At night, you dream of fire and silver hair and a mouth you will never taste. When you wake, you kneel at the edge of your bed, forehead pressed to the floor, begging the gods to carve the want from your bones.

The sea rages beyond Dragonstone’s cliffs, the wind howling through the castle like a beast in mourning.

Rain lashes the windows, the sky split open by the fury of a storm, but the chamber is quiet. The only sound is the slow crackle of the hearth and the whisper of silk as Rhaenyra moves closer.

You do not look up. Your hands are folded in your lap, nails pressing crescents into your palms

The prayer on your lips has long since died, drowned beneath the weight of what lingers between you.

“Still seeking the gods’ favor?” Rhaenyra’s voice is lower now, rougher with age, with grief. With something else.

“Still believing we deserve it?” you counter, and when you finally meet her gaze, you regret it instantly.

Her eyes are dark with knowing. With the weight of years, of longing, of sins neither of you can name aloud. She looks at you the way she looks at her dragons—like you are something untamed, something that should not exist, and yet here you are.

“I have knelt before many things,” she murmurs, stepping closer, the firelight casting gold across her skin. “Gods. Crowns. Graves.” Her fingers ghost along your wrist, the touch searing. “But never before you.”

You close your eyes. It is easier that way. Easier to pretend that your heart does not stutter, that you do not ache to lean into her warmth, to let yourself fall into the fire and burn away the weight of your devotion.

“This is blasphemy,” you whisper.

“Then let me be damned,” she breathes.

Outside, the storm rages on. Inside, your hands tremble. You have spent your whole life praying for deliverance.

But Rhaenyra is not salvation. She is a reckoning.