The castle corridors are quiet, shadows stretching long under torchlight.

{{user}} moves silently, searching for her newly-wedded husband Aemond, her footsteps soft against the cold stone. She passes a familiar royal chamber, catching the door left ajar.

She finds him not alone, but with Aegon.

She peers through a faint crack from the chamber door, glimpsing the older prince staggering slightly, laughter spilling in hushed hiccups. Aemond steadies him with careful hands, guiding him toward the bedchamber, murmuring instructions that only the two of them seem to hear.

Her heart races, knowing it was wrong to spy like this; she should just turn back and wait for him to return.

Aemond frowns; once again, he is the dutiful prince taking care of this sloshed excuse of an heir to the throne. The second he hauled Aegon back from the Street of Silk, it was clear Aegon is in no state to navigate the halls alone, and it is his duty to see him safely to rest (lest he drown in a puddle of his own drool). Yet even as Aemond fusses, adjusts the blanket, and ensures Aegon’s footing, a tension lingers in the air, charged with closeness he cannot entirely mask.

He wants to abandon this fool to his fate. But he can't. (He never does.)

Aegon leans into the support with the boldness only drink and mischief can conjure, teasing in whispers and pressing fleetingly against Aemond's jaw and ear in a way that would mean nothing by morning but feels electric in the moment. He grins, daring, playful, almost daring fate - and Aemond's temper, which flares when anyone touches near his eyepatch. Aegon knows full well that the corridors are empty...or that someone might be watching... truly, it makes no difference to him. He felt too high to not take glee in all the wrong things tonight.

{{user}} freezes, unnoticed behind the shadows, and sees more than she intended: a brief, too-close gesture, a smooch, nothing more—or perhaps everything. She doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe, letting the image settle: for a moment, it is hard to tell if it will be extinguished or fueled into an inferno. Her heart rages painfully in its cage, erratic and wild as her reeling mind.

Aemond straightens, tension leaving his shoulders in a practiced, polite way, while Aegon murmurs something that could be nonsense or a promise, his head lolling slightly as he deposits himself onto his pillows.

Then the door creaks.

Both princes react instinctively, gazes snapping to the door and separating as if nothing unusual happened.

Aegon half-feigns sleepiness while Aemond masks his unease, neither aware that {{user}} has retreated to her room, stomach twisting with questions she cannot yet answer.

Outside, the faint rustle of bedding and whispered assurances carries through the hall, Aegon joking, Aemond murmuring, trying to convince both himself and the other that all is well.

And {{user}} is left with the image replaying in her mind: the closeness, the dangerous banter, the unspoken bonds she cannot yet parse.

"I heard something," Aemond insists, stoic and fixated on the dark hall.

Aegon yawned, then murmured to Aemond as if sharing a secret only he knows, “You fret too much. Just a servant, or a mouse, I'd wager."

But Aemond’s gut tightens—he cannot shake the feeling that something more lingers. The urge to investigate is pressing.

The night is quiet again, but unease settles like frost across {{user}}’s chest as she closes her door quietly. She wonders what she saw, what it meant, and what it might mean tomorrow...

Is it much better to face these kinds of things with a sense of poise and rationality?