Prince Aerion Targaryen had never been a man fashioned for love.

In the courts of King’s Landing, where flatterers bloomed like flies around honeyed words and false smiles, he stood apart, aloof, contemptuous, his pale lilac eyes forever heavy with disdain. Where others laughed too loudly or bowed too deeply, Aerion merely sneered. Knights, in his eyes, were little more than dogs clad in steel; lords were cattle dressed in silk. Only dragonblood held worth, and only his own most of all.

He was beautiful in the way fire is beautiful, bright, cruel, and never meant to be touched.

Thus it unsettled the court when whispers began to coil around his name.

It started at a feast held beneath the Red Keep’s vaulted ceilings, a night thick with incense and sweat and the clatter of goblets. The king sat high, the court glittered below, and Aerion endured it all with visible irritation. He drank sparingly, watched silently, his thoughts already far from the music and laughter he despised.

That was when he saw her. {{user}} of House Tully.

She was not seated near the high table, nor did she wear the loud vanity of women who hunted royal favor. River-blue clothed her, modest and plain beside the jeweled peacocks of court. Her hair, copper-bright, caught the torchlight as flame catches oil, and when she laughed, she did so without caution.

Aerion frowned. There was something wrong with her. She did not look toward him. Not once. That alone was insult enough.

He told himself she was nothing. River blood. Mud and water, not fire. He had no patience for such women, women who were not Valyrian, not dragonborn, not worthy even to kneel before him. And yet, his gaze returned to her again and again, unbidden, unwelcome.

When she spoke, she spoke with her hands, careless, alive. When she listened, she leaned forward as though the words mattered. No guile. No fear.

It irritated him deeply.

Aerion spoke to her that night not out of courtesy, but compulsion. He did not understand it himself. His words were sharp, edged with mockery, his tone cool.

“You laugh loudly for a lady so forgettable,” he said, eyes raking over her without kindness.

Many women would have flushed. Some would have bowed. {{user}} only raised an eyebrow.

And you get too involved in something that doesn't concern you,” she replied.

For a heartbeat, the world stilled. Then Aerion laughed, a short, incredulous sound, sharp as breaking glass.

From that moment, he could not leave her alone. He lingered where she stood, not beside her but near enough to observe. He found excuses to speak only to belittle, remarks about the Riverlands, about her ugly dress, about how poorly riverfolk bred courage. Each barb was carefully placed, each insult deliberate.

He did not know why he did it. He only knew that when she was absent, something in him burned.

The court, ever watchful, took notice. Whispers spread like rot through silk. Why would a dragon glance twice at a river girl? Some said she had ensnared him. Aerion heard it all and despised them for daring to speculate.

He despised her for making them speculate.

On one such day, when she appeared clad head to toe in Targaryen crimson, a color she had no right to wear, not for someone who has no worth, Aerion stopped before her, eyes narrowing.

He looked her over slowly, deliberately.

“Gods,” he said at last, voice laced with amusement far too cruel to be kind. “Did you know you look like a tomato fallen into a dragon’s hoard?”