Spring has come to King’s Landing, but winter still lingers in the stone.

Your chambers are stifling despite the chill in the air. Fires crackle. Blankets cocoon you on the chaise near the windows. The sea wind rattles the panes, sharp and restless—like you.

You are enormous.

Not delicately rounded. Not sweetly glowing.

Enormous, aching, swollen, and furious.

Seven hells take anyone who says otherwise.

A maid hovers with watered wine. Another attempts to adjust the furs around your shoulders.

“Stop fussing,” you snap, voice edged like a blade. “If you tuck that blanket one more time I’ll smother you with it.”

They scatter.

You shift, wincing as the weight of your belly pulls. The child sits low. Too low. Every movement presses downward with cruel insistence. Your back throbs. Your ankles have vanished into your slippers. And you are hungry. Constantly hungry.

A tray of honeyed bread, roasted capon, stewed apples, and soft cheese sits half-destroyed beside you.

That is when your mother arrives.

Cersei Lannister does not knock. She glides in like judgment itself, gold hair gleaming, green eyes sharp.

She surveys the crumbs. The grease on your fingers. The loosened laces of your gown.

“You will make yourself sick,” she says coolly. “A queen does not devour her meals like a tavern girl.”

You stare at her.

Something in you—something swollen and primal and beyond fear—rises.

“I am not a queen,” you say flatly. “I am in labor.”

“You are near labor,” she corrects.

Another tightening grips you low and deep. Not quite pain. Not yet. But enough to steal breath.

You grip the arm of the chaise and glare at her.

“I am hungry,” you say. “And if I want the entire kitchens brought to me, I will have them.”

Her mouth thins. “You must maintain decorum—”

“Get out.”

The words fall like a dropped goblet.

The room stills.

Even you are surprised.

For years you feared that tone. That cold, slicing disapproval. But now? Now your body is splitting itself open for the realm’s heir, and you have no patience left for lectures about posture and portions.

“I said,” you repeat, voice lower, “get out of my chambers.”

For a moment, it seems she might strike you.

Instead, her chin lifts.

“Very well,” she says, each syllable polished steel. “Do try not to disgrace us with hysterics.”

She leaves in a sweep of crimson silk.

The maids stare at you as though you’ve slain a dragon.

You grab another piece of bread.

⸻

Below, the castle trembles with anticipation.

Robert Baratheon is in his cups already. Of course he is.

Your father bellows through the halls about heirs and strong blood and how he wants to hear the babe’s cry from the Tower of the Hand itself. He claps knights on the back hard enough to bruise them. Demands more wine. More noise. More celebration before the child has even crowned.

“The first grandchild!” he roars. “My blood! Gods, I’ll have a grandson who can swing a hammer before he can walk!”

Someone wisely does not mention the possibility of a girl.

He is terrified, of course.

But Robert fears quietly and celebrates loudly.

⸻

And Sandor?

The door opens without ceremony.

Sandor Clegane fills the threshold, broad and grim, still in leather though the castle steams with heat.

His eyes go first to your face.

Then to your belly.

Then to the discarded tray.

He shuts the door behind him with his boot.

“They’re circling like crows,” he mutters. “Your father’s near wrestled a maester.”

You snort, then grimace as another tightening pulls low across your spine.

He notices instantly.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t lie.”

“I’m not—” You suck in breath as the pressure builds again, deeper this time. Your fingers curl into the fur blanket. “It’s just… tightening.”

He crosses the room in three strides.

Large hands frame your hips, steadying you as you shift upright. His touch is firm, grounding. Possessive.

His woman.

His wife.

You press your forehead briefly against his chest. The leather smells of oil and steel and him.

Sandor guided you by the hips off to the large, canopied bed.