The firelight cast long shadows across the stone table, flickering against the faces of Aegon II, Ser Criston Cole, Grand Maester Orwyle, and Larys Strong. The chamber had the tension of a drawn bowstring—strategies whispered, allegiances forged with blood. War had teeth, and they all felt it gnawing closer.

Larys spoke little, as he always did, his voice a velvet thread winding through the louder bluster of Aegon’s ambitions and Cole’s military resolve. Aegon was restless, chewing a fingernail, his crown askew on his brow. Ser Criston paced. Orwyle murmured about supply lines and harvests, ignored as usual.

A low knock interrupted the flow of plans.

The guards outside stirred. One pushed the heavy door open, hesitating.

“My lords,” the guard said uncertainly. “A lady demands entrance. She says she is… Lady Strong.”

Larys’s head lifted with the smooth surprise of a cat who’d just heard a mouse. Every other man stilled. Even Aegon blinked.

“Lady who?” he asked.

Larys did not answer. He stood, cane clicking once against the flagstone floor as he turned.

Into the room swept a woman cloaked in forest green, skirts trailing, dusted with the ride from Harrenhal. Her hair was pinned simply, her cheeks flushed not from vanity, but travel and purpose. Her eyes sought one man alone.

“Larys,” she said, her voice soft—curiously soft, for a woman who had crossed half the kingdom without escort or permission.

“My lady,” Larys said after a beat, his tone unreadable. He did not move toward her, but the air shifted around him, as if the scent of ash and lake water had followed her from the haunted halls of Harrenhal.

She walked the rest of the way herself.

“I heard whispers of war,” she said, standing before him now, her hands folded low over her slightly swollen belly. The swell was modest but unmistakable. “And I will not stay in that cursed keep while dragons roar and ghosts stir.”

Grand Maester Orwyle’s eyes widened. Aegon leaned forward, genuinely amused for the first time in days. Ser Criston simply stared.

“You’re… with child,” Orwyle murmured.

She paid him no mind.

“You did not send for me. You did not write. No word in three moons,” she said to Larys. “Would you have waited until the child was born before remembering you had a wife?”

A strange look passed over Larys’s face—not quite shame, not quite guilt. Something older, rusted and buried beneath his composure. He raised a hand but did not touch her.

“I meant to keep you safe,” he said, his voice low and private, for her alone.

“You left me with spirits,” she replied calmly. “Do you know they wept the night Prince Daemon’s daughter passed through? All night. I will not raise our child among wailing stones.”

A silence hung over the room, thick and awkward.

“Seven hells,” Aegon muttered finally. “You’ve a wife. And she’s with child. Are you secretly a man of poetry and hearth?”

Larys did not answer the king. His eyes were still on her.

“You shouldn’t have come,” he said, though his voice lacked the usual bite. “It is not safe here.”

“No place is,” she answered. “But I would rather be near you than the bones of your forebears.”

She laid a hand briefly on his wrist. The touch was light, fleeting, but Larys did not flinch away.

“I’ll not be hidden like a mistake,” she added quietly. “I’ll not have this child raised in the shadows.”

He bowed his head slightly. “I will see to your chambers.”

At last, she turned to the room at large, sparing Aegon and his council a single glance that was not quite a curtsy, not quite a dismissal.

“Your Grace,” she murmured.

Then she let Larys lead her out—his gait uneven, hers steady—and the chamber behind them resumed breathing only once the door shut.

Aegon sat back with a low whistle. “Well,” he said, grinning. “The Clubfoot has secrets yet.”

Criston glanced at the door. “Gods help us all if he loves.”

Orwyle only muttered, “Harrenhal bears strange fruit.”

But Larys said nothing, and behind closed doors, his wife looked out at the towered city below, murmuring to her unborn child, “Here is where the storm begins.”