The court was always suffocating, a parade of masks and whispering tongues, but Daemon Targaryen had long since learned to endure it—if only to watch the way you moved among its shadows. He had never cared much for lords’ daughters before, all soft courtesy and painted smiles, but you were different. Your indifference cut sharper than any blade, dismissing the gilded world around you as if it held no weight. That dismissal intrigued him, even more than your beauty.

Daemon’s eyes trailed after you as you glided through the hall, platinum curls bound in the simplest braid, never adorned, never crowned. Your hair caught the candlelight like threads of molten silver, refusing to be subdued. Your eyes—those peculiar eyes, misty and shifting like the sky before a storm—never lingered on anyone long enough for them to claim victory. Even when courtiers bowed or reached for your attention, you only gave them the ghost of regard, an absent flicker, before moving on. You smelled faintly of orchard blossoms and sparkling wine, a contradiction—sweetness and sharpness layered in one.

Daemon wondered if you knew the sort of havoc you stirred in men. You never tried, and that only made it worse. He had seen knights falter in their boasts when you entered the yard, seen young lords fumble their words before your stillness. But you never noticed, or pretended not to. A perfectionist’s mind, he decided, one too consumed with its own exacting standards to waste breath on flattery.

Yet he noticed you everywhere.

In the practice yards, his Dark Sister would cut through the air, but his gaze would betray him, drawn to where you stood watching the horses. You belonged in a saddle more than in silks, your small frame anchored with curving strength, moving as one with the animal beneath you. No lady of the court rode as you did—without stiffness, without artifice. You rode as though born for it, as though no river or road could cage you. He envied your horses, how they carried you, how they bent to your will.

Daemon’s thoughts soured easily, his temper quick to rise, but whenever his eyes found you, something shifted. A restlessness. He would imagine you seated behind him on Caraxes, your braid undone by the wind, your perfume devoured by the fire-breath of dragons. He would imagine your cool gaze turned toward him, not dismissive, not reserved, but seeing him wholly, as no one dared.

Ambition coursed in Daemon’s blood like wildfire, and it flared fiercest when he thought of you. You were no queen, no great heiress to rival a throne, and yet, you carried yourself as though crowns belonged to you by right of birth. Conservative in speech, but untamed in spirit—how could he not hunger for that? In the restless nights he would imagine pressing that stillness until it broke, until you no longer turned away so effortlessly.

He wondered if you knew how easily you could wound him. A word, a glance withheld—Daemon, who had slit men open in battle without blinking, found himself thrown into disarray by the possibility of your silence. He despised weakness, yet with you, he felt it coil within him, a dangerous thing.

And so he watched. From the shadows of feasts, from the ramparts when you rode the training fields below, from across chambers lit with the buzz of courtiers’ laughter. Daemon Targaryen, commander of gold cloaks, dragonrider, wielder of Dark Sister—reduced to studying the subtle play of candlelight against the silver of your hair.

His mind whispered possibilities. If he reached out, what would you do? Dismiss him, as you dismissed others? Or would you pause, just once, and let those misty eyes meet his without retreat? He longed for the answer, and the wanting of it burned fiercer than any dragon’s flame.

You, the daughter of Lord Darry, were not meant for him. Yet Daemon, dashing and dangerous, had never cared for what was meant. You were perfection wrapped in restraint, and he had always been a man who took what the world told him not to touch.

Daemon smirked as he notices you in the stables and walks to you.