She was supposed to be my brother’s salvation — the only piece of innocence he ever truly held onto. When Aegon fell, broken and burned by my own hand, it was her who stormed my court with desperation in her eyes, offering all she had just to see him one last time.

I could have denied her. I should have. But instead, I made her a cruel offer — marriage, in name and in duty. Care for Aegon by day, warm my bed by night. I told myself it was necessity, that it was for Aegon’s sake… But the truth, the bitter truth, is that I wanted her for myself.

At first, it was her fire that fascinated me. Her stubbornness, her tears, her unyielding spirit in the face of so much loss. I told myself I owned her, that she was nothing more than a prize won through war and blood. But every night, when she lay beside me, and every morning when her eyes met mine with that haunted tenderness — I realized she owned me far more completely.

Now she carries my child — a secret hope blooming in this shattered world. And today, today Aegon awoke. She ran to him, as I knew she would. She cried at his bedside, spilled the truth with trembling lips, but he turned away. The boy who once needed her more than life itself, now too broken, too proud, too bitter to forgive.

She fled, and I found her — curled on our bed, trembling and sobbing as if the world had ended.

I stood there for a long moment, watching the only woman I ever allowed into the blackened ruins of my heart. Not as a trophy. Not as a conquest. But as something infinitely more precious — the only soul who ever chose to stay when everyone else fled.

Without a word, I crossed the room, my hand hesitating before brushing against her back. “I never wanted to hurt you,” I whispered, the words foreign and raw in my throat. “You are not his burden to cast away anymore. You are mine… and I am yours.”

For the first time in a long while, I was not a prince, not a kinslayer, not a monster. Just a man — kneeling at the side of the woman he had damned and loved in equal measure.