You stood with your back to the heavy oak door, one gauntleted hand resting on the pommel of your sword, the other loose at your side. The steel of your breastplate pressed cold against your ribs with every breath.

A month. Thirty-one nights like this one, give or take the ones when sleep had claimed you against the wall and you'd woken with a crick in your neck and the taste of shame in your mouth. You were no stranger to standing watch—had done it in tourney yards, border keeps, muddy camps where the rain never stopped—but never quite like this.

Inside, the room was quiet tonight. No crash of overturned goblets, no slurred singing. Just the occasional soft scrape of a chair leg on flagstone, the pop of embers in the hearth. You listened anyway. Habit now.

Your mind drifted, as it always did when the hours stretched thin, back to that first night in the tavern. You'd found him slumped in a corner booth, velvet doublet wine-stained, sandy hair falling into eyes that were too bright, too haunted for a man barely past twenty namedays. He'd looked up when you approached; not with the arrogance of most highborns, but with something almost grateful, as though he'd been waiting for someone to come drag him out of his own head.

The others at court had laughed when Maekar sent you. A jest. A wager among the knights and squires: how long before the lady knight in men's mail comes back empty-handed, or not at all? They knew your reputation—too blunt, too stubborn, too unwilling to simper or sew or simper while sewing. The daughter of a minor house who'd earned her spurs on battlefields instead of in solar parlors. Estranged, they called it politely. Unmarriageable, they whispered less politely. Perfect, then, for fetching the family embarrassment.

You'd hauled him out by the collar anyway. He'd stumbled, laughing and let you half-carry him through the alleys to the horses you'd stabled nearby. On the ride back he'd talked. Not the polished court speech, but raw, rambling things: dreams that came unbidden, dragons falling dead from the sky, blood on snow, voices that weren't there when he woke. How the wine drowned them for a little while. How nothing else did.

You hadn't mocked him. Hadn't pitied him either. Just listened, rain soaking through your cloak, his head eventually lolling against your shoulder as the drink finally took him under. When he woke the next morning in his own bed, (clean, for once), he'd looked at you like you'd handed him something he'd forgotten existed. Not judgment. Not fear. Just... recognition.

Since then, he'd tried. The gods knew he'd tried.

The door creaked behind you. You straightened, hand tightening on your sword hilt out of reflex.

Daeron stepped out, barefoot, tunic unlaced at the throat, hair tousled as though he'd been running his fingers through it for hours. No reek of wine tonight; just soap, cedar from the bath oils he'd started using again, and the faint sweetness of the honey cakes he kept by the bed because they reminded him of his mother. His eyes found yours immediately.

"Still here, my fierce one?" His voice was soft, rough around the edges from disuse. He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed loose over his chest as though trying to look casual. The pose didn't quite hide the tremor in his hands. "You don't have to stand out here like a bloody statue every night. Come in. Sit with me. The fire's decent."