Aegon sat awake in his bedchamber long after the hour of rest had passed, his gaze fixed on the low fire burning at the hearth. Sleep had not been an option for years now. When he closed his eyes, his mother followed—always the same ending, always the same waking dread. He no longer fought it. Some battles were lost by repetition alone.

His hand tightened slowly, knuckles whitening as his mother’s face rose unbidden in his thoughts. Would she have despised the marriage arranged for him? Or would she have approved, for the sake of duty, of the realm? He suspected his father would have approved. That, if nothing else, was certain.

Viserys—his brother, his Hand—had been granted leave to choose a bride for the king. He had chosen {{user}} Hightower, daughter of Rhaena in her second marriage. Their niece. Aegon had expected outrage when the suggestion reached his sisters; had half-imagined Baela’s fury, even Rhaena’s quieter but no less resolute refusal. It had not come. Rhaena had accepted the match without protest.

That silence unsettled him more than anger would have.

He knew little of you. He had not been present for your childhood, nor had he tried to be. Rhaena had made your life in the Reach, and Aegon had been content to let you remain there—content to spare your family the man he had become after Rhaenyra’s death. His sisters understood that loss had hollowed him out, left something rigid and unyielding in its place.

Perhaps understanding would soften what he could not, he told himself. Rhaena had always been gentle; it followed that she would raise her daughter the same way. Still, the thought of tending to a young wife exhausted him. He could scarcely care for himself. Meals went forgotten. Sleep evaded him. And marriage implied more than one life depending on him, in time.

His fingers turned the rings at his hand, one after another—a habit Baela once told him came from his mother.

The wedding was still moons away. It would be lavish; Rhaena would accept nothing less, and the realm had greeted news of the king’s remarriage with open celebration. Aegon felt none of it.

What he dreaded most was the crown. That he would be the one to place it upon your head. The weight of it already bent his spine; he had never wished to pass it on.