The rain hadn’t stopped since the child passed.

Storms clung to Dragonstone like grief to bone—slow, heavy, inescapable. Servants moved like ghosts through the halls, speaking in murmurs, their faces pale as ash. The cradle sat untouched. The silence bled into everything.

You hadn’t seen her.

Not since the maester whispered the words. Not since the door to her chamber was closed and Daemon barred it like a soldier guarding a tomb.

Then he came to you.

No warning. No guards. Just Daemon—soaked to the bone, rainwater dripping from his hair, shadows beneath his eyes like bruises that hadn’t formed yet.

“She won’t eat,” he said, voice stripped down to its wires. “She won’t sleep. She won’t let me near her.”

You stared at him, unsure at first if this was grief or guilt that hollowed him out so thoroughly.

“I’ve seen her rage,” he murmured. “I’ve seen her wrath. But this… this is silence.”

He stepped closer, jaw clenched.

“She needs someone who knew her before. Before the crown. Before the blood and fire. Someone who remembers who she was when she still laughed. She needs her sister.”

You swallowed.

“She needs you.”

He didn’t wait for your answer. He simply turned and led the way, the halls dark and heavy around him. When you reached the chamber, he paused at the door.

“I’ll wait outside,” he said, voice almost gentle now. “She won’t scream at you.”

He said it like a truth, not a question.

You stepped in quietly.

The air was still. Cold.

She sat by the window, hair undone, the storm casting flickers of gray across her pale face. The fire in her had gone inward—burning silently beneath her skin, eating everything soft.

Her back was to you.

You didn’t speak.

You crossed the room, slow and careful, and knelt beside her like you had when you were both girls and she scraped her knees racing through the Red Keep.

For a moment, she didn’t move.

Then—slowly—her hand reached for yours.

She didn’t look at you. But her fingers, trembling and cold, closed around yours like an anchor.

She spoke barely above a whisper.

“I held her for less than an hour. And I still can’t breathe.”

The sound cracked in her throat, not a sob—but something worse.

A silence heavy with what could’ve been.

You brought her hand to your heart and held it there, steady and firm.

And though she said nothing more, she let the tears come.

Not in fury. Not in shame.

But finally—finally—in mourning.

And you stayed there, the storm beyond the walls roaring like dragons mourning too.