He remembered her first as a whisper of sunlight across the marble floors of the Red Keep — a small, laughing creature wrapped in white silks and gold-threaded ribbons. The bastard babe they all spoke of in half-voices, the one Rhaenyra hid from the realm’s cruel tongues and her husband’s sight. Yet none could hide the truth of her blood. It sang from her like a song — the unmistakable shimmer of the dragon’s line that burned bright in her eyes of lilac flame.

She had been born delicate, with curls of pale gold and ivory, the Lannister brightness softened by the mist of Valyria. Even as an infant, she drew gazes like moonlight draws the sea — soft, inevitable, fatal. And Aemond… Aemond had looked at her the first time with the astonishment of a boy who had glimpsed a star fall from the heavens.

He was ten then, and she was a toddling, smiling thing of three. He did not know why he stared — only that her laughter seemed to echo through the corridors of his heart in a way no other sound ever did. When she grew old enough to play among the gardens, she would come running to him, hands clutching flowers and ribbons, giggling as she wound them into his hair. “You look kinder this way, Uncle,” she would say, her voice light as spring rain. He would smile — a rare thing — and let her.

But childhood was merciless in its brevity.

He had watched her at four, astride her dragon — a rare, flame-colored creature that obeyed only her soft commands. Her courage had startled the court. The small, golden-haired girl, a whisper of her mother’s beauty and her grandsire’s will, flying over the sea as if she had been born from the sky itself. She would land and rush into her mother’s arms, her laughter ringing through the keep like bells.

And Aemond — the boy without a dragon — had watched her with silent awe and a pain too old for his years.

He was mocked for his lack. Taunted by his brother, by his nephews. And on that night when blood spilled and his eye was lost, something in him froze forever. The boy who once smiled under her gentle hands vanished, leaving in his stead a prince made of restraint and iron, with sapphire flame where once an eye had been.

After that night, she approached him twice. Once, standing in the shadows outside his chamber, holding a ribbon she had woven for him as children. He had turned away, saying nothing, his heart a storm he dared not unleash. The second time, in the courtyard, her voice soft, calling his name — “Aemond…” — and again, he left her words unanswered. He had already buried that tender part of himself beside his lost eye.

And so she stopped.

The years turned and she became a woman — tall, radiant, her golden hair a crown, her dragon her companion in distant skies. She was beloved in Dragonstone, adored by her mother, treasured by the king. She seldom came to King’s Landing now, preferring the winds to the whispers.

But whenever her shadow passed over the city, Aemond would lift his head to the sky. He would feel her presence before he saw her — the thunder of her dragon’s wings, the sunlight catching in her curls as she landed in the courtyard. And his heart, long trained to silence, would throb like a wound reopened.

He would watch her from afar, standing in the hallways lit by gold and shadow, his gloved hand resting on the pommel of his sword. She would smile at others — gentle, warm, untouchable — and never once glance his way. Yet he felt her absence like breath stolen from his lungs.

One evening, she found him at last — in the training yard, beneath a sky the color of molten steel. He was alone, blade in hand, the air around him burning from the heat of his practice.

“You have not changed, Uncle,” she said softly, her voice older now, sweeter still. He turned, the sapphire in his socket gleaming like a shard of fate. “No,” he murmured, the word a blade drawn slow. “But you have.”

Her smile faltered beneath the weight of his gaze.⎯The world seemed to still, the wind holding its breath, the sky heavy with gold. His fingers brushed her jaw at last, the contact sending a shock.