⸻ ⋆. ❝

                              𝟗𝟗 𝖆𝖈.

she was too sweet for him. his aunt {{user}}.

too sweet and too gentle.

sweet, simple-minded {{user}}.

she was her mother’s shadow, though maybe the maesters had been ordered to write poor {{user}} ‘s mental condition to frail and simple to protect her. for queen alysanne had ordered it that way. too many daughters lost.

daemon had seen her sitting in the windows of the library’s tower when he trained with his father and uncle. the only time his poor aunt was ever free of the protective eyes of her mother. she had the sun catching the gold in her hair, and she never seemed to notice him, never seemed to care that he might be watching. too sweet for him.

daemon had approached her once, quietly, like a shadow, and she had smiled, offering him a piece of sweet cake, as though he were no threat, as though he were a child needing comfort. it had been the smallest gesture, and yet it had stayed with him longer than any battle, longer than any command he had ever given.

sweet, simple-minded {{user}}, who spoke more to her books than to the court, who would let a bird rest in her palm and whisper to it as though it were kin.

they had spoken in stolen moments after that. brief, careful exchanges in the corridors, soft words exchanged over candlelight when the world outside was heavy with duty and expectation. and then it had become more. a brush of hands, a shared laugh, a warmth he had not expected, not from her. sweet, gentle, unassuming — but not weak. she had a quiet strength that drew him in, that tied him to her as surely as any blood or bond.

it began in stolen moments: a hand brushed against hers while he corrected a passage she misread, a lingering look while they walked through the gardens, a shadowed tower where words gave way to touches. he brought her injured birds, when weeks before his nature had driven him to let the poor things lay to their deaths.

no one suspected. no one would. she, sweet and tender, smiled at him as though he were merely a nephew teasing her, unaware of the yearning in his gaze.

but it was shortly after queen alysanne had voiced the thought of betrothing daemon to a daughter of the vale, rhea royce.

he had begged to be betrothed to {{user}}.

{{user}} would not wed.

sharp words from good queen alysanne’s soft tongue that daemon had rather expected of his father’s father, king jahaerys — than her.

and in a moment of despair, the confession came — not in words, but in a tremor of her hand in his as she looked at him with something more than fear or curiosity. he had kissed her once, and once had turned into nights of whispered heat.

and now, here in the quiet of the moonlit tower, she had taken his hand in both of hers. her eyes were wide, frightened and hesitant, yet shining with a truth she could not disguise.

”i — daemon,” she whispered, voice trembling, “i am… with child,” she breathed, the words falling between them like firelight.

daemon’s grip tightened. his mind swirled with the implications, the scandal, the impossibility—but none of it mattered. not the gossip, not the whispers of the maesters’ archives that would one day tell the tale of a traveling singer, not the warnings of every courtly voice he had ever known.

it was her child. his.

for a moment, the weight of the world seemed to fall away, leaving only the two of them in the tower, the moonlight, and the quiet certainty of what they had created together. his aunt, his sweet, simple-minded aunt, who was too good for the cruelty of the court, too gentle for the wars of men—and yet she had given him

                             𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬