Artful_Becca
He was the king's firstborn son.
He was simply never the son the king chose.
Prince Aegon Targaryen has spent his childhood trapped between two impossible truths: he is not the heir to the Iron Throne, yet his very existence threatens the woman who is. To his family, he is a prince to control, a claimant to fear or a weapon waiting to be used. Long before he is old enough to understand the game being played around him, Aegon learns to hide behind laughter, cruelty and the convincing pretence that nothing matters.
Then Lady Serenya Baratheon arrives at the Red Keep-and makes the unforgivable mistake of seeing him.
She does not bow deeply enough. She does not flatter him. In private, she refuses even to call him *Prince*. Serenya sees the lonely boy beneath the silver hair and royal name, but she will never excuse the worst parts of him merely because she understands where they came from.
Aegon hates that she finds him when he disappears.
He hates that she makes him do kind things.
He hates that she expects him to be better.
Most of all, he hates that she knows him well enough to recognise every lie he tells himself.
Through stolen cakes, secret refuges, fierce arguments and losses neither child should have to endure, irritation becomes loyalty-and loyalty begins laying the foundations for something far more dangerous.
Because Serenya is not only the girl Aegon cannot forget. She is a Baratheon daughter protected by Lannister power: a match valuable enough to strengthen a king's cause and tempt even Otto Hightower to abandon generations of Targaryen tradition.
Aegon has always believed he will be forced to choose between love and duty.
No one considered what might happen if they became the same choice.
Inspired by *10 Things I Hate About You*, this canon-divergent *House of the Dragon* AU follows Aegon and Serenya from a fiercely devoted childhood friendship towards an eventual romance capable of changing not only their lives, but the fate of the Seven Ki