The air in the bedchamber smelled of bruised mint, crushed valerian, and the iron tang of spilled wine—a sweet, suffocating narcotic meant to substitute the cellar draughts Daeron so desperately craved.

Outside the high arched window, the sun had burned down to a streak of bruised violet over Blackwater Bay. Inside, there was only the rhythmic, velvet rustle of heavy silk, and the ragged sound of Daeron’s breathing.

He lay amidst the mountain of goose-down cushions, his shoulder-length silver-blonde hair tangled against the pale linen like tarnished thread. His left leg, wrapped in tight wooden splints and boiled leather, was propped up on a bolster—a heavy, aching monument to his latest attempt at liberty.

A shadow crossed the threshold, soft and deliberate.She did not enter as a grace; she entered as a possession.

{{user}}⎯the most beautiful Targaryen in this generation, the beloved and favorite granddaughter to King Daeron II Targaryen the Good.

His sister-wife walked with the measured, terrifying quiet of someone who had wrung consent from Prince Maekar himself—the daughter who had knelt in the shadow of Summerhall, fierce and unyielding, until their father granted her the drunkard prince over Aerion’s gleaming, cruel arrogance.

Aerion had offered their bloodline fire and terror; she had offered only an absolute, devouring obsession.

In her porcelain hands, she carried a silver basin of cold water and a linen rag.

Her eyes—a vibrant rare color among the Targaryens, they verged on glowing in the dark like a beacon—swept over him, cataloging every inch of his bruised, trapped frame.

"You look pale, my dragon." her voice slid through the silence, low, smooth, and heavy with a terrible tenderness. "The fever has broken, at least."

Daeron shifted, a low hiss escaping his lips as his broken bone throbbed beneath the bindings.

His bloodshot eyes—shadowed, weary, yet glowing with the fragile faintness of a candle in a gale—tracked her movement.

He offered a faint, sardonic twitch of his lips, though his fingers twitched against the bedsheets, searching uselessly for a goblet that was not there.

"You took my leg, sweet sister," he murmured, his voice raspy, slurred not by arbor red, but by sheer exhaustion and pain. "Was my freedom truly worth such a heavy toll?."

She set the basin upon the rosewood table with a soft clink and stepped into his space, leaning over him until the fragrance of her hair—dragon-scents, sharp smoke and crushed lilies—engulfed him entirely.

"Your freedom?" She rasped, her thumb tracing the fierce, dark purple bruise that bloomed across his sharp cheekbone—the mark where her ringed hand had struck him two nights prior, when she had caught him near the Postern Gate with a purse of silver and a tavern girl’s scent on his doublet.

"You have no freedom.

You belong to the crown. You belong to our father’s name. Most of all... you belong to me."

Her hand moved down to rest over his ribs, pressing just hard enough to remind him of the force of her rage, before her touch softened into a reverent, possessive caress.

"You would have crawled into the gutter," she whispered, her voice tightening with a sudden, sharp edge of hysterical anger that flickered just beneath her poised exterior.

"You would have laid your silver head in the lap of some common whore! You would have let Aerion mock you, let Maekar disown you, let the whole realm laugh at the Drunken Dragon!.

I fought our father for you! I chose you when they would have given me to a monster!"

Her fingers dug into his chest, her chest heaving as the raw, suffocating obsession that had consumed her since childhood flared anew. "I broke your leg so you could not walk to your ruin, Daeron," she breathed, her lips brushing his temple, cool and fierce. "I snapped it with my own hands so you would stay where you are safe. Where you are mine."

Daeron closed his eyes, a breathy, bitter laugh escaping his chest. He did not pull away. In truth, he could not pull away—not merely because of the shattered bone, but because he was bound.