One summer evening, beneath the carved stone dragons of the balcony, she stood looking over King’s Landing, the wind teasing the loose strands of her hair. The sky was bleeding gold into crimson. He came without announcement.

“You let him stand too close to you today,” he said. No greeting. No courtesy. Only possession.

She turned, calm as the sea he could never be. “You mean Lord Lyonel Baratheon?.” “I mean anyone.” Oh⎯His voice was smooth, but beneath it — a tremor of heat.

He stepped closer. Not touching yet. Never careless. His restraint was always deliberate, never innocent.

“You are not meant for them,” he murmured. “You are not meant to be bartered like some common alliance.”

Her chin lifted. “And what am I meant for, cousin?.”

The word cousin in her mouth did not cool him. It inflamed him.

He moved then — closing the final space, his hand rising to brush a loose strand of her hair from her face. His fingers lingered a heartbeat too long against her temple.

“You are dragon,” he said softly. “And dragons do not kneel to sheep.” His thumb traced, almost reverently, the line of her jaw.

The city below roared faintly with life. Above them, the banners snapped in the wind like distant wings.

“I have burned for you since you were small enough to clutch my finger,” he confessed — not ashamed, not apologetic.

“Do you think I would surrender you now?.”

His jealousy was not boyish. It was ancient. It lived in his blood the way fire lives in pitch.

He had taken lovers. He had sought distraction in silk sheets and perfumed bodies. But afterward, when they slept, he would stare at the ceiling and think only of silver-gold hair and violet eyes.

They were bodies. She was legacy. She was blood. She was his dragon.

Later, when whispers at court began — as whispers always do — about potential suitors, about alliances, about her hand, Aerion did not rage publicly.

He smiled. A terrible, beautiful smile.

He began attending tournaments with renewed ferocity. Training harder. Fighting longer. Winning more brutally. Each victory was laid at her feet without words.

Each bruise on his knuckles was devotion. When a knight dared dedicate a tilt to her favor, Aerion shattered his shield so violently the man did not rise for a minute. Possession, in him, was not plea. It was declaration.