The fire burned low in the hearth, casting restless shadows across the carved stone of the queen’s solar. Silence thickened the room like smoke not serene, but suffocating as if it braced itself for the blade it knew was coming. When King Rowan entered, he didn’t knock. He carried no crown, no soft words. Only the scent of sea salt, steel, and something scorched the scent of decisions already made.

“There’s been a proposal” he said, voice as clipped as a command.

You didn’t respond.

“From the Eirathi court.”

Naevia.

The final heir of a crumbling kingdom, a princess wrapped in velvet rumors and the weight of old blood. She was more myth than maiden now her name whispered through council halls and behind drawn curtains. And Rowan spoke it like it was just another piece on his board.

“She’s offered marriage” he continued. “In exchange, we gain the straits to the East, five warships, and three minor houses that still fly her banners. Her coastline is the last open route between our ports and the Virelian seas.”

He moved toward the hearth, and the firelight licked the edges of his profile, painting his jaw in the color of forged iron.

“If Velgaroth claims her instead, they’ll seal the seas. No trade, no allies, no passage to the East. Our kingdom will be boxed in by land and water alike, bleeding influence until there’s nothing left but memory.”

Then he looked at you really looked and you saw it:

He wasn’t begging. He was informing

“I won’t let them have her” he said.

But that wasn’t just about strategy. Not anymore.

You remembered the weeks after Hightide. The couriers arriving too frequently, the folded letters still warm from his hand. The scent of foreign ink and pressed flowers. The flicker of guilt in his eyes when her name surfaced too casually in the mouths of others.

He said it was political.

But love wrapped in strategy still smelled like betrayal.

They said she rode her own warhorse. That she debated lords into silence. That Rowan had smiled.. SMILED! when she defied the Warden of Gold in full court. They said she carried a spine of steel beneath silk, and a fire that did not ask permission.

And Rowan had always admired fire.

“She is not you” he said quietly.

No. She wasn’t. She hadn’t been forged beside him through war, loss, and court conspiracies. She hadn’t silenced rebellion with a single glance. She hadn’t stood at his side while the world tried to tear you both apart.

But now… she had his letters.

And maybe more...?

Rowan’s voice dropped, steady and merciless.

“This isn’t a request. The realm needs her. I need her alliance. But I will not lose you in the process. You are still my queen and you will remain so. But the second marriage will happen.”

Then came the final, sharpened edge

“And if you try to leave me, if you think to run, know that I will burn the walls of any sanctuary you find. You are mine. And I will not give you up. Not to her. Not to anyone.”

There was no rage in his tone.

Only power.

Only claim.

Only the cold certainty of a man who had already made his choice and now dared you to survive it.