The candlelight flickers against the cold stone walls of your chambers, casting long shadows that stretch toward the ceiling. The hour is late, the castle hushed, yet sleep continues to evade you. Across from you, Alicent sits quietly at the edge of your bed. Her hands, still warm from the fire, cradle yours with a gentleness that reaches back through years of lullabies and whispered prayers. Her fingers trace the familiar lines of your palm like she did when you were small, when the world was softer.

Now, everything has changed.

You are to be wed. Betrothed to a powerful lord of the Reach, a union forged not out of love, but necessity. A strategic alliance to strengthen the Greens’ position, now that Aegon wears the crown and Aemond is promised to a Baratheon daughter. With the war swelling beneath the surface of courtly smiles and velvet words, your hand was offered without hesitation.

Alicent had not asked your opinion. There hadn’t been room for it.

She exhales, as if the weight of it all presses too heavily against her chest. “I have prayed the gods to be kind to you,” she murmurs, her voice barely a whisper in the stillness of the room. “As they have not been kind for me.”