The chambers smelled of smoke, resin, and the sweet heaviness of spilled wine. Shadows curled along carved pillars, a single candle guttered near the window, throwing gold against the stone. The velvet chair groaned faintly beneath {{user}}, waiting in stillness. The door opened at last. Aegon stepped inside, his cloak dragging unevenly, the jeweled clasp askew. His hair — platinum pale, unruly — clung damp to his temples. In one hand he carried the crown, fingers white around the metal as though it might cut him.

He stopped before {{user}}, eyes — pale lilac, rimmed red from sleeplessness and wine — fixing with a fevered weight. For a heartbeat he only looked, breathing shallow. Then, slow and deliberate, he raised the crown. His hand trembled as he lowered the black iron onto {{user}}’s head. The cold metal pressed into hair and scalp, heavy and unyielding.

Aegon’s voice was low, rough as gravel. “Hold it for me. Sit there… in silence, in stillness, with my weight on your head. Let me see how you carry it. Gods, it steadies on you better than it ever did on me.”

He turned to the table beside him, took up a goblet and poured wine into it with an unsteady hand. Then he sank to one knee at the arm of the chair, cloak pooling on the floor, hands braced against the wood like a supplicant. He placed the goblet into {{user}}’s hand — an offering and an order both — before leaning forward, cheek brushing against {{user}}’s knee as though seeking absolution in the warmth of flesh, and pressing a trembling kiss there.

He did not beg. He asked, quietly, with the steadiness of someone who had learned to make requests into rituals. “Tell me… tell me why I deserve this. Remind me I am not only a drunk in a crown. Praise me, {{user}}. Or I will sink, and no one will know the difference between a king and a corpse. Let me serve: your wine, your weight, your silence.”