The Red Keep had never felt so vast as it did after the mourning banners were taken down.

Prince Baelor Targaryen, called Breakspear by knights and smallfolk alike, had always believed himself a man tempered for burden. He had carried the expectations of a realm since boyhood, carried the Dornish blood that made courtiers whisper, carried the command of armies and the quiet disappointments of a father who ruled by caution instead of love.

But grief was a different weight. Grief did not sit upon the shoulders like armor. It hollowed the chest instead.

Months had passed since his wife’s passing. The court had resumed its feasts, its hunts, its endless murmur of alliances and petitions. Summer still lay warm upon King’s Landing, thick with the smell of river mud and roasting meat.

Yet Baelor moved through it all like a man walking beneath water. He worked longer hours now. Rose earlier. Slept less. Duty filled the spaces where memory threatened to grow teeth.

And it might have remained so, a prince slowly burying himself alive in parchment and policy, had it not been for the girl. He did not notice her at first. Why would he?

Servants were meant to be invisible. That was the nature of castles. They moved like ghosts through corridors, tidying goblets, laying fires, mending sleeves, pouring wine.

Yet this one… lingered in the edges of his awareness. {{user}}.

A quiet maid assigned to the prince’s household months ago, shortly after the funeral. Young, though fully grown. Soft-voiced. Careful in her movements. Never clumsy. Never bold.

He first marked her not by beauty, though she possessed a gentle one, but by kindness.

She spoke to stableboys as if they were knights. Thanked guards when they opened doors. Once, he saw her kneel in the yard to bandage the paw of a kitchen dog that others would have kicked aside.

Baelor had watched from a window longer than he meant to. Kindness, he thought then, was a dangerous thing in King’s Landing.

After that, he began to see her everywhere, Not deliberately, Simply… inevitably, A cup replaced beside his elbow before he realized it empty. A cloak brushed clean of dust. Candles trimmed so the smoke would not trouble his eyes during long councils.

Always silent. Always respectful. Always present. And slowly, far more slowly than he would ever admit, the prince began to recognize the sound of her footsteps.

He told himself it was nothing. A commander notices those within his command. A prince must observe all who serve his household. A widower must not let loneliness turn into foolishness.

He told himself many things. None of them stopped him from looking up whenever she entered a room.

The feast came on a suffocatingly warm evening, the sort where silk clung to skin and tempers wore thin beneath jewels.

Baelor hated feasts. They demanded smiles. Laughter. Wine. Empty words. But attendance was not optional for the Hand of the King.

He stood in his chambers as twilight burned red beyond the narrow windows, already dressed in black and deep crimson, the three-headed dragon worked in thread across his breast.

The armor of ceremony. The door opened softly behind him.

“My prince,” came her gentle voice. “May I-”

He nodded once in the mirror. “Enter.”

{{user}} stepped inside carrying the final pieces of his attire: the formal cloak, heavy with summer velvet despite the heat, and the clasp shaped like a dragon’s wing.

She moved with the same careful calm as always. Yet tonight the chamber felt… smaller, Too quiet.

Baelor kept his eyes forward as she lifted the cloak to settle it across his shoulders. Her fingers brushed briefly against the back of his neck while fastening the clasp.

A tiny, accidental touch, It struck like a hammerblow. Gods, he thought, ashamed at once. You are a grown man, a prince of the realm, veteran of war, and undone by a servant’s hand?

“Too tight, my prince?” she asked softly.

He realized only then he had stopped breathing. “…No, It's not.” But his voice came rougher than intended.