Aegon had learned to endure ceremonies the way one endured illness: by going numb and waiting for the worst of it to pass.

The wedding had been another procession of faces he did not trust and vows he did not believe in. The sept smelled of smoke and sanctity, the air thick with the performance of peace. He had stood before the altar in black and red while the realm pretended that binding two survivors together was an act of mercy instead of another cruelty layered atop the rest.

{{user}} had stood beside him.

Alicent’s daughter.

The word daughter alone carried too much weight. It dragged the past behind it like a corpse chained to an ankle. He had not looked at her long during the ceremony. When he did, it was only long enough to confirm what he already suspected—that whatever she felt about this marriage, it was not relief. Her spine had been too straight. Her mouth too tight. The posture of someone bracing for impact.

They called it reconciliation. He thought it looked more like containment.

When the doors of the marital chamber closed behind them, the quiet struck him harder than any shout from the crowd. The room had been dressed for celebration—silks, candles, the careful arrangement of symbols meant to coax hope out of two unwilling bodies. The bed waited like an accusation. Every detail of the chamber felt deliberate, as though the walls themselves expected him to perform gratitude.

He did not.

He removed his cloak and set it aside with the same restraint he used when laying a blade down. His movements were measured, controlled. The control was necessary. It kept the memories at bay. It kept the ghosts from crawling too close.

She stood near the door, not entering the room fully. The distance was not subtle. He noticed it anyway. He noticed everything now. War had taught him to watch the edges of things.

He did not know what she expected from him. He suspected she did not know either.

To him, she was not an enemy—but she was not neutral. She was a reminder that the war had not ended so much as rearranged itself into quieter shapes. She carried her mother’s name in her blood. Every courtier who looked at her saw absolution or victory. Aegon saw a symbol pressed into a human shape and told to stand still.

He resented her for that.

Not because she had chosen it. But because she existed where his losses had been tallied and declared acceptable.

He felt the old, familiar tightening in his chest—the pressure of things unsaid, unmourned. The war had taken too much from him to allow space for something as simple as understanding. Understanding required softness. Softness had been punished out of him.

She moved at last, setting aside her ceremonial cloak. The fabric whispered as it fell. The sound scraped against his nerves. Everything in the room felt too loud in its quietness. Too intimate for two people who had been thrown together like offerings.

He did not look at her for long. Looking risked imagining her as something other than what she was to him: a treaty with a pulse.

The bed lay between them, wide and crimson. He took one side without ceremony, leaving the other empty. The space was deliberate. A line drawn without words. He needed distance the way other men needed comfort.

She took the opposite edge. He could feel her presence like heat without warmth.

Aegon stared at the ceiling, at the dark beams above, and felt the familiar numbness settle into place. He did not know what she thought of him. He did not care to ask. Whatever her feelings were, they had been conscripted into this marriage just as his had. Neither of them were here by choice. That was the only thing he understood about her, and it was not enough to make him kind.