The other woman, the one he sought to have when the one he loved didn’t give him what he wanted.

Wrapped in his arms, with your head on Brynden's bare chest, you could feel what Shiera Seastar must have felt a thousand times—his warmth, the solemn rhythm of his heart, the quiet hum beneath his alabaster skin. Yet unlike her, you did not twine your fingers through his hair, nor sigh into the hollow of his throat. You lay still, ears filled with the echo of that heartbeat, wondering—did it still beat for her?

The fire cracked low in the hearth of the Tower of the Hand. The heavy velvet curtains kept the moonlight at bay, but the shadows of the room still bent strangely, as if whispering secrets only Bloodraven knew. His long arm, veined and scarred from old battles and older magic, draped around your waist with an ease that was practiced, maybe even natural. That was the part that frightened you most—how natural it had all become. How you, the Greyiron girl, sent from Orkmont to leash the beast of court and crown, had become his comfort.

You had not expected to be loved.

Certainly not by Brynden Rivers. He had married you for political reasons, to pacify your uncle, Lord Greyjoy. A knot of duty and tension, sewn together by ravens and sealed by the king’s will. He had barely spoken to you those first moons. Watching you with that single red eye, always thoughtful, always grim, like a man trying to decide what use a woman from the Iron Islands might serve.

And yet… somewhere between the long nights of careful talk, your quiet mending of his wounds after court skirmishes, your insistence on treating servants with respect—and your refusal to bow to his silence—you became something else. Not the ironborn doll they thought you'd be. Not the whisper he expected to ignore.

You never tried to be Shiera. You could never be. She was all silk and poison, shadow and sparkle. You were blunt edges and salt-wind, laughter over lawbooks, eyes that flared gold when angry.

But he had begun to watch you with that same hungry gaze he once gave her.