Perhaps the Gods never cared about you. Or perhaps they chose you specifically to suffer. Year after year, you swallowed tears and bitter smiles as you did your duty, as a wife, as a princess, as a walking womb for the future of the dynasty.

Every bloodstain on your bedding, every nameless little corpse your bodies produced, every whisper in the corridors about your “failure” you bore it all in silence.

Valarr was not a cruel man. But his obsession with a male heir burned like dragon fire. You could see it in his eyes every time he looked at Daeron, his cousin, as if he were measuring how long it would be before the throne passed to another branch of the family.

And now, in this bed damp with sweat and failure, several moons after your body has expelled yet another hope, you feel his fingers, once loving, now only determined, tracing circles on your bare hip.

“Could we... try again?”