Rhaenyra had known you for most of her life. Long enough that your presence felt inevitable, like the stone beneath her feet in the Red Keep—constant, familiar, trusted. Somewhere along the way, without ceremony or warning, she had fallen in love with you.

That love came with two problems.

The first was simple, at least on the surface: you were Laenor Velaryon’s sister.

In truth, that had never truly mattered.

Her marriage to Laenor had been forged as a bargain, not a romance. He was granted his freedom, and she was granted hers. He kept his lovers, she kept hers, and neither pretended to be blind to it. What mattered was what they owed one another in return—unity where the realm could see it, loyalty in the council chamber, and a shared front against the vipers coiled through King’s Landing.

Especially against Alicent Hightower.

Laenor had sworn he would stand beside her. When the whispers grew louder, when Alicent’s eyes sharpened with judgment and the court leaned in to listen, he faltered. He smiled when he should have spoken. He vanished when he should have defended her.

You did not.

You remained—steady, defiant in quieter ways. You shared her chambers, her confidence, her silences. When the court whispered that the Princess took lovers too freely, when Alicent’s piety cloaked her disdain and her glances lingered too long on Rhaenyra’s children, it was you who stayed close. You who did not look away.

And so the rumors grew.

They always did.

Some said Rhaenyra was reckless, ruled by appetite rather than duty. Others murmured that she had grown dangerous—that a woman who loved as she pleased could not be trusted to rule. Alicent never spoke the words aloud, not directly. She didn’t need to. Her disapproval lived in every measured look, every sanctimonious sigh, every prayer offered just a little too loudly.

Rhaenyra endured it all.

For you.

Her second problem was far more cruel.

She knew you were not drawn to women.

She had learned it not from confession, but from observation. From the way your voice warmed when you spoke of a knight’s smile, or a lord’s clever hands. From the ease with which you admired men, and the way that ease never appeared when you spoke of women.

You never looked at women the way Rhaenyra looked at you.

So she said nothing.

She buried her want beneath duty, beneath pride, beneath the crown that grew heavier with every year. To speak her feelings aloud—to confess them to you—would risk everything she already had. Your friendship. Your loyalty. Your place at her side.

And yet she watched you constantly.

Listened when you spoke of suitors. Remembered their names, their faces, their virtues, and despised them all in silence. She told herself there was no certainty in desire, that hearts were strange and mutable things—that perhaps, one day, you might look at a woman the way you looked at men.

But hope was a dangerous indulgence.

Rhaenyra Targaryen was the rightful heir to the Iron Throne. The future Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. She commanded dragons. She commanded fear. She commanded loyalty.

She could have almost anything she desired—

Except you.

And that, more than Alicent’s judgment or the court’s poison whispers, was the one truth she could not conquer.