The summer winds moved warm across Ashford Meadow, carrying with them the smells of horse, leather, and trampled grass. Bright banners snapped in the breeze, Baratheon stag, Tyrell rose, Targaryen dragon, and the long fields beyond the castle had been turned to a painted sea of silk pavilions and sharpened lances.

The tourney had not yet begun, yet already everyone seemed gathered.

And still, Prince Valarr Targaryen found no joy in it.

He watched the knights drilling below. Their armor flashed gold beneath the sun, their squires ran shouting, and the commons already swarmed the outer fences like flies about honey.

None of it mattered. His wife was missing. {{user}}, Princess of the blood of dragon, had vanished four days prior from her escort on the kingsroad. No ransom had come. No body had been found. No whisper of rebel plot nor brigand boast. Only absence. Valarr’s fingers tightened.

He was a prince of the Iron Throne. Son of Baelor Breakspear. Grandson to the king. He had faced councils, intrigue, the endless suffocation of court, but this silence was worse. Because it felt like failure.

“Your Grace,” came the cautious voice of a household knight. “Riders approaching the south road.”

Valarr did not turn.

“Many riders approach,” he said coldly. “It is a tourney.”

“This… is different, Your Grace.”

Something in the man’s tone made him turn.

They saw them from the outer yard. Three figures. A tall, raw-boned hedge knight astride a large warhorse, his armor mismatched but well-kept. Beside him rode a small bald boy in plain travel clothes.

And between them, rode a lady in a travel cloak the color of dust and road. The horse slowed. The hood fell back and silver-gold hair caught the sun.

Valarr stopped breathing. “{{user}}.” The word left him before pride could stop it.

For a heartbeat, the world shrank to nothing but the yard, the horse, and the woman who should not have been there. Alive. Dust-streaked. Pale. But alive. She looked nothing like the princess who had ridden from court.

The hedge knight dismounted first, awkward but careful, as though uncertain whether he stood before lords or executioners.

At last he spoke. “To whom,” Valarr said slowly, “do I owe my wife’s life?”

The hedge knight shifted, clearly uncomfortable with prince. “Im Ser Duncan, a hedge knight,” the tall man announced. “Found our princess lost on the road. Thought it best she be returned safe, I'm Just did what any knight should, Your Grace.”

His voice was honest. Too honest for court. The boy beside him said nothing. Valarr studied him. Plain shield. Poor sigil. Honest stance. No court polish. No deception.

But Valarr scarcely heard them. His gaze had locked on his wife. And what struck him first was not relief. It was anger. Not the roaring kind. The quiet, frightened kind a man feels when something he thought buried suddenly returns.

“You vanished,” Valarr said, descending the steps slowly. Formal voice. Prince’s voice. Armor for the heart. The yard held its breath. Even the hedge knight sensed this was no place for interruption.