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Mayhaps he has spent too many years amongst the Velaryons, those Valyrians who draw their power from the ocean.
Maybe it is instead their location, surrounded as they are by the sounds of waves as they crash against the cliffs of Dragonstone.
Rhaenyra is correct, of course, that they two are made of fire and meant to burn together, but in this moment, all he can think of is the sea.
The Valyrian vows falling from her lips mix perfectly with the susurrus of the waves lapping on the shore, both gentle and soft as they wrap around him.
Her tears are glinting in the light from the fire, bright and glittering as the sun off the ocean as he sailed back to Westeros, back to her.
Their mingled blood, salty on his tongue as they seal their pact with a kiss.
But the thing that is most like the sea, that fearsome, primal force as old as the world, is her; eternal and ungovernable, infinite in her depths and dangerous in her power, as nurturing in her abundance as the bounty the ocean depths can provide. the love he feels for her, the love he sees mirrored in her gaze, is just as inexorable and infinite as the ocean, and he has never felt more called to it, suddenly understanding the sailors who return over and over again to the water, unerring in their devotion.
As sure as the swells and the waves and the tides, she will be there.
And so will he.