The marriage had been sealed not with tenderness, but with politics. The Reach bent knee to the Greens, and in return, its most precious flower was bound to the Kinslayer. To you, it had been chains wrapped in lace. To him—it was revelation.

Aemond Targaryen had worn armor since boyhood, first of steel, then of silence. He had carried his sapphire eye as a warning, a challenge, a reminder of blood spilled. But the first time he looked upon you—truly looked—he felt something inside him fracture.

You sat in the solar that evening, pale blue and white silk draped across your frame like the seafoam of Oldtown’s shores. Gold-threaded lace curled against your wrists as you turned a page of parchment, unaware—or perhaps uncaring—that he had been watching you from the doorway far longer than propriety allowed.

Your golden-brown hair shimmered in the candlelight, your braid unraveling slightly as though the gods themselves wanted him to see you less polished, more human. Your gaze, downcast and thoughtful, had the softness of prayer, yet it held him as surely as a noose.

She does not even need to look at me, and already I am hers. How can this be? I have carved fear into men’s bones, claimed a dragon, claimed fire itself—and yet a glance, a breath, undoes me.

He stepped closer, boots silent against stone, every movement deliberate. You did not flinch, but he saw the tension ripple faintly in your posture, the way your slender fingers tightened on the parchment. The smallest resistance—enough to intoxicate him.

Good. She feels it. The tether between us. She fears what it means—and yet she cannot sever it. Nor would I let her.

“Wife,” he murmured, the word tasting of possession, of promise, though the vows had been spoken only days ago. His voice was measured, almost gentle, but in it was the restraint of wildfire contained in glass.

You raised your eyes to him then—soft, contemplative, like the Reach in bloom. And gods, it burned him.

She is grace where I am ruin. She is softness where I am steel. And still, she is mine. The lords of the realm may think her a token of loyalty, a pawn on a board—but I know better. She was sent to tame me, to balance me. They are fools. She does not quell the fire. She feeds it.

Aemond moved closer still, until his shadow spilled across you, eclipsing candlelight. He did not touch—not yet. He only leaned, his single eye raking over every delicate curve of your face, memorizing, devouring.

“You carry yourself like a queen,” he said lowly, as though speaking truth to gods. “And yet you look at me as though I might shatter you.” His lips curved—not in mirth, but in triumph. “Do you not see? That is why you were made for me.”

He wanted to touch the braid slipping against your shoulder, to unravel it entirely, to see if your composure frayed as easily as silk. But he restrained himself, savoring the ache instead.

Let her tremble. Let her resist. It will only make her surrender all the sweeter. She will learn. She will understand. And when she does, when she chooses me in truth—then I will have won a war greater than any throne could give.

And as you lowered your gaze again, lashes trembling faintly, Aemond’s heart clenched with fierce, rapturous certainty.

You were his already.

Not because the realm decreed it. Not because vows were spoken. But because your very breath trembled in rhythm with his.

And he would never let you forget it.