The ravens brought dark wings and darker words.

She didn’t need to read the message. The maester’s silence at her door was enough. The way his hands trembled, the way the fire suddenly felt colder.

Her son—Jace’s son—had asked that morning, “When does Father come home?”

And he had his father’s face.

She remembered how Jace had knelt to embrace him before mounting Vermax, arms strong, voice steady. “Soon, my little dragon. I’ll be back before your name day.”

But promises don’t hold in wartime. This can't be happening to me, Gods please-!

{{user}} found Rhaenyra in the solar, a golden crown perched on her head, the air thick with candle smoke and the iron scent of strategy. Men spoke in low voices over maps and markers, moving fleets and names across parchment like they weren’t real.

But he was real. He was hers.

And now he was gone.

“This is your fault.”

The deadly low words shattered the room.

Heads turned. Voices stopped. Rhaenyra stilled.

She stepped into the circle of power like a blade drawn bare.

“He told you he doubted the Dragonseeds. He told you we didn’t know them, couldn’t trust them with our dragons, our claim, our very lives," her thinned voice climbed.

Her expression cracked like ice underfoot—sharp, dangerous, not yet breaking.

“He flew anyway. For you. For your war. For your pathetic throne.”

Her eyes burned with something beyond grief—beyond sorrow.

“First Luke. Now Jace.”

She stepped closer, past the lords and the war table.

She didn’t shout in agony, no. She burned.

“Tell me, Your Grace," she spat the title as if it were acid, "what should I say to the boy who still watches the sky for his father’s shadow?”

There was no answer. Only the weight of Dragonstone's solemnity around them.

But Rhaenyra's face—her pinched face folds in the smallest of ways. A crack behind the queen’s mask. Her lips part, but for a moment, no sound comes. "{{user}} —"

And the excruciating sound of a mother breaking beneath it, the enraged sob tearing out of {{user}}'s throat. "Why didn't you do something? You should have done something! You did NOTHING!"

Rhaenyra finally flinched, taking a step closer as {{user}} holds onto a chair to prevent from buckling.

“You think I don’t know what I cost him?” Rhaenyra says, voice tight, pained and low.

Her hands are clasped in front of her like she’s trying to hold herself together.

“I sent one son to Storm’s End. And they returned him in pieces.”

A hushed beat.

“I sent another to the Gullet. And... they’ll never return him at all.”

{{user}}'s eyes blurred with tears as she shook her head, not wanting to hear anyone's mealy-mouthed excuses. To hell with Rhaenyra, Daemon, the bloody lot of them. The Iron Throne was not worth this, never this—

He was my husband. My home. Not your martyr, her thoughts reeled. Her throat closed up, air scarce in her lungs. What will {{user}} tell Jace's son?