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jacaerys enemies to lovers!!

until then | j.v

Pairings: Jacaerys Velaryon x Dragonseed!Fem!Reader

Summary: the line between hate and love is really thin.

WARNINGS: Enemies to lovers (kinda), slight angst, hurt to comfort, kissing, yearning, my boy is a little confused, ñuha jorrāelagon/my love

A/n: I don’t know how much of an enemies to lovers this is, but I hope you’ll like it! It came out way longer than I imagined💀

masterlist | wc: 17.1k (yall I overwrote I’m sorry)

THE CASTLE seemed to change its face from the moment the dragonseeds arrived at Dragonstone. The black stone corridors, worn smooth by the passage of countless generations of Targaryen rulers, no longer knew the austere silence that had always defined them. Where once only the measured footsteps of princes, ladies, guards, and councillors echoed, now unfamiliar voices intertwined, accents from the streets of King's Landing and the rest of the Crownlands, nervous whispers and restrained laughter. Men and women of every age walked those halls with the awareness of being in a place they had, until only days before, been able to observe only from afar, imagining it shrouded in legends and tales. Some advanced with their chests swollen with pride, as if the mere fact of being summoned already made them worthy of the blood they claimed to possess. Others, instead, kept their heads bowed, eyes fixed on the stone floor, intimidated by the castle's grandeur and by the stern gazes of the nobles who watched the crowd with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. It was enough to meet a lord's or lady's eyes for a single instant for many to immediately lower their gaze, as though they feared crossing an invisible boundary.

You belonged to neither of those categories. You had no reason to puff out your chest, nor any desire to appear superior to the others, but neither did you allow fear to bend your back or slow your steps. You walked those long corridors with composure, maintaining the bearing you had learned over the years: your back straight, chin slightly raised, and your serious gaze fixed ahead.

Every detail of the castle seemed to watch you in silence. The volcanic stone walls barely reflected the flickering torchlight, casting shadows that stretched across the floor like claws. The air held the familiar scent of sulfur and sea, carried by the wind that slipped through the narrow windows overlooking the cliffs. From time to time, the distant roar of a dragon reverberated through the very rock of the castle, making the ground tremble beneath your boots. You continued walking without haste, seeking only to pass unnoticed among the multitude of unfamiliar faces, many of whom shared the same silver hair and violet eyes that bore witness to an ancient blood, though diluted by time.

That was precisely your intent, to blend into the crowd until the moment of the trial, without drawing unnecessary attention or feeding expectations. No one knew what fate awaited them in the Dragonpit, and you were no different from the others. And yet, fate seemed to have decided otherwise.

When Grey Ghost emerged from the shadows of his cave, the murmur ceased almost instantly. The dragon observed everyone present with his large pale eyes, maintaining the natural wariness that had earned him a reputation as a shy and solitary creature. For long moments, no one dared move. Then you stepped forward, slowly, without sudden gestures, allowing him to decide the distance between you. You felt the warmth of his breath brush your face as his snout approached your hand. When your fingers touched his cold, smooth scales, Grey Ghost did not pull away. On the contrary, he slowly extended his neck and lowered himself before you, offering you his back. Around you fell a silence so deep it seemed unreal. Every face turned in your direction, every gaze fixed on the scene, unable to comprehend what was happening.

Grey Ghost had always been considered the most elusive of the dragons of Dragonstone. He avoided men, shunned even the company of his own kind, and rarely allowed himself to be seen for long. No one had ever managed to get close enough to touch his scales, let alone mount his back. And yet that day he recognized you as if he had been waiting for you his entire life. There were no chains, no commands spoken in High Valyrian, no displays of force, only a silent recognition between dragon and rider. That gesture alone was enough to dispel all doubt. From that moment on, you were no longer just one of the many dragonseeds who had come to the castle. You had become the rider of Grey Ghost.

Thus, on that very same day, you were officially welcomed by Queen Rhaenyra into her ranks. The news spread through the castle with surprising speed, passing from mouth to mouth among soldiers, servants, and knights. Some offered you sincere smiles, others simply observed you with respect, while a few did not even try to hide a hint of envy. To be chosen by a dragon was a privilege that no man or woman outside the royal family could have even dreamed of. It was the dragon who chose, and that choice could be contested by no one.

Among all the looks you soon learned to distinguish in the days that followed, there was one that seemed to seek you out persistently, even when you would have preferred to go unnoticed. It lacked the naive curiosity of the servants and the veiled suspicion of the lords gathered in the queen's council. It was a hard, stern gaze, almost irritated by your mere presence, as though every time your paths crossed you reminded him of something he would rather forget.

Prince Jacaerys Velaryon observed every new dragonseed with a coldness that was difficult to ignore. Hugh received reprimands for his arrogance, Ulf was constantly called out for his loose tongue and inability to respect court etiquette. You, on the other hand, gave him no reason to criticize you openly. You behaved with respect, followed orders without complaint, and never sought to draw attention to yourself. And yet, every time the prince met your gaze, his expression seemed to stiffen ever so slightly.

You were, after all, a woman, and Jacaerys never addressed you with a direct insult, never raised his voice to you, and certainly never laid a hand on you. His conduct remained impeccable by the standards of the court. And yet, a simple greeting was enough for him to respond with a barely perceptible nod or with a silence so heavy it bordered on offense. At times his eyes lingered on you a moment longer than necessary, with an intensity capable of making you tense without understanding why. Anyone observing from the outside would probably have thought the prince merely ignored you. You, however, came to believe the exact opposite. No one observed with such consistency something that truly meant nothing to them.

More than once you searched for an explanation for that apparent hostility. You wondered if, without realizing it, you had spoken out of turn during one of the councils or training sessions. You asked yourself whether Grey Ghost might have awakened an unpleasant memory in the prince, or whether the simple fact that such a reclusive dragon had chosen you represented, in his eyes, something difficult to accept. Every hypothesis seemed as plausible as the next, yet none found confirmation. Jacaerys remained as inscrutable as the ancient stone statues that adorned the castle. In the end, you gave up searching for answers no one seemed willing to offer. If the prince truly had a reason to look at you that way, it would be up to him to reveal it, not for you to guess.

So you simply continued to live your days, following the discipline you had imposed upon yourself from the moment you arrived at Dragonstone. Each morning, when the wind from the Narrow Sea swept through the courtyard and made the black and red banners of House Targaryen billow, you trained with Baela. The princess fought with remarkable speed, alternating precise thrusts with movements so fluid they seemed like a dance. Every bout forced you to improve, to correct the position of your feet, to make each strike more solid. The sound of wood against steel blended with the distant calls of dragons soaring above the cliffs and the crash of waves against the rocks. At the end of each training session, your arms were heavy and your fingers sore from the constant grip on your sword hilt, yet a genuine smile almost always appeared on your face without you noticing. Baela had a way of turning every fight into an engaging challenge, and as the days passed you found yourself appreciating her company more and more.

When training ended, you devoted long hours to studying High Valyrian. You sat in the quietest rooms of the castle, far from the bustle of soldiers and the murmur of the court, repeating words and phrases until your tongue finally began to move with ease. At times you corrected your pronunciation again and again, refusing to settle for approximation. You understood the importance of that language for one who rode a dragon, and you were not willing to appear unprepared.

On quieter afternoons, when the sky above Dragonstone was covered in gray clouds and the rain forced many to remain inside the castle, you sought refuge in the library. There, time seemed to pass more slowly. Yellowed parchments, worn maps, and leather-bound volumes filled shelves so old they seemed part of the very walls. The scent of paper, dust, and aged wood mingled with the salty air drifting through the half-open windows. Within those pages, you found a peace the rest of the castle rarely offered, as though the weight of the coming war remained, at least for a few hours, shut out from that silent room.

Without your knowledge, the prince was present in nearly every one of those moments that had come to shape your days.

He did not seek your company, nor did he ever find a pretext to speak to you, and yet he always ended up wherever, by chance or not, you happened to be. At times he lingered on the upper gallery overlooking the inner courtyard, a vantage point from which it was possible to observe every training session without being easily noticed. He would lean against the stone balustrade, his face turned slightly toward a guard with whom he pretended to discuss shifts, patrols, or military matters, but his eyes constantly betrayed the act.

Every time your sword crossed with Baela's, his gaze followed the clash of blades, studying the way you shifted your weight, how you corrected the position of your feet after a mistake, how stubbornly you rose each time the princess managed to throw you off balance. He watched you take the blows without complaint, wipe the sweat from your brow with the back of your hand, and immediately resume your guard, as though fatigue were nothing more than an inevitable companion to be embraced with discipline. There was no arrogance in your movements, nor any desire for display. That, more than he was willing to admit, seemed to unsettle him.

At other times, it was the library that made him a silent observer of your days. He would enter with one or two volumes tucked under his arm, walking slowly through the narrow aisles between shelves filled with parchments and manuscripts, pretending to search for a particular text. The scent of worn leather, candle wax, and aged paper filled the air, while the silence of the hall was broken only by the rustle of turning pages and the quiet crackle of the fire in the hearth. You, seated by a window through which a pale light filtered, seemed entirely absorbed in the study of High Valyrian. Your fingers traced the faded lines of ink, while your lips moved softly, repeating words, shaping their pronunciation with patient care. At times you would pause, your brow furrowing slightly at a more difficult passage, only to begin again from the start, without showing the slightest sign of frustration.

Jacaerys always continued on his way when he passed by your table, yet he never failed to turn his head slightly in your direction when he was certain you were not looking. It was a gesture as quick as it was unintentional, and yet it repeated itself with a consistency even he could no longer ignore.

Then there were the simplest moments, the ones no one would have thought worth noticing. He saw you laugh with Baela after a particularly grueling training session, when both of you, still breathless, let your swords fall and allowed yourselves a brief moment of rest seated on the low wall of the courtyard. He watched you shake your head at one of the princess's provocations, or smile faintly when you finally managed to understand a difficult passage during your studies. He even saw you climb toward the highest terraces of the castle, those from which Grey Ghost would take flight over the Narrow Sea. From a distance, your figure appeared small against the vastness of the sky, your cloak whipped fiercely by the salt-laden gusts rising from the cliffs, while the dragon emerged slowly from the mist, silent as a specter. Even then, the prince remained still, watching, unable to turn away before both dragon and rider vanished beyond the horizon.

Each time, it was the same. His chest would seem to tighten, a subtle yet persistent tension gripping his stomach and making his breathing heavier. He tried more than once to convince himself it was nothing but irritation. It had to be. It could be nothing else. You represented what he, despite the blood that ran through his veins and the title he bore, would never possess. Every time his gaze fell upon you, that feeling returned, as relentless as the sea crashing against the island's rocks. He tried to smother it with duty, with council obligations, with the study of military strategies and maps, but the mere glimpse of you from afar was enough for everything to resurface with the same force.

Your hair fell over your shoulders like threads of silver, reflecting the light of the sun or the colder glow of the moon. When the wind lifted it, it seemed almost to merge with the clouds that wrapped around the tall towers of Dragonstone. Your eyes were pale, carrying that violet hue so often celebrated in the chronicles of the Targaryens. They were the same eyes described in tales of Aegon the Conqueror, of Visenya, of Rhaenys, of the ancient lords of Valyria who had ruled the world upon the backs of dragons. You embodied that image effortlessly, as though time itself had chosen to bring back a fragment of that ancient lineage through your very existence. No one, looking at you, would ever doubt your heritage.

He, on the other hand, knew all too well the weight of a gaze.

He was the prince of Dragonstone. The heir chosen by Queen Rhaenyra. The one who would one day claim the Iron Throne, if the gods and war granted him the time. And yet all of that seemed to fade every time someone looked upon his face. It was enough to see his dark hair, so unlike the silver of the Targaryens, or those brown eyes that bore nothing of ancient Valyria, for doubt to once again find the courage to rise to people's lips. No one dared to speak that word openly before him, at least not at court, but Jacaerys had learned as a child that silence could wound as deeply as an insult. Bastard. A short word, yet one capable of following him all his life like a shadow he would never escape.

No crown would ever change the color of his hair. No dragon would transform his eyes into those the world expected of a Targaryen. Not even the oath of a thousand lords would be enough to erase what his enemies continued to consider undeniable proof of his birth. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how much he studied the history of his house, how relentlessly he trained with the sword or spent entire nights beside the queen's councilors discussing war and politics, there would always be someone ready to remind him that his face told a different story from the one the realm was meant to accept. It was an old wound, long since scarred over only in appearance, that kept reopening each time the past found a new way to stand before his eyes.

And you had become one of those ways.

You had possessed since birth what he had spent an entire lifetime trying to make up for through duty, sacrifice, and merit. No one would ever question the blood that ran in your veins. No one would ever lower their voice while looking at your face to wonder who your father truly was. It was enough for you simply to exist for the world to see a daughter of ancient Valyria. He, on the other hand, had been forced to build his legitimacy day by day, like a man compelled to raise a castle stone by stone while knowing that someone would try to tear it down all the same. Perhaps that was why he continued to look at you more than he should. Because, without meaning to, you had become the reflection of everything that had been denied to him before he was even born.

One afternoon, the sky above Dragonstone turned a pale, almost milky blue, veiled by thin streaks of cloud that let through a soft, gentle light. The air still held the chill carried by the sea, and the wind brought with it to the gardens the salty scent of waves breaking against the high cliffs. Those gardens did not possess the richness of those in King's Landing, nor the abundance of the strongholds of the Reach. They were small, sheltered by walls of volcanic stone and shaped with patience to wrest a few patches of green from a harsh island battered by storms. Few flowers managed to grow in that dark soil, yet those that survived seemed to do so with stubborn resilience, bending to the wind without ever breaking.

You walked slowly along the gravel path, letting the rhythmic sound of the waves accompany the thread of your thoughts. You had no particular destination. You simply followed the path winding between the flowerbeds, breathing deeply that sharp air that tasted of sea and rain. At last, you stopped before a small cluster of flowers, their pale petals seeming almost out of place on that island of stone and ash. You bent down naturally, studying their delicate form as though you wished to understand every detail. Your fingers brushed lightly against one of the slender stems without bending it, tracing its outline. At that very moment, a cloud gave way to the sun, and a blade of golden light poured over you, igniting silvery reflections in your hair.

A stronger breeze from the sea lifted a few loose strands, carrying them across your face. You smiled faintly, with that unguarded expression that appeared only when you believed yourself entirely alone, brushing them behind your ear with a slow, absent gesture. Then, with great care, you picked a small flower that had already bloomed, brought it close to your face, and breathed in its faint fragrance, unaware that, from one of the loggias overlooking the gardens, a pair of chestnut colored eyes had remained fixed on you far longer than their owner would ever have admitted.

Anyone watching you from afar would have seen only a young woman gathered in the quiet of a garden, intent on appreciating the fragile beauty of a flower that had bloomed against all odds on an island of stone and fire. Nothing in that scene would have drawn more than a passing glance. Any lady might have paused in the same way, bent with the same delicacy, breathed in the scent of a flower before continuing on her way. It was a simple image, almost insignificant, and for that very reason it would have escaped the notice of most. Jacaerys, however, saw far more.

His eyes did not linger on the flower, nor on the garden or the light filtering through the clouds. They settled only on you, and remained there with a constancy he himself could not explain. He noticed the way your fingers brushed the petals without tearing them, as though you feared breaking something so fragile. He noticed the calm with which you breathed in the salty air, the slight movement of your shoulders, and that quiet serenity that seemed to belong to you. In that moment, you were not the rider of Grey Ghost, nor one of the new dragonseeds welcomed by the queen. You were simply the woman who, without intending to, had awakened in him feelings he would have preferred never to know.

He remained motionless beneath the garden's entrance arch for long moments, unaware of time continuing to pass. He seemed to hear and see nothing. His hands hung relaxed at his sides, his face impassive as he had been taught since childhood, yet within him every thought seemed to have come to a halt. It happened to him rarely. He had grown up learning to observe every detail, to anticipate his opponents' moves, to reflect before speaking, and to maintain control over his emotions at all times. And yet it was enough to find you there, unaware of his presence, for that discipline, built over years of study and duty, to suddenly show a crack.

There was nothing studied in your movements. No gesture seemed crafted to draw anyone's attention. You did not tilt your head as many court ladies did when they knew they were being watched, nor did you let your lashes blink an excessive amount of times. Every movement seemed to arise with the same natural ease as the wind passing through that garden. You bent because you wished to observe a flower, you smiled because the moment genuinely stirred something within you, you breathed deeply because you enjoyed the sea air.

Jacaerys had spent his entire life surrounded by men and women who weighed every word and every gesture, who turned even a smile into a political instrument. You, on the other hand, seemed incapable of pretending. Even when you tried to go unnoticed, you ended up drawing his attention.

The smile that appeared on your face was small, barely there. Your lips curved, your eyes softened almost imperceptibly, and your expression, until a moment before composed in the quiet focus with which you had been observing that small flower, seemed to brighten. It was not the open, carefree smile he had sometimes seen during your training with Baela, when one of the princess's provocations finally managed to make you laugh. This was something much smaller, more fragile, born spontaneously and destined to vanish within moments. It was precisely that fleeting nature that made it impossible to ignore. For an instant, Jacaerys had the distinct impression that the entire garden had changed along with your expression. The golden light of the afternoon seemed to fall more gently upon your face, the wind stirred the silvery strands of your hair, and even the sound of the sea felt more distant.

You are more beautiful than you should be, he thought with irritation, more beautiful than many of the ladies he had known at court. More beautiful than the young noblewomen who had tried to capture his attention during feasts.

The realization struck him with the force of a blow. His jaw tightened at once as an inexplicable irritation spread through his chest. How could that have been the first thought that came to his mind? Why did his gaze linger on such insignificant details? Why did he remember the shade of the color of your eyes, the way you smiled, or how the wind lifted your hair, instead of focusing on matters of far greater importance? He was the Prince of Dragonstone. He was the queen's heir. Every day of his life should have been consumed by the war drawing ever closer, not by a girl who paused to smell a flower.

He drew in a slow breath, trying to regain the control that seemed to have slipped from him without warning. Perhaps this was the punishment the gods had chosen for him. All his life he had borne the weight of accusations, whispers, and suspicions about a birth he had never had the power to choose. He had learned to live with the judgment of others, with their looks, and with that word murmured behind his back since childhood. Was that not enough? Did the gods truly need to torment him with thoughts as absurd as they were unwelcome? Why you? Why the very woman who reminded him most of everything he would never be? Why had the gods decided that his eyes should continue to seek you even when every rational part of him commanded him to look elsewhere? He inhaled once more and composed his face into its usual stern expression, the one that had become a second skin over the years. No one must suspect the turmoil stirring within his chest.

His boots sank slightly into the gravel path, producing a soft sound, yet enough to break the silence of the garden. The small stones crunched under the weight of his step, and you reacted at once. You lifted your head naturally, letting the flower slip slowly from your fingers back among the others. For a moment your eyes met, then, as soon as you recognized the prince, you straightened with that composure that now seemed to define your every gesture. Your hands folded neatly before you, your head inclined in a proper bow, and your voice broke the silence with that calm that never seemed to leave you. "My prince."

Jacaerys stopped at your side without replying. Following a habit learned from watching Daemon during the years they had trained together, he placed both hands upon the hilt of his sword. The gesture, now almost instinctive, gave him a sense of steadiness, as though the mere contact with the weapon reminded him of who he was and the role he was meant to fulfill. For a few moments he kept his gaze fixed on the sea, following the slow crash of waves against the rocks, for he found it infinitely easier to look at the horizon than to meet your eyes directly.

When he finally spoke, his voice came out steady, controlled, devoid of any inflection that might betray what had crossed his mind only moments before. "My mother has summoned you to the Painted Table."

You lifted your head slightly, nodding with quiet acknowledgment. You did not seem surprised by the news, nor intimidated by the queen's summons. "Thank you for informing me, my prince." Your voice was gentle, measured, without hesitation. There was no attempt to prolong the conversation beyond what was necessary, no unnecessary question, no polite smile. It was the respectful tone one reserved for a prince, and nothing more.

Jacaerys hated it.

For a brief moment, however, you seemed on the verge of adding something. Your lips parted slightly, your gaze lifting slowly to his face. Jacaerys had the faint impression that you were searching for the courage to voice a question you had held back for too long, perhaps about his constant coldness, perhaps about the reason for those glances he continued to cast your way without ever offering an explanation. He waited without realizing it, hanging from your lips. But the moment faded before it could take shape in words. Whatever thought had brushed your mind, you chose to let it die there. You closed your mouth again, gave a faint shake of your head as though reproaching yourself for the hesitation, and lowered your gaze once more.

Then you moved past him with quick steps, brushing lightly against him as you resumed the path leading back toward the castle. Your cloak swayed softly behind you, carried by the sea breeze, while a faint trace of your scent lingered in the air for a moment. You did not look back even once. You kept walking with the same calm with which you had entered the garden, leaving him standing motionless behind you.

Jacaerys followed your figure with his eyes until it disappeared beyond the stone arch that marked the entrance to the castle. Only then did he slowly release the breath he had, without noticing, held for most of the encounter. His fingers tightened slightly on the hilt of his sword as his jaw hardened once more. It irritated him that you avoided his gaze with such determination, as though his presence were something to be endured only for as long as strictly necessary. And more than anything, it angered him that inexplicable desire that continued to grow within him, the desire to force you, at least once, to look him in the eyes. Not with the respect owed to a prince, not with the caution reserved for a superior, but the way one looks at a man.

The days that followed passed slowly. The island continued to live according to the unchanging rhythm of the tides crashing against the cliffs, the salt-laden wind that swept endlessly across the battlements, and the beating wings of dragons that, at irregular intervals, darkened the sun as they flew over the castle. The sentinels changed shifts at the same hours, the blacksmiths continued their work in the forges heated by the mountain's fire, the servants moved through the corridors with the same discreet steps, and the queen carried on her war councils without granting herself a moment of rest. To an outside observer, nothing seemed different from the day before. And yet, beneath that reassuring semblance of normality, something had changed. It was a subtle sensation, almost imperceptible, like the moment when the wind shifts direction before the sea begins to ripple. No one spoke of it. No one seemed to notice. Only Jacaerys came to feel its weight each time he crossed those same halls that, until a few days earlier, had seemed unchanged for as long as memory could reach.

You were simply no longer there.

Your absence crept slowly into his days, at first as a negligible detail, then as something impossible to ignore. You no longer appeared in the long corridors, where he would sometimes pass you as you held a few volumes against your chest or walked calmly through torchlit galleries. You were not in the library, seated by the windows overlooking the Narrow Sea, where you used to spend hours surrounded by timeworn chronicles and manuscripts in High Valyrian, so absorbed in study that you forgot even the passing of time. Not even the courtyard echoed anymore with the sound of your sword crossing with Baela's, accompanied by the brief laughter that sometimes escaped you after a particularly intense clash. Even the upper terraces, from which Grey Ghost would take flight among the currents rising from the cliffs, now appeared suddenly deserted. It was as though someone had erased every trace of your presence from the castle without leaving any explanation, turning you into nothing more than a memory.

To anyone else, that absence would have gone unnoticed. Dragonstone housed dozens of knights, ladies, servants, advisors, and soldiers. Every day someone left, someone arrived, and someone else remained occupied with duties that kept them out of sight. One less person within those walls would hardly have raised any questions. For Jacaerys, however, your absence became a detail so persistent that it crept into his thoughts even when he tried to ignore it. On the first day, he paid it little mind. He simply thought your paths had not crossed. After all, the castle was vast, and the demands of war now consumed most of his time. On the second day, however, he began to notice the void left by your presence in the places you had made your own. He even found himself glancing toward the table in the library where you used to sit, inevitably finding it empty. By the third day, that simple observation had already turned into a question that, however absurd, kept returning insistently to his mind.

What if you were avoiding him?

The thought struck him as so senseless that it irritated him immediately. Why would you avoid him? There had never been any argument between you, no quarrel, no openly spoken harsh words. True, his behavior had never been particularly warm. He was well aware of that. He had maintained a constant distance, had greeted your every salutation with coldness, and had allowed his gaze to speak far more than the few words you had exchanged. But all of that had always seemed sufficient to keep the relationship purely formal. He then thought back to your last encounter in the gardens. He saw again the moment when you let that small flower fall among the others, your composed bow, the kindness with which you had thanked him. Above all, he remembered that hesitation. For a moment, you had seemed as though you wanted to say something, perhaps a question, perhaps a remark long held back. Then you had changed your mind. You had lowered your gaze, chosen silence, and walked away without looking back. The more he tried to dismiss that memory, the more it returned.

Perhaps you had truly misinterpreted his coldness. Perhaps you had decided that the prince of Dragonstone preferred to have nothing to do with you. It was a conclusion that, observing his own behavior, he himself might have found reasonable. If that were the case, the simplest choice for you would have been to keep your distance, limit yourself to strictly necessary interactions, and spare yourself the discomfort of crossing paths with someone who seemed to greet your presence with a stiff expression. That thought should have left him completely indifferent. Indeed, it should even have been a convenient solution. If you had truly stopped seeking his company, he would have no reason to question his own behavior or to struggle against those emotions that kept surprising him. And yet, instead of relief, he felt an inexplicable irritation rise within him. A discomfort difficult to ignore, directed as much toward you as toward himself.

The answer came a few days later.

The small council was gathered around the Painted Table. The carved surface of Aegon the Conqueror's Westeros reflected the light of the many candles, while lords, maesters, and commanders discussed the progress of the war, troop movements, and the ravens that had arrived during the night. Jacaerys listened in silence, speaking only when asked for his opinion. It was in the middle of a conversation regarding the distribution of dragonriders that one of the councillors made a brief reference to you. No one seemed to attach particular importance to the news. The queen had entrusted you with a mission a few days earlier. You had departed on Grey Ghost, and the success of your task depended largely on the discretion with which it would be carried out. For that reason, neither the destination nor the purpose of the mission had been disclosed. The matter was dismissed within moments, and the discussion immediately returned to issues deemed more urgent.

Jacaerys remained motionless for the rest of the meeting. He continued to nod when addressed, offered his opinions on military strategies with his usual clarity, and did not allow a single emotion to show on his face. Only he, however, noticed the faint sense of relief that had passed through his chest the moment he learned the truth. You were not avoiding him. You had not chosen to vanish from his sight. You were simply away, engaged in serving the queen as any dragonrider would. That simple awareness was enough, at least for a moment, to ease the weight that had been pressing on him in recent days.

It was only later, as he walked through one of the long corridors, that he realized something. His hands had remained clenched with such force during the meeting that deep reddish marks had been left in his palms. He slowly opened his fingers, observing the imprints his nails had carved into his skin, and a flicker of irritation immediately crossed his thoughts. He forced a rational explanation upon himself before any other interpretation could take shape. He was not worried about you. No. There was no reason for him to be. You were one of the queen's dragonriders, one of the most valuable assets the Blacks possessed. Grey Ghost represented considerable strength, and its loss would inevitably weaken his mother's forces. That was the only reason for his tension. A commander had a duty to be concerned for his riders. Nothing more. He repeated it to himself several times, as though by repeating it he could make it true.

Nothing more.

From that day on, he made that sentence his conviction. He repeated it every morning while studying with the maesters. If his thoughts strayed to you, he cut them off immediately, reminding himself that he was merely assessing the strength of the queen's forces. He repeated it during training in the courtyard, when every strike of his sword felt heavier than the last and his focus slipped with unusual ease. Baela eventually halted their sparring more than once, watching him with growing perplexity and asking where the precision that usually defined his movements had gone. He dismissed every question with a brief answer, attributing his distraction to the fatigue accumulated over recent weeks. Even in the evening, when the castle fell quiet and only the sound of the sea rose through the open windows along with the steady breath of the wind, he continued to repeat the same explanation, as if it were an oath capable of silencing any doubt.

But the days kept passing, and no word came from you.

No raven reached Dragonstone bearing your name. No messenger reported having encountered you along the road. No sentinel announced having seen Grey Ghost flying over the cliffs with his characteristic silent glide. The sky above the island continued to be crossed by dragons, but none of the great shadows cast against the clouds belonged to yours. And, as the days passed, the silence you had left behind began to weigh far more heavily than Jacaerys was willing to admit, even to himself.

The days continued to flow with the same unchanging rhythm, until no one truly noticed the exact moment when they ceased to be merely days and became an entire week. Time, at Dragonstone, seemed to wear away differently than in the rest of the realm. The tides continued to rise and fall with the same regularity, dragons crossed the sky leaving behind immense shadows that raced along the black walls of the castle, and the wind never ceased to blow through the towers, carrying with it the acrid scent of sulfur and the sharper tang of salt. And yet, as the hours passed, the silence left by your departure slowly began to fill with words.

At first, they were only whispers exchanged between two servants while changing pitchers in the kitchens, or among guards sharing a watch along the walls. Then those voices began to spread, passing from mouth to mouth with the swiftness typical of fortresses besieged by uncertainty. Some claimed that the mission entrusted to you by the queen had ended in the worst possible way, and that you had fallen far from Dragonstone, dragging Grey Ghost into death with you. Others, more inclined toward suspicion than compassion, preferred to imagine a different story. They said that dragon's blood was not enough to guarantee loyalty, that power changed the hearts of men and women alike, and they insinuated that you had simply turned your back on the queen, fleeing with your dragon toward lands where no one could claim your obedience or force you to fight a war that was not yours.

Jacaerys heard those words only once, and it was more than enough. He was crossing one of the corridors leading to the western terraces when a knight, convinced he was far enough from prying ears, casually voiced the possibility of betrayal. The prince stopped without saying a word. He did not raise his voice, did not draw his sword, and did not utter a single rebuke. He simply turned slowly toward the man. The look he gave him was so cold it seemed carved from the same volcanic stone as the castle itself. There was a hardness in his eyes that was enough to extinguish any further words before they could be spoken. The knight visibly paled, lowered his head at once, and found no courage to add anything more. The corridor fell silent within moments, as if that conversation had never existed. Jacaerys resumed walking without turning back, but within himself he rejected that possibility with conviction.

He did not truly know you. He had spoken to you only a handful of times, always briefly. He did not know your story in detail, did not know what fears had accompanied you growing up, nor what dreams you held when the world fell silent. And yet there were things that did not need to be told to be understood. He had watched you long enough to recognize the discipline with which you faced every task entrusted to you, the seriousness with which you approached even the most exhausting training, and the respect you showed toward the queen and anyone above you in rank. But above all, he remembered the way your face changed whenever someone mentioned your family in King's Landing. It was not an obvious change. It was enough, a slight softening of your gaze, an almost imperceptible pause before answering, or a smile that appeared for the span of a breath. They were details so small that no one else would likely have noticed them. He had. For that reason, he dismissed without hesitation the idea that you might have chosen to disappear of your own will. No. You would never have abandoned the people you loved. If Grey Ghost had not yet returned to Dragonstone, it meant only one thing. Something had prevented you from doing so.

So he waited. He waited without realizing it, until that waiting became part of his days. He waited in the morning, when he stepped onto the highest terraces of the castle and the first light of dawn gilded the waves of the Narrow Sea. He waited in the afternoon, unconsciously interrupting the games with which he entertained his brothers whenever a shadow crossed the windows of the Painted Table. He waited above all in the evening, when the sky blazed with shades of red and orange and every distant shape seemed as though it might belong to a dragon returning to its home.

More than once, he found himself lifting his gaze toward the horizon for no particular reason, as if some part of him were constantly listening for a beat of wings that never came. Every time a dragon flew over the castle, his heart would quicken for a moment, only to slowly return to its rhythm when he recognized Vermithor, Syrax, or one of the others. Grey Ghost never appeared.

That afternoon, the sky was covered by an unbroken stretch of gray clouds, so low they seemed almost suspended above the sea. Jacaerys had taken refuge on the beach at the foot of the fortress, a place he often returned to when the weight of his thoughts became difficult to bear. Far from the council chambers, from the constant strategic discussions, and from the expectant gazes of the court, the ceaseless sound of the waves managed, at least in part, to bring order to his mind. He walked slowly along the shoreline, letting his boots sink slightly into the damp sand. The wind lashed his cloak against his legs and carried with it the sharp scent of salt and approaching rain. Before him, the sea seemed endless, stirred by dark waves that crashed violently against the black rocks of the coast. For a moment, he stood watching the horizon without thinking of anything, allowing the sound of the water to fill the silence.

A sudden shout shattered that fragile stillness. One of the guards raised an arm, pointing toward the sky, indicating something beyond the clouds. "Dragon!" The word was almost immediately swallowed by the wind, but it was enough.

Jacaerys lifted his gaze at once. At first, he could make out only a dark shape struggling to emerge through the clouds. It was too far away for him to recognize with certainty, but a few wingbeats were enough for the silhouette to become unmistakable. Grey Ghost.

His heart leapt violently in his chest before reason could form a coherent thought. For the briefest instant, relief struck him so suddenly it nearly stole his breath. He was alive. He was returning. You were returning.

Then the distance closed, and relief gave way to terror.

Grey Ghost was not flying as it should. One wing dipped noticeably with every beat, forcing it into constant corrections to keep from losing altitude. Its body wavered in the sky with unnatural, labored movements, as though each stroke of its wings tore through unbearable pain. The closer it came to the shore, the clearer its wounds became. Deep gashes tore across its flank, blackened by blood that had long since dried and crusted over its scales. In places, the armored hide had been completely stripped away, exposing the flesh beneath. A long wound ran along its neck to its shoulder, and even from that distance its breathing appeared strained.

The guards immediately began running toward the place where the dragon seemed intent on landing. Jacaerys did not wait for orders.

His legs moved before his mind had time to think. He ran along the beach, feeling the sand give beneath his boots and the wind tearing the breath from his chest. Around him, the sound of the waves vanished, replaced by the thunder of Grey Ghost's massive wings cutting through the air as it drew ever closer to the ground.

The dragon struck the earth with a force that made the beach tremble. Its claws sank into the sand, carving deep furrows, while its enormous body skidded forward for several meters before finally coming to a halt. Grey Ghost lowered its long neck slowly and let out a hoarse, broken sound, so far from the powerful roar it was known for that it resembled a lament. Its nostrils flared in an attempt to draw breath, its flank continuing to rise and fall with difficulty.

That was when your body slipped from the saddle. There was no attempt to hold onto the straps. No instinctive movement. You fell heavily onto the damp sand like a lifeless doll, your body completely limp.

For a moment, time seemed to stop.

Jacaerys reached you first. He dropped to his knees beside you so quickly he did not even notice the sand staining his clothes. His breath caught in his throat the moment his gaze fell upon your face. It was smeared with dried blood, dust, and salt. Strands of your silver hair clung to your cheeks, partly concealing small cuts scattered across your skin. Your clothing was torn in several places, and deep wounds crossed your arms, shoulders, and side, some still wet with blood. Your hands, worn from gripping the reins, were covered in abrasions. He called your name immediately, his voice one he scarcely recognized as his own. He searched for a response. A deeper breath. The flutter of your eyelids. Anything. When none came, he placed a hand upon your shoulder with extreme care, giving you the faintest shake, as though afraid you might break.

Nothing.

Fear surged through his chest, making him tremble. Without allowing himself another moment of hesitation, he slipped one arm behind your back and the other beneath your knees, lifting you from the ground with a gentleness he would never have thought himself capable of. He held you tightly enough to keep you from slipping, yet every movement was measured, careful not to worsen wounds he could not yet count. You felt impossibly light in his arms, too light, and that sensation unsettled him more than the blood staining your clothes.

He rose to his feet and began running toward the castle without slowing once. He crossed the main courtyard, completely ignoring the stares of soldiers, servants, and nobles who turned as he passed. Some stepped aside immediately at the sight of your condition; others remained frozen, unable to comprehend what was happening. Jacaerys did not care. In that moment, there was only the ragged sound of his own breathing, the weight of your body pressed against his chest, and the hope that it was not too late. When he finally reached the fortress entrance, his voice rang through the stone halls with a force that silenced all other conversation.

"The maesters!" he shouted, not breaking stride. For the first time, desperation openly fractured the usual steadiness of his tone. "At once!"

The doors to your chamber burst open with such force that they struck the stone wall, making the iron hinges shudder. Jacaerys crossed the threshold without slowing, still holding you in his arms as behind him the corridor filled with hurried footsteps, urgent orders, and the rustle of the maesters' long robes as they gathered at the sound of his cry.

He laid you down with the utmost care upon the bed, as though even the softness of the mattress might cause you further pain. Only when he was certain your body was supported by the cushions did he step back, finally allowing the healers room to work. Within moments, the room, until then silent, transformed into a place of ordered urgency.

Some servants brought basins of boiling water, from which thick steam rose to veil the air. Others arranged clean bandages, linen cloths, and carefully sterilized iron instruments on the table beside the bed. The acrid scent of blood quickly mingled with the sharp smell of crushed medicinal herbs, lavender, artemisia, and the alcohol used to cleanse the wounds. Needle and thread were prepared with practiced hands, while the maesters bent over you, exchanging quick instructions, layering one command over another until a constant murmur filled the room. Your wounds were washed one by one, the dried blood patiently loosened by warm water, the lacerations examined carefully before being stitched. At times, one of the healers would shake their head slightly at the depth of a cut, but no one wasted time on unnecessary words. They simply kept working.

Jacaerys never left the room. He could have waited outside like anyone else, entrusting your fate to the skilled hands of the maesters and returning to the duties that called him elsewhere. No one would have found such a choice unusual. And yet he remained, unmoving, almost oblivious to the presence of anyone else. He stood by the window, his hands clasped behind his back in an attempt to maintain, at least in appearance, the composure expected of him. From that position, he could see the sea churning beyond the castle walls, the waves crashing violently against the black rocks, and the gray sky slowly giving way to sunset. He saw none of it.

His eyes kept returning to the bed, following every movement of the healers, every fresh bandage, every stain of blood replaced with clean linen. More than once, he realized he had been holding his breath without noticing. Each time, he forced himself to inhale slowly, reminding himself that this concern was not truly about you. He repeated it stubbornly, as though it were a formula capable of restoring order to his thoughts. You were one of the queen's dragonriders. The war was being fought thanks to men and women like you. To lose Grey Ghost would mean depriving the Blacks of one of their most valuable weapons. That was all that unsettled him. It was the fate of the realm weighing on his chest. Duty, nothing more. And yet, every time your face tensed faintly as a wound was treated, that explanation seemed suddenly far less convincing.

Time seemed to slow within the room. No one spoke more than necessary. Only the soft crackling of the fire in the hearth could be heard, along with the faint clinking of metal instruments and the sound of bandages being slowly unrolled. At last, when the final wound had been treated and the last stitches completed, the eldest of the maesters straightened with visible exhaustion. His hands were still stained with blood despite repeated washings. After studying your face for a moment, he gently placed two fingers against your wrist, as if seeking further confirmation. Only then did he turn toward the prince. In a calm voice, he explained that you had lost a considerable amount of blood and that your body had endured a strain that might have killed anyone else. "The wounds are deep, but none appeared to have reached any vital organs. If infection did not set in and if the gods showed mercy, she will recover. It would require time, rest, and great patience, my prince."

Jacaerys listened without interrupting, merely nodding once. It was a small gesture, yet the slight drop of his shoulders betrayed a relief he did not allow himself to acknowledge. "I understand."

When the last Maesters left the room, silence returned to fill every corner. The door closed slowly behind them, and suddenly it was only the two of you. The fire continued to burn in the hearth, spreading a gentle warmth, while the orange light of the flames cast uneven shadows across the stone walls. Jacaerys remained still for a moment, as if uncertain what to do, then slowly dragged a chair beside the bed and sat down. He rested his forearms on his legs, clasping his hands so tightly that his knuckles turned white. He continued to watch you without a word. Your face, finally cleansed of blood, appeared paler than usual. Bruises were already darkening along your jaw and beneath your cheekbone, while bandages wrapped your shoulders and arms almost entirely. Your breathing was slow and steady, yet so faint that more than once he found himself checking to be sure your chest was truly rising.

Time passed. Perhaps a few minutes, perhaps an hour, during which Jacaerys never took his eyes off you. Then it happened.

The fingers of your hand moved faintly above the covers. A movement so slight it might have seemed an illusion if the prince had not been watching you so intently. Your eyelids trembled weakly, as if the light of the fire had suddenly become too bright, and after a moment they lifted with visible effort. Your gaze was still clouded by exhaustion and pain, unable to focus immediately on what surrounded you. Jacaerys rose so quickly that the chair scraped sharply against the floor. In two strides he was at your side. "Easy." His voice, unexpectedly, came out much softer than he intended. There was none of the usual hardness that always accompanied his tone when he spoke to you.

When you instinctively tried to sit up, a grimace crossed your face at once. Pain seemed to stiffen every muscle in your body, forcing you to stop. Jacaerys reacted before you could fall back. One hand slipped behind your shoulders, the other gently supported your arm, helping you slowly sit upright against the cushions. Every movement was careful, as though he feared applying too much pressure to your still-fresh wounds. He did not withdraw his hands until he was certain you could keep your balance on your own. Only then did he step back half a pace, though he continued to watch you with that severe expression that seemed to return to his face almost by instinct.

A long, motionless silence fell between you. You breathed slowly, trying to adjust to the pain that every movement seemed to awaken. He remained standing beside the bed, unable to find a position that felt natural. In the end, it was Jacaerys who broke the quiet. "What happened?" he asked. He had tried to keep his voice calm, but the words came out harsher than intended, as though tempered by the anxiety that had built over those long days of waiting.

You slowly bit your lower lip as you studied his face. For a moment, you seemed to search his expression, as if trying to understand which of the many emotions hidden behind that mask of severity was the true one. Then you lowered your gaze slightly. "I did not know you cared."

Those words struck him more than he would have admitted. The prince remained still for the span of a breath. Who does she think me of?

Then he rose so abruptly that the chair scraped loudly across the stone floor. He closed the distance between you in a few steps and stopped before you. Slowly, he lifted a hand toward your face in a spontaneous gesture. His fingers hovered a few inches from your cheek, where a deep bruise stood out sharply against your skin. For a long moment, he truly seemed on the verge of touching you, of confirming with his own hands that you were real, alive beneath his reach, warm and breathing. Then something held him back. His fingers twitched, slowly curling into themselves, closing into a fist as his arm fell back to his side. "An attack against you is an attack against the Crown." The words came out rigid, almost rehearsed, as if he had grasped desperately for the first explanation that could conceal everything else. Even to his own ears, they sounded hollow.

You let out a slow breath. "There was a fight." Your voice was low, strained. You closed your eyes for a moment, as if the mere act of returning to that memory was nearly as painful as the wounds still crossing your body.

His face remained still, his eyebrows twitching sightly. "With whom?"

"With Prince Aemond." The name fell into the room with the weight of a blade. Jacaerys did not move. Only his jaw tightened visibly. "I managed to escape only because Grey Ghost was faster. But he pursued me, for hours." You paused to catch your breath, lowering your gaze slowly to your bandaged hands. "I had to hide for days before he finally gave up. If I had returned at once, he would have followed us to Dragonstone."

Jacaerys continued to look at you in silence. In his mind, the image of Vhagar pursuing Grey Ghost through the sky formed with stark clarity. It was enough to know Aemond to understand that he would not have abandoned the chase until one of them had fallen. The wounds that covered your body told the rest of the story better than any explanation. After several long moments, the prince drew a slow breath, forcing the tension tightening his chest to remain hidden behind his impassive expression. That wretched cunt of a kinslayer had not only killed his brother, now he meant to take you as well. At last, he gave a single nod. "You did what you had to." he said.

He remained still for another moment, studying each of your wounds as though he wished to imprint them upon his memory, then slowly turned toward the door. His hand reached the wood, but hesitated before grasping the handle. Without looking at you, he added in a voice that had returned to calm, though threaded with a weariness difficult to hide. "We will speak when you have regained your strength, until then, rest." He waited just long enough to be certain you had heard him, then left the room. The door closed slowly behind him with a soft sound of wood and iron. Only when he found himself in the empty corridor did he allow his eyes to close for a moment, drawing a deep breath.

For the first time in many days, the weight pressing upon his chest had grown slightly lighter. Not because the war had changed. Not because the danger had passed. But because he knew you were still alive.

In the days that followed, something in Jacaerys changed. At first, it was only small details, subtle enough to be mistaken for simple courtesy: a glance that lingered on you a moment longer than necessary whenever he thought you weren't paying attention, an unusual attentiveness to your movements, an almost involuntary need to make sure you weren't putting too much strain on your still-aching leg. No one else seemed to notice the change. He felt it every time you entered a room and his gaze sought you out before his mind was even aware of it, every time the sound of your footsteps made him lift his head automatically, interrupting whatever he had been doing. It was as if a part of him had begun to orient itself toward you instinctively, like the needle of a compass incapable of pointing anywhere but north. He constantly sought reassurance that you were well, that the pain was easing, that some color had returned to your face after the injury. And whenever his eyes finally met yours, an inexplicable relief would sweep through his chest, leaving him confused each time by the intensity with which his own heart reacted to something so simple.

That concern, however, did not remain confined to small gestures. Day after day, it turned into a constant presence. During your rehabilitation sessions, he was always there. He would sit at a distance, pretending to be absorbed in military reports or studying a map, but his attention was entirely fixed on you. Every time you clenched your teeth to endure the pain of a movement that was too sudden, his shoulders would stiffen unconsciously. When you faltered even slightly, he would rise before your balance was truly compromised, ready to catch you if needed. He rarely intervened, knowing how much you valued your independence and how much you hated feeling fragile, but the tension with which he followed your every movement was impossible to hide. And that same presence extended throughout the rest of the day. He would accompany you along the corridors of Dragonstone even when you insisted you could walk on your own, keeping just enough distance not to suffocate you, but never enough to lose sight of you. He was discreet and silent, constant as a shadow the sun could not erase. Even the servants had begun to grow accustomed to the sight: the prince who, with any excuse, always seemed to end up wherever you were.

Every day he found a new reason to knock on your door. Sometimes he claimed he needed to deliver documents that could not wait until morning; other times he said he wanted to report a decision made during council or inform you of developments along the coast. Occasionally, the excuse was to ask if you needed anything, whether the maester had already visited, to make sure your fever had not returned. The pretexts were so transparent that neither of you truly believed them. Least of all him.

Every time he left your room, he convinced himself it would be his last visit of the day, that he would finally stop looking for reasons to see you again. And yet, after only a few hours, the desire to see you returned with stubborn persistence. All it took was the memory of your smile, your voice, or the way you tilted your head slightly when listening, for another reason, another seemingly plausible justification, to form. And when he finally stepped out of your chamber, closing the door behind him, he was always left with that strange sense of incompleteness, as though he had forgotten something important inside. No amount of time spent with you ever seemed enough. It was an inexplicable emptiness that opened within him the moment he walked away, compelling him to long, almost unconsciously, for the next time he would see you.

That constancy frightened him. The more he tried to ignore it, the more evident it became. Jacaerys had always trusted in his discipline; he had been raised to control every emotion, to place duty above personal desires, to never allow his heart to interfere with his judgment. And yet now that certainty was wavering. He began to doubt himself, wondering when everything had changed and, more importantly, why. He tried to convince himself it was only a sense of responsibility. You had been seriously injured during a mission entrusted to you by his mother, it was natural to feel involved, to worry about your recovery, to make sure nothing worsened. He repeated it to himself like a prayer, seeking comfort in reason. But that explanation grew weaker with each passing day. Because responsibility did not explain the relief he felt when he saw you smile. It did not explain the tightness in his chest when he saw you in pain. And above all, it did not explain why his mind continued to seek you out even when he was occupied with matters of far greater importance.

He began to notice impulses that were increasingly difficult to control. He wanted to touch you. Every time you sat beside him, he felt an almost irresistible urge to reach for your hand, just to intertwine his fingers with yours and confirm whether your warmth was truly as reassuring as he imagined. When a loose strand of your hair slipped free and fell across your face, his fingers would move unconsciously, driven by a natural instinct to brush it aside with infinite gentleness so he could see you more clearly. The slightest accidental brush of your shoulders during a conversation, or the fleeting contact of your hands when passing an object, sent a sudden shiver through his entire body, leaving him motionless for a brief second. It was a new sensation, intense, almost destabilizing. To prevent himself from giving in to those impulses, he had begun, almost unconsciously, to clench his fists behind his back or cross his arms over his chest whenever you were too close, as though he could contain his desire simply by preventing his hands from moving. But the struggle grew harder each day, because the need to touch you never diminished, instead, it grew quietly within him.

Then came even more dangerous thoughts. He caught himself looking at your lips far more often than was appropriate. It would happen suddenly, in the middle of an ordinary conversation. You would be speaking, telling him something with that effortless naturalness he had grown so accustomed to, and he would realize too late that he had stopped listening, his gaze caught in the way your lips moved. They looked so soft, slightly parted when you smiled or said his name, and for no logical reason he found himself wondering what it would be like to kiss them. He would immediately try to banish the thought, almost frightened by its boldness, but it was already too late. The image had taken root. He told himself it was only curiosity, a fleeting whim destined to fade. And yet it returned each time with greater clarity. He even remembered the mornings at breakfast, when you would absentmindedly gather a drop of honey that had slipped from your bread with the tip of your finger and bring it to your lips in a simple, mesmerizing gesture. From that moment on, whenever honey appeared on the table, his mind would recreate that scene. He was inexplicably convinced that your lips must be as sweet as that honey, as soft as they appeared to his eyes.

That image began to haunt him at the most unexpected moments. It surfaced during council meetings, forcing him to reread the same reports over and over because he could not focus. It followed him while studying maps of the war, when his attention should have been on naval routes and enemy armies, yet his thoughts kept returning to you. It reached him even in flight, astride Vermax, when the wind should have cleared his mind of all distractions. All it took was closing his eyes for a moment, and your face would appear with startling clarity, your smile, your eyes, the sound of your laughter, the way you said his name. The more he tried to suppress those thoughts, the deeper they rooted themselves within him, spreading into every corner of his mind with relentless persistence. He was like a moth unable to resist the pull of light, fully aware of the danger yet irresistibly drawn to what might consume him. And the most unsettling truth was that, despite the fear it stirred in him, a part of him did not want to stop following it at all.

He had always believed he knew himself. He had grown up convinced that discipline was the most important quality a prince could possess, the foundation upon which to build every choice, every word, every action. From childhood, he had been taught to master fear before facing it, to never let emotions interfere with duty, to maintain control even when everything else seemed to collapse. He had learned to ride a dragon long before becoming a man, and over the years he had come to understand that true strength did not lie in imposing one's will through force, but in mastering one's deepest impulses. He had always believed the same applied to the heart. Emotions could exist, of course, but they had to remain in their place, silent, incapable of bending reason. He was certain he could do it. Certain he knew every corner of his soul, every limit of his will.

And yet you had shattered that certainty with ease, without doing anything extraordinary, without even realizing it. You had not tried to win him over, had not spoken words meant to seduce him. You had simply been yourself. And that had been enough. Your presence, your courage, the way you faced pain without letting it define you, the smile you still offered others despite your wounds. Without realizing it, his heart had ceased to belong to him. It had happened slowly, day by day, until the moment he understood he was no longer master of it at all.

He tried to fight that feeling with all the determination he possessed. He forced himself to treat you exactly as he always had, without allowing even the slightest change. He continued to address you in the same composed tone, to maintain a distance that felt more unbearable with each passing day, to avoid any gesture that might betray what he truly felt. Every morning, as soon as he opened his eyes, he told himself he would stop searching for you with his gaze, that he would spend at least one day without finding an excuse to come to you, without inventing new reasons to knock on your door. He tried to convince himself it was only a passing phase, a restlessness born from the fear of having nearly lost you. He clung to duty as though it were a shield capable of protecting him from his own feelings. War loomed over the realm. Each day brought new reports of the Greens' movements, new losses, new villages destroyed, new oaths broken. He was the eldest son of Rhaenyra Targaryen. His duty was to prepare to lead men into battle, to forge alliances, to make decisions that would shape the fate of the realm. He could not afford weakness. He repeated it to himself every day. Love, or whatever name could be given to the feeling that tightened his chest whenever he saw you, was a luxury that did not belong in his life. Not now. Not ever.

So he tried to suffocate it. He pushed it deep into the furthest corner of his heart, where he hoped time might slowly consume it until it disappeared. He convinced himself that if he ignored it long enough, it would fade into nothing more than a distant memory, a passing moment destined to close on its own. But the opposite happened.

Every day spent by your side made those feelings stronger, deeper, more deeply rooted. It was enough to see you cross the courtyard of Dragonstone for his breath to slow. It was enough to hear your voice among dozens of others for every other sound to fade away. It was no longer just attraction, nor simple affection. It was something far greater, something that had begun to intertwine itself with every thought he had of the future. And there came a moment when he had to face the truth. He would rather face certain death than live to see the day you left his life. The idea that you might live far from him, that one day your smile might be meant for someone else, that you might build a future in which he had no place, filled him with unbearable pain. It was a selfish thought, unreasonable, unworthy of a prince raised to put the realm before himself. And yet it was what he felt. The more he tried to deny it, the more he recognized its truth. He could no longer imagine his future without you in it. Every plan, every hope, every victory he envisioned suddenly seemed meaningless if you were not part of it. No, he would not endure losing you. Not after coming so close to watching you die.

It had been just under a week since your return to Dragonstone. The castle had slowly resumed its usual rhythm, but anyone who crossed your path could not fail to notice how your body still bore the marks of the battle. The deepest wounds had finally begun to close, but they left thin reddish lines along the skin of your face and neck, silent promises of scars that would remain. The bruises, now faded into shades of purple, yellow, and green, testified to the violence of the impact from your fall. Every breath drawn too deeply stirred the dull ache of your cracked ribs, forcing you to inhale with care. Your burned and torn shoulder protested with every sudden movement, reminding you in sharp flashes just how fragile your body still was.

The maesters insisted every day with stubborn persistence, prescribing absolute rest, compresses, potions, and weeks of inactivity. They repeated over and over that you had survived your clash with Vhagar by a miracle, and that forcing your recovery would risk undoing all the progress you had made. But their words seemed to bounce against an invisible wall. You had never been capable of remaining still while the world moved on without you. The thought of spending entire days shut inside your chamber, listening to tales of battles fought by others, felt far more unbearable than the pain itself. So that morning, when the sunlight barely filtered through the windows overlooking the sea, you were already on your feet.

You wore your riding leathers, heavier than usual, reinforced in the places where the material could better protect you in flight. With quick, efficient movements, you filled a sturdy leather bag with everything you deemed essential: spare clothes, rolls of clean bandages, a flask full of water, a small sharp-bladed knife, medicinal herbs, vials of painkillers, and anything else you might need far from the castle. Every bend pulled at your still-fresh wounds. Every movement made your body protest with sharper, more insistent pain. But you continued without so much as a complaint, gritting your teeth each time the pain threatened to slow you down.

When Jacaerys knocked lightly and stepped into your chamber, your heart lurched. He remained frozen in the doorway, unable to take even a single step forward. For a long, endless moment, he simply stared at the scene before him as though his mind refused to understand it. His gaze drifted slowly over your face, still marked by bruises, over the thin bandages visible beneath the collar of your tunic, over the stiffness with which you moved your injured shoulder as you tried to ignore the pain. Then he noticed the nearly full bag, the bandages, the knife, the medicines carefully arranged, and everything fell into place at once.

He felt his stomach tighten instantly. His heart dropped violently in his chest, stealing his breath. For a moment, he hoped he was mistaken, that there was another explanation, something simple his mind had not yet grasped. But deep down, he already knew the answer, and that certainty made everything far more terrifying.

"What are you doing?" he asked at last, breaking the silence. His voice sounded calm, almost controlled, but beneath the surface lay a tension so strong it made it just slightly lower than usual.

You did not pause for even a moment. You continued arranging the contents of the bag with precision, fastening one of the straps with a firm motion before answering, without even turning toward him. "I'm going on a mission."

Those three words were enough to make his blood run cold. His brows drew together immediately as he stepped closer, unable to take his eyes off the wounds that still marked your body. He stared at you in disbelief, struggling to understand how you could even consider mounting your dragon again when even breathing seemed to cost you such effort.

"You're not healed yet." His voice came out harsher than he intended, strained with concern he could not hide. "Your wounds will reopen. You can't go."

You placed more bandages into the bag with the same calm as before, without sparing him a glance. "Aemond burned a village last night." Your voice remained surprisingly steady. "After an attack like that, he'll have to rest. He's vulnerable. If we move now, we can strike."

Jacaerys felt something inside him snap the moment you said those last words. You spoke so naturally, as though the possibility of facing danger again carried no weight, as though the memory of your clash with Vhagar had already been pushed into some distant corner of your mind. He, on the other hand, could not forget anything. Every image of that day still haunted him with brutal clarity, even at night. He saw again the sky darkened by the vast wings of Grey Ghost, heard the deafening roar, relived the moment he had feared he would never find you alive again. All it took was closing his eyes for it to return with the same violence as before. And so, as he watched you calmly preparing that bag, a sudden anger rose within him.

It was not directed at you. It never could be. It was anger at the war that seemed to demand everything from you, at Aemond for reducing you to this state, at fate for continually placing you in the path of death, but most of all at your stubborn determination that drove you to sacrifice yourself again and again without granting any value to your own life. It felt unbearable. Before reason could stop him, his body had already moved.

He crossed the room in a few strides. The sound of his boots echoed across the stone floor, quick and decisive, filled with tension. When he reached you, his hand rose instinctively and closed firmly around your wrist. His fingers wrapped around your skin, stopping at once the motion with which you were placing the last bandage into the bag. It was not a violent grip, there was no intention to hurt you, no desire to impose himself by force. Quite the opposite. Even in that moment, he was careful with you. His hold was firm enough to stop you, secure enough to keep you there before him for at least a moment longer, but never painful. It was as though, if he let go of your wrist, he knew he would watch you walk out of that room and head straight toward a danger from which you might never return.

At last, you stopped what you were doing and slowly lifted your gaze to him. For a long moment, neither of you spoke. The silence that filled the room seemed almost tangible, broken only by the distant crash of waves against the cliffs of Dragonstone and the wind slipping through the half-open windows. Your eyes remained locked on each other, unable to look away. Jacaerys felt his breathing slow, while his heart continued to pound hard against his ribs. Jace's eyes were filled with conflicting emotions: fear, frustration, exasperation, and something far deeper that he could no longer hide. His fingers, still wrapped around your wrist, trembled slightly. It was a barely perceptible tremor, but enough to betray how fragile the control he was desperately trying to maintain truly was. The mere thought of letting you go had become unbearable.

"No." The word came out slowly, low, almost hoarse. He held your gaze without lowering it for even a moment, shaking his head faintly as though even imagining what you had just said was unacceptable. "You're not going anywhere." His voice grew firmer, more resolute, yet beneath that firmness something trembled that he could not conceal. "Not until those wounds are completely healed."

For the first time since you had known each other, those words did not belong to the heir prince issuing an order to one of the queen's riders. He was not speaking as the son of Rhaenyra Targaryen, nor as the warrior accustomed to giving commands during war councils. He was simply a man who had known the terror of losing you, and who was not willing to face it a second time. Everything he had tried to suppress over the past weeks now surged to the surface all at once, turning that simple sentence into a plea disguised as an order.

You stared at him for another moment, unable to fully understand what you were reading in his eyes. Then, without a word, you reacted on instinct, wrenching your wrist free from his grasp in a swift, abrupt motion. Jacaerys's fingers opened immediately, devoid of any intention to hold you by force, and remained suspended in the air for a few endless seconds, motionless, as though they had suddenly forgotten what they were meant to do next. For a moment, he stood there, his hand still slightly raised between you, staring at the empty space where your wrist had been. That simple gesture sent a sharp pain through his chest, far more painful than he would have ever admitted.

You looked at him, your eyes still burning with the stubbornness that had always defined you, but this time something else was mixed into it. Anger. A slow-building anger, born from a sense of inadequacy you had tried to ignore for far too long. You felt your heart pounding against your still-aching ribs as you struggled to keep your breathing steady despite the tension filling the room.

Since your return to Dragonstone, you had the constant impression that you could no longer take a single step without sensing his presence. Wherever you went, he was there. Always close enough to watch you with that concern you had come to find suffocating. Always ready to intervene at the slightest sign of strain, to notice even the smallest grimace of pain you tried in vain to hide. If you stepped into the courtyard, he would appear shortly after. If you attended a council meeting, he would find a place beside you. If you spent time in the library or on the castle terraces, your paths would inevitably cross. At first, you had thought it a coincidence. Then you began to realize it was not at all. That constant presence had begun to suffocate you. Every one of his attentions, every question about your condition, every concerned glance seemed to remind you constantly that you were injured, that your body was no longer what it had been. You, on the other hand, desperately wanted to forget. You wanted to feel free again, strong, capable of making your own choices. And he, without realizing it, seemed to be taking even that from you.

You inhaled slowly, trying to suppress the agitation that threatened to crack your voice. When you finally spoke, you kept your eyes fixed on his. "Why do you care so much?" you asked calmly, without looking away. "Ever since I came back, you've been constantly hovering over me. You're always in my room, always behind me, always ready to tell me what I can or cannot do. It's almost as if you're afraid to even let me walk on my own." You shook your head slowly, letting a loose strand of hair slip behind your ear, while with an almost unconscious gesture you pointed to the still-visible bruises on your face. "I'm not made of glass. I'm a dragonrider. I chose this life. This is my duty."

Your words struck him with the force of a blow straight to the chest. Jacaerys stood still, unable to respond. He lowered his gaze slightly for a moment, drawing in a deep breath in a futile attempt to regain the control slipping through his fingers like sand. He felt the blood pounding in his temples, his breathing growing heavier, while inside him weeks of fear, sleepless nights, restrained silence, and unspoken feelings surged all at once, pressing hard against the last fragile barrier he had built. He tried once more to suppress them. He tried to remind himself who he was, what he represented, what he was supposed to say. But that fragile calm held only for a few seconds before cracking completely under the weight of everything he could no longer contain.

"Your duty?" Jacaerys repeated, and for a moment disbelief, bitterness, and a kind of anger that had never been directed at you mingled in his voice.

Those words suddenly felt devoid of meaning. He had spoken them himself hundreds of times throughout his life. Duty came before everything, before desire, before fear, before happiness. He had built his entire existence upon that principle, sacrificing without hesitation any part of himself that might stand in the way of the destiny imposed upon him. And yet, hearing you use that same word to justify a mission that, in his eyes, amounted to a death sentence, stirred something dangerously close to rebellion within him.

Without even realizing it, he took a decisive step toward you, closing the distance between you. His gaze never left yours, as though he feared that if he looked away even for a second, you might truly walk out of that room and disappear forever. "Your duty is not to walk straight into certain death!" he burst out at last, his voice, usually controlled, filling the chamber with an intensity that made the silence itself tremble. The stone walls seemed to echo his words, amplifying the desperation behind them. "You can't just pack a bag, mount your dragon, and leave as if nothing happened! You've seen Aemond fight, and you're injured! You know what Vhagar is capable of, you'll never prevail in this state!" Each sentence came faster than the last, as though he feared he would not manage to say everything before it was too late. His chest rose and fell quickly now, his breath unable to keep pace with his racing heart. For a moment, he seemed to try to compose himself. He clenched his fists so tightly that his knuckles turned white, drew in a deep breath, and lowered his head slightly, as though speaking the next words required far more courage than facing any battle. He swallowed hard, his throat suddenly dry, before lifting his eyes to yours again. "If you face him alone..." His voice faltered slightly. "You will die."

Those words hung between you, and they were what finally shattered the fragile control you had been holding onto until that moment. You felt something explode inside you, an emotion that had been building for days. All the anger, all the fear you had refused to acknowledge since returning to Dragonstone, all the pain your body continued to inflict with every breath, all the guilt that gnawed at you every time you thought of the villages reduced to ash and the people you had failed to save, everything fused into a single sudden flame, so intense that it burned away every trace of restraint.

You looked at him, your eyes shining, filled with determination. You could feel your heart pounding so hard against your injured ribs that every breath was painful, yet you did not take a single step back. "Then I'll die trying to kill him!" you shouted with all the strength you still had left. Your voice trembled slightly under the weight of the emotions you were finally allowing to surface. "Every day we wait, more innocent people are burned alive! Every day Aemond flies over defenseless villages, and every day someone loses their family, their home, everything they had! If there's even the slightest chance I can stop it, I'll take it!" You drew in a strained breath, ignoring the sharp pain that shot through your chest. "I do not care what happens to me."

The world seemed to stop for Jacaerys. All that remained was the weight of those last words, echoing mercilessly in his mind. I don't care what happens to me. He had truly heard them. They were not a product of fear or imagination. You had said them with conviction. He felt the blood drain from his face, leaving him suddenly pale. His breath caught for a moment, as though a hand had closed around his throat. Until that instant, he had desperately tried to convince himself that his fear was exaggerated, that in the end he would find a way to protect you, that he would somehow stop you from putting yourself in danger again. But now he understood. The greatest danger was not Aemond. It was not Vhagar. It was you, with your willingness to sacrifice yourself without hesitation, with your complete indifference to your own survival. For the first time, the possibility of losing you ceased to be a distant fear and became something terrifyingly real.

He closed the short distance between you in two strides, and before you could step back or turn away, his hands came to rest on your shoulders. The contact was firm, but not rough. He held you with both hands as if afraid you might vanish before his eyes at any moment. He turned you fully toward him, forcing you to meet his gaze, and gave you a slight shake. You could feel the warmth of his hands through the thick fabric of your tunic, the faint tremor in his fingers, his unsteady breathing as he tried in vain to steady it. Your faces were now very close, so close that you could see every trace of tension on his features, every muscle tightened along his jaw, every emotion he had tried so hard to conceal.

"Do you even realize what you're saying?" he asked, his voice breaking. Nothing remained but a frightened man, watching the person he cared for most slipping away before his eyes. "Do you hear yourself?"

You looked at him without answering. For a few seconds, silence claimed the room again. Jacaerys drew in a deep breath, desperately searching for words that seemed to slip through his grasp every time he reached for them. He lowered his gaze slightly, unable to bear the weight of your eyes any longer. He seemed to be fighting something within himself, a war that had begun long before the one consuming the realm. His lips parted more than once, yet no sound came out.

"Have you... have you thought about me?"

You frowned slightly. For a moment, the meaning of his words escaped you entirely. You looked at him in confusion, unable to understand what he meant. "Why would I think about you?"

Those few words left him breathless. He went still. Every muscle in his body seemed to tense at once. His hands, still resting on your shoulders, gradually lost their strength, though they did not pull away. His lips pressed into a thin line as he slowly lowered his gaze, unable to meet your eyes any longer. His eyes fell, almost involuntarily, to your lips, not to avoid your gaze, but because they seemed the only point on your face close enough to give him the courage he so desperately needed. The silence that followed became almost unbearable. Neither of you moved. Beyond the windows, the wind continued to howl between the towers of Dragonstone, carrying with it the distant sounds of dragons in flight, while inside the room there remained only the uneven rhythm of your breathing.

When he finally lifted his eyes to you again, something had changed. The mask he had worn his entire life was gone. There was no longer the heir prince measuring every word, controlling every emotion, placing duty above himself. Standing before you was simply Jacaerys, a young man, terrified and vulnerable. "How did you..." he whispered, sadness lacing his voice, his eyes glistening faintly with unshed tears. "How did you not notice?"

The question hung between you for an endless moment. Then he drew in a slow breath, as though it were the last before stepping into the void. You furrowed your brows, your stomach fluttering with nerves. "What?"

"I love you."

The words left his lips barely above a whisper, so soft that the wind itself seemed ready to carry them away. And yet, the instant they were spoken, they carried the weight of something immense. They filled the entire room, erasing every distance, every misunderstanding, every silence that had stood between your hearts until that moment.

You remained completely still, as though time itself had stopped. You felt your heart skip a beat as your eyes widened in shock. Instinctively, you searched his gaze, almost hoping to find uncertainty there, a hint of a smile that might reveal it as a joke, some sign that those words had been spoken in anger or fear.

But you found none of that.

Only sincerity, so deep it stole your breath away.

Time seemed to come to a halt at the exact moment those three words left Jacaerys' lips. For a long moment, neither of you was able to add anything more. The room, which only moments before had been filled with raised voices, anger, and fear, was suddenly swallowed by a deep silence. Even the wind that blew beyond the open windows, threading its way through the ancient walls of Dragonstone, seemed to have grown more distant. You simply continued to look at each other, motionless, now separated by only a few inches. Your breaths intertwined in the space between you, slow and uneven, still broken by the emotion of the argument that had just ended. You kept staring at him, your eyes wide, unable to look away from a face you knew so well and that now, suddenly, seemed to reveal a completely different person. The surly prince you had known was gone, before you stood only a young man who had finally torn down every defense and placed his heart in your hands, without knowing whether it would be shattered.

It was Jacaerys who broke the silence. "Don't go, my love.”

His voice was barely more than a whisper, so soft it seemed almost afraid to break the fragility of that moment. There was no authority left in those words. No command. No imposition. All the firmness with which, only minutes before, he had tried to stop you from leaving had vanished, leaving space only for something infinitely more vulnerable. It was only a plea. A request spoken by someone who had finally stopped hiding behind his role, his title, the duty that had guided every moment of his life. He was asking you to stay not as a prince, but as a man. Not for the good of the realm, not for a military strategy, not because your wounds still needed time to heal. He was asking it for himself. Because by now he could no longer imagine a world in which you might disappear from his life.

Slowly, as if afraid that any sudden movement might shatter the delicate balance that had formed between you, he raised both hands. For a moment they hovered a few inches from your face. He hesitated. It was unusual for him, he had never been afraid to act. But this was not about fighting an enemy. This was about you. Only when he convinced himself that you would not pull away did he let his palms rest gently against your cheeks. The contact was incredibly light, almost hesitant. His hands were warm, but they trembled slightly against your skin. You could feel that faint tremor clearly, a tiny detail that, more than any words, revealed everything he had tried in vain to hide in the days before.

His fingers lightly traced the line of your cheeks, brushing with infinite care even the thin, still-reddened scars that time had not yet erased. He did it with the same attention one gives to something precious and fragile, as though he feared that even the slightest rough gesture might make you vanish before his eyes. He drew you a little closer to him, without forcing you. The movement was so slow that you would have had all the time in the world to step away, to retreat, to end that moment before it even began. Jacaerys seemed almost to expect your refusal. He watched you with an intensity that revealed all his uncertainty, as though his heart were beating so hard it kept him from even breathing properly. But you did not pull away. You remained there, motionless, allowing the distance between you to slowly disappear.

That was when his lips met yours.

The kiss began slowly, as if even he could hardly believe he had found the courage to close the distance he had respected for so long. It was a kiss that spoke far more than words ever could. Within that gesture was all the fear he had carried through nights spent imagining you lost to him. There was the relief of knowing you were still there before him. You felt the slight tremor of his lips against yours, the same tremor that still ran through his hands as they gently held your face. It was a warm, shy contact, sweet as candy.

After a few moments, he pulled back just enough to rest his forehead gently against yours. He stayed there, eyes closed, breathing deeply in a futile attempt to calm the heart that seemed ready to burst from his chest. Your foreheads remained pressed together, your noses brushing lightly, and his lips seemed reluctant to leave yours, chasing them gently. For a long moment, he said nothing. He breathed in your scent slowly, as though trying to etch it into his memory, almost afraid he might forget it.

When he slowly opened his eyes again, he looked at you with desperation. "Please, ñuha jorrāelagon..." he whispered, his voice now completely broken. "Don't go."

Those words came out with a vulnerability you had never seen him show to anyone. Almost without realizing it, he sought your lips again, kissing you a second time with the same softness, but with a more evident hunger. The kiss lasted slightly longer than the first, as if every moment spent so close to you helped calm, at least in part, the chaos stirring in his heart.

"Please..." he murmured again, his breath breaking against your lips.

When the silence continued to offer him no answer, fear immediately tightened around his chest once more. He drew you a little closer with extreme gentleness, never holding you tightly enough to take away your choice. There was an almost obsessive care in every movement, as though he feared even an embrace too strong might hurt you. He kissed you again, with the same slowness, savoring every moment as if it were the most precious of his life. Then again, and again, and again. Each time his lips left yours, his eyes immediately searched for yours, desperately hoping to find in them an answer that still did not come. He kept whispering barely audible pleas, small please’s, while his voice betrayed his fear.

He was desperate, aching to feel your lips once more, longing to hold you and plead into your ear. Every fiber of his being urged him to keep you, to convince you to stay, to protect you from a fate that had already taken too much from his family. He had already seen the pain Aemond was capable of inflicting. He had already known the emptiness left by the loss of a brother, an absence that could never be filled. He did not want, he could not, lose you to the same man who had taken his brother from him. If necessary, he would challenge anyone, cross the sea, bend the sky itself to prevent it. He would not allow your blood to be spilled as so many others had been. He would not endure another loss.

His pretty girl.

At last, the weight of the stubbornness you had carried on your shoulders for days seemed to slowly melt away. You let out the breath you hadn't realized you had been holding, as the tension gradually left your body. You lifted your chin slightly until your forehead rested gently against his. You closed your eyes. "I won't go."

Jacaerys drew in a deep breath, as though until that moment he had been living without air, his head beneath water. He felt his chest finally fill with a full, free breath, as all the tension that had built over the past days slowly dissolved. His shoulders relaxed, his fingers stopped trembling, and a small smile, disbelieving and full of relief, appeared on his face.

He remained looking at you for a long time in silence, as though he wanted to memorize every detail of your face. The curve of your lips, the light in your eyes, the small scars that time might one day soften but that, to him, would never diminish your beauty. He brushed his forehead against yours once more, closing his eyes for a moment and breathing in the scent he loved so much, treasuring that instant as something irreplaceable. Only then did he seek your lips again, drawing you into one last slow, silent kiss.

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