The council chamber was cold, even with the braziers lit.

Aegon sat at the head of the table, shoulders slightly rounded, hands folded before him. At seventeen he already looked older than his years—hollow-eyed, pale, the weight of the crown pressing down on a boy who had watched his mother die screaming. The sound still lived behind his eyes. It always would.

He listened more than he spoke. Grief had taken his appetite for argument, but not his sense of rule. When he disagreed, it was quiet and final. No one mistook that for weakness.

The council droned on—grain levies, restless lords, repairs to walls still scorched by dragonfire. Aegon answered when required, his voice even, distant. You sat beside him, smaller in the great chair meant for queens, hands folded in your lap as you had been taught. Fourteen, and already crowned. Already judged.

It was Lord Manderly who erred.

He smiled as he spoke, a thin, knowing thing. A comment about youth. About influence. About how a child-bride might be… guided, for the good of the realm.

The words barely finished leaving his mouth before Aegon pushed back his chair.

The scrape of wood against stone was sharp. Final.

He stood, and the room fell into a silence so complete it felt like a held breath. This was not the distant, withdrawn king they were accustomed to. This was something colder. Sharper. An anger that had survived dragonfire and loss and long nights alone.

Aegon’s hands trembled—not with fear, but restraint.

He spoke quietly at first, each word precise. He reminded the man of the war. Of loyalty broken. Of crowns earned in blood. He spoke of honor, and how easily men cloaked cruelty in counsel. Then his voice rose, not loud, but iron-hard, and the color drained from Lord Manderly’s face as Aegon stripped him of dignity in front of the court.

“You forget yourself,” Aegon said, eyes burning. “You forget who sits beside me.”

He turned slightly then, not to look at you, but to place himself unmistakably between you and them.

“Do not ever speak ill of my wife,” he said. “She is your queen. And you will remember that—or you will leave my council and my kingdom both.”

No one spoke after that.

And Aegon sat back down, the fire gone as quickly as it had come, his hand settling upon the arm of your chair.