“You’re bleeding.”

His voice was low, tight — not loud, but threaded with restrained fear as he caught your wrist. Prince Jacaerys Velaryon pulled you into the shadowed corridor of Dragonstone, away from torchlight and the distant roar of the sea against black stone.

His fingers hovered over the cut along your arm — shallow, but bright with fresh blood against your dark cloak. His jaw tightened.

You had slipped away again. Down into the docks. Into the press of sailors and whispers and danger.

“Do you have any notion what would have happened had I not found you?” he asked quietly, violet eyes hard as tempered steel. “These are not tourney crowds. This is war.”

Behind him, somewhere in the distance, a dragon roared — as if echoing his temper.

“You are not some court lady who can vanish into the streets without consequence,” he continued, voice dropping. “You stand beside my mother, beside Rhaenyra Targaryen. That alone paints a target on your back.”

You looked up at him — breathless, stubborn, fire in your eyes.

He hated that fire.

Gods, he loved it more than air.

He should have called a maester. Should have stepped back. Should have remembered his duty.

He didn’t.

Instead, he exhaled slowly and tore a strip from his own sleeve to bind your arm himself.

“Next time you flee a royal feast,” he muttered, tying the knot firmly, “try not to leave a trail of blood for the Greens to follow.”