The first thing Lyonel saw of her was the stag’s head.

It struck the feast table with a wet, cracking thud, sending trenchers skidding and wine sloshing red as spilled blood across linen. Antlers splintered goblets. Courtiers gasped.

The princess did not flinch. She stood at the high dais in black and red silk, her silver-gold hair unbound, falling like molten light down her back. Her violet eyes found Lyonel at once.

“So this is the stag,” she said, her voice clear as steel drawn from a scabbard. “I had hoped for something larger.”

Laughter rippled uneasily through the hall. Lyonel Baratheon did not rise.

He remained seated, broad-shouldered, dark-haired, storm in his blue eyes. He was not yet the Laughing Storm, not yet the rebel lord history would remember, but the temper was there, banked and waiting.

He looked at the stag’s head. Then at her. “I see the dragon eats poorly,” he said at last. “She sends scraps before her.”

A sharp intake of breath moved through the nobles. Her mouth curved. King Daeron II Targaryen did not smile.

Lyonel had been betrothed to Princess {{user}} for three years. A political match, forged to bind Storm’s End closer to the Iron Throne. He had seen her twice before the feast, once in a garden at court, where she had dismissed him without courtesy, and once at a tourney where she had wagered against him and lost.

She had never forgiven the loss. She had too much pride for forgiveness. And too much fire for obedience.

It was whispered she rode better than most knights. That she once bloodied a lordling’s lip for daring to call her delicate. That she had dragon dreams. It was also whispered that the king had discovered something else.

A missed moon’s blood. A second. A third. The king had summoned Lyonel in private.

“She will wed you at once,” Daeron had said, his face grave. “The ceremony will be hastened.”

Lyonel had not been a fool. He understood what haste meant. “Is it mine?” he had asked.

The king’s eyes had been sharp then. “You dishonor my daughter and now you doubt your own conduct?”

There had been wine that night. And anger. And words exchanged between a dragon and a stag that burned hotter than courtesy allowed. He remembered her defiance more than her surrender.

But doubt remained. And doubt was poison.

The sept bells rang before the sun reached its height. Princess {{user}} stood in black velvet sewn with rubies like drops of blood. No white. No maiden’s modesty. If she was shamed, she did not show it.

Her hand trembled only once, when Lyonel took it. He felt it. And in that tremor he sensed something unfamiliar. Not arrogance. Fear.

When she knelt for him to put the cloak on her shoulders, she did not bow her head fully. Her spine remained straight as a spear.

When she rose husband and wife, the hall applauded. Politics cheered. Alliances secured. But when their eyes met, nothing was settled. War lived there still.

At the feast, She did not sit meekly at his side. She drank. She mocked. She smiled too sharply. And when the stag’s head was cast upon the table, some private jest of hers, meant to humiliate, Lyonel understood what she was doing. She would not be traded quietly.

If she must be wed for scandal, she would make the realm choke on it.

Later, when music softened and torches burned low, she leaned close enough that only he could hear.

“Tell me, my lord husband,” she murmured, wine warm on her breath. “Will you claim the child as yours?”

He studied her face, beautiful, furious, afraid.

“I will claim what is mine,” he said.

“And if it is not?”

“Then the Seven help the man who fathered it.” he said.