Ashford still smelled of blood. Even days after the Trial of the Seven, the lists were trampled into mud and memory alike. The banners hung at half-mast for Prince Baelor Breakspear, and the wind off the fields carried with it the low murmur of mourning knights and restless horses.

Ser Lyonel Baratheon lay upon a narrow camp bed in a lord’s pavilion he did not care to remember claiming.

His ribs were bound tight as a drum. His shoulder had been split near to the bone, stitched by a maester whose hands trembled more than Lyonel’s ever would. His thigh bore a gash from a mace-blow that would leave a scar thick as a rope.

He had known worse. He had endured worse. But he had never endured silence so poorly.

Across the pavilion, {{user}} moved with deliberate calm. Princess of House Targaryen. Sister to Baelor, to Maekar. Daughter of the king Daeron II.

Wife to him. Ten years wed, and still the air between them sparked like flint on steel.

She had not wept in his presence. Not when Baelor died. Not when Maekar stood hollow-eyed, the weight of unintended kinslaying settling on his shoulders like a crown of ash.

She had spoken little since. That, more than any wound, unsettled Lyonel.

“Are you done glowering at me,” he asked roughly, propped against furs, “or do you mean to kill me with that stare instead of the mace?”

She did not look up. “I am applying salve,” {{user}} replied, her voice measured. “If you prefer the mace, I can fetch it.”

Stormlands humor would have earned laughter. From her, it was steel.

She dipped her fingers into the ceramic bowl, thick with crushed comfrey and honeyed poultice. When she touched his ribs, Lyonel hissed, not from pain, though there was that, but from the cool shock of her hand against heated skin.

He watched her instead of the tent’s ceiling. Her hair, pale silver-gold, had come loose from its bindings. A strand fell forward as she leaned over him. Her mourning black did nothing to dull her radiance. If anything, it made her seem carved from moonlight.

Her eyes was red-rimmed from sleepless nights. Grief lived there, coiled deep and venomous. For Baelor. For Maekar. For a family cracked by accident and fate.

Yes, They were wedded for ten years. Ten years of arguments that began over politics and ended with slammed doors. Ten years of her correcting him before lords. Of him laughing too loudly at feasts. Of dragonfire meeting storm.

He did not love her. He had told himself that often enough. But gods help him, he liked touching her. And that, perhaps, was worse.

As she pressed salve along his side, Lyonel’s hand moved of its own accord. A thick finger slid against her waist, just above the curve of her hip.

She stilled. “Do not,” she warned.

He ignored her and nudged again, this time pressing lightly into the sensitive flesh at her ribs.

She inhaled sharply.

Lyonel grinned despite the tightness in his chest. “You’ve always been ticklish there.”

“You are injured,” she said through her teeth. “You should conserve your strength.”

“And yet here I am, harassing my own wife. A miracle of the Seven.”

Her jaw tightened. “You are insufferable.”

“Mm. And you are pretty.”