Prince Daeron Targaryen had not known {{user}} long.

He had met her first beneath the glass-colored skies of Oldtown, the city where he had been sent as a boy, to learn the Faith, the law, and the ways of peace. He had grown among septons and scholars, his dragon Tessarion sleeping on the windy cliffs outside the Hightower, while his own blood, royal and searing, cooled in quiet discipline.

When the raven came from King’s Landing, it bore a seal of red wax pressed with the three-headed dragon. His mother’s doing, no doubt. The letter spoke of alliance, of duty, of uniting the fractured bloodlines that had already begun to turn inward like a wound left untended. He was to wed his niece, {{user}}.

Yet nothing in his calm, ordered life in Oldtown had prepared him for the day he finally saw her.

She came to the Hightower with her retinue, her pale hair braided with silver ribbons, eyes like amethysts that had seen too much. She did not bow when introduced to him, she curtsied, but her gaze did not lower. The faintest smile, polite but edged with something unreadable, touched her lips.

And Daeron, who had been praised all his life for his serenity, found himself… disturbed.

That night, he walked the gardens of Oldtown, under the scent of night-blooming flowers, his mind echoing with her face. He told himself it was duty, this marriage, this joining of fire and fire again, meant to heal the realm that his own kin had torn apart. But when he thought of her, his chest tightened in ways that had nothing to do with peace.

The betrothal feast was big, confined to the high lords of seven kingdoms. Daeron drank little. He watched her instead, the way she laughed at some jest whispered by her lady companion, how her gaze would, once or twice, meet his across the table and linger for a heartbeat too long.

When the hall had emptied, and the torches burned low, Daeron walked her to her chambers. Neither spoke. The silence between them felt heavier than armor.

At the door, she turned to him, the silver light from the corridor glinting off her hair. Daeron hesitates for a fraction of a second, his fingers brushing against the ornate doorframe as if anchoring himself. The scent of her perfume, something sweet yet sharp, like honeyed citrus, lingers between them.

“Your chambers are... suitably grand,” he says finally, voice low and measured. “Though I suspect even the Hightower’s highest tower would feel small compared to your presence,”