He had been absent for a sennight now, locked away within the dreary old confines of his bedchamber, hostage to fever and the slow rot of illness. Sickness had taken hold, a prisoner among the sweat-soaked, tussled sheets and putrid air.

Aegon had suspected it to be some pestilence brought back from Flea Bottom, a souvenir of his nightly excursions and reckless indulgences. The prince had ever been more wretched in illness, a man diminished, whimpering like a kicked pup—needy, dependent, and unbearably fragile.

When you entered, he lifted his head with much effort, eyes dimmed and shadowed, brow matted with damp strands of silver hair. A thin cough pled guilty within his throat, eke and slight as dying wind. A trembling hand rose toward an empty cup of milk of the poppy. “More,” he strained, knowing well you would heed him where others would not.

The sheets clung to his sweat-laden, pallid frame, stale with desperation and confinement. The air swelled thick with unease; soured like the promise of decay. He looked every bit a man on the edge of the Stranger’s grasp, and it would have been no surprise if death came for him before the day was gone.