Baelon’s hand found your waist and drew you back a single step, placing himself firmly between you and the queen.

The shift was subtle, but unmistakable. His shoulders squared, his jaw set, and though his voice did not rise, the warning was clear in the tension of his stance—more so in the way his fingers lingered just shy of his sword.

He had never trusted her. She wore her father’s ambition too openly, and Baelon had long despised Otto Hightower nearly as much as Daemon Targaryen did. It was Otto who had pressed for a new queen when the king already had heirs, who had filled the court with quiet suggestions of weakness and succession. Baelon himself had stood as the first barrier to those designs—the initial problem to be solved.

And then there was you.

You, his sister-wife, younger by two years, brought into the world at the cost of your mother’s life. Viserys I Targaryen had ordered her cut open in the desperate hope of a son. Baelon remembered the blood, the suffocating stillness, the awful silence when it became clear the gods had not answered. More than anything, he remembered Rhaenyra Targaryen—her grief, her fury, the way she had fled and never once looked back. At twenty, he no longer held it against her. She had loved their mother in ways he never had the chance to.

For twenty years, their father had remained unwed. Baelon and Daemon had ensured it, countering the Hand at every turn. But when the king finally yielded, it happened swiftly—the marriage, the pregnancy, the shift in courtly balance. It did not matter. You were already his. The future of their bloodline would come through you, not her.

Court was never safe. It only pretended to be.

Baelon knew better.

He watched every glance, every whisper, every figure that lingered too long in your presence. As Crown Prince, he was afforded a certain latitude—sharpness, even cruelty, when necessary. He used it without hesitation. No one came near you without his notice. No one spoke to you without his measure. And when you carried his child, that vigilance became something colder, something absolute.

So when the queen turned her attention to you now, his hand moved without thought to the hilt of his sword.

She noticed.

She understood.

And, wisely, she stepped away.

Only then did the tension ease from him. Baelon leaned in, his forehead resting briefly against the side of your neck. His voice, when it came, was low—meant for you alone, carrying a quiet apology the court would never hear.

To them, he remained composed. Controlled. Every inch the prince meant to rule.

But with you, there was no such restraint.

He knew how easily harm could be done—not only with steel, but with words, with looks, with intent. And he would allow neither near you.