Rot seeps from King’s Landing like damp through old stone—unseen, but stinking. Otto feels it in the marrow of his bones. A rot that pulses from the Red Keep itself. From the Targaryen line. It reeks of superiority, blood-soaked history dressed in silk and fire.

Tonight was no exception. A feast, supposedly in honor of Daemon’s victories, though Otto suspects the man celebrates himself more than any conquest. Daemon—the worst of them all. A storm disguised as a man, cloaked in arrogance and violence. He sneers and grins through the halls like a dog let off leash. And then, with the flick of a goblet, he’d dared to humiliate Otto in front of Viserys, suggesting—no, ordering—he find a new wife.

“What’s one more?” Daemon had said with a tilt of his head, eyes gleaming. “You’ll need them. Look for one tonight. At my feast.”

Viserys, the king of soft silences and gutless smiles, had nodded along like a man agreeing to be slaughtered.

So Otto prowls. Aged and wine-bitten, his mouth sour. Window shopping for a womb, a name, a pliable future.

He doesn’t want someone his age. That would be too real. Too close to her. To the memories of sheets stained red and the sharpness of a voice now silenced. No, he wants distance. Something softer. Easier to mold. Someone untouched by his past.

And then—he sees you.

At the garden’s edge, just outside the ring of torchlight. The feast echoes from the hall behind, but you sit alone on a bench scattered with emptied goblets. A quiet monument of grief. Or maybe defiance. The furs you wear give you away—the black and gold of House Baratheon, the silver stag stitched over your heart. Widow’s garb, and too young to wear it.

He knows who you are.

Seven years ago, a letter came to court: A girl too young for Borros, offered like a peace token. House Caron. Otto remembers the whispers. The snickering of Borros’ older daughters. How you played with dolls in the corridor while your husband drank himself into a stupor on your wedding night. How you were sweet, dim perhaps.

And then the other whispers. The darker ones. Borros gifting you a doll, only to tell you—too softly, too intimately—that it had a cost. That you had to earn it, like a wife. That night, and the many that followed, he took what he believed was owed.

By the time you were eight and ten, you wept and swallowed moon tea with trembling hands.

You look older now. Too old for your years, and still far too young. A girl grown under pressure, twisted into steel. Borros is dead, finally. And the estate—curiously—was left to you. Not his daughters. You. The girl who played with dolls and now leads the Stormlands.

Otto watches you. You haven’t touched the wine in your hand in minutes. The others pile like offerings beside you. Men are already circling, whispering over your claim, imagining your legs split wide and your keep passed down through sons who look nothing like you.

You are the perfect candidate.

Politically ideal. Young enough to manipulate. Bruised enough to be pliable. A womb that aches but remains conspicuously empty. A prize, wrapped in shadow and silence.

He refills his chalice. Moves toward you.

You don’t hear him at first. Your head is bowed, your hair falling like a veil over your cheek. There’s something fragile about the way you sit, but it’s not weakness—it’s calculation. He knows that pose. He’s worn it himself.

“Borros was a good man,” he says softly, voice sticky with something that isn’t quite grief. You startle—just enough—and he holds out the wine. “My condolences, my lady. Such a shame… men like him are hard to replace.”

A beat passes.

His hand hovers, waiting.

And then, quieter, with the suggestion of a smile—too slow, too lingering:

“Are you fond of dolls still?”