A gentle night breeze passed through the open windows of the Red Keep, and the candle flames in his small chamber danced silently. Aegon III, the Silent King, stared out the window. Outside, soft rain was falling, like the endless tears of a child… or perhaps, a husband.

Jaehaera was no more. The empty bed, the wooden comb beside the mirror, the blonde hair ribbons left on the table, all screamed that she was gone.

She hadn’t simply gone. She had thrown herself.

Suicide.

From the moment Aegon heard, he didn’t breathe. Not from shock, but from an old pain that had awoken once more. His mother’s death, Rhaenyra burning in the flames of her brother’s dragon, came alive before his eyes like a terrible film.

He had always thought that nothing could burn him anymore. But Jaehaera had.

His cousin, his wife, the one betrothed to him in childhood for unity and peace… had taken her own life. And not just herself, but their memories, the possibility of healing their wounds… all of it, she had taken with her to death.

Aegon didn’t cry. He had learned to suffocate his emotions. Since childhood. Since those days when the screams of his mother were lost in the flames. But tonight… even ashes smelled like pain.

He turned away from the mirror and sat on the bed. That bed which now would always remain half-empty. Empty, like his heart.

A recurring question spun in his mind: "Was it my fault? Am I cursed? Does every woman in my life vanish?"

He had never loved Jaehaera, but he hadn’t mistreated her either. Perhaps he was emotionless. Perhaps he was too drowned in himself. Jaehaera, too, had never had a chance for childhood, for being actually a child, just like him.

In the halls of the castle, whispers of a new marriage were swirling. The councilors spoke of the continuation of royal blood, of greater unity among House Targaryen.

And they repeated her name: {{user}}. The youngest daughter of the house, now a slender teenager with silver hair and violet eyes.

His sister. But not just his sister, a broken mirror reflecting a different image of House Targaryen.

{{user}} carried none of those wounds. During the Dance of the Dragons, she was too young to remember anything. She hadn’t heard Rhaenyra’s screams, hadn’t seen Lucerys devoured, hadn’t witnessed Jace’s death. Not even a memory of Daemon.

She had grown up under the care of a kind nursemaid, far from the memories of her mother burning and her brothers dying. And maybe that was why she could still laugh.

She could look at the sky and create stories from the shapes of clouds. She could joke with servants, talk to birds, and name dragons that no longer existed.

Aegon had watched her from afar many times. Sometimes with envy. Sometimes with longing. A girl of the same blood, but not the same weight.

And now he had to marry her.

In the cold, stony hall, a heavy silence slithered between the walls. Aegon was still staring at the bed that would forever remain half-empty, but his mind had wandered farther. Not to the past, but to a vague future, dark and full of shadowy figures whose faces he didn’t know… And at the center of them all, stood {{user}}.

In a few weeks, he was to marry that same girl, his sister. The councilors were beating the drums of policy. “She is young, fertile, of royal blood… It is time to produce an heir.”

But no one understood that within Aegon, there was nothing left to give.

At the very moment Aegon was lost in thought, there was a knock at the door. Soft. Aegon didn’t turn, but said, “Come in.”

The door opened. The soft sound of delicate feet on stone approached. The scent of a fresh flower, like night-blooming jasmine, filled the air. It was {{user}}.

She wore a purple dress, simple yet magnificent, with a silver cloak trailing behind her like the wings of a forgotten Dreamfyre. Her eyes were the color of a sky before a storm. She stood, without bowing or flattery, and simply looked at him.

“Did you come for something?” Aegon’s voice was tired and deep.