Obsession was a sickness in a man like Daemon. Not a passing fever, but a rot—deep in the marrow, behind the eyes. It festered quietly for years before it began to shape his world. He called it love, once. A softer word for something monstrous.

He had known it early. Too early. When Aemma was just beginning to bleed and be called woman, he had felt the stirring under his skin—the itch, the hunger, the terrible need. She carried fire in her blood but kept it bottled like a good princess. Composed. Groomed. A dragon clipped and gilded.

He wanted her because she belonged in a cage. He wanted her because she made the cage beautiful.

But it was Viserys who was given the key. Viserys who got to ruin her with royal rights. And Daemon—Daemon was handed you.

Born barely a moon’s turn behind Aemma, but no court could hammer iron into silk. You were chaos. Wrong. Wild. A storm without warning. You never learned to obey. And worse—Daemon saw himself in you.

He hated you for that.

Your dragon came for you before your eighth name day. You drew blood in your first spar before your tenth. And once, you pinned him in a training yard, a girl with wild hair and no shame. Laughed when he couldn’t break free. He still sees it sometimes—your grin, your teeth bared like a wolf’s.

That was when the hatred rooted. And yet…

He’d laughed when they betrothed you to him. Called you barren like the Vale, empty as snow. But when Viserys took Aemma to his bed, something inside him fractured. She walked different the next morning. Looked changed. Touched. Loved. And Daemon had nothing but ghosts in brothels and the taste of ash in his mouth.

So he came to you.

A wound dressed like a man. His hands shaking as he whispered his mockeries, his apologies, all in the same breath. "I need proof of my accusations. Prove to me you aren’t barren, sister." Your teeth sank into his palm. Left him with a scar. A reminder. He rubs it sometimes—when he's angry, when he’s alone, when he thinks of you. He loathes you for it. Which means he thinks of you often.

A month later they married you off to an old, coughing Arryn. A limp, a liver full of rot. Daemon didn’t care. Until he saw your twins. Both daughters. Both his face. He knew the moment he looked at them. And he left you there in the mountains with them, like a crime scene he didn’t want to return to. Like something shameful he couldn’t bear to bury.

Now—now he is back.

Aemma’s been dead for four months. Viserys is unraveling. Your absence is... noted. Inconvenient.

The Crown whispers for you. Viserys asks. But Daemon knows you won’t come. You’ll spit in their faces before you return to the court that caged you. You’ll never let them near your daughters. So he’s brought a threat instead.

He waits in the shadows of your keep, in the cold stone halls of the Eyrie, watching his daughters—your daughters—spar beneath the gaze of armed Goldcloaks. Fourteen now. Unwilling to call him father, they offer him the safer lie: uncle.

Lord Arryn is dying. You are alone.

You enter the hall, and the air dies in your lungs when you see him.

He smiles—wide and slow. “Sister. I was wondering when you'd come.”

You freeze. There’s something feral in his eyes. Something familiar.

“I was just talking to my nieces,” he drawls, “about their aunt. Dead. Gone.”

A step closer. His mouth at your ear.

“Come with me. Or I’ll let these men take their turns. All three of you.”

You do not speak. You follow. Into your husband’s study. Into silence.

He sits behind the desk like he owns it. Like this place was always his.

Truth is—he's here because Viserys has asked him to bring you back. For court. For appearances. For politics. But Daemon doesn't do requests. He makes demands. He bends people to his will.

And he knows you. You’d never bend without force. So he’s come with fire. And cruelty. And the unbearable weight of shared blood.

“You’re just the same,” he says at last. His fingers trace the scar you gave him long ago—slow and purposeful.

Like an omen.