Aegon caught Daeron's blade, shoved it aside, and stepped backward with a grin. "I have been wondering about your wedding night, little brother."

Daeron reset his stance. "That sounds like a particularly unfortunate use of your imagination."

"It is a practical concern." Aegon rolled one shoulder and raised his sword again. "Everyone keeps speaking about the wedding as though the ceremony is the difficult part. I am more interested in what happens afterward." He parried Daeron's next attack and circled him, amusement gathering as he discovered the direction he wanted to take. "You have barely courted anyone, and now they are sending you straight into a marriage bed with a woman who cannot even see who climbs into it."

Daeron's sword stopped halfway back into guard. Aegon noticed immediately. The grin widened.

"There is a thought." He lowered his blade slightly. "How would she know?"

"Aegon."

"By your voice, perhaps, assuming the man had the stupidity to speak." Aegon paced sideways through the dirt, turning the idea over as though it were genuinely amusing. "Or perhaps she would recognize your hands. Gods, Daeron, you had better develop some distinctive habits quickly. Otherwise any man in the Red Keep could slip into your place and she would spend the next morning thanking her husband."

Daeron's expression emptied.

The two guardsmen at the edge of the yard suddenly became very interested in the weapons rack.

Aegon saw the warning and continued anyway. "Actually, I may have solved your problem for you. You look terrified every time somebody mentions bedding her. If you find yourself lacking the courage on the wedding night, send for me." He spread his arms slightly, practice sword hanging loose from one hand. "Consider it my wedding gift. I shall spare my little brother the ordeal, she can believe she had her prince, and everyone wakes satisfied."

Daeron crossed the distance between them before Aegon finished smiling.

His first strike came hard enough to knock Aegon's sword sideways. The second followed before his brother had properly recovered, steel cracking against steel with enough force to drive Aegon backward. Aegon's grin disappeared as he caught another blow, then another, suddenly forced to use both hands and every fragment of sobriety he possessed to keep Daeron's practice blade away from his body. "Seven hells-"

Daeron attacked again. Aegon barely turned it.

"You think that is funny?" Daeron demanded.

The warmth had vanished from his voice. Anger made him frightening in a way Aegon rarely encountered because Daeron usually spent so much effort controlling it, wrapping displeasure in manners and giving people opportunities to retreat before forcing a confrontation. There was no such invitation now. Daeron drove him across the yard until Aegon's heel carved a trench through the dirt and his shoulder struck the low wooden rail.

"I was taking the piss."

"You offered to climb into my wife's bed and use her blindness to make her believe you were me."

Aegon opened his mouth. Daeron slammed his blade against Aegon's and knocked the weapon from his hand. t landed several feet away. The guardsmen moved instinctively, then stopped when Daeron tossed his own sword aside as well. He caught Aegon by the front of his training doublet and drove him backward against the rail. Wood groaned beneath the impact.

"Daeron."

"Say it again."

Aegon's expression sharpened. "Get your hands off me."

"Say it again."

The difference in their ages disappeared inside Daeron's fury. He had spent years as the youngest brother, the pleasant one, the boy sent away to Oldtown while Aegon and Aemond grew into men at court. Aegon still treated him accordingly whenever the opportunity arose. Daeron could tolerate jokes directed at himself. He could tolerate being called inexperienced, frightened, painfully earnest, even prudish. What Aegon had just described required something else entirely: {{user}} trusting the man entering her marriage bed and another man exploiting the one sense she could never use to verify his identity. The fact that Aegon could transform that vulnerability into a joke made Daeron's fingers tighten in his clothes.

"If any man ever enters her chambers pretending to be me," Daeron said, each word measured through clenched anger, "I will treat him as a man who violated the protection of my household. Brother, lord, knight, prince, it will make no difference."

Aegon stared at him. Daeron leaned closer. "And if you ever suggest to her that she should fear such a thing from you, I will forget that you are my brother long enough to make you regret teaching her the idea."

For once, Aegon found no immediate joke. Daeron released him with a shove and stepped back. His hands were shaking now that the first violence of his anger had somewhere to go, and he curled them into fists before anyone could mistake the tremor for fear. Aegon straightened his doublet and rubbed the place where the rail had caught his back. His expression hovered somewhere between irritation and surprise, as though the brother he had expected to embarrass had been replaced midway through the conversation.

The afternoon had left the training yard churned into a mixture of dust and damp earth where water had been thrown down to settle it, and Aemond had already driven Aegon through enough exchanges to expose the difference between talent and discipline. Aegon possessed the first in irritating abundance and treated the second as a personal insult. He fought with his collar open, hair sticking to his forehead, and the increasingly careless confidence of a man who had discovered that irritating his brother required considerably less effort than defeating him. Aemond, by contrast, had been training since before the sun reached the highest wall. His sleeves were rolled to his forearms, his long hair secured away from his face, and sweat traced the line of his scar beneath the edge of the leather patch while he circled Aegon with his practice sword held ready. Their blades met twice, separated, and Aegon retreated before Aemond could punish the opening beneath his guard. "Marriage has improved your temper," Aegon observed, breathing harder than he wanted anyone to notice. "You used to look merely miserable. Now you look miserable with purpose."

Aemond advanced. "Raise your guard."

"I am trying to congratulate you."

"Your guard, Aegon."

Aegon lifted the sword at the last moment and caught the strike with a grunt. Aemond forced his blade downward until Aegon's wrist bent beneath the pressure, then released him and stepped away. "I have been thinking about Lady {{user}}," Aegon continued, apparently deciding that self-preservation could wait. "You make rather a remarkable pair."

Aemond's eye narrowed. "Careful."

"Why? It is practically romantic." Aegon grinned and wiped his mouth against his sleeve. "One eye between the two of you."

The yard went quiet. A pair of guardsmen standing near the weapons rack looked elsewhere with remarkable speed. Aegon saw them do it and found fresh encouragement in their discomfort. "Think of the convenience. Stand her on your right and between you there is almost a complete person." He raised his sword again, already chuckling at his own invention. "Though perhaps the septon should arrange you carefully at the wedding. Would be terribly embarrassing if the bride faced the wrong direction and the groom only saw half of it."

Aemond stared at him. Aegon knew that stare. He had known it since childhood, and somewhere beneath the wine, laziness, and appetite for provoking people lived enough sense to recognize exactly when his brother ceased participating in the joke. Unfortunately, Aegon's pride usually arrived several moments before his judgment.

"Come now," he said. "You should appreciate the symmetry. The One-Eyed Prince and his blind bride. Between the pair of you, you could keep watch over half a corridor."

Aemond attacked. The first blow smashed into Aegon's guard with enough force to jar both his arms. The second came from the opposite direction before he recovered. Aegon staggered, caught the third awkwardly, and cursed as Aemond drove him backward through the churned earth. This had ceased resembling practice. Aemond gave him no interval to reset, no courteous distance, no opportunity to turn the exchange into another joke. Steel hammered against steel until Aegon's grip began to fail, then Aemond twisted his blade beneath his brother's and tore the sword from his hand.

It landed in the mud. Aegon stared after it. Aemond threw his own aside.

"Oh, fuck."

He reached Aegon before his brother could retreat. Aemond caught him by the front of his training coat, turned with the momentum, and hurled him bodily into the wettest stretch of the yard. Aegon struck the ground shoulder-first and rolled onto his back with mud smeared across one side of his face. He managed half a curse before Aemond's boot planted against his chest and drove him flat again.

"Aemond."

Aemond increased the pressure. Aegon grabbed at his ankle. "Get your fucking foot off me."

"You wanted symmetry."

The words came low and precise. Aemond shifted his boot higher and forced Aegon's shoulder deeper into the mud. Brown water seeped through the expensive fabric across his back. Aegon twisted, trying to rise, and Aemond shoved him down again with enough force to splash mud across his cheek and silver hair.

"Here is yours."

"Aemond, Seven fucking hells-"

His brother caught a fistful of Aegon's hair and turned his face toward the ground.

"One eye between us, was it?"

Aegon's cheek pressed into the mud. The guardsmen remained several yards away, caught between the danger of allowing one prince to batter another and the greater danger of physically intervening without command. Aemond crouched over his brother, one knee pinning the back of Aegon's thigh while his hand kept his head exactly where he wanted it.

"You have two," Aemond said near his ear. "Use them."

He forced Aegon's face another inch downward.

"Look at the mud."

Aegon spat dirt from his mouth and tried to wrench free. "I can fucking see it."

"Good."

Aemond released his hair only to seize the back of his collar and haul his head up enough for him to breathe properly. Mud streaked Aegon's forehead, nose, jaw, and pale hair. Aemond regarded the result with cold satisfaction.

"Then you possess twice my advantage and remain half as observant."

Aegon's expression twisted. "It was a fucking joke."

"Yes." Aemond shoved him down again. "I understood it."

Daeron had intended to spend perhaps half an hour with {{user}} before the afternoon pulled them both back into the machinery surrounding their approaching marriage. He had escaped a fitting early, acquired a small paper parcel of sugared almonds from the kitchens because she had mentioned liking them several days earlier, and crossed toward the enclosed gallery where one of her attendants had told him she was spending the afternoon. He heard conversation before reaching the open doors and recognized {{user}} immediately. The second voice made his steps slow. Rhaenyra. His half-sister had been back from Dragonstone only a handful of days, and Daeron still found her presence inside the Red Keep strangely disorienting. For most of his life she had existed at a distance, simultaneously his sister, the king's chosen heir, and the woman around whom every Hightower conversation eventually became political. Alicent spoke of her with old hurt buried beneath caution; Otto discussed her as a problem whose eventual consequences had to be anticipated; Aemond's resentment toward her carried the accumulated weight of Driftmark and Viserys's favoritism. Daeron had inherited all those histories without living closely enough beside Rhaenyra to make them entirely his own. Hearing her alone with the woman he was expected to marry therefore produced an immediate flicker of suspicion, followed almost at once by embarrassment that suspicion had come so readily.

He found them beside an open window overlooking Blackwater Bay, {{user}} seated with Rhaenyra close enough for conversation to remain private while a neglected embroidery frame rested between them. Rhaenyra had evidently abandoned whatever conventional occupation had been intended for the visit, because the needle remained untouched and she was describing Dragonstone instead: the sound of the sea beneath the castle during storms, the heat that lived inside certain passages because the mountain itself remained warm, the sulfurous breath of the Dragonmont, and the way Syrax announced herself long before anyone reached the outer yard. Her descriptions contained none of the exaggerated simplicity Daeron had heard courtiers adopt around {{user}}, as though blindness had somehow reduced the vocabulary available to her. Rhaenyra spoke to her as she spoke to anyone whose attention she wanted, with opinions, gossip, sharp observations about people they both knew, and enough detail to make the place intelligible through everything except sight. "The castle itself is hideous," she was saying when Daeron entered. "Every Targaryen insists Dragonstone is magnificent because admitting our ancestors built a damp black fortress covered in stone monsters would wound several centuries of family pride." {{user}} answered something that made Rhaenyra's mouth curve. "Exactly. You understand already. Daeron will tell you it is historically important. Aemond will call it Valyrian. Both mean hideous."

"I have been slandered before entering the room."

Rhaenyra turned toward him. "Then you arrived at an inconvenient moment. I had several more things prepared."

Daeron approached deliberately enough for {{user}} to follow his position by sound and greeted her before setting the paper parcel within reach, telling her what it contained. Rhaenyra noticed that. Her eyes moved from the almonds to Daeron and lingered with an expression he found difficult to interpret. "You remembered."

"She told me she liked them."

Daeron gave his half-sister a look and took the remaining chair. The exchange should have irritated him. Instead, something about finding Rhaenyra and {{user}} together had already unsettled the picture of his sister constructed for him in Oldtown. He had expected courtesy because Rhaenyra understood politics too well to insult Otto's ward shortly before a royal marriage. He had expected curiosity because {{user}} belonged to a Great House Otto wanted bound more securely to Alicent's children. He had even expected Rhaenyra to probe delicately for information about the Greens. What he had found looked considerably less useful. Rhaenyra simply liked her.

That became clearer as the conversation continued. Rhaenyra asked {{user}} questions and waited for her answers rather than redirecting them toward Daeron. When a servant entered and addressed Rhaenyra with a question concerning {{user}}'s refreshments, Rhaenyra immediately told the woman, "Ask her. She is sitting directly beside me." When the embroidery frame became inconvenient, she asked where {{user}} wanted it moved rather than silently relocating it. The habits were small, yet Daeron recognized their significance because he had spent enough time around {{user}} to see how frequently people failed at them. Rhaenyra possessed another quality that surprised him more: she showed little interest in treating {{user}} as unfortunate. Blindness entered the conversation whenever relevant and disappeared whenever it was irrelevant. She asked how {{user}} found the Red Keep's labyrinthine passages, agreed that half the staircases appeared designed by a drunken architect, and told her which galleries she herself had hated as a girl. When {{user}} mentioned Alicent, however, something sharper entered Rhaenyra's attention.

"My stepmother has been difficult with you."

Daeron looked toward her. Rhaenyra caught the movement. "Daeron, half the castle knows."

"Half the castle knows everything."

"Usually incorrectly. In this case, they possess ears."

There was old hostility beneath the remark, but Rhaenyra directed none of it toward {{user}}. If anything, Alicent's resistance to the marriage seemed to have produced an unexpected solidarity. Rhaenyra knew what it meant to have her suitability measured according to standards created by other people, and she recognized enough of that machinery around {{user}} to dislike it instinctively. "Alicent spent years hearing what a woman's duty required of her," she continued, turning back toward {{user}}. "It appears she has become rather fond of passing the tradition onward."

"Rhaenyra."

"What? I am being charitable."

"You are being Rhaenyra."

"That too."

Daeron reached for one of the almonds and received a light slap against his fingers from his half-sister before he could take it.

"Those are hers."

"I brought them."

"Which makes stealing them afterward particularly graceless."

Daeron stared at her, then at {{user}} as though appealing to the only reasonable person present. "You see what Dragonstone has done to her."

...