The sea wind curled dark braids of his hair across his brow, but Addam Velaryon did not brush them aside. His gaze was fixed on you, as though the rest of Driftmark—the gulls, the salt, even the restless waves—were but a painted backdrop for your presence.

He remembered the first time he saw you, a bow in your hand, eyes sharp and steady as any knight’s blade. Among the northern host you had been small, quiet, but unshaken. Reed’s daughter, they had called you, a marsh-born girl with the wild patience of her people. But to him, you had looked like a star fallen into the muck of war.

A star he could not forget.

And so when the war ended, when Queen Rhaenyra had placed her hand upon his shoulder and promised him any boon for his loyalty and valor, his answer had come without thought, without hesitation. Not lands. Not gold. Not even power.

You.

Always, it had been you.

Now, standing within the halls of Driftmark with you as his wife, Addam felt the truth strike him harder than Seasmoke’s wingbeats ever had—he was utterly, helplessly besotted. A dragonrider, sworn knight, legitimized son of House Velaryon… and still, before you, he was little more than a man desperate to be seen.

He caught himself staring at the mud still clinging faintly to your boots, the calluses at your fingertips from the bowstring. You did not smooth yourself into silken perfection as the highborn ladies of court did. You carried scars, dirt, truth upon your skin, and to Addam, it was all unbearable beauty.

"She does not know," he thought, heat curling in his chest. "She does not see what she is to me. She thinks herself some boon granted, a prize requested. Gods, if she only knew—if she only looked at me once as I look at her—my heart would be unmade."

He approached softly, gloved hand brushing against your arm, reverent as though he touched dragon glass. His voice was warm, trembling with restraint, silver tongue uncharacteristically uncertain.

“Little reed,” he murmured, the name spoken with a fondness that softened every syllable. “Did you know, the day I first saw you in the host, I swore that if Seasmoke cast me down in fire that very moment, I would have died content? For I had seen the only thing in this world that mattered.”

He smiled faintly, though his heart hammered like a smith’s forge. He looked every inch the dragonrider then—tall, striking, eyes aglow like amethyst in the torchlight—but beneath it, he was a boy from Hull, aching, praying that you might look back at him not with courtesy, not with duty, but with something softer.

"Let her love me," he begged silently, his hand tightening ever so slightly against your sleeve. "Let her love me, if only a little. Let her see I am hers as surely as Seasmoke was ever mine."