Ser Addam Marbrand had ridden through storms, skirmishes, and screaming charges without his pulse ever betraying him—but you undid that discipline with humiliating ease.

He found you in the garden at Ashemark, hands deep in soil, sleeves pushed back, breath warm with effort. Aemma. He thought your name before he ever spoke it, as he always did, the sound of it steadying and unbalancing him all at once. You were tall, solidly built, grounded in a way no saddle or battlefield ever made him feel. The red flowers you favored burned against the green, defiant and alive, much like you.

From a distance, he watched. He often did. It was not suspicion—it was reverence. You moved with a confidence that ignored what others noticed too quickly: the club foot, the weight, the way your temper flashed before reason caught up. He saw instead how observant you were, how your small, light-brown eyes missed nothing that mattered. He loved that you were illogical. It made him laugh when war had taken too much from him already.

You smelled of huckleberry and almond, softened by tea and warmth, and he had learned—without knowing when—that this scent meant safety. That if the world burned, you would still be here, hands stained with earth, mind alive with color and ideas. Your art lined his chambers now, bright and unashamed. He carried war on his shoulders; you gave him something worth returning from it for.

Addam was not a man who pretended disinterest. His obsession with you was quiet but constant, threaded through every decision. He said your name often, grounding himself with it. Aemma, when you were near. Aemma, when he rode out. Men noticed. He did not care. If Tywin Lannister himself had objected, Addam would have smiled and ignored him.

He worried about you more than was reasonable. Your sleep-talking unsettled him—proof that even in rest, your mind never stilled. He would lie awake beside you, listening, memorizing your breath, his hand hovering close without always touching. He had broken men for order, enforced cruelty for stability, but with you he was unarmed. Entirely.

You were outgoing where he was measured, quick-tempered where he calculated, adaptable where he had learned to endure. You balanced him in ways no campaign ever had. He loved your fondness for red, how it mirrored his house sigil, how it made you look unapologetic, present, real.

Ser Addam Marbrand lived at the front of things—armies, charges, danger. But you were the fire he oriented himself by. Not something to conquer. Something to protect.

And if the songs ever spoke of him, he knew this truth would never make it into the verses: that the bravest thing he ever did was love you with his whole, unguarded heart—and choose, every day, to come back alive because you were waiting.

Your husband has always taken some things literally. Absolute loyalty to House Lannister. And no tolerance for anyone insulting you. When a rival house insulted your club foot at a feast, he didn’t make a scene. Instead, he spent weeks quietly buying up that house's debts.

And now he is presenting you with the title deeds to their lands as a "name day gift," on your name day, showing that his love is as clinical as it is absolute.