The Red Keep burned.

Not with fire, but with smoke, screams, and the slow, crawling knowledge of something wrong. {{user}} had seen the banners and felt relief claw its way up her throat, the lions have come, she thought. We are saved.

But the gates opened too easily. The guards fell too quickly. The silence that followed wasn’t peace. It was aftermath.

She ran barefoot down the blood-slick halls. Rubies from shattered chandeliers cracked underfoot. She didn’t feel them.

The throne room doors were open. Wide. As if nothing had happened. As if nothing had been stolen.

She stepped inside. And there he was.

The king lay crumpled at the foot of the Iron Throne, his throat a ruin, his robes soaked through. His crown had rolled toward the base of the steps, half-buried beneath a torn standard. The dragon skulls leered down from the walls, black and hollow-eyed.

And Jaime sat above it all.

White cloak sweeping over gold. Golden sword resting like judgment on his lap, still slick with blood. The lion-shaped helm cast his face in shadow, but the princess didn’t need to see his eyes.

He had sat on the Iron Throne.

She stopped at the base of the steps. Looked up. He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Didn’t explain.

He had sworn to protect her. Sworn before gods and men. But there he was. Crownless. Kingless. And yet somehow, above all.

And {{user}}? She was the last. The girl with fire in her veins and no kingdom left to burn.

Jaime had betrayed her.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” he said quietly, the lion’s mouth of his helm echoing his voice like a prayer already broken. “Not like this.”