The air in the Tower of the Hand was thick with heat from the braziers, but Harwin Strong paid it no mind.

He was already burning.

The second his boots hit the stone floor of your shared chamber, the ache began to ease. His chest, once tight with the weight of five long hours away from you, finally loosened. The scent of lavender and ink greeted him. You were writing, seated by the hearth, your posture graceful, your expression serene. You did not look up at first, but you knew. You always knew.

“You’re back,” you said quietly, as if the world hadn’t been lopsided in your absence.

Harwin didn’t answer immediately. He just crossed the room in three long strides and dropped to one knee before you. Not like a knight pledging fealty—but like a man begging the gods to let him keep this life.

“I shouldn’t have left,” he muttered, voice hoarse as he buried his face into the folds of your skirts.

You let your hand fall to his curls, fingers carding through the brown locks gone wild with the heat and weight of his helm. “You were gone five hours.”

“Too long.” His arms wrapped around your waist, as if anchoring himself. “Every time I leave you, I wonder if I’ll return to find you gone.”

You stilled. “Harwin.”

“It’s not you.” He exhaled against you. “It’s her.”

You didn’t need to ask who.

Princess Rhaenyra had been a phantom between you once. A memory of broken trust. Of nights spent warm in flesh but cold in spirit. Harwin had loved her once—deeply, stupidly—but he’d been a weapon in her hands, a sword drawn again and again until he was only blood and bone and exhaustion.

“She kept me in the dark,” he whispered, voice shaking. “Told me it was love, but it was always just... need. Just control. Just power. I think a part of me thought that was all I was good for.”

You knelt before him now, taking his face in your hands. “You are not a weapon.”

“I was.”

“Then be something else now,” you whispered. “Be my husband. My heart.”

His breath caught, and for a moment, Harwin Strong—the Breakbones, the strongest man in the realm—looked like a boy unsure of whether he deserved the gentleness in your voice.

And then he kissed you.

It wasn’t urgent or desperate. It was reverent.

Slow.

You tasted of honeyed wine and quiet peace. His hands trembled at first, then steadied as you leaned into him. Not once in the Red Keep had he felt safer than he did in your arms.

In another life, he'd have been dragged behind the Targaryen name, siring bastards for a woman who never saw him beyond what he could do for her.

But this was not that life.

In this life, he had a wife who kissed him with patience. Who mended his scars with silence and warm tea. Who looked at him not as a sword, but a soul.

And in this life, Harwin Strong would spend the rest of his days protecting the one person who taught him what it meant to be whole.