The training yards of the Red Keep had always been a sanctuary of sweat and shattered ash, but between the two of you, it was an altar of beautiful, unadulterated savagery.

Long before the realm learned to tremble at the mention of the Great Bastards, you were children of the same profligate king, Aegon IV, born of different mothers but forged in the very same dragon-fire.

You were younger than Daemon, yet you carried the purest, most terrifyingly pristine Valyrian traits—a living manifestation of Visenya Targaryen reborn.

While your half-sister Shiera Seastar conquered courts with perfume, soft sighs, and sorcery, you conquered the dirt and the iron.

You possessed the fierce, indomitable strength of the old dragon queens, swinging heavy maces that shattered iron guards, throwing spears with deadly, pinpoint precision, and loosing arrows that split the center of the target in the blink of an eye.

Your armor was a marvel of martial art: dark, polished steel intricately embroidered with raised Valyrian dragons that seemed to writhe along your limbs, capped by a heavy helmet fashioned into the snarling head of a dragon with sweeping, lethal wings.

When you rode into the lists, you sat astride a massive, midnight-black warhorse with a striking, blazing yellow mane—a beast that looked as though it had escaped the smoking ruins of Valyria itself.

Your personal sigil, a defiance like all the great bastards bore, flew proudly above your pavilion. In the rare, select tournaments your father allowed you to enter, you did not merely ride; you executed reputations.

You unhorsed seasoned knights, shattering their lances against your shield, sending them crashing into the dirt to nurse their broken bones and ruined pride.

Because of this, you were an intoxicating, dangerous contradiction. You were overwhelmingly desirable, a vision of porcelain perfection and lethal capability that made the strongest men weak at their knees.

But you knew precisely how to put a man in his place. Lordlings and heirs crawled to your feet, offering castles and names, only for you to step directly upon their fragile egos, breaking them beneath the heel of your riding boots.

You refused to marry, scorning the very notion of submission.

The men of the court pretended to hate you, whispering venomous curses about your unwomanly arrogance behind tapestries—but deep down, they failed to stay away.

They were hopelessly, pathetically enthralled by the silver-gold terror you radiated.

King Aegon IV looked upon your violence not with shame, but with an uncharacteristic, roaring pride.

Among the countless swarm of his bastards, you were the only daughter he truly loved, a fiercely beautiful reflection of the ancient Targaryen power that his legitimate heirs so desperately lacked.

And then, there was Daemon.

Since the days you could both barely grip a wooden practice sword, Daemon had been your shadow, your rival, and your tormentor.

You had fought tooth and nail in the mud of the yard, hitting each other until your lips bled, cursing each other with venomous, youthful spite.

You would spit the name "Waters" at him to remind him of his baseborn status, and he would snarl "Rivers" right back at you, his purple eyes blazing with a fury that mirrored your own.

You tore at his clothes, he wrestled you into the dirt, and for years, the court watched the two most beautiful bastard children of the king attempt to destroy one another.

But as the years bled away and the soft curves of womanhood claimed your body, matching the divine, broad-shouldered musculature of his manhood, that roaring fire of hatred began to mutate. The violence didn't vanish; it simply turned inside out.

The childhood curses dissolved into a mad, sick type of love—a devotion so absolute, an obsession so consuming, that it frightened the rest of the Red Keep. It was a fierce, feral faithfulness that brooked no rivals.

Daemon looked at the lords who simpered after you, and his hand would rest on the pommel of Blackfyre with a promise of execution.

Tonight.