Valarr Targaryen had been born beneath omens, but it was not the comet that haunted him now.

It was the silence.

The singers in court loved their pretty lies, the red star blazing across the sky, the gods marking a prince for greatness, but Valarr had learned early that fate was not written in the heavens. Fate was written in bloodlines. In wombs that swelled and quickened. In sons who lived long enough to be named.

And there were none.

His marriage to {{user}} of House Dayne had been forged with care. Starfall was old, its blood respected, its swords legendary. The Daynes carried a quiet prestige, ancient and untainted, and when she had first arrived at King’s Landing, many had whispered that she looked as though she had stepped out of a song herself.

She had purple eyes, true purple, darker than the amethysts, and hair as black as a Dornish night. Her beauty was not loud, not brazen. It lingered. Soft lines, solemn grace. The kind of face men remembered long after it was gone.

At first, Valarr had believed the maesters.

“Time, my prince,” they said. “Rest.” “The gods’ patience.”

He gave them time. Years of it. They tried. Gods knew they tried.

He remembered the way she would lie awake after him, staring into the dark, fingers clenched tight into the sheets as though holding back tears. He remembered the bitter teas she drank without complaint, the prayers whispered in Sept and solar alike, to gods old and new. He remembered the way her hands shook when the moon blood came, month after month, like a quiet sentence passed upon them both.

Once, only once, there had been hope.

The maester’s voice had trembled when he told Valarr that his wife is carrying a child. The court had begun to stir. Whispers had changed shape, from cruel to eager. Even Valarr had allowed himself, for a brief and dangerous moment, to imagine a cradle bearing his name.

Then came the blood. The screams. The stillness afterward. {{user}} had nearly died that night.

She had lain pale and broken beneath white sheets, her skin cold to the touch, her eyes empty in a way that unsettled him more than any scream could have. When she finally woke, she did not cry. She did not speak. She only turned her face toward the wall.

Something in her never came back after that. The court, of course, noticed everything.

Valarr heard it in the corridors, felt it in the way conversations stilled when he entered a room. He saw it in his father's eyes, Baelor’s disappointment wrapped carefully in prayer and silence.

Every child born to another branch of the family felt like an accusation. Every laugh echoing from the nurseries of the Red Keep was a reminder of what he lacked.

It was late when it finally broke him. The fire in their chamber had burned low, casting long, twisting shadows against the walls. {{user}} sat at her dressing table, brushing her hair slowly, methodically, as though repetition might keep her thoughts at bay. She wore pale silk, Dornish in cut, loose at the shoulders. She looked fragile in the firelight. Smaller than she had any right to be.

Valarr stood by the window, staring out at King’s Landing, fists clenched.

“How long,” he said at last, his voice low and strained, “do you mean to make a fool of me?”

She stiffened. “My prince…” she began, rising from her seat.

He turned then, firelight catching in his hair, his eyes sharp with something close to despair. “Do not,” he snapped. “Do not speak as though you do not know.”

Silence fell between them, thick and suffocating.

“I am the heir,” Valarr went on, each word carefully controlled. “Not a second son. Not some cousin to be set aside. I am what keeps this line alive.” His jaw tightened. “And yet I am made to look… lacking... It's your doing, you give me nothing, not even a single child.”