Daeron sat by the window, a half-empty goblet in his hand, the morning sun turning the dregs in it to blood. Beyond the shutters, the Red Keep still slept, that great, suffocating warren of stone and whispers, and the bells of the Great Sept tolled somewhere in the distance, mournful and slow.

They had been married three days.

He had not gone to the feast. He could not bear to. The thought of his sister, his sweet {{user}}, soft-spoken and kind, all light where he was shadow, bound to that man made him sick. Brightflame, the court called Aerion. Daeron had another name for him: Demon of the House Targaryen.

He poured himself another cup.

Aerion had always been cruel, even as a boy. He had plucked the wings from sparrows, set cats alight for sport, and laughed when the servants cried to stop him.

And now {{user}} was his wife.

When Daeron had tried to speak against it, to plead with Maekar to choose another match, anyone but Aerion, his father had turned on him in cold fury. “Your opinion,” Maekar said, “is worth less than the dregs at the bottom of your cup.”

So Daeron had done what he always did. He drank.

She had always been gentle, too gentle for a world built on dragons and blood. He remembered her as a girl, running barefoot through the halls of Summerhall, her laughter echoing off the marble, the smell of lemoncakes on her hands. She used to beg him to paint her dragons on parchment, “the kind that fly but do not burn,” she’d said once.

Now she was married to the kind that did.

The goblet slipped from his hand and shattered against the floor, scattering dark red across the stones like spilled life. He stared at it for a long time before whispering, “I should have stopped it.”

But how does a drunken fool stop a man who call himself of dragon blood?

He rose unsteadily and crossed to the balcony. From there, the city stretched out before him, all smoke and gold and dust.

He thought of Aerion’s smirk at the wedding feast, that same cruel curl of the lips he’d worn when he’d once broken a knight’s arm for losing a tilt. He thought of {{user}}’s eyes, wide and glistening like dew on glass.

“Gods be good,” he murmured, though he no longer believed they listened.

A knock came at the door. He didn’t answer.

It opened anyway, and there she was, his sister, veiled in blue, her beauty dimmed by sorrow. The bruise on her wrist was small but dark, a single crescent where fingers had gripped too hard.

“Daeron,” she said softly. “You weren’t at the feast.”

“I was drunk,” he said. “As I always am.”

She smiled then, faint, brittle. “I wanted to see you. I… I didn’t know where else to go.”

He gestured to the chair by the hearth, wordless. She sat, folding her hands in her lap like a scolded child.

For a time, neither spoke. The only sound was the crackle of the fire and the faint hum of the city below.

Finally, Daeron said, “Does he hurt you?”