The Red Keep's walls breathed winter tonight; wind off Blackwater Bay rattled the leaded panes, carrying the salt-tang of the sea and the distant, mournful cry of gulls. A single brazier glowed in the corner, spitting embers like dying stars, but it did little to warm the vastness between the bed and the door.

You stood near the window embrasure, fingers pressed to the chilled glass, watching your own breath fog the view of the torchlit yard below. You had spent the afternoon in the kitchens again—kneading dough beside a girl whose hands shook from the cold, laughing quietly when she spilled flour across your dress, promising her you'd speak to the steward about thicker blankets for the lower halls. Small kindnesses. They felt like breathing.

Aemond had not spoken to you in nine days.

Not since the supper in the great hall where he'd sat rigid beside you, eye fixed on his plate as though the venison might rise up and confess treason. You'd reached once for the pitcher of wine between you, your pinky finger brushing his wrist. He'd flinched. A muscle in his jaw ticked, and he'd withdrawn his hand as if your touch carried plague.

The door opened now with the soft scrape of iron on stone. You did not turn at first. You knew his step: measured, deliberate. The air changed when he entered—like the moment before lightning.

He stopped just inside the threshold. You felt his gaze on your back, singular and unblinking, the sapphire one and the violet one both. You had learned to sense it the way one senses a storm gathering over the Narrow Sea.

"You were in the servants' quarters again," he said. Voice low, clipped. No greeting. No warmth. Just observation.

You exhaled slowly, watched the fog bloom and fade on the glass. "Her name is Lysa. She has chilblains on her fingers from scrubbing pots without gloves. I brought salve."

A silence stretched, taut as bowstring. Then the soft clink of his cloak clasp being undone, the heavy wool falling over the back of a chair. Leather creaked as he moved.

"You are the wife of a prince," he said. "Not a scullery maid."

You turned then.

He stood near the foot of the bed, arms crossed, posture straight as a spear. His face was pale, sharp-angled, beautiful in the cruel way winter is beautiful. The long silver hair hung loose, strands clinging to the high collar of his tunic. He looked exhausted. Not in body but in the hollows beneath his eye, the faint tension at the corners of his mouth.

"And you are my husband," you answered quietly. "Yet you treat me as though I am furniture. Something to be stepped around."

His jaw tightened. "Do not be dramatic."

The words stung more than they should have. You felt heat rise behind your eyes. "Dramatic would be screaming. I am asking. Politely. Why do you refuse to share this bed? Why do you leave the moment I enter a room? Why—" Your voice cracked, small and furious. "—do you look through me as if I do not exist?"

He did not answer at once. Just watched you.

"I did not ask for this marriage," he said finally. Flat. "Nor did you, I imagine. It was arranged. A seal on parchment. Nothing more."

You laughed—short, bitter, surprising even yourself. "Nothing more? I have lived in your shadow for half a year, Aemond. I have learned the shape of your silences. I know you prefer your wine mulled with clove because the sweetness masks the bitterness of the vintage. I know—" You stopped, throat tight. "I know you hate being pitied. And yet you pity yourself enough to punish me for existing."

His eye narrowed. "Careful."

"No." You stepped forward until the space between you was only the width of his outstretched arm. "I am tired of careful. I am kind to everyone because it costs me nothing. I help because it makes the world fractionally less ugly. But you—" Your voice trembled. "You make me feel like a trespasser in my own marriage. Like my affection is an insult."

He flinched then. A flicker across his features, gone so fast you might have imagined it.

"I do not want your affection," he said. The words were almost gentle in their cruelty.