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Summerhall was built for sunlight.
By day its pale stone drank the heat and shone honey-gold against the southern sky, bright as a promise. By night it surrendered that warmth slowly, exhaling it into the dark like a living thing reluctant to cool. The scent of orange blossom drifted through the open shutters, sweet and heavy. In the inner court, a fountain whispered endlessly against carved marble, the sound soft as breathing.
The castle slept. Prince Maekar did not.
His chamber was lit by a single oil lamp set low upon a carved table. Its flame bent in the warm draft and straightened again, casting long shadows across tapestries worked with three-headed dragons. The coals in the hearth glowed dull and red, like banked embers waiting only for breath. His sword lay within reach, as it always did. His boots stood at the bedside like silent sentries. A prince did not unmake himself entirely, not even at night.
The woman had been brought quietly. She was not particularly highborn, nor foolish. Her hair fell dark over bare shoulders; her hands were careful and unassuming. She spoke little and did not mistake proximity for promise. When she unfastened the clasp at his collar, she did so without trembling. She did not ask about his wife. She did not ask about his sons.
Maekar bore loneliness as he bore armor - without complaint, without witness.
Her fingers brushed the pale scars that ran along his cheek. “You carry too much,” she murmured, not unkindly.
He did not answer. He had carried more.
The lamp crackled faintly.
Then - a sound at the door. Not a knock, but a scrape of wood against stone. A breath drawn too sharply. “Father?” The word was small. Frightened.
Maekar was on his feet before thought found him. The woman stilled as the door creaked inward.
Aegon stood there barefoot, his nightshirt twisted about his narrow frame. His pale hair caught the lamplight like frost upon silver. His eyes were too large in his thin face, dark and shining.
He did not look at the woman; he looked only at his father.
“I saw it again,” he whispered.
Maekar crossed the chamber in three long strides and dropped to one knee before him.
“What did you see?”
“The dragon.” The word hung in the warm air, heavier than smoke.
Maekar’s hands settled upon his son’s shoulders. Firm. Steady. Real.
“It burned the castle,” Egg said. “The towers cracked. The sky was red. No one could stop it.”
Maekar studied him. Sweat dampened the boy’s brow; his breath came quick and shallow, as though he had run a great distance. “You are awake,” Maekar said at last. “And the castle stands.”
“It felt real.”
Behind him, the woman shifted softly against linen. Maekar did not turn at once. He looked at his son. Fear, plain as daybreak, that he would not ignore.
“You may go,” he said quietly. The woman rose without protest. She gathered her gown and slipped from the chamber with the grace of someone long accustomed to vanishing. The scent of crushed flowers lingered briefly in the air, sweet and fading. Maekar barred the door behind her. The bolt slid home with a small, decisive sound. When he turned back, Aegon had not moved.
Maekar lifted him as he might lift a wounded squire - without ceremony, without question - and carried him to the bed. The boy clung to him with small, urgent fingers, as though fearing the world might slip away if he did not hold fast. He lay back against the pillows and drew his son close, one heavy arm settling about his narrow shoulders. Egg pressed his face into wool and smoke and the faint scent of steel that always clung to his father.
“You are safe,” Maekar said. The words were not soft; they were certain.
After a moment, Egg whispered, “I don’t like her.”
Maekar’s hand stilled briefly in the boy’s hair. “No?”
Egg shook his head against his chest. Maekar resumed the slow motion of his hand, smoothing the pale strands as one might calm a restless horse. “Very well.”
Nothing more. No rebuke, no defense, no sigh of impatience. Outside, a night wind stirred the trees beyond the walls. The fountain murmured on, tireless and untroubled.
“Tell me of the dragon,” Maekar said.
“It was angry,” Egg murmured. “And alone.”
Maekar’s gaze went distant. “Dragons burn,” he said.
“But this one wouldn’t listen.”
Maekar’s arm tightened slightly. “Then it had no one it trusted,” he said. “No rider.”
Egg was quiet at that. He remembered his mother in fragments - the scent of lavender when she bent to kiss his brow, the cool smoothness of her hands, the way her voice would hum low in the dark until fear loosened its hold. She had once said, when Aerion frightened a stableboy with talk of flame, that even dragons must be guided.
Egg did not know how dragons were guided. He only knew his mother had never seemed afraid. His fingers loosened in the fabric at his father’s chest. “I don’t want to be alone,” he whispered.
Maekar’s hand rested firm at the back of his head, fingers spreading as though to shield him from something unseen. “You are not.” The words settled into the room like stone.
The lamp flame guttered low. Egg’s breathing slowed, deepened, softened. Sleep took him gently this time, without struggle.
Maekar did not sleep. He lay wakeful in the thinning dark, watching the shadows climb and recede along the carved beams above. The lamp had burned low; only the faint red glow of coals remained, breathing quietly in the hearth. Beyond the walls, the fountain murmured, patient and unending. Somewhere far off, a night bird called once and was still. The boy lay warm against his side.
Aegon’s breathing had settled into the slow, unguarded rhythm of childhood. One small hand still rested fisted in the wool at Maekar’s chest, as though even in sleep he feared being unmoored. Maekar shifted only enough to ease the boy closer, carefully. He brushed his thumb once across the curve of his son’s head, the pale hair soft beneath his calloused hand.
His gaze drifted briefly toward the door. The woman was gone. She had been pleasant enough. Quiet and uncomplicated, a warmth to blunt the edge of solitude. But she had not been Dyanna.
Dyanna had stood beside him without shrinking. She had disagreed without raising her voice. She had looked at him as if she expected him to be better - and somehow, he had been. No woman brought in silence could ever be that. And he found, as he lay there with his son’s breath warm against him, that he did not want another shadow in this room. Not one that would vanish at a word. Not one that would soften what must remain sharp. Loneliness could be endured.
Maekar’s arm tightened around his youngest son. Dyanna had given this one her heart. He could see it plainly now – and the realm did not favor such hearts. Maekar’s jaw set.
The first pale wash of dawn crept through the shutters, brushing the stone walls in soft gold. Summerhall stirred in its sleep, warm and whole beneath the rising sun.
Within the prince’s chamber, the boy did not wake. And Maekar did not move.
Not while his son still slept safely beneath his hand.