The Red Keep lay heavy with summer heat, its red stones warm beneath the afternoon sun. The great hall was quieter than it often was, not for lack of lords, but because all eyes had been drawn to a single, small presence at its center.

Myriah Martell stood proud, her back straight despite the weight of the child in her arms.

She had worn Dornish silks that day, light, flowing, the color of sun-baked sand touched with red and gold thread. Against the pale severity of the Targaryen court, she looked like something warm and alive, a living reminder that not all fire was born of dragons.

In her arms lay her first daughter, {{user}}. The babe was scarcely weeks old, swaddled in fine cloth, her tiny fingers curled clumsily as she attempted, without much success, to fit her entire fist into her mouth.

Prince Daeron stood beside her, one careful hand resting at the small of her back. He smiled down at their daughter, a soft, almost disbelieving smile, as though he still could not quite accept that something so small and fragile had come from him.

Across the hall, some of King Aegon’s lords shifted uneasily in their seats. They could not look away from the child.

{{user}} had Daeron’s paleness, skin almost translucent in the light, but her hair was thick and black as Dornish night, already visible in soft wisps against her small head. Her eyebrows, dark and full even at such a tender age, softened her features, lending her a strange, disarming charm.

It was her eyes that unsettled them. They appeared black at first glance. Too dark. Too knowing. On such a pale face, they seemed almost wrong.

King Aegon IV watched his granddaughter with an expression no one in the hall could quite read. His heavy-lidded eyes lingered on the child longer than politeness demanded. Beside him, Queen Naerys sat silent, her hands folded neatly in her lap.

It was Prince Aemon who broke the silence. “May I hold her?” The words were gentle, but firm.

Aegon’s Hand, Lord Butterwell, opened his mouth at once, whether to protest, advise, or simply remind the court of protocol, none would ever know.

Prince Daeron turned his head. The look he gave Butterwell was cool, precise, and sharp enough to strip flesh from bone. The Hand closed his mouth.

Myriah studied Aemon for a heartbeat longer. The Dragonknight stood tall and calm, all white cloak and quiet honor, his eyes filled not with curiosity, but respect.

She shifted {{user}} carefully and placed her daughter into his arms.

Aemon held the babe as though she were made of glass. {{user}} stared up at him, her dark eyes unblinking, studying his face with unsettling focus.

For a long moment, the greatest knight in the realm simply smiled.

“She watches,” he said softly. “Like she understands more than she should.”

“She does,” Myriah replied.

At that moment, Baelor burst free from his nurse and ran across the hall, nearly tripping over his own feet.

“My sister!” he declared proudly, climbing up beside Aemon to peer down at the baby. “She’s small.”

“She will not always be,” Aemon said.

Baelor grinned, satisfied.

Aerys, for his part, remained seated at the far end of the hall, a book open in his lap. He frowned at the page, lips moving as he struggled through the words, barely glancing up at the commotion. The world could shift around him, but if there were words to read, Aerys would be reading.

Myriah watched all of this with a quiet smile. She knew what the court saw: a strange child, half Dornish, half dragon, her darkness too visible for their comfort.

But Myriah had seen her daughter in the sun.

She had carried {{user}} onto the terraces overlooking Blackwater Bay, letting the light fall full upon her face. And there, in that golden Dornish-familiar warmth, the child’s eyes had revealed themselves, not black at all, but a deep, rich plum-purple, darker than Daeron’s, touched by Dornish shadow. A union of fire and sun. A child of two worlds.

“She has your stubbornness already,” Daeron murmured once again.

Myriah huffed quietly. “That is Dornish. You will have to endure it.”