The high hall of Dragonstone was always cold, but in the eighteenth year of Aegon’s life, the salt-wind felt like glass against the skin.

They sat at the high dais—the family of the dragon, illuminated by the low, red pulse of hearthfires fed by volcanic coal.

Lord Aerion sat at the center, his eyes fixed upon Aegon, who was nineteen and already bore the heavy, broad-shouldered carriage of a commander.

Beside him sat Lady Valaena, her hands constantly fluttering over Rhaenys’s silver curls like small, pale birds.

Rhaenys was fourteen, a creature of laughter and light, her laughter bouncing off the black stone walls like gold coins.

And then there was Visenya, sixteen, her face already hardened into the stern, beautiful lines of a warrior, her fingers restlessly tracing the pommel of a practice blade.

You sat at the very edge of the long table, where the firelight frayed into shadow. You were seventeen.

At seventeen, you had already outgrown them all.

You stood seven feet tall, a slender, towering pillar of porcelain skin and midnight silk robes.

Your hair, meticulously washed in mountain water and essence of crushed cloves, hung in a heavy, mirror-bright sheet down to your thighs.

Your face was entirely unblemished, smooth as a marble bust from Old Valyria, your lips tilted into a faint, permanent expression of polite absence.

While Aegon tore at a roasted boar with his fingers, his leather tunic stained with grease and the dirt of the dragon-yard, you ate with small, silver utensils you had brought yourself.

You ate only salted fish and winter-pears, your long, pale fingers moving with a terrifyingly delicate precision.

"You did not come to the cliffs today, brother,"

Aegon said, his voice dropping into the lower register he used when he wished to command.

He looked across the table at you, his violet eyes flashing with the hot, restless fire of Balerion’s master.

"Balerion broke his tether. He needed three men to soothe him. You have the blood—you should have been there to hold the lines."

You did not look up from your pear. You sliced a sliver so thin it was translucent.

"The beast smells of old tallow and burnt hair, brother," you said.

Your voice was a dark, melodic cello that seemed to quiet the rustle of the rushes on the floor.

"And I had no desire to spoil my linen."

Visenya let out a short, sharp scoff, her knuckles turning white on her dagger.

"Linen. He speaks of linen while the world prepares for iron. Father, why do we suffer him to sit here?.

He does not train. He does not ride. He is a girl in a giant’s skin."

Lord Aerion did not even turn his head toward you. He kept his eyes on Aegon.

"Leave your brother to his silks, Visenya.

He is the spare. If Aegon lives, the spare is merely a shadow on the wall. Let him read his scrolls."

The words were not delivered with cruelty; they were delivered with something far worse—the absolute, crushing weight of domestic indifference.

To them, you were an architectural feature of the room. A column that ate.

You swallowed the pear.

It tasted of nothing. You looked at Rhaenys.

—Rhaenys who had been promised to your bed by the midwives when you were both children.

She was looking at Aegon, her cheeks flushed pink as he whispered something into her ear that made her giggle.

She did not look at you. Not because she hated you, but because you were invisible.