This was what he had always wanted, wasn’t it? A woman—a beautiful one—to call wife despite the empty socket beneath the patch, despite the fact that he had always been second place to his brother, to his cousins, to every damned child of his father’s negligence. Yet never in his imagining had he thought it would be her. {{user}}. Daughter of Rhaenyra and Daemon, blood of two people he despised. To the lords gathered in the hall the marriage was the seal of peace, the plaster over the crack that split the kingdom. To him, it was a quiet triumph, the sight of Daemon Targaryen forced to watch his only daughter bound to the one-eyed boy he had once laughed at. It was not love, not even desire. It was the sharp edge of satisfaction, the sweet burn of vengeance dressed as duty.

He sat among the candles and music of the feast, the taste of roasted meat heavy on the air, and thought of Helaena. How often he had believed he would be her shield, her brother who might love her rightly where Aegon would not. She had deserved gentleness, and he had once told himself he would have given it. But the thought of {{user}} beside him shifted the balance. With her, there was no need for tenderness, only strategy. He could crush her spirit and call it justice, make her life a theater for his revenge against her father and her bastard brothers. The idea alone was almost intoxicating. And yet when he turned his eye upon her, pale and still at the long table, not touching the feast, she seemed already undone. Perhaps the marriage itself was the cruelty. That realization pleased him. It made him want to see just how far she could bend before breaking.

So he rose, as if summoned by all the kingdoms, and extended his hand across the air between them. The hall grew quieter, expectant, as the groom offered his bride the dance that custom demanded. He leaned closer, voice smooth and unhurried, and spoke in High Valyrian: “Do not be a fool. You are stopping a war, and you cannot even smile.” The words fell sharp and soft together, only for her, and his lone eye fixed on her like a blade. His hand remained there, patient, commanding, daring her to take it, to meet him where the eyes of the realm could watch and judge.