The marriage had never been hers to want.

You remembered the way Otto’s hand landed heavy on your shoulder that night, the way he spoke of duty and legacy, of thrones and dragons. “A strategic match,” he’d said. As if you were a pawn on the board, not a girl barely out of girlhood. Viserys agreed, of course. Daemon needed a wife, and you—Alicent’s younger sister, the Hightower girl left in the shadow—fit too well into their plan.

Daemon didn’t speak a word to you before the wedding. Not even after. He didn’t kiss you at the Sept. He didn’t stay the night. He didn’t offer a thing but silence, and then war.

He left for the Stepstones a week later, no goodbye, no promise. Just a crownless prince fleeing from a marriage he never wanted and a wife he would not touch.

And yet, in the quiet of the Dragonstone, you remained his wife. And in the loneliness of your chambers, you remained watched. The court whispered about the rogue prince’s young bride, left behind with silver in her belly and a family name heavy on her shoulders.

In his absence, you lived among strangers. Dragonstone taught you to read silence like a language. You hid letters to your father behind the hearth—small truths about the cold halls, Daemon’s absence, and what it meant to be alone in a place that never welcomed you.

Now, he was home.

You found him in your chambers, holding one of those letters, seal torn open, fingers tight with fury.

“You wrote to Otto about me,” he said, low and furious. “You spied for your father.”