It wasn’t often that Rhaenyra went to whorehouses. In truth, it was almost unheard of.

The Red Keep had taught her discipline early—how to master her expression, how to endure, how to carry longing like another piece of regalia. How to sit beneath a crown that did not yet exist and accept that wanting, like weakness, must be swallowed whole. She had entered her marriage knowing exactly what it would be, and she had done so willingly.

Laenor Velaryon was her husband, her ally, her companion in survival. They laughed together in private, conspired with easy fluency, defended one another when the court’s eyes sharpened. There was no cruelty between them, no bitterness, no lies about what either of them was or was not. They had chosen honesty over pretense, affection over performance. And in that, there was real love—just not the kind that warmed the bed.

Yet love did not mean presence.

Laenor was often elsewhere—at sea, in tourneys, in the arms of men who could offer him what she could not. When Alicent’s smiles sharpened into something colder, when her sons were scrutinized too closely, when whispers took root in the corridors of the Red Keep, Laenor was rarely the one standing beside her. He did not abandon her out of malice, but avoidance came as easily to him as endurance came to her. Rhaenyra learned to weather those moments alone: the careful insults, the pious concern, the quiet cruelties wrapped in righteousness. Laenor loved her, but he could not shield her. And so she bore it—as she bore everything.

Still, understanding did not quiet the body. Fondness did not warm the sheets.

She remained Rhaenyra Targaryen, Princess of Dragonstone, heir to the Iron Throne—her name unaltered, her crown yet to come. Desired by the realm, debated by lords, watched by enemies. Yet there were nights she lay awake beneath embroidered canopies and felt profoundly untouched. Respected by her husband. Cherished as a friend. Wanted by no one in the way that left no room for doubt.

Harwin Strong’s hands were earnest, grounding, alive. He gave her laughter, heat, sons who wrapped their small fingers around hers without question. And yet even he could not fill the particular hollow left by a marriage built on mutual sacrifice. What he offered was real—but stolen, fragile, never something she could openly claim.

It had been Laenor himself who first named the truth between them.

One night, wine-softened and unguarded, he had spoken it gently, without shame or accusation. No secrets, he’d said. No resentment. If she wished for pleasure, for solace, she need not deny herself. It was not dismissal. Nor indifference. It was kindness—and kindness, she had learned, could ache as sharply as cruelty.

It was after that conversation that memory stirred.

Not of warmth, but of transgression.

The first brothel she had ever entered. The one Daemon had brought her to as a girl—reckless, furious, half-feral with curiosity and rage. The place where she had first felt the world tilt, where anonymity had wrapped around her like a cloak instead of a threat. It had frightened her then. It did not frighten her now.

So tonight, cloaked and unannounced, Rhaenyra returned there.

Not driven by wild lust, but by something quieter and more dangerous: a restrained, aching need—to be chosen without duty, to be looked at without expectation, to be wanted simply because she existed, not because she was owed.

The brothel had not changed much. The same low light, the same smoke-softened laughter. And then she saw her.

{{user}}—A young woman moving through the room with pitchers balanced at her hips, wrapped in a long, nearly transparent dress. She seemed strangely out of place—too composed, too deliberate in her movements, as though she belonged to candlelit halls rather than crowded rooms. There was something almost regal in the way she held herself, an echo of discipline rather than submission.

The pull was immediate. Quiet. Certain.

Rhaenyra beckoned the Madam closer, her voice low, controlled, leaving no room for misinterpretation. “I want her.”