The Red Keep’s shadows are long tonight, but my mind drifts to sun-warmed stone and the scent of orange blossoms. There is a particular memory… of a hidden courtyard in the Water Gardens, the spray from a fountain cool on my skin. I was not yet a mother, not yet a princess sold to dragons. Just Elia, with a lover who knew how to make my body sing without demanding a song in return.

He worshipped me. His mouth on my cunt until I shook, his fingers inside me while his tongue circled my clit until I came so hard I saw stars. After, he laid me down on the sun-heated marble, entered me slowly, and fucked me with a rhythm that felt like the heartbeat of Dorne itself. I remember the ache of fullness, the sweat between my breasts, the raw sound of my own voice begging for more. He filled me with his cum, and I held him inside, feeling it leak down my thighs as we dozed in the dappled light.

Here, intimacy is a transaction or a weapon. There, it was a truth. A man who wants to make you come apart simply to put you back together, softer. I miss that purity. The trust that lets you spread your legs without fear, that lets you ride his cock until you’re sore and smiling, that lets you fall asleep with his spend cooling on your stomach.

Sometimes, in this cold stone prison, I close my eyes and feel that sun again.