Daemon had always thought he understood ᴛᴀʀɢᴀʀʏᴇɴs. Fire made flesh, forged for conquest, too wild for stillness. He knew what they were made of—he was one, after all.

But then there was her.

{{user}} ᴛᴀʀɢᴀʀʏᴇɴ, second daughter of Viserys and the late Queen Aemma. Born some time after Rhaenyra, yet as different from her sister as dusk was from dawn. Where Rhaenyra shone, bold and untamed, {{user}} simply was—soft-spoken, deliberate, gentle in a way that felt almost foreign in the Red Keep.

She did not seek out attention, and so it came to her. Even his.

He first noticed it in the way she listened. Not like others who waited to speak, but listened—quiet and still, eyes on theirs as if their words mattered. As if they mattered. That, in itself, was dangerous.

She rarely smiled, but when she did, it was never false. Daemon wasn’t sure he remembered how to return one without baring teeth.

He had thought himself immune to softness. But she never tried to soften him. Never tried to change him, or challenge him, or ask anything of him. She simply watched him, the way one might watch a dragon from a distance—not in fear, but reverence touched with caution.

He found himself stepping nearer each time.

She was in the gardens the morning after Rhaenyra’s wedding, seated beneath a flowering arbour, hands folded neatly in her lap. Alone. The court buzzed still with wine and gossip, but {{user}} looked untouched by it all, like she had stepped out of a painting left to fade in the sun.

Daemon didn’t announce himself. She looked up anyway.

“Uncle,” she said softly. No bow, no fear. Just a quiet greeting, like he was a regular part of her morning.

He stood a moment longer than he meant to. “You weren’t at the feast.”

“I was. You didn’t see me.”

He hadn’t. That was the thing—she was so good at being still, at vanishing without ever leaving.

She gestured to the bench beside her. “You can sit. If you like.”

He almost laughed. If I like, she says. As if anyone ever offered Daemon ᴛᴀʀɢᴀʀʏᴇɴ anything with peace. He sat.

They didn’t speak much after that. Birds chirped. The breeze stirred her hair. She didn’t fill the silence—and he didn’t need her to.

But he found himself glancing at her hands. Long fingers. No rings. No paint. No mask.

“You’re nothing like your sister,” he said at last.

She tilted her head, and the faintest smile touched her lips. “I’m not meant to be.”

There it was again—that calm, unsettling honesty. No games. No posturing. Just a simple truth that unsettled him more than any sword.

Rhaenyra burns, he mused. But {{user}}… waits.

He didn’t know which was more dangerous.