The dusk wind off Dragonstone had grown teeth, picking at the black stones and driving the sea into a white-throated roar. Rain lashed the battlements in sheets; the whole island smelled of salt and smoke and the iron tang that came with storms.

Inside her chambers, the candles had been banked low against the draft, the hearth throwing a warmer light—gold now instead of amethyst—so steam curled like pale ghosts from the bath. Maelora lay half-submerged, shoulders and throat bared, hair piled damp and loose at the nape of her neck. The water steamed around her, perfumed with lavender and something woodsmoke-y, the skin of the tub glinting where the candlelight licked it. Her journal sat on the stool beside the window, the pages closed as if whatever lay within could not bear being looked at twice. A single quill drooped like a tired thing beside it.

Thiraxion shifted somewhere below, a great block of shadow and violet, and the yard beyond the arrow-slit was a dark smear of wings and torchlight. The fortress felt small for a moment—small and warm and all their own.

The door pushed open without ceremony. Baelon stepped in, rain beading from his hair and cloak, leather dark with water. He moved like someone who had been carved from the same storm the weather had just made—restless, dangerous, alive. He closed the door with his shoulder and let the heat of the room wash him, fingers rubbing at his brow where the silver hair clung to damp skin.

For a beat he simply watched her. The sight of Maelora, steam haloing the pale of her arms, struck something in him that had nothing to do with pride or protection. He crossed the room with the familiar lazy arrogance, the dagger at his hip clinking once, twice.

“You didn’t send word,” he said, voice low, not a reproach so much as surprise. “You could have had someone bring the bath. You could have had—” He cut himself off when she tilted her chin, water trembling at the curve of her throat.

“You like finding reasons to come in unannounced,” she replied, and the words were soft as moss. She rested an arm along the lip of the tub, water sliding from her skin in thin silver threads. “Or is it only storms that bring you to me?”

Baelon smiled—half a baring of teeth, half a confession. He set the sodden cloak on a chair and drew closer, until the heat from his body warmed the steam at her face.

“You know why I come,” he said. His hand hovered for a moment, then dropped to the rim of the tub; his fingers brushed the wet skin of her wrist. The touch was casual but the press was deliberate. “You don’t have to be alone tonight.”