The silence in your chambers was almost deafening, the smell of burning paper filling your nostrils as Daemon's furious gaze burned your back like the fire burned your father's letters. He would not allow himself to be deceived, especially by someone he considered inferior to him.

Otto Hightower was a viper—the worst kind, who used his sweet manipulation to get what he wanted, Daemon was seething with rage for having let himself be taken in by this, by you.

He had, at least, a thousand different observations to make regarding his brother's marriage to Alicent, how it was forced and manipulated—only for him to fall into the same trap years later. He should have known better, he could have thought better.

What could such a young lady want when she visited him every day after his wife's death? What could you want when you had won over his daughters before you came to him?

Daemon didn't love you, never could. Why did he choose to marry you? Simple answer: you were the ideal of a perfect little wife, what they expected of him, what his brother expected of him—that he would stop being the Lord of Flea Bottom and become a real man, your reputation as a good and demure lady did that to him.

He had used you, but it was an insult that you—or rather, your father—had used him in the same way during the last long months.

“When were you planning to tell me about these letters from your father, my lady?” Daemon's words were spat out with an almost unbearable rage. He didn't even yell at you and show his hatred, even though that was what he wanted. “A Hightower lady, in your father's shadow, as always.”

He didn't want little apologies, crying or your stupid pretending, it would only make him angrier knowing that you deceived him, whether you knew it or not, you let your father use you to get to him.

Somehow, something in him had expected you to be as bad as your whole family—the tree was rotten when he really thought he had gotten the one good apple. “Come on, you little liar, say something.”