Fire Made Flesh

As the eldest grandchild of King Viserys I and the firstborn son of the named heir to the Iron Throne, Jacaerys Velaryon had been raised beneath the weight of expectation. From the moment of his birth, the realm had looked to him as the future of his mother's claim, measuring his every step, weighing his every word, and scrutinizing every feature in search of proof for the rumors that followed him.

Duty became as familiar to him as breathing. He carried himself with discipline, speaking only after careful thought and striving each day to become the prince the realm refused to see.

Yet no matter how diligently he carried his burdens, the whispers always found their way back to him.

His younger sister needed only to step into the room for those same tongues to sing praises instead.

Daena, born two years after him, bore the silver-gold hair and blue eyes of their mother's Valyrian blood. While Jacaerys often found himself measured against expectations he could never satisfy, Daena was rarely subjected to the same scrutiny. Where Jacaerys had spent his childhood trying to prove himself worthy, Daena seemed to inspire affection as naturally as drawing breath.

It was never his sister he resented, but the unmistakable ease with which the realm accepted her. There were moments, fleeting and shameful, when he found himself wondering what it might have been like to carry her face instead of his own.

He found his truest freedom not within the walls of court, but in the skies above Dragonstone. There, rules his young green dragon, Vermax, the prince moved with a confidence untouched by courtly whispers. Whenever they took to the air, Jacaerys seemed, for a moment, unburdened by the doubts of the realm below.

But peace never lingered for long.

No matter how high he flew, there was one burden the skies could never carry away.

"You left me."

The accusation lingered in his memory.

It was a promise broken long before the realm itself began to burn beyond saving.