You had learned, in the years since Casterly Rock sealed you to the stag, how to make a room look like an apology. Candles stood in neat ranks; a silver ewer steamed with lemon and wine; your bed was made so that his side sagged exactly where he liked to fall.

It was nearly midnight when the sound came: the booted thud of the king's gait in the corridor, uneven, the clink of metal and money and the loose jangle of some trinket bought for a bawd. A smell preceded him — strong, sour, the metallic hint of too much ale and cheap perfume. You did not turn. The mirror at your vanity showed your hair braided and thrown back in a style Lady Joanna would have approved; your face was a careful mask of cool ivory and green eyes that did not flinch.

"Don't they teach them to close doors properly in this damn keep?" he barked as he entered, and the door banged against the wall.

He filled the doorway like a dark storm, broad shoulders rounding under the heavy cloak, a crown tipped just enough to look ridiculous on his rumpled hair. The years had not been kind; the quick spring of youth lingered only in flashes — in the laugh that still lit his face sometimes, in the way his hand remembered a spear. Mostly, there was the weight of the throne in his eyes, and the hollowness where laughter used to live.

"I fixed you supper," you said. Your voice was small in the room, but steady. "The roasted partridge you like."

Robert's eyes slid to the table and back again. He loped forward and seized a goblet, draining half without ceremony. "They fed me a pheasant at the feast," he said, belching. "Not fit to sit beside a king's table, mind you. Lord Tywin's birds are fat as pigs."

"You did not eat it," you observed.

He snorted. "I had another man's pleasures on Silk Street, that's what I had." The words were a jab, not entirely aimed at you. He set the goblet down with a careless slap, and a ring caught the candlelight: a golden lion, older than the man who wore it.

You felt the old burn of shame rise — for having been paraded like a prize, for Tywin's bargain that had bent your life into politics and pedigree. You did not reach for the goblet. "You should rest, my lord," you said. "Hunt tomorrow. The stag waits, and you promised the smallfolk—"

"Promises." He laughed, a rough sound. "Promises are for children and maids. Men like me keep oaths for a night and debts for a bottle." He came closer, and for an idle moment you saw the boy who had loved swords and sun, before kings and weight and ash. He put his hand on your shoulder, not gentle. "You are cold, Lannister. Always cold."

You let him think he had found fault where there was only caution. "You should take your cloak off. You'll catch a chill."

He pushed you away instead. "Aye, Tywin taught you hands better than hearts. Does he teach you how to laugh, too? How to make a man think his wife is worth more than a coin?" His face had gone ugly then, power cutting the laugh short. "By the Seven, I thought marrying a Lannister would make things easier. Gold solves a lot. But it don't mend the hollow."

There it was: the hollow that never had a name in his mouth but always had a face in his thoughts. Lyanna. The breath left you in a quiet sound like a folded silk sheet.

"You can't keep courting ghosts, my lord," you said, because there are some cruelties that need naming to be borne. "Grief is a stubborn thing, but it eats you if you let it. You deserve to live, not be a prisoner to one memory."

"A memory?" He barked again, incredulous and angry. "She was more than a memory, girl. She was what I wanted till the world insisted otherwise. She was Winterfell and wind and—" He stopped, the rest lost in his throat, and for a moment the room was only the two of you and a dozen smaller deaths. "You are a Lannister," he said softly, as if the name were a charm he had not yet learned to use. "You are not her," he said then, and it was not a pity but a verdict.

"No," you agreed. But I am real. Flesh and blood. But you only ever wanted a shadow.”