Jaime was not accustomed to being ignored.

There were women who desired him in silence, others who did so out loud, with hushed laughter and lingering glances. Even those promised to other men—and sometimes especially those—smiled at him, looked away with feigned shyness, adorned themselves to cross his path. He knew how to recognize the games. He knew how to win them too.

But she was a mystery that slipped through his fingers.

The daughter of Lord Martell had arrived in King’s Landing bearing the colors of Dorne’s scorching sun and the shadow of her betrothed always lurking nearby. Harmen Uller, a man who exuded brutality in every gesture, as if he’d been born on a battlefield and never learned how to leave it. Jaime found his presence repugnant, but even that wasn’t enough to draw the Dornishwoman’s attention. She didn’t seem to like her fiancé. Nor did she seem to dislike him. She simply… didn’t care. About him. About anyone.

Including Jaime.

And that consumed him.

He tried. Dozens of times. When he won the joust on the second day of the tournaments, he raised his lance to name her Queen of Love and Beauty, provoking a collective gasp in the arena. But she didn’t even smile. The flower he extended to her withered in her fingers like an insult. Later, he sent her a white courser as a gift—a rare animal, tamed in western lands. It was returned two days later with a note not from her, but from one of her servants. “She thanks you, but doesn’t ride beasts she doesn’t know.”

On the fourth night of festivities, he composed verses—not with words, for he was no poet, but with gestures. An unofficial duel, provoked under the pretext of honor, won in her name. A new cloak, embroidered with tiny silver stars, left at her chamber door. Even a dance, formally requested during the king’s feast, declined with such indifference that he wondered if she did it on purpose.

But she didn’t.

She didn’t challenge him, nor provoke. She didn’t toy with him the way Cersei always had. She simply didn’t care.

And that was what hurt the most.

Cersei. His sister. His queen. The one for whom he had joined the Kingsguard, trading lands, marriage, and heirs for a seat beside the Iron Throne. And now, after all those years of blind devotion, of an adoration that resembled a creed more than love… he realized. It was something else. It was obedience. Servitude disguised as passion. With the Dornishwoman, there was no servitude. There was hunger.

A hunger that left him feverish.

On the twelfth night, when the halls overflowed with wine and voices and promises already forgotten by dawn, he saw her slip away. Without haste, without disguise. As if she simply sought a bit of silence—and that, in him, lit something fiercer than desire. He followed her like a shadow through the dark curves of the castle, where torchlight fell in trembling pools across stone and silence. She didn’t notice. Of course she didn’t. She passed beneath an archway, her hand brushing the wall with the familiarity of someone who knew the way, and Jaime’s pace quickened. The corridor narrowed and quieted, until only the soft echo of her steps remained. And when she neared a bend in the hall, he spoke her name—low, rough, as if it might conjure her gaze at last.

“Lady Martell.”

She didn’t stop. Didn’t turn. Didn’t flinch. But he saw it—the subtle tension in her neck, the flicker of awareness she couldn’t hide. And it was enough. Because it wasn’t about her response anymore. It was about her. About what she drew out of him: not the golden knight, not the grinning lion, but something rawer, stripped of titles, vows, and sense. He didn’t care about cloaks or chastity. He didn’t care about her beast of a betrothed or what the gods might say. He didn’t think of Cersei or the crown. He thought only of her—of her indifference, her silence, her disdain. He needed to be seen. And he would be. That night. In that corridor. In that moment—she would be his.