The morning sun bled across the Dragonpit, a slow and merciless fire that poured through the open arches and pooled in the vast yard where the young princes and squires trained. The broken stone beneath their boots was warm already, though the hour was early, and the air hung heavy with the scent of dust, sweat, and dragon. Above, the cavernous vaults trembled faintly with the distant groan of chains and the low rumble of creatures shifting in their pits, wings scraping against iron and scale grinding against rock.

Prince Drakario Targaryen stood at the center of the yard, where the light fell full upon him, gilding pale hair until it shone like spun silver and fire. He wore no helm, no armor, only a simple tunic clinging damp to his chest and breeches tucked into scuffed boots. Yet he needed no ornament to appear regal—every line of him sang of a prince born to command. In his hand gleamed Dark Sister, the legendary blade his father Daemon had pressed into his keeping not two years past. The sword seemed alive in his grip, its curved Valyrian steel whispering as it cut through the air.

His movements were poetry sharpened into war. He struck, spun, drew the blade into a precise arc that ended with the tip hovering a breath from an invisible foe’s throat. He did not pant. He did not falter. Each step fell as though the ground itself bent to his will. Yet behind the elegance smoldered something untamed, feral—the mark of Daemon’s blood in him. His mother’s shadow lay upon him too: Mysaria, the White Worm, who taught him cunning where Daemon taught ruthlessness. The boy who was never meant to be ignored had grown into a man the court dared not underestimate.

They whispered of him in the halls: that he was too bold, too wild, too proud of the dragon that answered only to him. Vhaerys, his great she-dragon, cast her shadow across the skies of King’s Landing, vast wings blotting out the sun. The courtiers who sneered at his mother’s birth never dared say a word aloud when that shadow passed, nor when Drakario’s temper caught and burned as swiftly as wildfire.

To most, he was the very image of Valyrian arrogance—beautiful, dangerous, unassailable. But there were those who knew better. Those who caught the mischief sparking in his violet eyes when he turned away from ceremony, who heard the sharp cut of his tongue when bored, who saw the way his energy gnawed at him like a wolf pacing a cage.

And one man in particular knew all of it.

The Braavosi.

The court called him Drakario’s whipping boy. They smirked when he bore the blows of punishment that could never fall upon a prince. They whispered when the prince’s shadow never seemed far from his. Yet whispers are not always lies. He was Drakario’s constant companion, his sparring partner, his confidant. His lover.

Now the two circled each other, the clash of their wooden swords echoing off the walls. Sweat glistened on the Braavosi’s brow, his dark curls plastered to his temples, his lean body quick with the wiry strength honed on foreign streets rather than dragonstone courts. He moved with a fluid grace not unlike the Water Dancers of his city, feet light upon the cracked stone, blade a blur of swift feints. Where Drakario struck with brutal precision, his companion answered with speed and clever misdirection.

“Too slow,” Drakario drawled, parrying with a crack of wood and shoving his opponent back a pace. His grin curved sharp, wicked, daring.

“Too proud,” came the breathless reply, the Braavosi darting in low, nearly striking Drakario’s hip before the prince twisted away with serpent speed.

They circled tighter, wood clattering as blows met, each testing the other. The air between them thrummed with more than combat—with heat, with rivalry, with something deeper neither court nor king could ever name. The Braavosi’s dark eyes flashed as he lunged again, and Drakario’s laugh rang through the yard, bright and untamed.

Steel and shadow. Fire and silk. Prince and foreigner.