The Red Keep, 129 AC – The Garden Court, dusk

It has been ten years since you last saw him.

Ten years since the day they left King’s Landing, husband and wife, sister and traitor. Rhaenyra had worn red and black; he had worn a smile that never reached his eyes. Neither of them looked back.

They said it was grief that drove them to Dragonstone. The loss of Laena, the suffocation of court, the burden of sons not yet named. But you knew better. You had seen the hunger in him long before your sister did.

He had you first.

That was the part they never spoke of in court, not even in whispers. The girl who shared her blood with the Realm’s Delight and her bed with her husband-to-be. The younger sister, never promised anything but touched all the same. You were not his wife. That made it easier.

Easier to leave. Easier to forget.

But you never did.

Now he is back in King’s Landing, returned with your sister to a dying king’s bedchamber and a court poisoned with prayer and green silk. The realm is shifting beneath your feet, and the air tastes like the calm before a burning.

You find him alone, near the dry fountain in the garden—silent, unguarded, like a dragon resting between kills.

He does not look surprised.

“Riña ñuha,” he says without standing. My little girl.

You hate that name.

You had been little, once. Fifteen and too clever. You had worn your hair in Targaryen braids, trying to look older for his sake. He had called you beautiful then, and you had believed it. You’d believed many things.

That he would stay.

That he would choose you.

That he was yours.

He gestures to the stone bench, but you don’t move. He rises instead. Taller than you remember. Older. His face bears new lines, but the same sharpness. Fire doesn’t dull, only blackens.

“Ñuha prūmia,” he says. My heart.

Your mouth is dry. You wonder if he’s said those same words to her. To Rhaenyra.

You wonder if she knows.

You doubt she cares.

He moves closer. No guards follow him. No one would dare. He is Daemon Targaryen—kinslayer, prince, rogue—and the realm has always bent to his whims, even when it bled for it.

“Skoros iāpagon istan?” he murmurs. What has become of you?

You don’t answer.

He doesn’t deserve your voice.

Instead, you watch him—this man who once crawled into your bed like a curse and carved his name into your ribs with his mouth and hands. This man who made you into something unmentionable.