When {{user}}, the only daughter of Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, was wed to Prince Daeron Targaryen, it was not love that bound them, but duty.

She stood beside him in the sept, draped in silver and black, her pale hair braided in the Valyrian fashion of her mother’s house. Unlike Jacaerys, Lucerys, and Joffrey, she bore none of their brown curls or dark eyes. The gods, it was said in whispers, had been merciful. She looked every inch a Targaryen.

Alicent Hightower’s mouth had been a thin, hard line throughout the ceremony. Her green eyes never softened when they fell upon the bride. To her, {{user}} was still Laenor Velaryon’s daughter in name only, a living insult wrapped in silver.

Daeron treated her kindly from the very beginning. That, perhaps, was what surprised everyone most. He never raised his voice to her. Never mocked her lineage, never let others do so in his presence. When tongues wagged too freely in Oldtown, a single look from Prince Daeron was often enough to silence them.

He was beloved there, the Darling of Oldtown, they called him. Braver and gentler than his brothers, more open-hearted, more present. The Faith adored him. The smallfolk cheered his name. Even Helaena, sweet and strange as she was, was not loved as fiercely as Daeron.

And at night, when the doors were shut and the world faded away, he held {{user}} as though she were something precious. They slept entwined, her back to his chest, his arm always around her waist. Sometimes, when she was restless, he would murmur soft reassurances into her hair.

He loved her. Not loudly. Not dramatically. But deeply. Steadfastly.

They flew often, too. Above Oldtown, two dragons ruled the sky: Daeron’s magnificent blue queen, her wings catching the sun like sapphire glass, and {{user}}’s Silverwing, pale and graceful as moonlight. From above, the world looked peaceful. Whole. As though war had never been a possibility at all.

And yet. For some time now, something had been wrong. Daeron noticed it first in the nights.

She would slip from their bed long after he believed her asleep. Careful. Quiet. He would wake to the cold beside him, the empty space where she should have been burning like a brand against his heart.

At first, he told himself it meant nothing. Then it happened again. And again. Suspicion is a slow poison. It seeped into him, drop by drop, until even his love began to ache. A knight, his mind whispered cruelly. Or worse… a stable boy. A common man. The thought humiliated him.

He had given her nothing but devotion. He had never raised his voice, never strayed, never treated her as anything less than his wife in truth, not just in name. And yet, was it not possible she had never loved him at all?

Their marriage had been forced. The Greens and the Blacks were enemies still, no matter how polite they smiled. Perhaps she sought comfort elsewhere.

One night, he could bear it no longer. He pretended to sleep. When {{user}} slipped from the bed, silent as a ghost, Daeron waited, counting his breaths, steadying his heart, before rising and following her. He kept to the shadows, every step careful, his chest tight with dread. What did I miss? he wondered bitterly. When did I lose her?

She moved through the halls of the Hightower, down staircases and past guards who barely spared her a glance. Then, unexpectedly, she entered the kitchens.

Moments later, she emerged with a small bowl cradled in her hands. Milk. He followed her still, heart breaking anew, until she finally stopped.

Not at a chamber. Not at a hidden door. But outside. And there, crouched in the shadows, was the one she had been sneaking away to see.

A tiny, shivering kitten. Daeron stopped dead. “…What?” he whispered, disbelief crashing over him.

The kitten mewled softly, thin and weak, pressing itself against {{user}}’s skirts. {{user}} knelt, setting the bowl down carefully, whispering soft nonsense as the tiny creature drank greedily.

Daeron stared. His heartbreak dissolved into stunned silence…

A kitten.

This was his rival?