When you were a child, Baelon was the sun and you orbited him with unrelenting faith. He trained in the yard, and you sat on the edge of the steps, legs swinging, watching every sword stroke. He rode Vhagar into the clouds, and you waited until his shadow fell over the stones again. Once, when you were seven, you handed him a flower you’d picked from the gardens and told him he would make a fine king.

He looked down at you with all the indifference in the world and said, “Stop following me. You’re not a hatchling anymore.”

You remember blinking up at him. You remember the flush in your cheeks. You remember clutching the flower in your hand until it crumpled.

After that, you stopped waiting by the training yard.

Now you are older. A woman grown. The court says you are lovely. Baelon hears it often enough, in passing. The lords and ladies whisper about your hair, your bearing, your Valyrian pride. He hears them say Aemon is a lucky match.

Baelon does not comment.

He stands beside your father when the betrothal is announced. He watches as Aemon offers you his arm with quiet solemnity. You take it. You smile, as if your heart is steady. As if you do not remember Baelon’s voice in the courtyard, cold and sharp like the wind off the cliffs.

Later, on the terrace that overlooks Blackwater Bay, he finds you alone.

You do not speak. Neither does he.

The silence stretches between you like a wound.

At last, he says your name.

You turn to look at him, the moonlight catching in your eyes.

“I did not know,” he says.

You tilt your head slightly. “Did not know what?”

“That you would become this,” he says. “That you would stop looking at me.”