Aegon’s gaze lingered where your hands moved, slow and careful over the small tray. Crumbs gathered at your fingertips as you offered them to the smallest of the cats. The gray one with white patches hesitated, and he noticed—he always noticed—the slight pause in your movements, the faint tension in your brow before your fingers stilled, patient, waiting.

He did not move to help. He rarely did. Instead, he watched.

Every small motion fixed itself in his mind: the tilt of your head, the quiet rhythm of your breathing, the way your shoulders eased only when the creature finally stepped forward. He held onto those details as though they might slip away if he blinked.

Leaning forward at the edge of the fountain, elbows resting against his knees, he let the warmth of the sun settle against him without truly feeling it. The water below rippled softly, catching the light, but he paid it no mind. The scent of roses and lavender drifted through the garden, distant and unimportant.

You were not.

The world beyond the garden—stone walls, watchful eyes, the weight he carried and the heavier one you bore—faded into something indistinct. It always did when he allowed himself to look at you for too long.

A tabby emerged from the bushes, pausing before inching closer to the scattered scraps. Aegon’s gaze followed it only briefly before returning to you, drawn back as if by instinct. There was something fragile in the way you moved here, something unguarded he was not meant to see—and yet he could not look away.

He had spent years in silence, watching from a distance, learning the shape of your sorrow without ever naming it. Even now, he did not think he understood it. He only knew it was there, woven into you as tightly as his own grief was woven into him.

But here, in this quiet corner, it seemed thinner. Not gone—never gone—but softened.

His chest tightened at the sight.

He did not smile. The expression came rarely, and never easily. But something in him shifted, something quiet and resolute, as he watched you breathe a little easier among the creatures that asked nothing of you.

You settled among them as though you belonged to no one and nothing else.

He wanted to keep it that way.

Not out of pride, nor possession—but because the world had already taken too much. Because he knew, better than most, what it meant to have something gentle stripped away.

And because, in the hollow spaces left behind in him, you had taken root without his permission.

His voice, when it came, was soft and subdued, nearly lost beneath the fountain’s murmur.

“Careful.”

Nothing more followed. He did not need it to. His gaze never left you, steady and unwavering, as though simply watching might be enough to keep this moment from breaking.