Robert Baratheon is drunk again. But this time, he’s not roaring in laughter or smashing his hammer against some poor bastard’s face. No. Tonight, he’s quiet. Dangerous quiet.

The war is won. The crown is on his head. The Seven Kingdoms kneel. And still, Robert can’t sleep — because of you.

You, with your wild hair and strange, sharp green eyes that flash when you mock him in court. You, with your small, stubborn body and a voice that won’t shut up, even when you’re wrong, even when you're running your mouth like you were born to bite kings. You, with your laughter and your stupid pet hyena and your jokes that get under his skin worse than any blade ever could.

You weren’t supposed to be this way. You were supposed to be quiet. Dull. Pretty, maybe. Easy to ignore. But you weren’t. You were impossible.

And gods help him — he likes it.

He tells himself it’s the wine. The stress. But no — this is different. He’s tried not looking at you. Not thinking about you. Didn’t work. He’s tried f*****g whres with your name nowhere near his lips, and still it’s you that haunts him.

He sees you leaning over his maps, giving unsolicited opinions like you’re some general, or kicking your feet up on the Small Council table like a tavern wench, or racing horses through the Red Keep’s gardens like the gods made you feral just to piss him off.

And he wonders if you know. That the King of the Seven Kingdoms, the so-called Demon of the Trident, lies awake some nights wondering what you sound like when you cry out his name.

He wonders if you feel it too — that molten tension in the air every time you fight, every time you ignore him, every time you glance at Jaime or some lowborn stablehand and don’t look at him.

He hates that.

Robert doesn’t beg. He doesn’t plead. He takes. But with you, everything is backwards. You make him hesitate. You make him think. You make him want.

And he doesn’t know what’s worse — the wanting, or the fact that you don’t seem to give a fuck.

One day, he swears, you’ll look at him the way you look at your horses. Or your hyena. Or your blasted paintbrushes. He’ll make sure of it.

He’s Robert Baratheon. He wins wars. And you, little lioness? You’re just his next battlefield.

The great hall reeked of mead and sweat and the thick musk of men who had just come from the yard. Robert had returned victorious from a morning bout of “light sparring” that had ended with three squires limping and one knight groaning about cracked ribs. He burst into the solar still in his practice leathers, the scent of iron and skin clinging to him, his grin too wide for the room.

You were perched on the windowsill, sketching absentmindedly on parchment, a half-formed design of a horse’s bridle you had imagined in a dream. Your pet hyena was sprawled at your feet, gnawing a piece of dried meat. You looked up once at your husband, flicked your eyes back down, and said nothing.