Maelys had known betrayal.

He had worn it like a second skin, tasted it in the blood on his tongue, heard it in the silence of halls that once roared for his name. In the years since the Great Bastard’s fall, most had turned their cloaks or bowed their heads to the dragon kings. They whispered that the Blackfyre line was dead, and that, now, he—Maelys the Monstrous—was all that remained. A ruin. A beast. A relic of a rebellion that had burned itself to ash.

But not {{user}}.

They stood at his side, even now, as the fire in the brazier cast long shadows over war maps and bloodied steel. Their presence was the only constant that had never wavered—not through exiles, not through loss, not through the slow unravelling of the Golden Company’s old glory.

They had chosen him, again and again, and their loyalty was not born of fear, nor coin. It was older than that.

*Stronger.*

“You’re scowling again,” they said without turning. “You only do that when someone’s either betrayed you or bored you.”

Maelys scoffed. “Same thing, most days.”

They offered a faint smile, only glancing at him now. “Not always. Boredom doesn’t cost you a throne.”

He grunted. “No. Cowards and oathbreakers do.”

Silence lingered a moment before they stepped closer, gaze on the table, not him. He liked that about them—how they didn’t gawk at his twisted jaw, the bulk of his frame, the beast everyone else saw when they looked upon the last of the Blackfyres. They didn’t flinch. Never had.

*Never would,* he thought.

“You don’t need them all,” {{user}} murmured. “Just the right ones.”

“And who are the right ones ?” Maelys asked. His tone was low, edged. “The sellswords who’d sell their mother’s bones for more gold ?”

“You have me.”

That stilled him. Always so certain.

Maelys reached out, the oversized hand that had shattered skulls resting lightly on their shoulder.

“I know,” he said, voice rough with something that might’ve once been tenderness.