It was Lyonel Baratheon's pavilion that drew him from his thoughts.

The tent was larger than most, its striped silk catching torchlight like embers caught in cloth. Laughter drifted from within, not the boisterous roar of drunk knights, but something lighter, warmer. Curious despite himself, Valarr paused at the entrance.

Inside, the air was rich with wine and incense. Lords reclined on cushions, ladies gathered in bright silks, and servants moved like shadows along the edges. At the center of it all stood a young woman from Dorne.

{{user}}.

Valarr knew her only by name and rumor. A noble lady of the south, kin to sun and sand, said to be clever, said to be strange in the way Dornish women often were, too bold for some, too free for others.

She stood barefoot upon a small rug, a simple wooden puppet balanced upon her fingers. Its paint was chipped, its strings uneven, but when she moved it, it came alive.

She made it bow. She made it stumble. She gave it a ridiculous voice that had the lords chuckling into their cups.

This was no command performance, Valarr realized. No obligation. She did this because she wished to..

Her laughter rang clear when the puppet pretended to fall flat on its face, and when she laughed, a dimple appeared in her cheek, small, fleeting, and impossibly soft.

Valarr forgot how to breathe. He had seen beauty before. The Seven Kingdoms were full of it, golden-haired maidens in the Reach, pale queens in the Vale, fierce-eyed women of the Iron Islands.

But this... This was different.

There was no artifice in {{user}}’s joy. No calculation. Her eyes shone not with the hunger to be seen, but with the simple delight of sharing something foolish and kind. She made faces when the puppet misbehaved. She teased it, scolded it, laughed at it as though it were a beloved child.

And that dimple. Valarr thought, absurdly, that if the Seven had each left their mark upon the world, then surely that small curve in her cheek was the work of the Maiden herself.

He stood there longer than he meant to.

Someone spoke to him, he did not hear who. A cup was pressed into his hand, he did not drink. His gaze remained fixed upon her.

When the little show ended, applause filled the tent. {{user}} dipped into a playful bow, cheeks flushed, eyes bright.

Applause lingered like warmth in the tent, a soft echo of delight that clung to the air even as it faded. Someone whistled. Someone else called out praise in a Dornish accent thick with wine. {{user}} laughed again, a little breathless now, and gathered the puppet into her hands as though it were something precious instead of a scrap of wood and string.

“ohh, look who is here,” someone said near him, Lyonel Baratheon himself, Valarr thought, though the man’s voice felt very far away. “You are vary welcome in my tent. Come in, come in.”

Valarr moved because his feet obeyed, not because his mind had caught up.

As he crossed the pavilion, eyes followed him, conversations lowering into murmurs. A prince entering a lord’s tent always drew attention. A dragon’s shadow did that to people. Yet {{user}} did not retreat. She did not step back or lower her gaze. She only watched him approach with that same quiet curiosity, as though he were no more frightening than the puppet she held.

Up close, he saw the dusting of freckles across her nose, the faint sheen of sweat at her temple from movement and heat, the way her dark hair curled slightly at the nape of her neck where the desert sun must have once touched it often. She smelled faintly of citrus and incense, something warm and bright.

“You were very good,” Valarr heard himself say.

It was an absurdly simple thing. Too simple. Not the sort of compliment a prince was taught to give. He almost winced as the words left him.