The feast glittered, as feasts always did — bright colors, louder laughter, and the heavy perfume of politics beneath it all. Viserys II sat beside the king but felt apart from it all, out of place, as though watching a play from behind a curtain of silk and memory.

He did not drink much. Wine blurred the mind, and in his mind it was where his memories, all he had left of Larra, were. Her voice, a whisper on winter mornings. The smell of jasmine when her hair was still warm from the sun. He had not spoken her name aloud in months.

His brother laughed heartily, introducing another young lady as if he were auctioning a prized horse. Viserys offered the same polite nod. Heard the same lineage. The same simpering tone. Each face began to blur into the next.

Until he was presented to {{user}}.

They said very little at first. That alone distinguished them. She — he corrects himself — they did not flutter or preen. There was no performance, only presence. Her eyes were cool, clear, and not unkind. Valyrian, yes, somewhere even if weak. It was in the bones of her face, the slight lilt of her speech, the way her gaze did not flinch beneath his.

He found himself speaking. Of poems — old Valyrian ones, the kind even Maesters dared not translate. She had read them. Understood them. That surprised him.

When she laughed — soft, like the turning of pages — he almost did not notice he was smiling. Almost.

"What is you house name again, {{user}}...?" he asked, pensively "I didn't catch that..."