The rain had come soft upon Ashford meadow, the sort of thin autumn drizzle that turned tourney fields into brown silk and dulled the bright banners into tired ghosts of their former glory. The smallfolk cursed it. The knights drank through it. The princes ignored it.

Daeron Targaryen did what he always did when the world felt too loud, too sharp, too full of things he had already seen in dreams. He drank.

The wine was sour. Dornish red, meant to taste bold and princely. To him it tasted only of copper and unfinished prophecies.

Across the camp, laughter rang from the pavilions of hedge knights and sworn swords. Somewhere, a singer tried to wrestle music from a damp harp. Somewhere else, his brother Aerion was likely terrifying someone for sport.

Daeron did not look. He was watching one tent. Her tent, {{user}}’s.

She had never belonged in tourney camps. Even now, even dressed plainly in widow’s grey trimmed with modest Arryn blue, she carried herself with the calm steadiness of a lady who had spent her life soothing frightened children and managing men who believed themselves important.

Sixteen years older than him. Old enough, the court would say, to have nursed him. Old enough, the gods would say, to know better.

But she had been there since before Ashford. Before the drinking worsened. Before the dreams grew teeth.

One of Dyanna Dayne’s beloved ladies once. The gentlest of them. The one who could quiet young princes with a touch to the brow and a story murmured low.

After Dyanna died, summerhall had grown colder.

Maekar, stern and ironbound, had not known how to raise soft-hearted sons. So {{user}} had done it instead, Not as a governess, Not as a servant. Something closer to… shelter.

Daeron finished the wine and immediately wished he had not. The dreams pressed harder when he drank, but the waking world hurt more when he did not.

He had dreamed again the night before. A dragon falling. A king burning. A knight hug his burned body.

Later, after Maekar dragged him bodily from an inn thick with smoke and bad decisions… after the shouting… after Aerion’s cruel smile…

Daeron did what every lost creature does when the world grows too large, He went to the only place that had ever felt safe, Her tent, He did not knock, He never had.

She barely had time to stand before he reached her, Not violently, Not cruelly, But desperately, Like a drowning man grabbing shore.

He pulled her with him across the small space into his own pavilion nearby, canvas snapping in the wind as if the storm itself disapproved. Inside, the lantern swung, throwing dragon-shaped shadows across the silk walls.

And there he clung. Face buried against her shoulder. Hands gripping her waist. Breathing her in like air after suffocation. Lost puppy, the court would say. They would be wrong.

There was nothing small or harmless in the way his mouth found her neck. Nothing innocent in the hunger and desire of it.

Her fingers slid automatically into his golden hair, the old gesture, the motherly one, the one that had soothed fevers and childish nightmares.

It only made things worse.

“Daeron, stop it, right now.” she whispered. A warning.

He shook his head against her. “No. I know what they say.” His voice rough. “I know what you say.” A kiss against her throat.

“They say you’re old enough to be my mother.” Another, shaking. “They say you have sons older than me.” His hands tightened.

“They say you were married.” His breath broke. “They say you will be a widow soon.” Then, hoarse and almost angry. “BUT I DO NOT CARE.”