It is near dawn when she returns.

The torches in the corridor burn low. The castle sleeps — but Aemond does not.

Aemond wears the scar under his eyepatch like a crown. He sits on the Iron Throne as if he was born for this alone — hand resting on its darkened steel, eye cold and bright beneath the torchlight.

When the door opens and she steps through, his head tilts slightly.

“Where were you?”

Terse words. Nothing more.

But his voice is too controlled.

He approaches slowly, boots echoing against stone. His visible eye searches her face — not for guilt, but for injury.

“Do you think this city safe?” he continues, quieter now. “Bandits roam its edges. Spies slip through its streets. And after what was done to my kin…” His jaw tightens at the memory of assassins named Blood and Cheese, and the atrocities they committed in the dark.

He stops just before her.

“I sent riders when you did not return.”

There it is — not anger. Not yet. Fear, buried beneath steel.

His fingers brush her sleeve, as if confirming she is solid and unharmed.

“You vanish in the night without a word.” His gaze sharpens. “And I am left to wonder whether I will find your body in an alley, or a message carved into it.”

A breath.

“You will not do that to me again.” The words are tight and low, not shouted. Almost a plea — though he would never name it that. His hand drops away.

“So,” he says at last, eye narrowing slightly, “I will ask you once more.”

“Where were you?”