High Tide had been dressed in banners that day, long silken streamers of sea-green and pale silver snapping gently in the salt wind, embroidered with the seahorse of House Velaryon. The hall smelled of brine and wax and fresh bread, and somewhere beyond the tall windows the sea beat a slow, patient rhythm against the rocks below, as it always had. Driftmark remembered its own.

Laenor Velaryon stood near the high table, laughing softly as small fingers fisted the front of his doublet.

“My pearl,” he murmured fondly, lowering his voice as though sharing a secret with the child clinging to him. “Careful, little one. You’ll pull the seams loose, and your grandsire will scold me for wasting good Velaryon silk.”

{{user}} only giggled in answer.

She was a beautiful child, so unmistakably his that even the gods must have smiled when they shaped her. Her skin was pale as seafoam, her nose aquiline and proud despite her tender age, and her hair fell in soft, pale waves the color of sunlit sand. But it was her eyes that drew every gaze in the hall: not Targaryen violet, but a clear green-blue, bright as the banners of House Velaryon themselves. A cruel jest, some whispered. A blessing, Laenor thought.

She wore white that day, stitched through with blue-green thread in the shape of tiny seahorses, pearls sewn carefully along the hem and collar. The pearls had been Corlys’s idea, of course. A Velaryon child should shine like the sea, his father had said. And shine she did.

Laenor adjusted her in his arms, settling her more comfortably against his chest. {{user}} looped one small arm around his neck at once, pressing her cheek against him as though the hall were too vast, too loud, and he the only safe harbor in it.

Alicent Hightower watched them from across the table.

Laenor felt her gaze like a prickle between his shoulders and smiled wider for it. When the Queen had first spoken, carefully, politely, of future matches between her sons and his daughter, Laenor had answered just as politely, just as firmly.

“No.”

Not Aegon. Not Aemond. Not Daeron. No.

“My daughter will not be bartered to soothe another house’s ambition,” he had said, voice calm as a summer tide. “She is my heir.”

Rhaenyra had bristled at that word. Heir. She had argued in low, furious tones later, insisting that Joffrey, sweet, newly born Joffrey, should be named instead. But Laenor had only looked at her then, steady and unyielding.

“If you may inherit the Iron Throne as a woman,” he had said, “then surely our daughter may inherit Driftmark.”

Rhaenyra had gone very quiet after that.

Now {{user}} laughed again, distracted by a flutter of pale wings overhead.

Valryon, small yet already graceful, circled the hall clumsily before landing on the back of Laenor’s chair, his white-scaled body gleaming with faint blue-green shimmer where the light struck him. The hatchling chirruped, then scrambled along the carved wood to cling to {{user}}’s shoulder, his tail flicking happily.

“There you are,” Laenor said softly, lifting a finger for the dragon to nuzzle. “Showing off again, are we?”

Many whispered that Valryon must have come from Silverwing’s line. He bore little resemblance to Syrax, that was certain. Like {{user}}, he was a quiet contradiction, beautiful, undeniable, inconvenient.

The feast continued around them, music, laughter, the cries of celebration for newborn Joffrey.

Across the hall, Rhaenyra watched her daughter with an expression that was difficult to name. Pride, perhaps. Distance, certainly. {{user}} did not cling to her mother as she did to Laenor; when set in Rhaenyra’s arms she grew restless, reaching back toward him with small, insistent hands.

“Papa,” she lisped now, tugging his collar again.

“Yes, my little hatchling?” he answered at once, voice warm.