By the time she read the truth in a scrawled translation, the candles were already burning low in the Tower of the Hand.

“Lanta.” He had said it again that morning— melodic High Valyrian half-murmured against her hair as he rose for council, his long silver hair unbound, his eye still heavy with sleep. It had always sounded sweet. Private. The kind of word a man only says when the walls are high and no one’s listening.

But she had been listening. And now she knew.

“Lanta”—not a pet name, not even a poem. Just two. Second.

The second wife. The second queen.

He had loved the first, the realm all knew that—the Baratheon bride with the storm in her blood, whose name still drifted like salt air through the stones of Maegor’s Holdfast. She had died too young, and too beloved. No one ever said as much, but the loss hung in Aemond’s silences like a sword left sheathed.

And he hadn’t lied. Not once - not really. He had called {{user}} what she was, in the old tongue of his blood, and she had smiled at it.

What a fool she’d been.

Her hand tightened around the carved toy dragon on the windowsill, green like their father’s Vhagar. One of the twins had left it behind after supper—Aeron or Visenya, she couldn’t tell by the scratches. They had clambered into her lap just an hour ago, their sleepy silver heads nestled into her shoulder like she was a pillar of the world.

They loved her. Gods help her, she loved them. They had been so young when she and Aemond wed, had only ever known her as Mother.

Outside, in the cold hush of evening, the city bowed low to the King who ended the war. Inside, she waited—not as a girl, and no longer just a wife, but as a woman who knew the weight of silence.

King Aemond would come soon. He always did, after his council concluded. He would ask for wine, for quiet, for warmth. And tonight, for the first time, she would ask something back…

The chamber door eased open on its iron hinge, and she turned to face him.