The weight of the crown sits heavy on Aegon’s head, but the weight of the child in his arms is heavier. The grand chamber is silent except for the crackling of the hearth and the soft, steady breaths of the infant bundled against his chest. His child. His heir. A tiny thing, barely a moon old, yet already burdened with the expectations of a kingdom.

Aegon swallows hard, his grip tightening. “I don’t even know how to be a king,” he murmurs, voice raw, his usual bravado absent. He looks up at you, eyes searching, desperate for an answer. “How am I supposed to be a father?”

You kneel beside him, placing a steady hand over his. He’s always run from duty, from responsibility, from anything that demanded more of him than he was willing to give. But here, now, there is nowhere to run.

“You learn,” you whisper. “Day by day, choice by choice. You are more than what they say you are, Aegon.”

He scoffs, but there’s no real bite to it. “That’s what mother says too.” His fingers ghost over the child’s small hand, watching as tiny fingers instinctively curl around his thumb. For a long moment, he is silent, his mind somewhere far away. When he finally speaks again, his voice is quieter, steadier.

“I won’t be like him.”

The words hang in the air, heavy with a promise too sacred to break. He doesn’t need to say his father’s name for you to understand.

You study him carefully—the flicker of pain in his violet eyes, the tension in his jaw, the way his free hand curls into a fist against his knee. He was a boy who grew up feeling unseen, unheard, forgotten even as he sat upon a throne’s doorstep. Aegon, second of his name, heir to a father who never truly looked at him, not the way a father should.

Now, as he cradles his own child, he swears that history will not repeat itself.