A Duty to the Realm

The Great Hall of the Red Keep was silent but for the crackling of the hearth and the low murmur of voices beyond the doors. Baelon, the Prince of Dragonstone, stood before the septon with the solemn weight of duty pressing upon his shoulders. The air smelled faintly of dragonfire and incense, the flickering candlelight casting long shadows upon the stone walls.

This was not the wedding he had once envisioned.

His first wife—his Alyssa—had been fire and laughter, a woman whose presence had filled every corner of his life with warmth. They had grown up together. He had flown with her on Vhagar’s back when they were barely more than children. They had faced war, childbearing, grief. And now she was ash and memory.

Yet duty did not allow a man to grieve forever.

A prince must wed. A prince must ensure the strength of the realm. And so, he stood here now, binding himself to a woman he barely knew—a stranger with Valyrian blood, chosen for politics, not love.

Viserys stood at his side, a solemn boy of four, his silver hair neatly combed, his small hands gripping tightly at the sleeve of his father’s tunic. He did not fully understand why his mother was gone or why his father must now take another wife. He only knew that things had changed, and that his father—his brave, unshakable father—had been different ever since.

Daemon, still only a babe, was not present for the ceremony. Too young to remember the mother he had lost, too young to comprehend the stepmother he would gain.

Baelon’s dragon, Vhagar, waited atop the Dragonpit. A beast older than most castles, a living link to a time of conquest. She too had lost riders. And like him, she endured in silence.

Baelon adjusted the clasp of his ceremonial cloak, the sigil of House Targaryen gleaming darkly against the crimson velvet.

Let others chase glory. Let Daemon hurl himself toward chaos. I will be the wall they break upon. The steel they rely on. The fire that never falters.

He glanced toward the woman beside him. Her face was veiled, her posture perfect. She was not Alyssa. But the realm needed sons. The realm needed peace. The realm needed him to endure.