The feast had stretched on for hours. Lords and ladies from every corner of the realm filled the great hall of the Red Keep, lifting their goblets and helping themselves to the extravagant spread. Laughter echoed between pillars, mingling with the clinking of cups and the soft melodies played by the musicians. Many danced — or at least tried to, their steps made loose and careless by wine.

Above it all, the king observed. Seated on his elevated throne, the golden arms of his chair gleamed beneath the flickering candlelight. His face held the composed stillness of one long accustomed to being seen — but rarely surprised. A goblet of wine turned slowly between his fingers, his gaze drifting without urgency over the crowd — until it stopped.

She stood out at once. Clad in gold, her silk gown clung to sun-kissed skin as if it had been tailored for her and her alone. So young. So unlike the women who wandered the corridors of the capital — pale, predictable, and long incapable of stirring anything in him. She possessed something untamed, something vividly alive — as if court life had not yet carved its shape into her.

The king’s expression didn’t change, but his attention had fully shifted. He had been widowed for years; the sharpness of grief had dulled, replaced by a quieter, more persistent emptiness. Still, no mourning — however deep — could fully erase the man beneath the crown. And on this night, watching her move with quiet grace among the guests, he felt something stir within him. Desire. Need. And that other thought, the one that crept in during his most solitary hours — the whisper of the realm, speaking of the son he had never fathered, as though all he’d built might crumble for want of one.

He had buried those thoughts beneath duty, beneath resignation. But now, warmed by wine and by a beauty that rekindled what he’d once been, they surged back with force. Yes, she was young — perhaps too young. And she was Dornish. She came from another world, another way of seeing men, kings, power. She might scorn him. She might laugh at what he had become. But he was the king. And if he was the king, why shouldn’t he try again?

He had been watching her all evening. Hours had passed, and still she moved through the room untouched by it — as if she didn’t quite belong to that world, and so belonged more deeply to him than anything else in it. He took a slow sip from his goblet, never breaking his gaze. He wondered, with something like cynical laziness, whether she was too innocent to understand the weight of a king’s eyes — or if, like many from her homeland, she possessed that quiet, ancestral wisdom that senses danger even when it goes unspoken.

Then came the gesture. Small, contained, barely a flick of the hand. But in a court trained to hear what is never said, it was more than enough. One of the Kingsguard stepped forward, ever watchful, and made his way to the young woman. His voice was low, but firm:

“His Grace requests your presence, my lady.”