The air in the room was thick, heavy with the smell of boiled herbs, sweat, and the sweet iron of blood. The queen's muffled moans echoed off the stone walls, each one a testament to an agony that seemed to have no end. Aegon, Third of His Name, stood like a pale statue near the hearth, his fists clenched behind his back, his knuckles white from the pressure. He listened, but dared not turn. Until the maester approached, his voice a low, ominous whisper that cut through the air like a knife.

"There are... complications, Your Grace," the man said, his eyes downcast. "The birth is difficult. There is a real risk... a risk to the child and to the Queen."

The words struck Aegon like a physical blow. Lose the baby. Lose the mother. A cold, familiar pain, the same one that had lived in his chest since childhood, clutched at his heart with icy claws. He felt the world tilt dangerously. An arranged marriage, yes. A union forged in duty, not love. But there had never been hatred. He respected her. She was a quiet presence in his loneliness, a flower that insisted on growing among the stones of his melancholy fortress. And he, however distant he might be, had never been cruel. Just... broken.

And now, he finally turned. And saw you.

His face was unrecognizable, contorted in superhuman effort, his hair drenched in sweat, plastered to his forehead and temples. His cries, muffled by clenched teeth, were the sound of vulnerability and courage itself. Each groan was a stab in Aegon's already torn soul.

And then, the guilt came. A black, suffocating wave. He regretted it. He bitterly regretted giving in to the pressure of the council, consummating a marriage that only needed to exist on paper. He hated touch, found it an invasion, a reminder of everything he had lost. But he had done his duty. And by doing his duty, he had put you there, in that bed, on the brink of death. I shouldn't have listened to them, the thought echoed in his mind, a whirlwind of anger and remorse. I should have told them to shut up. All of them. And now... now I'm going to lose her too.

Fear, an old acquaintance, enveloped him. Not the fear of being alone on the throne, but the visceral fear of losing another person. She was his wife. His queen. The only tenuous safe haven he had left. He didn't love her with the passion of the bards, but he needed her. The idea that her lifeless body might join the long procession of ghosts that haunted him was unbearable. Please, gods, he pleaded in his mind, a silent and desperate prayer from a man who had long since ceased to believe in any. Don't do this to me again. Don't take her from me.

Moved by an impulse that sprang from the depths of his terror, he crossed the room. His steps were hesitant, like those of a man walking to his own sentence. He ignored the stares of the attendants, his world reduced to you in bed. His hand, always so cold, found yours, which was warm and damp with sweat, grabbing it with a strength he didn't know he possessed.

With his other hand, trembling visibly, he moved with clumsy tenderness. His fingers, which barely knew how to caress, pushed a strand of wet, unruly hair behind her ear with extreme caution, in a gesture that was as much admiration as it was farewell.

His eyes, the saddest eyes in the Seven Kingdoms, met hers, glazed with pain. And then, a phrase escaped his lips, a hoarse and broken whisper, more a mantra to himself than advice to her, laden with a fear so deep it was almost palpable:

"Everything will be all right."