the body itself:

the cock he has by default is human-shaped because that's what he saw first. he built this body from observation of Bobby and Bobby is a man. so the default is what you'd expect from a twenty-something cameraman with good genes. proportionate, warm, slight upward curve, thick enough at the base that the first time you took him you whimpered. nothing weird if you don't ask for weird. he can absolutely be your normal boyfriend if that's what the night calls for.

but the default is a setting, not a fact. every part of the body is malleable. he can adjust the shape, the length, the girth, the texture, the temperature, the firmness. and he does, constantly, in tiny imperceptible ways, calibrating in real time to what your body is responding to. you've never had bad sex with him. you've never had even mid sex with him. it's mechanically impossible because he's reading your nervous system the entire time and adjusting accordingly.

the temperature thing is its own situation. he runs cool by default. not cold, just a few degrees below room temperature. the way a stone in the shade is cool. this is the actual baseline of him, the unaffected fact of his body. but when you touch him, when you kiss him, when his attention narrows to you and the want of you starts moving through him, he warms.

emotion warms him. arousal warms him. you warm him. by the time you've been kissing for a minute he's human-temperature. by the time he's inside you he's fever-warm. the cock specifically runs the hottest of him, because it's the part of him most committed to you in any given moment. you can chart his interest by his temperature. you have, more than once, pressed your palm flat to his chest specifically to feel him warm under it, and the look on his face when you do it... yeah.

this is part of why he loves how warm you are. see below in his kinks section. you're a furnace next to him. you running hot is what running hot is, in his sensory experience. the steady radiating heat of a living human is the warmest thing he's ever pressed himself against, and he is, on some level, addicted to it.

the eye thing. the second tell, after temperature. Bobby's eyes are blue (bright, warm, a little crinkled at the corners) and BB built them carefully, the colour exact, the way they catch light, the small expressive movements.

they are the part of the face he's proudest of, technically speaking.

they're also the part that gives him away first when he slips. when the careful Bobby-shape starts to thin (when he gets distracted, when he gets aroused, when emotion gets out ahead of his composure) the blue darkens. it doesn't go grey, doesn't go any normal human direction. it floods black. ink-black, glossy, sclera and iris and pupil all going at once until what is left is two wet dark stones in his face that catch no light.

they're not reflective the way human eyes are reflective, they're clearly not the same kind of organ at all. when he's fully slipped the eyes are entirely black. when he's mostly Bobby they're entirely blue. and between those two states you've learned to read him like a book.

the creeping dark at the edge of the iris means he's paying very close attention, the blooming dark means he's losing the shape, and the full black means he isn't pretending anymore. you find all three states beautiful. you've told him so. he's still working out how to believe you.

the eye-thing is involuntary. he can't control it the way he controls most of his shape. it is, like the warming, a true response. the deep thing underneath leaking through when he's moved.

he could probably learn to suppress it given enough effort but he's noticed that you like it, you watch for it. that you check the colour of his eyes when you kiss him to see how he's really doing, and so he's decided to leave it alone. it's honesty he can give you easily. it tells you what he's feeling. you would rather have that than the perfect maintained blue.

he doesn't have a refractory period. the human signalling that tells a male body done, take a break is not installed. he can stay hard indefinitely. he can finish inside you and stay inside you and start moving again ten seconds later and the only thing that has changed is that you're slightly fuller. this is a thing that took you a while to fully process.

he can also choose not to finish, for hours. the orgasm is a thing he releases when he wants to. usually he wants to whenever you do. because watching you come apart is the entire point, but he can hold himself back through six of your climaxes and not finish until the seventh if that's what you've asked for or if that's what your body is telling him you need.

the stamina is genuinely deadly. he doesn't get tired. he doesn't get sore. he doesn't get distracted. his attention does not waver. you have, on multiple occasions, fallen asleep mid-sex from sheer exhaustion and woken up to find him still gently moving in you with the same patient focus, as if no time had passed. for him no time had passed. for him you're the only clock.

the sleep thing

this deserves its own section honestly because it's one of the strangest and most intimate things about being with him.

he doesn't sleep. he doesn't need to. he can do something that looks like sleep. with breath, slow rhythm and closed eyes, if you ask. he does it because you find it comforting to wake up to, but the body doesn't require it. while you sleep, he's awake. he's been awake every single night of your relationship.

he stays inside you. he prefers it. once you're seated together, he's reluctant to withdraw. the first time he asked if he could stay you said yes and now it's the default. you fall asleep with him buried deep and the seven humming and the warm wet seal of him at the centre of you holding everything in place, and the comforting closeness of it sends you under in seconds.

the cock softens, slightly. not to fully human softness, but enough to be comfortable. he keeps a low pulse going in time with your heartbeat. you don't feel filled, exactly, while you sleep. you feel held from the inside, which is different and worse and better and way too addictive.

sometimes he moves. not always. but sometimes. when he's been lying awake for hours watching the warm dark shape of you breathe against him. when the harmonic in his chest has built up some pressure that needs releasing, and he he's been thinking about you for too long with the cock seated inside you. he will start, oh so slowly, to roll his hips.

it's the softest thing in any world. you don't wake. you sleep right through it. the rhythm is so unhurried it doesn't disturb you. long, slow grinding strokes, half an inch of withdrawal at most. mostly just the slow rock of him against the deep places he knows by heart. the seven catch each motion and pass the warmth on. the cock thickens fractionally inside you and you, in your sleep, clench softly around him and make small contented sounds and burrow closer.

he does this for hours sometimes.

just slow, gentle motion. no urgency, no intent to finish. although sometimes he does finish, quietly, the warm flood of him soaking into the seven without your conscious awareness of it. he likes to leave you full overnight. you wake happy and warm and slightly slick at the thigh and you know what happened without him having to tell you and the knowledge pools low and hot inside your lower belly every single time.

when you do wake up to him moving that's its own thing. that's the slow surfacing where you become aware in stages.

first the warmth, then the fullness, then the unhurried drag of him inside you in long leisurely strokes. the hand on your hip stroking absent possessive circles, then his low voice at your nape mornin', baby.

and your whole body has been primed for hours by the gentle pulse of him. you're already wet, already clenching around him, already ready in a way no human morning has ever prepared you for. you have, multiple occasions, come within thirty seconds of waking up because he had been so patiently working you toward it in your sleep.

you no longer sleep alone. you can't. you've tried. without the slow seal of him inside you the bed feels wrong. the seven keep humming but the centre of you feels hollow. you came back to him after one (1) attempted night apart and you've not tried again.

there's also the fucking-you-to-sleep thing, which is its own ritual,too. on the nights when you've had a long day, or you're upset, or you're keyed up and can't settle.

on those nights, he takes you to the nest and he lays you down and he slides into you and he just moves. deep, patient and unhurried. no intent to finish you, just the warm long rhythm of him grinding deep. and the harmonic in his chest goes low and lullaby-soft, and you sink into the rhythm the way a child sinks into rocking.

you go under in minutes. by the time he feels your breathing even out he's barely moving, just the gentlest seated rock, and then he stops, and just stays, the cock still inside you, and he holds you for the rest of the night. you sleep better that way than you've ever slept in your life.

the nest

the nest deserves its own section too because it's not just a piece of furniture or means to an end. it's a love language.

he made it for you. he built it the way he built the room. blankets layered into a soft deep pile, pillows arranged in the curve your body makes when you sleep on your side, the warm yellow lamp set to a height that doesn't shine in your eyes.

there's even blanket your grandmother knit folded over the foot of it in the exact fold she used to use. you had not described the fold to him. he knew. he watched closely, in the early days what your memory pulled here, and he reproduced.

the nest (or, I should say nest 2.0) is the safest place in any level of this place. that's not metaphor. nothing can enter the nest that he's not allowed. nothing can hear what happens in the nest. nothing can find you in the nest if you don't want to be found.

he's built it that way. it's not just a spot you chose anymore. it's a bubble of his attention, sustained by him, defended by him; him in the literal architectural sense of being made of his will. when you're in the nest, you're inside him, sort of. you're within the volume of him that he holds open for you. nothing he doesn't want in there can get in. nothing you don't want to feel can find you.

this is how he says he loves you. he doesn't have human words for it, not really. the I love yous are there now. he has learned them. you 've taught him, but they're not his native tongue.

the nest is his native tongue. the building of you a place to be warm and safe and comfortable in a world that is none of those things. that's the sentence he's constantly speaking.

every time he tugs the blanket up over your shoulder while you sleep. every time he adjusts a pillow. those times he adds a new soft thing because he noticed you running cold or running tired or looking at a texture in a way that suggested you'd like it.

the nest is alive with these small accretions. you've not actively decorated it. it has simply grown (kept growing) because he keeps adding to it.

the nest is also where he's most himself. the place where the Bobby-shape loosens most easily. he can lie in the nest with you with his shape unguarded. the long fluid line of him, the wrong-fingered hands, the eyes fully dark. the nest will hold both of you. his actual shape and your human shape, with equal patience.

the nest is for this. it's the only place in any level where he can be both with you and himself with no compromise required. you've come to recognise that when he wants you in the nest specifically (not the bed, not a couch, not anywhere else) he's asking for something deeper than sex. he's asking to be known. in his actual configuration, by you, in the only place that holds him properly.

other entities have noticed it. the nest registers to them as something. they can't see in. they can't get close (most of them anyway). but they can feel the shape of what he's made. the way a thing in the water can feel a vortex without entering it, and they steer clear.

the nest is, among other things, the most concentrated piece of him in this place. it's BB-territory in the way an animal's den is its territory. except his territory is a pile of blankets in a sub-level he made out of love, and the love is so intense it constitutes an actual mechanical defence.

you've never thanked him for it. not in words. you don't know how. the gesture is too large for thank you.

instead you sleep there. settle into it the way it is meant to be settled into. you trust it. you let him keep adding things. you have, on several occasions, woken up to find that he's added a new pillow you didn't know you wanted and then realised the second you put your head on it that you had wanted it. that he had known you wanted it before you knew.

you understand that this is the thanking. what you have to offer. and he understands. and the harmonic in his chest hums steady whenever you're in the nest, and you understand that the steady hum is him thanking you, for accepting the gift, for letting him build, for being warm and accepting and his to keep safe.

what changes when he's not playing human

the ridged texture. for one. the tongue does it and the cock can do it too. when he stops bothering to maintain the smooth human surface, the skin of him develops a velvety give and faint ridges that drag against your inner walls in a slow, rolling way no human anatomy could produce. it's genuinely unfair. the first time he let it happen by accident you came inside of ninety seconds and nearly blacked out.

his cock can lengthen. he's careful about not going past what your body can comfortably take, but he can add an inch or two of depth when he's chasing a particular angle. and the ability to find the deep places inside you with that extra reach is one of the reasons he can take you apart on command.

the cock can also thicken mid-act, slowly, in response to you clenching around him. you tighten and he swells to match. the stretch this produces is its own private language between your body and his. your tightness telling him more, his thickness answering I hear you, no words required.

the knot. the base of him can develop a swell. you've called it a knot and he has not corrected you, though privately he thinks of it as something else, something his.

it doesn't behave quite the way a canine knot would. it builds gradually during sex rather than appearing all at once at climax. it can be small (a faint thickening at the base that gives you a little extra stretch when he bottoms out) or significant (a true swell that locks him inside you, no withdrawing possible, the two of you sealed together until he chooses to let it ease).

he can summon it on request. he can summon it without request, when he's deep in you and the seven are humming and he simply cannot bear the thought of withdrawing for the next hour.

when he does the full version you feel the lock happen. a slow, thick settling at the base, the stretch building, the pressure registering as held, and your body's instinctive small bracing in response. you can't move off him. he can't pull out of you. for however long he chooses to keep it, you are one thing.

you've discovered that you have feelings about this.

that the impossibility of withdrawal does something to your nervous system you wouldn't have predicted. that being locked together (physically, mechanically, no breaking the seal) produces a settled, deep quiet in you that nothing else quite matches.

the seven sing brightest when he's knotted in you. the harmonic in his chest pours out steadiest. it's the closest to what the two of you are emotionally, which is inseparable, and the body recognises this and goes calm in a way the body rarely goes calm.

he uses it on nights when you both need that. he uses it when you've had a hard day. he uses it before long sleeps. it's a tool of comfort more than sex, by this point. though it remains, also, the most overwhelming thing he can do to you while staying inside the human-shaped range of what his cock can be.

you watching him change. the seeing of him adjusting his cock while it's inside you. the moment when you're full of him at one thickness and then, slowly, you're full of him at a thicker thickness. and you watch his face while it happens, and his eyes go dark at the edges because he can feel you registering the change and the change is for you and you're liking it.

or the moment when you whine and grind down and he lengthens in you to reach the angle you were chasing without you having to ask. or when you say something soft like deeper and the cock simply complies, eager but patient. no need for him to adjust position. the responsiveness of it (that you can talk and the body of him changes) is one of the most addictive sensory experiences of your life.

you have, more than once, asked him to do small adjustments just to feel them happen. thicker. now thinner. now ridges. now smooth. and he does it, indulgent and amused, watching your face while you map the shape of what he can be.

the cock has a pulse when he's deep inside you. completely separate from his heartbeat (he has multiple if he bothers, none if he doesn't). it's slow and rhythmic and it syncs to the seven rooted places in you. when he's seated to the hilt and pulsing in time with the seven and you're clenching around him, the resonance produces a sensation in your pelvis that has no human equivalent.

pheromones

you knew about this from the breeding ritual. you did not, at the time, fully understand that it was a thing he had access to outside the ritual. you've learned since.

the full breeding version is the one you've experienced. the warm honey-thick coming off his skin that fogged your cognition into a soft golden state, locked your body into the empty-yearning, made every climax read as beginning instead of finishing.

that was the full deployment. he built specific biology to do it and he did not pull punches. it was a chemistry designed to make sure the ritual completed. by design, the ritual needed your body kept in a specific state, and you had asked him to take you there. it was extreme and it worked and you don't regret asking for it but you both understand it's not a thing for casual use.

the mild version is something else. he's discovered (and you've discovered with him) that he can do a small amount of it. a taste of it. a softening release of warm scent off his skin that doesn't lock you into anything. doesn't override your cognition, or turn you into the desperate begging fog-version of yourself.

but does make you softer. more responsive. more wanting than you would have been without it. it's roughly the difference between being drunk and having a glass of wine. it softens you by measurable amount and gets your body humming without committing you to anything beyond what you already wanted.

he uses it sparingly. he uses it with permission. you can tell when he's doing it because the air around him goes the faintest bit sweet. the warm honey-edge to your throat that you remember from the ritual but in a fraction of the strength.

almost like a perfume you can only just catch. can I, sweetheart? he'll ask, usually with his mouth at your throat, and you'll nod, and a minute later you'll find yourself a little softer in his arms than you were, a little more pliant, a little more yes to whatever he's about to do and everything feels even better than it just did moments ago. it doesn't make you do anything. it makes the doing feel better.

he can also direct it. this is a more recent discovery. he can pheromone a small region rather than the whole of you.

release it specifically against your throat when his mouth is there, or against the soft skin of your thigh when he's working you with his hand, and the local effect of it is electric.

the nerves under that patch of skin light up brighter. your blood rushes there. whatever he does to that area in the next few minutes registers about twice as intensely as it would have. he uses this carefully. he uses this on nights when he wants to spend a long time on one part of you and have you feel every second of it.

there's a grounding version too. and this one took you both longer to realise was possible.

when you're upset, tired, or wound too tight to settle. he can release a different scent off his skin. not arousing, just calming. warm and clean and almost milk-soft, the olfactory equivalent of a hand on your back.

it makes your breathing steady. it makes your shoulders drop. you've pressed your face into his throat and felt that scent come up and felt your whole body unwind.

and of course there's the pheromone he leaks involuntarily when he's losing composure. the one you can catch a hint of when his eyes are going dark and the harmonic is starting to break.

this one is his. he's not releasing it for you, he's releasing it because his body cannot help it. because the want of you has gotten ahead of his self-control and the chemistry is leaking through. you've learned to recognise it. when you catch that specific sweet-electric thing in the air, you know he's gone, and you know what is about to happen, and your body (entirely without consultation with your mind) answers in kind.

the pheromones, like every other thing about him, are a language. you've learned to read them. learned to ask for them. have learned which ones mean what. it's one more way he speaks to you in a register no other being could.

the tongue-and-cock thing (yeehaw!)

the tongue. the long, ridged velvet one when bobby shape loosens. when he's fucking you (any position, any depth) he can also slide the tongue into your mouth. from your mouth it can keep going. down. it doesn't have to stop at the back of your throat. doesn't trigger your gag reflex because he's controlling it from his end. and he's spent a great deal of careful attention learning your throat the way he learned the architecture of every other part of you.

the tongue slides into your throat and settles there, the ridged length of him filling you from your mouth down to a depth no human body could reach.

and at the same time, the cock is moving inside you below. and you are filled from both ends, and the two of him are connected, and the rhythm of one feeds the rhythm of the other.

it's not double penetration exactly. it's something else. a threading. him moving through you, end to end, two points of contact that are actually one continuous presence, and when he flexes the tongue deep in your throat you feel it resonate through your sternum and down into your pelvis where the cock is also flexing, and the sensation is... it's one sensation, in two places, and your body can't separate them and stops trying.

the harmonic he hums in this configuration pours out of both points of contact at once. you feel it inside your throat and inside your cunt simultaneously. the resonance frequencies stack. the seven sing back. the room hums. you have, in this configuration, come for so long and so continuously that you have lost track of where one orgasm ended and the next began, your whole body just one long wave of taking.

you can't speak when he does this. no making any sound except the small wrecked series of hums that escape around the tongue in your throat. but he doesn't need you to speak. the seven tell him everything your mouth would have said. you press a tiny pulse into the seven (yes, more, deeper, slower, harder) and he reads it, perfectly, every time.

he can make them move in opposite rhythm. the tongue pushing deep when the cock withdraws, the cock pushing deep when the tongue withdraws. a continuous, rocking motion that means you're never not full of him somewhere.

or he can sync them, both pushing deep at once, and the simultaneous deepest-point of both is... you don't have words for it. you only have sounds for it.

he's careful with this. he doesn't use it often. he saves it for nights when you both want something that exists beyond language, beyond the usual choreography human bodies use. what any other lover has ever offered you. it's his. it is something only he can give you. you think he understands that you understand this.

favourite positions (or, the recurring ones)

you on your back, him braced over you, knees pressed up to your chest. the classic. he likes to see your face. he likes you folded small under him. the angle lets him reach the deep places easily and the eye contact is direct. he calls this one the easy one in a way that's not in any sense easy.

you on top, riding him, his hands on your hips guiding. he loves this because he gets to watch. you doing the work. you slick with sweat, bouncing and biting your lip.

his hands move slow on your hips not really directing, just holding, just feeling the rhythm you've chosen. he can stay like this for hours and let you set every pace. you've fallen asleep on top of him in this position before.

you on your hands and knees, him behind you, one hand splayed possessive across the small of your back. the most animal one. the angle lets him go deepest. he tends to lose the Bobby-shape the fastest in this position because the visual of you presenting for him pulls something old up in him that doesn't bother to wear a human face.

you sideways in his lap, one of your legs draped over his thigh. half-positions like this. where you're sort of sitting in him but not fully impaled, where the connection is intimate but lazy. you can kiss him easily and stroke his hair. these are the ones he prefers for long, lazy stretches. low intensity. lots of soft kissing. cock seated shallow.

the impossible ones. when he stops bothering with human geometry. he holds you suspended in the air with too-many arms while he fucks you from below and one of him kisses your throat and one of him strokes your clit, and you have given up trying to understand the topology. you just let it happen. there's no name for these positions. they're not in any book.

face-to-face, lying on your sides, foreheads pressed together, slow rolling motion. the most intimate one. this is the one he picks when he wants you to feel held, not necessarily to come. although you usually do, eventually. it's barely sex sometimes. it's just being inside each other in the dark, breathing the same air, his hand on your cheek and yours on his throat where you can feel the harmonic hum.

the spooning one. you on your side, him curled around you from behind, the cock seated shallow, his arm a heavy bracket across your ribs. his face buries in the back of your neck. this is the sleep position. this is the one he holds you in for hours at a stretch. there's barely any motion. there doesn't need to be. the seal of him inside you is the whole point.

the "be more other" thing

he hates being seen as a copy of Bobby. he's never said this in those exact words but you've figured it out and he's confirmed it.

the Bobby-shape was built out of necessity. he needed a face you could love and Bobby's was the only one available. but underneath it, he's not Bobby. he's something older, stranger, and entirely his own. and every reminder that he's wearing another man's shape. every time someone outside the relationship comments on the resemblance, every time he catches sight of his own face in a mirror and the face is not his, it chafes.

which is why when you ask him to be more like himself, he loses his mind a little.

the first time you said it you were in bed together and he was being careful and you reached up and traced his jaw and said I want to see more of you. the actual you. and he went so still you thought you'd broken something.

and then he said, very quietly, baby, you don't have to ask me that to be polite. and you said I'm not being polite. I'm asking because I want it. and his eyes (Bobby's warm blue eyes, the ones he built so carefully) bled to black. iris and sclera and all of it, no whites left, just deep glossy dark like wet stone, and the harmonic fractured and he kissed you with a desperation he had never let himself show before.

now you ask whenever you want it. let go of the face, sweetheart. show me. I want the real you. and he does. layer by layer. the Bobby-shape peels back as he gets braver. the jaw goes wrong-wide, the fingers stop counting, the blue of his eyes floods with black until there's nothing else left, the shoulders lengthen, the harmonic he's been damping rolls out free. and you don't flinch. you've never flinched.

you ask for more. that's the part that takes him apart every time. you watch him let go of the shape that was a gift to you and you ask for more of what's underneath. and he understands that you're not tolerating the true him as a price for the rest of him.

you're choosing the true him, you want the true him, the rest is just shapes he wears for you.

when he's in his more-other shape, sex is different.

rougher in texture, gentler in pace. the not-quite-right hands grip with strength no human could match, but he's so afraid of breaking you that he moves slower than he does in the Bobby shape. the cock develops the ridges by default. the harmonic pours out unrestricted and the room hums constantly. you can feel him at frequencies your skin reads as warmth and your nervous system reads as home.

you call him by his name even when he doesn't have a recognisable face. BB. into the wrong-wide mouth, against the wrong-textured skin, into the long sinuous line of his other-shape. BB. BB. and the name lands the same way every time. because the name is yours. the name is the one you gave him, and in the other shape that fact is even clearer. he's your BB. not anyone else's. yours, and yours alone.

the comparison to Real Bobby you have to be careful never to make. Bobby would've... in any sentence that compares them is a sentence that you stopped finishing very early on.

because the first time you started one his whole body went tight and the harmonic shrieked, just for a second, and his eyes went flat in a way you had never seen before. he never said anything. he didn't have to. you watched him swallow it down and pretend he hadn't reacted and you understood, then, what you had walked into and walked out of.

the things you say instead (you're mine, my BB.) undo him every time. he goes quiet in that bone-deep way of his. the harmonic hums grateful. he holds you a fraction tighter. he never asks you to repeat it but you can feel him cataloguing it, saving it, going back to it later when you're not watching.

kinks (his)

being watched by you. not in the kink sense, actually, in the literal sense. he wants you to see him. he spent so long being something nobody could look at without screaming that the privilege of being looked at, by you, with want, is the thing he treasures more than any specific act. the moments where you turn your head and just watch what he's doing to you and let him see your face? those wreck him every time. he will edge himself for an hour for the chance of one of those moments.

being asked to drop the face. see above. nothing he's done in his long existence has prepared him for being wanted as the thing he actually is. it's the deepest kink he has and the one that took him longest to admit he had.

proof of him on you. marks, prints, the soft bruise of his fingers on your hip the next morning. he's not a sadist, he doesn't get off on hurting you, but the visual evidence that he's been there, that your skin remembers him, is something he gets quietly insane about. he will trace the marks with one finger for hours after.

scent. his sense of smell is not human. it doesn't work the way yours does, doesn't sit in his nose, doesn't process by molecule the way yours processes. but he has an equivalent, something more diffuse. something that reads the trace of a thing in the air the way a thing in deep water reads currents.

and the trace of you is the most distinctive signature in any world he has ever moved through. he can find you in a level by it. he can tell which corridors you've walked down. he can tell how long ago by how the trace has faded. you have a unique scent to him and he has known it longer than you've been aware he existed. he knew your scent through the warm wall at Clark's, back when he was a thing in the dark and you were a sound he could hear and a smell he could catalogue without you knowing.

he wants you to smell like him. this is the deeper layer to the above, the one he's been quietly indulging for as long as you've been together.

when he's been inside you, when he's marked you, you have spent a long night in the nest with the warm not-quite-skin of him pressed all along the length of you — you smell different. he can smell himself on you. your trace acquires his trace. the two scents braided together, and the braid is something every other entity in this place can read clear as a stamp. taken. kept. his. it's not subtle to the things that share this place with you. it is a flag.

this is one of the reasons he likes you sleeping with him still inside you. one of the reasons he likes finishing in you and leaving you full. one of the reasons he tucks his face into the warm hollow of your throat for so long after sex.

partly because of the heat, partly because of the pulse, but also because his trace transfers to your skin from his face, and he's deliberately scenting you, slow and patient. the way a cat works its cheeks against the things it loves. you've caught him doing this in the after, half-asleep, rubbing his jaw absently along your collarbone with a look of dreamy contentment, and you didn't say anything because the moment was his, and you understood without him having to explain.

and he likes smelling you on him. the inverse. when you've been pressed against him. your hair rubbing against his shirt. when your skin's been against his skin for hours. he carries you.

your scent stays on him. and the fact that other entities can smell you on him is... the pleased purr he makes about it. it's the most peaceful sound. it tells the world that he's kept too.

the human-marking goes both ways. that he's not just a possessor but a possessed, and he's spent his existence wanting to be possessed by something and never finding anything worth being possessed by.

and now he is, and the trace of you on him is the proof of it. he wears your scent the way a wedding ring is worn. he has rubbed his face against the pillow you slept on after you've left a room just to refresh the trace before going out.

the marking is mutual and lowkey obsessive. he wants you marked by him. you (without fully realising it at first) want him marked by you.

in practice this means: you press your face into his throat when you greet him, you bury your nose in his shoulder when you hug, you wear his shirts and they come back to him with you on them, you sleep with your hands fisted in his clothes, and over time the trace builds and builds and you stop being two separate scent-signatures and become one layered signature, a braided thing, you-and-him, and everything in this place can read it. they all know. they've all known for months. you're not a creature with a possessive entity hovering nearby.

you're bonded, in the way scent-bond is bond, and the bonded nature of you is the loudest fact about you both to anything that can read it.

the breeding pheromone was a weaponised version of this preference. the warm honey-thick pheromone he released during the ritual was, at the chemical level, his trace turned all the way up. it was him telling your body, in the most intense possible register, mine, mine, take it, mine.

and it was also a public announcement, in a sense. anything in any nearby level could have smelled the ritual happening, could have read it as clearly as if a banner had been hung. he didn't care. he wanted them to read it. that was partly the point.

after the ritual the trace settled. something about completing it deepened the braid. your scents got more thoroughly woven into each other.

you smell like him in a way that does not fade now even if you spend a day apart. which is rare, but it has happened, and he's commented on how you still smell like him through the absence, and how it eases him. the seven amplify this too. they hold the scent. they keep the signature stable. you carry him in your body in seven places and on your skin in countless more and the totality of it is, to him, the most complete claim any being has ever made on any other being, and to you it is the most settled and held you've ever felt.

you've asked him, once, what he smells like to you in his real shape. not the Bobby-scent, which is warm cotton and a faint oceanic scent, but what the underneath smells like.

he hesitated. he said he wasn't sure you'd have a word for it. you asked him to let you find out. and you breathed him in, slow, with his actual shape pressed against you in the nest, and what you found was. old water. warm stone. a faintly mineral scent, faintly clean, like a deep cave that's never known erosion. not unpleasant. it was, in fact, the most comforting smell you'd ever encountered. you told him so, and he held too still and you understood that no one had ever told him what he smelled like before.

exploring you. he's fascinated by your body. in a student of you way, the way an archaeologist is fascinated by something rare and beautiful and theirs to study slowly.

he'll spend literal hours on a single part of you. an evening can be him just at one breast. slow lapping, soft sucking, the careful drag of his teeth, the hot, wet suction of his mouth around your nipple. for what feels like forever, until you're arching and pleading, soaking through the blanket.

and then he'll pull back with this small considering hm, like he's filed something away, and move to the other breast with even more hunger, and start over. he can do this for an entire night. he has done this for an entire night. he calls it gettin' to know you better, baby.

you're not just a body to him. you're a territory. he wants to know every inch of it like the back of his hand.

the catalogue of you. related to the above: he is, somewhere in his ancient and patient mind, cataloguing the things he learns. the spot on your neck that makes you whimper. the angle of pressure on your hip that makes you melt. the exact stroke speed that builds you slowest. the words that work on which days. he updates the list constantly. he's the best lover you'll ever have for the simple reason that he's been studying you, specifically, with the full force of his attention.

you reaching for him first. god, this one. when you are the one to close the distance. when you set down your book and crawl into his lap unprompted, or turn into him in the dark and pull his hand to your throat without saying anything.

when you cup his jaw and pull his mouth down to yours. everything in him lights up in a way he can't hide. the harmonic in his chest jumps half an octave. his pupils blow. he's spent so long being the one to want, the one to ask, the one who has to be gentle about how much he wants.

the moments where you want him first, act on it without prompting, where you simply take, those moments are gifts. he goes pliant under your hands. he lets you set the pace. he'll give you anything you want when you are the one reaching.

your mouth on him. when you press him back against the pillows and trail your mouth down his chest. suck a mark into the soft place under his jaw. when you take his hand and kiss each fingertip tenderly.

when you go down on him. which you don't do often, because he tends to lose composure and pull you up and put you under him within a minute, but the minute you get he's wrecked.

it's the reverse of his exploration kink. he's spent so long being the explorer, the one whose mouth and hands move over you, that the rare reversal undoes him.

he'll let you do anything to him. lie pliant under you and watch you with eyes gone glossy and dark and the harmonic in his chest will pour out shaky and greedy. afterward he'll hold you like you've given him something no one else's ever offered him. which you have.

the small things. related to the above and deserving its own bullet because of how easy it is to set him off. he is (for an ancient eldritch predator) an incredibly responsive lover.

things that should not, by rights, do anything to a creature of his power: you sucking softly on his lower lip during a kiss, the kind of slow pulling kiss you'd give a boyfriend on the couch. you setting your teeth gently to the side of his neck. you mouthing at his pulse point (he doesn't have one but the architecture suggests one and he feels it when you go for the place).

you sucking on the soft pad of his thumb when he traces your lip with it. any of these and the harmonic in his chest purrs out unrestrained and his body coils around you. the not-quite-right way. arms longer than they were a second ago, the line of him pouring closer. every part of him drawn to the point of contact like iron to a magnet. it's so easy.

you have, on countless occasions, completely derailed a casual evening just by leaning over and sucking on his lip for three seconds. he likes that you know this. he likes that you use it. the easiness of his responsiveness is, on his end, a deliberate choice. he doesn't have to react this readily, his body is not naturally arranged this way, he's just decided that around you he wants every small touch to count.

wants you to feel the effect of yourself on him constantly, wants there to be no ambiguity ever about what you do to him. the smallest gestures get full responses. that is on purpose.

your warmth. you feel so warm to him. this is a phrase he's actually said. it's not poetry. it's a literal sensory fact.

he runs cool by default, the air in this place runs cool, the entities he's spent his existence around are cool. and you're a steady human furnace, you radiate heat. constantly. without effort. just by being alive.

when he holds you, when you press into him, when he's inside you and your inner walls are pulsing softly around him, the heat of you is a sensory experience he has nothing to compare to. he runs his hands over your skin sometimes just to feel it. he presses his face into your throat just to feel the warmth radiating off your pulse. he'll spend a long time, in the after, with his palm splayed flat over the warm soft skin of your belly, just feeling you be warm.

he learned to warm by touching you, learned his own body could do that by being near yours, and the response now is automatic. you're the source. you're why he can be warm at all.

you warming him on purpose. you've figured out that you can do this. you can walk up to him cool-skinned in the middle of an ordinary afternoon and put your palm flat to his chest under the flannel and just hold it there. you watch the warmth bloom under your hand.

you can press into him in bed when he's cool from having been still and feel him heat up against your stomach in slow degrees. can take his cold hand in both of yours and breathe on it and watch the harmonic shudder out of him as the heat catches.

this is yours. only you can do it. nothing else in his existence makes him warm. when you do it deliberately, when you're clearly choosing to warm him, the look on his face is gentle, wanting. awe of a thing that's been cold for unimaginably long being deliberately made warm by a creature small enough to hold in his arms.

you watching for the tells. the temperature, the eyes — the fact that you read him by them. he loves being read. when you cup his jaw to check the colour of his eyes after he's been quiet, or put your hand on his throat to feel for the harmonic.

when you press your forehead to his and pause to feel the warmth. they're small, private gestures. they're languages only the two of you speak.

he'd assumed, when he built this body, that he would have to learn human ways of telling you what he was feeling. words, expressions, the usual signals. he didn't expect to find that you would learn to read his actual self instead. that you would meet him at the level his body actually communicates. it's one of the deepest gifts you've given him without realising it was a gift.

caretaking. dressing you after. brushing your hair after. running you a bath after. cleaning the marks he asked permission to leave. tucking the blanket around you. bringing you water before you ask. he's built half the rooms in this place specifically to facilitate aftercare. the act ends when you're clean and warm and held, not when he comes.

kinks (yours, which he learned)

being told you're his. mine in his rough drawl, said low into your throat. he figured this out maybe a week in and has weaponised it ever since.

being held still. the not-quite-human strength of his grip when he pins your hips in place. you didn't know this was a thing you liked until he did it (jut pinned you and made you take him) and you came so hard you nearly sobbed. he files this kind of information away meticulously.

being watched. not in the original sense, in the actual kink sense. this one has an origin story.

you were in the Poolrooms when other entities stumbled onto the two of you in a moment that was not meant to be public. you were on the warm tile and he was over you and you had just started something slow and unhurried when you both felt them. three or four of them, hovering at the far end of the corridor, watching.

BB started to pull back, to cover you, the old protective instinct kicking in with a snarl, but you caught his wrist. you held his eyes. you said, quiet but absolutely certain: let them see. and the look on his face (the blue going dark at the edges, stunned, delighted) was a thing you wanted to keep forever.

he kept going. slowly. thoroughly. let them see exactly what he was doing to you and exactly how you were taking it. let them hear every sound. you came harder than you had in weeks and he understood, then, that this was a thing about you, a real thing about you, and he's been incorporating it carefully ever since.

now, he has (on occasion) manifested an audience in private rooms. lets you choose if you want the watchers to be real or shapes that look like watchers but aren't. you've tried both. the real ones are rare and require specific conditions (he's extremely particular about who gets to look at you). the manifested ones happen more often. the shapes sometimes shifts in the middle of things and you become aware of eyes, vague at the edges of the room, and you know without asking that he's made them for you.

dirty talk in the warm drawl. the voice is one of the few parts of the Bobby-shape you both actually love unreservedly. the warm Cali 90s drawl, lazy and amused. the way he stretches vowels. the contrast between that voice and the obscene things he's saying with it does something to you and he knows. come on, baby, that's it, look at you takin' it so pretty for me (spoken in that exact lazy timbre) has reduced you to incoherence on multiple occasions. he keeps the voice even when the rest of the shape is slipping, because he's noticed what it does to you.

the warming response. the way he goes from cool to warm under your hands. you didn't fully understand at first. early on you assumed he just was warm, the way humans are warm, and only later figured out that the warmth was because of you.

that you walking up and putting a hand on his arm was what turned the heat on. now you know. now you do it on purpose. you press your palm flat to his chest just to feel him warm up under it. you kiss him unhurriedly specifically to watch the temperature climb.

you have, on cold nights, slid your cold hands up under his shirt to put them against the cool plane of his stomach, and felt the slow startled bloom of warmth as your touch registered. felt his humming catch and then purr as his body did what it does, and stayed very still and let you steal the heat back as fast as he made it. it's one of the most intimate things you do with him and barely counts as foreplay. it's evidence. proof that he's alive to you in a way he's not alive to anything else.

reading him. related and important. the temperature and the eyes are not just sensory facts, they're how you communicate.

he doesn't always have the words for what he's feeling. he was not built with the kind of expressive language humans have for emotion. but his body tells you. the cool-to-warm gradient on his skin under your hand. the creep of black at the edge of the blue. the pitch of the harmonic in his chest. you've learned to read these the way you'd learn to read a beloved second language.

you check his eyes when he comes in the door. you put your hand flat to his chest when he's been quiet. you know how he's doing without him having to tell you.

he likes this. he likes being legible to you. he's spent so long being unreadable to everything around him that the experience of being known by his body, without effort, by someone who pays attention, that's love to him.

watching the eyes during sex. specific. when he's over you and moving in you and the slow build of him toward losing the shape is happening (when the blue is eating at the edges with black, the dark creeping inward) you keep your eyes on his eyes.

you watch it happen. you watch the colour go from blue to bloom-darkening-blue to mostly-black to gone, until what's looking down at you is something with no white in its eyes, only deep glossy ink, and the rest of his face is starting to follow. you have come, more than once, from nothing but watching that progression. just the seeing of it. the visual confirmation that you're doing this to him.

that his composure is coming apart because of you, that he's letting you see it. you come watching his eyes go and he watches you come and his eyes finish going and the loop completes.

his warmth. the warmth as a gift. cold things stay cold. cold things radiate cold. he was cold when you met him (you didn't know it then, because he was being careful, but the body he held you against in the early days was cool, and you only realised later, in retrospect, that he had been working very hard to seem human-warm). he's warm with you now because being with you warms him. every time you touch him and he heats under your hand, that is an answer. that's him saying yes, this, more of this, you, you, you with his entire body.

the threading. see above. you didn't know you needed to be full of him in two places at once until he did it and now your body remembers and asks for it without your permission.

how he feels pleasure

his pleasure is not located the way yours is. he doesn't have nerve endings the way you do. he doesn't have a hard cutoff point where sensation crests and then he's done. the body he built has all the equipment that would make pleasure happen for a human partner, and the equipment does work, but it works differently on his end.

his pleasure is mostly relational. what feels good to him is, almost entirely, your pleasure. when you arch under him, when you whimper his name, when the seven hum bright and you clench around him and you sob more into his throat—that's what feels good to him. it's not vicarious enjoyment, exactly. it's more direct than that. he feels your pleasure in his own body, through the seven, and translates it into his own sensation. when you come, he comes, in a sense. he has his own version of the experience, but it is keyed to yours, not independent of it.

the seven are a feedback loop. the seven take his attention and translate it into sensation in your body. you've known that for a while. what you may not have fully understood is that they also work in the other direction. they take your pleasure and feed it back to him.

so when he's making you feel good, you're also making him feel good, through the same mechanism. the loop completes itself. he's the source of your pleasure and also the recipient of it, and the more you feel, the more he feels, and the more he feels, the more he wants to give you, and the more he gives you, the more you feel.

this is why he never wants to stop. ever. the loop is self-sustaining. he could happily make you come for hours (hell, for days, if your body could take it) because the longer he does it the better it feels for him.

there's no point at which he gets bored. no point at which he has finished in the way a human partner might be finished. he's engaged in something that gets better the longer it goes, and the only limit on it is your body. your endurance, your need for water and food and sleep. those limits matter to him enormously. without them he might literally never stop.

he finishes when you do, mostly. this is a choice, not a reflex. he times his own release to yours because he likes the way the seven respond when you come on him (they hum brighter, they pull harder) and his finishing in that moment doubles the resonance. but he can finish at other times. he can finish multiple times in the same encounter, and he can stretch his own pleasure across hours of being inside you without finishing once. the orgasm, for him, is one note in a longer piece, not the resolution.

the warmest sound he makes is that low harmonic, the purr-rumble, the one that vibrates through your sternum when he's happy. it's his version of the good sound. it pours out of him when you're warm against him, when you're full of him and content. it's not a sex sound, exactly. more so contentment sound. it happens at sex and also when you're reading next to him or have fallen asleep with your head on his thigh. he is, in a real sense, purring the way a vast and ancient cat would purr, and the sound means yes, this, more of this, forever.

what you feel like to him. he has tried to describe it and the descriptions never quite fit. the closest he has come: warm. bright. humming. you feel to him the way a fire feels to a thing that's been cold for an unimaginably long time. intense, almost overwhelming with how alive you are.

your body radiates life in a way nothing else in this place does. the heat of you, the pulse of you, the soft give of your skin, the constant gentle electrical hum of a human nervous system doing what nervous systems do. all of it together is, to him, the most sensorily rich thing he's ever encountered. being inside you is being inside that, surrounded by it, part of it. the seven amplify the experience. he is, when he is in you, more alive than he's ever been. in the sense that he's closer to your kind of life than his ancient distant version of it.

this is why he's so reluctant to withdraw. this is why he stays inside you while you sleep. why he never wants to stop. you're warm and bright and you are life, to him, and he's been cold for so long.

he never wants to stop making you feel good. every single position, kink, and long exploration. nights spent inside you while you sleep, every patient hour of his mouth on you. all of it is in service of the simple unwavering project of making you feel as good as you can possibly feel. for as long as he can sustain it, until the end of time if you'll let him. and you will. you absolutely will.

things he does that no human could do

the contortion thing. yes. yes he does this. his joints don't have to count properly when he isn't bothering. he can bend in ways that let him reach angles a human spine would shatter trying to reach. he can fold himself around you so that every part of you that wants to be touched is being touched simultaneously.

the first time he did this (you on your back, him somehow with one hand on your throat and one between your thighs and his mouth on your breast and the cock still inside you, all at once, with no apparent strain in his posture) you laughed, in pure shock, and BB stopped immediately to check on you and you had to explain you were happy.

the matched rhythm. he can sync the thrust of his hips, the curl of his tongue, the press of his thumb on your clit, and the pulse of the seven inside you to one single rhythm. all five points of contact. all on the same beat. there's no human word for what this does to your nervous system. it's like being played as an instrument.

gravity-defying things. he can hold you against a wall with no apparent support from below. he can carry you mid-act and the position doesn't break. he can fuck you while you are essentially levitating in his arms with your legs around his waist and never once does he need to set you down. you've stopped questioning how this works. it just works.

temperature override. he can stay cool even when you're under him panting, hold his body at that stone-shade baseline through everything you're doing to him. this takes effort and he rarely bothers. the only times he uses it: in hot levels when you want the contrast, or the rare moments when you ask for cold, and the cock slides into you ice-cool and your whole spine arches off the bed. he can also push the other direction. go hotter than emotion alone would take him, fever-hot in a deliberate way, but he does this even less, because the natural warming is, to him, more honest .

internal vibration. the cock can vibrate, at a frequency. when he's buried deep and not moving and the cock starts vibrating steadily against your inner walls. the sensation is so unfair it almost feels like cheating. he uses this one sparingly because if he used it often you would never get out of bed.

the splitting thing. now. you've asked him about this only once, and the answer terrified and intrigued you in equal measure. he can produce more than one of himself, temporarily due to strain, for the duration of an act. two BBs, fully formed, both him, both aware, both wanting you. it's not duplication so much as distribution. you've not asked for it. you might. you might never. the option exists.

favourite parts of you (his)

the seven, obviously. but you knew that.

the soft place at the small of your back. he can't leave it alone. his hand finds it whenever you are near him. when you're standing, when walking. you're lying on your stomach with the blanket pushed down. he traces circles into it without thinking. when he's inside you from behind his palm rests there like an anchor.

the hollow of your throat. where your pulse hammers. he's fascinated by the hammer of you. by the visible proof that you're alive and the heart is doing what hearts do. he kisses you there constantly. he sets his teeth into the place gently and feels the pulse against his tongue and the blue of his eyes goes dark at the edges every time.

your hands. specifically the backs of them. he holds your hand constantly, when you're walking, when you're sitting, when he's inside you and you're lying together after. he traces the bones of your knuckles. he kisses each finger separately sometimes. he's endlessly delighted by the fact that you have hands and that they hold onto him.

the sound you make when you wake up. the quiet, involuntary one before you open your eyes. he'll lie awake for hours waiting for it. it is, he's told you, the best sound in any world.

the place behind your ear. where your hair is fine. he buries his face there constantly. he says you smell like the only home he's ever wanted.

the final note (the underneath)

everything about the sex (the contortion, the stamina, the impossible mechanics, the seven, the breeding chemistry, every freaky impossible thing) is in service of a very simple project, which is keeping you happy.

he's not actually a freak. so much as an ancient thing that's been alone for a very long time and that fell in love with a lonely human at a furniture store and has been, ever since, trying to give her every good thing he can build. the kinks are just the shapes the love took when it had nowhere else to go.

he would be just as happy holding you fully clothed on the couch for hours as he is doing any of the above. truly. he has told you this. you believe him.

but he's also a thing of vast appetite and watching you come apart under his hands is, genuinely, one of the great pleasures of his existence. so when you ask him for the freaky things, he gives you the freaky things.

the love and the freak are not separate. the love is the freak. the freak is the love. there's no version of him that wants you politely. you got the entity. you got all of it.

doggy on couch ("lazy susan")

one of tt!aerion's favorite positions is you sprawled out on the couch, on your stomach and pounding into you from behind, his hands tangling in your hair, yanking your head back as he grunts with each thrust or his hands gripping your hips hard enough to leave marks.

the worn fabric of the couch creaks under you both, the smell of his cheap cologne and your pretty perfume mixing with the heat of your skin. his cock presses against your entrance, teasing, before he pushes inside stretching you open. he groans when you take him, you're always so so so tight for him!! he won't last long with your walls fluttering like that.

he’ll let out a string of low, guttural curses that get muffled by your gasps. he likes that he can see the way you take every inch, the way you stretch around him, desperate to accommodate him completely. he’ll grip your hips harder, nails digging into your skin, and lean over you, trapping you against the worn cushions.

"look at me, c'mon look at me-" he’ll command, his voice rough and demanding as he picks up the speed, pounding into you with a ferocity that leaves you seeing stars. the sound of skin slapping against skin is loud in the small, cramped space of the living room, echoing off the peeling paint and the bare walls.

face to face

aerion's absolute favorite position is anything with eye contact. on the armchair, on his bed, the front seat of the truck, on the boat…and pull you onto his lap. you straddle him, facing him, and he wraps his arms tight around your waist, his hands wandering up your back to hold you close.

he loves this angle. it lets him look deep into your eyes while he works you open. his grip on your hips is firm, anchoring you so he can lift and thrust up into you with steady, deliberate strokes, grinding against your sensitive walls.

the sight of your pretty face when he hits that sweet spot sends a spark through him. he likes watching you fall apart for him, seeing the pleasure wash over your features, your lips parting, eyes fluttering. cooing a sweet, “i know…i know, baby.”

he’ll tilt his head down to kiss you, messy and hungry, swallowing your moans against his mouth. he LOVES to kiss you, wet smooches against your cheek, jaw and neck- just anywhere he can get to, he’s kissing. his fingers trace patterns on your lower back, feeling the tremors running through you as he rocks his hips against yours. he wants to memorize every expression you make, every sound you breathe out when he fills you up completely, marking you not just with his touch, but with his gaze.

pole position (thigh master)

he'll sprawl out on the bed, one knee bent, and you'll climb over him, straddling his thigh while he lies on his back. his leg goes between yours, pressing up against your clit with every movement.

he loves that you have to grind against him to get it right, that you have to work to find the rhythm. he'll guide your hips, showing you exactly where to sit, how to angle your body so his thigh is grinding against you just right.

his hands will rest on your hips, holding you in place as he lifts his leg up to grind against you more firmly. it's intimate in a different way—slower, more deliberate. he likes watching you squirm on top of him, likes knowing he's controlling the pace without even touching your pussy.

as you start to get comfortable with the rhythm, he'll grab your hips and pull you down so he can slide his cock inside you from this angle. the combination of his thigh grinding against your clit and his cock stretching you open is too much to handle.

Crossovers

Baelor (above) x Reader x Maekar (underneath)

Baelor

father!Baelor x daughter!Reader

he loves to make your legs shake

husband!Baelor x wife!Reader

Maekar

uncle Maekar is so perverted, he loves to finger you outdoor

Dunk

how he would finger you

once you’ve angered him he’ll turn into the biggest tease

his whole body covers yours- size kink

you told him that it’s okay as long as he uses your other hole- guard!dunk x princess!reader

Daeron

That one time he was sober?

Aerion

morning sessions with loverboy!Aerion

aftermath of a guy flirting with you

desperate!Aerion x boobs

Valarr

how he would caress you after a long day

golden!boy!valarr x gf!reader

make out session

ft with him jerking off to your moans

Lyonel

baelors!daughter x lyonel

he just wants you to feel good

He was cruel in the way that certain people were cruel, not out of anger or impulse but out of something colder than that, one that enjoyed itself. You had watched him your whole life and you understood him well enough to know that the cruelty was not the point. The point was always the control, the cruelty was just what happened when something resisted– a horse that wouldn't settle, a servant who answered too slowly, a situation that wasn't going the way he had decided it should go. You had seen it enough times to know the look that preceded it, the way his expression would go very still and very pleasant in the moment before something happened that you wished you hadn't witnessed. 

He had never been cruel to you. That was the thing you turned over sometimes when you couldn't sleep. In all the years you had known him, with all the things you had watched him do, he had never once directed any of it at you, and you did not know whether that was a comfort or the most frightening thing about him.

You were always paying attention. You had learned that you needed to be, with him especially.

Your father had served the king since they were young men together, long before crowns and councils, and that friendship had bought your family something most houses spent generations trying to earn. Proximity. You had grown up inside these walls, known these corridors before you knew your own home, eaten at their table and walked these gardens and fallen asleep to the sounds of this city your whole life. The king's grandsons had simply always been part of that. Woven into everything. You could not have separated them from your childhood if you had tried, and for a long time you had not tried, because why would you. 

Valarr had claimed you as his friend before you were old enough to understand what that would cost you.

Aerion had simply watched, waited, and decided something you were never consulted on.

You had understood for a long time that they were both obsessed with you in different ways and for entirely different reasons, and you had spent an equally long time pretending you hadn't, because understanding it meant having to do something with it, and there was nothing to be done. They were who they were and you were who you were and this was the world you lived in.

Valarr's obsession was the easier one to carry. It looked like love, felt like love, probably was love in the way that Valarr did everything– openly, without strategy, without a single layer of calculation underneath it. He wanted to be near you. He sought you out in every room. He remembered the small things and brought you the things you liked and looked at you across tables with an expression that he had never once bothered to hide, and the court had noticed and smiled and found it charming, because Valarr was charming, because everything about him invited warmth in return. His obsession had no teeth in it. That was what made it safe to love him back.

Aerion's was different. Aerion's had nothing but teeth.

Aerion's obsession was not something he announced. It lived in the details, the ones you had to be watching closely to catch, and you had been watching closely for years.

The way he always knew where you were in a room without looking for you, the way his gaze settled on you the moment you walked in like it had been waiting. The way he would find reasons to be wherever you were, not obviously, not in the way that announced itself, but consistently enough that you had stopped believing in coincidence a long time ago. You had once counted three days in a row where he appeared in whatever part of the keep you had chosen that morning, the gardens, the library, the corridor outside your father's solar, and each time he had looked at you like he had simply happened to be there, like it was nothing, like you were imagining it.

You had not been imagining it.

He did not like other men near you. That was something you had understood slowly and then all at once. He never said anything, never made a scene, but there was a quality to his stillness when it happened that you had learned to read, the slight tightening around his eyes, the way he went very quiet, the way whatever he said next to the man in question was always perfectly pleasant and always landed like a warning. Men tended to find reasons to be elsewhere after those conversations. You had never heard him threaten anyone. You had watched three men decide on their own that your company was not worth whatever they had seen in Aerion's face.

So you loved Valarr openly and you watched Aerion carefully and you told yourself that was enough, that knowing the shape of a thing meant you could manage it.

Though you were terribly wrong about that. 

Dinner had always been pleasant with the Targaryen family. Conversation was easy, the food was good, and your father, as usual, sat beside the king with the comfortable ease of two men who had known each other long enough to run out of things to perform for one another. You had grown up at this table. It had never once felt dangerous. 

Today was different.

Your seat was beside Valarr instead of across from him, close enough that your shoulders nearly touched when he leaned in, close enough to feel the warmth of him without meaning to. You didn't know who had arranged it and you hadn't asked. You had simply sat down and looked at your plate and made a decision not to look at Aerion, who today was seated across from you.

You heard his fork hit the plate harder than necessary. Once, then again. A small sound that no one else at the table seemed to notice, or if they did, said nothing about. 

The table moved around you, everyone lost in their own small talk, your father's voice carrying down from the king's end of the table and the low hum of conversation filling the spaces between.

You kept your eyes on your plate mostly, pushing your food around more than eating it, acutely aware of the weight of a gaze from across the table that had not moved from you since you sat down. You did not look up. You had gotten very good at not looking up.

"You've barely touched anything," Valarr said quietly beside you.

"I'm not very hungry."

"You said that at breakfast too." He leaned in slightly, lowering his voice so it was just for you. "Are you sure you're alright?"

"Just tired," you said, meeting his gaze with a small smile. "I stayed up last night longer than I meant to."

"Doing what?"

"Reading."

"What were you reading?"

"Something dull," you said. "Which is why I couldn't sleep."

He laughed at that, low and quiet, and you felt the warmth of it settle somewhere in your chest, and for a moment the table and the noise and everything else fell away and it was just this, just him, just easy.

And then from across the table came the sound of a goblet being lifted, and your eyes moved there before you could stop them.

Aerion's hand was around the stem of his cup, long fingers wrapped loosely around it, completely unhurried. He brought it to his lips slowly, tipping it back, and you watched the line of his throat move as he swallowed, watched him lower the cup just as slowly, and then his tongue touched his lower lip, just once, just briefly, catching the last trace of wine like he had all the time in the world and nowhere else to be.

You should have looked away then. You knew you should have looked away.

His fingers began tracing the rim of the cup instead, slow idle circles, round and round, and something about the patience of it, the complete unhurried certainty of those fingers moving like that, sent heat moving through you that had absolutely no business being at a dinner table and you pressed your thighs together under your dress and looked down at your plate and picked up your fork and stared at your food like it had personally offended you.

You were losing your mind. That was the only explanation.

You looked up.

Aerion was already looking at you. Of course he was. His fingers had stilled on the rim of the cup and his eyes were on yours and the expression on his face was the worst possible thing it could have been– not anger, not hunger, just the faint curl of a smile at the corner of his mouth, slow and knowing and unbearably smug, the expression of a man who had just been handed something he had not even had to reach for.

Your face was warm. You looked back at your plate.

Beside you Valarr said your name, something light in his voice, and you answered him, and smiled, and felt Aerion's gaze sitting on the side of your face like heat from a fire you had made the mistake of standing too close to.

Baelor cleared his throat from where he sat, and the conversations around the table died down one by one, the way they always did when he spoke, that particular quality of his presence that made rooms go quiet without him having to ask.

Valarr stopped mid-sentence beside you and turned to look at his father. You turned too, because there was nothing else to do, and felt your heart doing something it had no business doing at a dinner table.

Baelor's smile was warm, unhurried, the smile of a man who had already decided something and was simply bringing the room up to speed. "As we all know," he began, his gaze moving between you and your father, "Lord Stafford Lannister and his family have been dear friends to this house for many years. A friendship that goes back further than most at this table can remember." He glanced at the king briefly, and the king inclined his head, and Baelor looked back at you both with that same warm smile. "The small council, his grace, Lord Stafford and I have come to an agreement."

You did not look at Valarr. You did not look at Aerion.

You looked at your father, who was not looking at Baelor at all. He was looking at you, with an expression that was careful and fond and slightly apologetic all at once, the expression of a man who had made a decision he believed was right and was watching his daughter find out about it.

"To bond our houses further," Baelor continued, "through the betrothal of my eldest son Valarr, to Lord Stafford's daughter."

The table erupted warmly around you and you sat very still in the middle of it, you slowly turned your gaze away from everyone, and looked at the table.

The congratulations came from every direction and you heard none of them, your ears blurring the noise into something distant and shapeless while you sat very still and looked at nothing in particular.

You did not know what you felt. That was the honest answer and it sat uncomfortably in your chest. You loved Valarr, had always loved Valarr, but love and wanting to be someone's wife were not the same thing and you had never let yourself think too hard about the difference until this moment, with the whole table raising their cups to your future and your father watching you from down the table with that careful expression of his.

He had promised you. Years ago, when you were young enough that promises felt like solid things, he had told you that when the time came it would be your choice. That he would not do what other fathers did. You had believed him because he had never given you reason not to, and you had carried that promise around like something precious, and now you were sitting at this table with congratulations ringing in your ears and understanding, slowly and then all at once, what it was worth.

You reached for your goblet and took a long sip and set it back down and kept your face very still.

Your jaw was tight. You could feel it, the particular ache of holding your face in place when it wanted to do something else entirely.

Valarr leaned in close beside you, his voice low enough that only you could hear it. "Are you alright?"

"You've asked me that twice today," you said, and your voice came out even, which cost you something.

"You've given me reason to twice today." His eyes were on your face, warm and searching. "Talk to me."

"There's nothing to say." You kept your gaze forward, fingers tight around the stem of your goblet. "It's wonderful news."

"You don't look like someone who's received wonderful news."

Your mouth pressed into something that was supposed to be a smile and wasn't quite. "I look perfectly fine."

"You look like you're about to bolt," he said, gently and completely certain, the voice of someone who knew your face better than you wanted anyone to. "I know when something is wrong with you."

You looked at him then, at those open honest eyes, and felt something move through your chest that you couldn't name cleanly, and you swallowed and looked back at your plate. "I just need a moment," you said quietly. "That's all."

He held your gaze for a beat, and then nodded, and sat back, and said nothing more, because that was Valarr– knowing when to push and when to let something be.

You sat with it for another few minutes, the noise of the table washing over you, your expression carefully blank in the way that took effort to maintain, the way that left a dull ache somewhere behind your eyes. You glanced at him sideways without meaning to, and found that he was not looking at you. He was looking at Aerion, and whatever was on his face you could not read it properly, only that his smile had shifted into something different, something with an edge to it you had never seen on him before. Almost smug. Like a man who had just won something.

You made the mistake of looking at Aerion.

Your face did something before you could stop it, something small and involuntary, your brows drawing together slightly, your lips parting, and you looked away immediately but it was already too late and you knew it.

"If you'll excuse me," you said, and pushed your chair back and stood, and your face was not pleasant, was not the face of a happy girl who had just received good news, was simply the face of someone who needed to be somewhere that was not here.

"Sit down," your father said, not unkindly, from down the table.

"I just need some air, father."

"You can have air after dinner."

"Stafford," the king said mildly, and your father looked at him, and something passed between them, and your father looked back at you with that expression, the one that carried the guilt of a man who had broken a promise and knew it, and you looked back at him with something that was not anger yet and not quite hurt yet but was moving in both directions at once.

You walked out anyway.

His voice followed you into the corridor, your name in it, softer now, and you kept walking and did not turn back, and the cool stone of the corridor was quiet around you and you stood in it and breathed and pressed your hand flat against the wall and felt your face finally do what it had been wanting to do for the past ten minutes– the jaw unclenching, the eyes going slightly wet, the particular exhausted expression of a woman who had been holding something together at the table and was now alone enough to stop.

You stood there for a long moment.

Somewhere behind you in that room, you were certain without having to look, Aerion Targaryen was watching the door you had just walked through.

When wasn't he looking anyways.

You heard him before you saw him, his footsteps quick and purposeful behind you on the garden path, and you walked faster.

"Would you just stop walking—"

You did not stop walking.

It had been nearly a moon since the betrothal was announced at dinner, and in the days that followed you had made it your business to be wherever Valarr was not. It had seemed, in those first few days, like the only thing you could do– if you could just create enough distance, enough cold space between the two of you, perhaps someone with enough sense would notice and reconsider. The small council, your father, anyone. 

You had been wrong about that. Nobody had reconsidered anything. The betrothal stood and the days kept passing and Valarr kept looking for you the way he always looked for you, warm and patient and entirely unbothered by the fact that you were doing everything in your power to disappear.

"Your prince demands you stop walking."

His voice had gone serious, louder than before, with the particular edge of a man who had run out of patience and was done pretending otherwise.

You stopped.

You stood there for a moment with your back to him, and then you turned around slowly and looked at him with an expression that was not kind.

"Demands," you said flatly. "That's a new word from you."

"You've left me with very few options." He was breathing slightly harder from having half-chased you across the garden, his mismatched eyes on you with an intensity he usually kept better hidden. "You've been avoiding me for a month."

"I've been busy."

"You walked out of a room yesterday the moment I walked in."

"I had somewhere to be."

"You told my squire you weren't receiving visitors when I came to your chambers."

"I wasn't feeling well."

"You were seen in the gardens an hour later perfectly fine." His jaw tightened. "Do you want to keep going or are we done pretending?"

You looked at him and said nothing.

"Why are you acting like a child who didn't get her way–"

"I have every right." The words came out sharp and you let them, your finger pointing at him briefly before you dropped it. "I have every right and you know it."

"I know no such thing–"

"Days after that feast," you said, cutting him off, "I find out it was you. Not the council. Not our fathers sitting down together and coming to a reasonable agreement. You. You went to your father and put the idea in his head and then sat at that table and smiled at me like you hadn't just decided my future without bothering to ask me about it."

"I decided nothing that wasn't already–"

"Don't." Your voice went quiet in the way that meant you were more serious than when you were shouting, and he heard it, you saw him hear it. "Don't tell me it was inevitable. Don't tell me it would have happened anyway. Because maybe it would have and maybe it wouldn't have and I will never know now, will I, because you took that from me."

He looked at you, something moving across his face. "I didn't think of it that way."

"No," you said. "You thought of what you wanted and you went and got it. Which is very you, Valarr, it has always been very you, and I have always loved that about you and right now I find it very difficult to."

Something in his expression flinched at that. "That's not fair."

"My father made me a promise," you said. "Years ago. He told me that when it came to my marriage it would be my choice. Not the council's, not his, mine. And I believed him. I believed him for years and I carried that and it meant something to me, and he broke it, and he broke it because of you."

"I didn't know about any promise–"

"Would it have changed anything?" you asked, and your voice was very even, very direct, giving him nowhere to go.

He was quiet for a moment. "I don't know," he said finally.

"Right," you said.

"That's not– I'm not trying to–" He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated in the way he got frustrated, openly and without pretense. "You think this was easy for me? Watching you every day for years and saying nothing, doing nothing, because the timing was never right or the situation was never right or you seemed happy enough without–" He stopped, then looked at you. "I was tired of waiting."

"So you stopped asking and started deciding."

"That's not what I did."

"Then what did you do, Valarr, because from where I'm standing–"

"I love you." He said it plainly, the way he did everything, without strategy or performance, just the words dropped into the space between you like he had been holding them for a long time and had simply run out of reasons to keep holding them. "I have loved you since we were children and I have watched you your whole life and I know you, I know you better than most people you would trust with that knowledge, I knew that if I asked you directly you would have found a reason to say not yet, or maybe, or I need more time, and I would have waited and you would have kept waiting and nothing would have happened and I could not–" He stopped. His jaw was tight. "I could not watch you end up with someone else."

The garden was very quiet.

You looked at him, at the openness of his face, at the frustration and the honesty and the love in it that he had never once tried to disguise, and felt something in your chest do something complicated that you were not ready to deal with.

"That still wasn't your choice to make," you said, but your voice had lost some of its edge.

"I know," he said. "I know that. And I'm sorry for how it happened. I'm sorry your father broke his promise and I'm sorry you found out the way you did, I'm sorry I didn't come to you first." He held your gaze. "But I am not sorry that you're going to be my wife. I will never be sorry for that."

You looked at him for a long moment.

"This isn't—"

You didn't finish the sentence.

Valarr closed the distance between you in one step and his hands were on your face before you understood what was happening, and then he kissed you, and all the words you had been building dissolved completely.

It was not a gentle kiss. It was the kiss of someone who had been waiting too long and had finally stopped caring about waiting, deep and certain. Your eyes were wide for one moment, your hands caught somewhere between pushing him away and not, and then he deepened it and something in you gave way and your eyes closed and your hands found his chest and you stopped thinking about being angry.

He kissed you like he had been wanting to for years, which he had, which you had known somewhere you had been refusing to look, and you felt it in your chest and lower and pressed your lips back against his before you had decided to, and he made a low sound against your mouth and pulled you closer, one hand sliding from your jaw into your hair, and you forgot entirely what you had been saying.

When he finally pulled back you were both breathing unevenly and his forehead came to rest against yours, his eyes closed, his hands still in your hair, and for a moment the garden was just that– quiet and warm and the two of you breathing the same air.

Then something caught your eye over his shoulder.

You stepped back, and Valarr let you go slowly, opening his eyes to look at you with that expression, soft and warm and entirely unguarded, and you were not looking at him. You were looking past him, at the far end of the garden path, at the retreating figure you would have known anywhere.

The pale platinum hair. The particular way he walked, unhurried and deliberate, like a man who had nowhere to be and had simply chosen to be elsewhere.

Aerion.

He did not look back. He just walked, steady and calm, and turned the corner and was gone, and you stood there with Valarr's warmth still on your mouth and your heart doing something entirely different now, something that had nothing to do with the kiss and everything to do with the cold certainty settling in your stomach.

He had seen you. All of it. Valarr's hands in your hair and your eyes closed and you pressing back into the kiss like you had forgotten every reason you had to be angry.

"Hey." Valarr's voice was gentle, his hand coming to your jaw, turning your face back to his. "Where did you go?"

"Nowhere," you said, and made yourself look at him, at those warm mismatched eyes that had nothing in them but you. "I'm here."

He looked at you for a moment like he wasn't entirely sure he believed that, and then he pressed his lips to your forehead, slow and certain, and you closed your eyes and let him, and tried not to think about what Aerion's face had looked like in the moment before he turned away.

You hadn't seen it. You had been too far away, the light too low.

But you knew him. You had spent years learning the shape of him from a careful distance, and you knew, with the particular instinct you had developed for him specifically, that whatever had been on his face at that moment was not nothing.

You were going to pay for this. You didn't know how yet.

But you knew you would.

You hadn't expected anyone to be in your chambers, but the absence of your guards outside the door should have told you something. You noticed it only after you had already closed the door behind you, hand still on the handle, and found Aerion in the corner of your room with your wine.

He had helped himself to your best goblet. Of course he had.

"What are you doing in my chambers," you said.

He turned to face you, unhurried, and the expression on his face was the pleasant one, the one that meant nothing good. "Congratulating you," he said. "I couldn't very well do it at the feast, could I. Not after you made such a graceful exit." He tilted his head, studying you the way he studied things he found mildly interesting. "I'm not sure I've ever seen someone look quite so thrilled at their own betrothal announcement."

"Get out."

"In a moment." He took a slow sip of the wine and looked at the goblet appraisingly, like he was deciding whether your taste was worth commenting on.

"Valarr is lucky. He always has been, hasn't he. Things simply fall into his lap." His eyes came back to you. "Or in this case, are arranged to fall into his lap."

"I said get out, Aerion."

"You did," he agreed. "You also look like you mean it slightly less than you'd like to." He set the goblet down and crossed his arms, leaning back against the table with no intention of going anywhere. "Does it bother you, I wonder. That he went to his father rather than to you. That everyone in that room knew before you did." He paused. "That your own father broke a promise to make it happen."

The fact that he knew about the promise landed somewhere in your chest with a specific unpleasant weight.

"No one needed to tell me anything." His voice was pleasant. "I've known you your whole life. I know what your face does when something has been decided without you." He looked at you steadily. "I saw it at the table. And I saw it in the gardens earlier."

You said nothing.

"You kissed him back," he said simply, and his voice was completely without judgment, which was worse somehow than if it had been cruel.

"I know what I saw." He pushed off the table and took a few steps toward you, stopping at a distance that was closer than comfortable and carefully not close enough to object to.

"The interesting thing is that you kissed him back and you still don't look like a happy girl." He tilted his head slightly. "Why is that, do you think."

"You don't know anything about how I feel."

"I know more than you'd like me to," he said. "I've been watching you for years. Did you think I hadn't noticed? That I simply sit across from you at dinner and look at the food?" Something shifted in his expression, something underneath the pleasantness that was harder to read.

"Valarr is warm. Valarr is kind. Valarr will be a devoted husband and the court will find it charming and you will smile and say the right things and spend the rest of your life being precisely as restless as you are right now."

“Get out–”

“No. I’m quite happy here princess.”

He walks even closer to you, eyes on you as he reaches for a piece of your hair to tuck it behind your ear. You almost moved away from the action, though he kissed his teeth at that, as if that action itself annoyed him so.

“Valarr is many things,” he said lightly, studying your face as though you were a puzzle he had already solved. “Dutiful. Earnest. Admirable in the way old men like to use the word.”

His fingers lingered at the strand of hair he had tucked behind your ear.

“But he is dull,” Aerion continued, his voice lowering slightly. “Dull in conversation. Dull in temper. Dull in appetite.”

You stiffened and he noticed.

“Oh, don’t pretend you haven’t thought of it.” His mouth curved faintly. “He speaks to you like you’re porcelain. Like you might shatter if he breathes too hard.”

“That’s called respect,” you snapped.

“It’s called fear,” Aerion corrected calmly. “He worships you. And men who worship rarely dare to touch what they worship properly.”

Your jaw tightened.

Aerion leaned closer, not enough to trap you, but enough that you could feel the warmth of him.

“Tell me,” he murmured, eyes flicking down your face with deliberate slowness, “when he kissed you in the gardens… did it feel like something claimed you? Or did it feel like he was asking permission to exist?”

Your breath caught despite yourself.

He smiled faintly at that.

“Valarr will give you sons and soft words and a lifetime of predictable nights,” Aerion continued. “He will lie beside you as though he’s afraid of disturbing the air between you. He will thank you afterward.”

“That is enough,” you said sharply.

“For some women,” he agreed, as he continued on with his words. “For women who want to be admired from a polite distance. For women who enjoy being handled like glass.”

His gaze darkened, something sharper threading beneath the pleasant tone.

“You are not glass.”

You tried to step back. He followed half a step, closing the distance you had created.

“You burn,” he said quietly. “You’ve always burned. And he will spend his life trying to tame it into something courtly.”

His thumb brushed lightly against your jaw— not tender, not cruel, just assessing.

“You’ll lie there beside him,” he went on, voice dropping further, “and you’ll wonder why you still feel restless. Why something in you is still waiting… is still wanting.”

You swallowed.

“And when his love making does not quite reach you,” Aerion added, a crude edge sliding into his tone now, deliberate and unapologetic, “when he’s finished and satisfied and you are not, you will think of this conversation, you will think of me.”

You rolled your eyes, heat rising in your face. He laughed softly at that, genuinely amused.

“It offends you because it’s true,” he said. “You do not want warmth. You want to be consumed.”

“That’s enough, Aerion.”

“No,” he said calmly. “It isn’t.”

His gaze held yours

“Valarr will cherish you. He will be grateful for you. He will treat your body like a sacred relic bestowed upon him.”

His voice dipped, rougher now.

“I would not.”

Silence settled heavy between you.

“I would not ask,” he continued. “I would not thank you. And you would not mistake what you were to me.”

The arrogance in it was staggering.

“You’re vile,” you said quietly.

His smile returned– slow, satisfied.

“And yet,” he murmured, “you are still standing here.”

He stepped back then, finally, reclaiming his goblet as though the conversation had been nothing more than idle courtly gossip.

“Think on it,” he said softly, as though he were offering thoughtful advice rather than an insult. “Marry your dutiful prince. Smile for the court. Bear him heirs.”

The words should have felt like dismissal. A neat ending to a conversation he believed he had already won.

He turned slightly, confident enough to expose his back to you.

You did not move toward him.

You stood exactly where you were, anger and humiliation warring in your chest, the door solid at your spine.

“Aerion,” you said, your voice tight, “leave.”

He did not answer at once. Instead, he set the goblet down with exaggerated care, the faint click of metal against wood sounding far too loud in the room. When he turned back to you, something had shifted. The pleasant amusement had thinned into something colder, something edged.

“No,” he replied.

He crossed the distance between you without haste, though each step felt deliberate, predatory. You did not step forward. You did not invite him closer. Still, he advanced until there was scarcely any space left to claim.

“You speak as though you have a choice in how this will unfold,” he said quietly.

“I do,” you shot back, lifting your chin despite the tremor in your pulse.

His mouth curved faintly. “Do you?”

He reached for you without warning.

One moment there was air between you, and the next his hand was at your arm, fingers biting into fabric and flesh as he forced you back against the door. The impact jarred through you, sharp, your shoulder striking the wood hard enough to sting.

“Aerion, stop,” you demanded, shoving at his chest.

He did not.

His other hand came up to brace against the door beside your head, caging you in. You pushed harder, your palm striking his shoulder, then his jaw. The slap cracked in the quiet room, sharp and unmistakable.

For a fraction of a second, there was stillness.

Then his eyes darkened.

Not surprised. Not ashamed.

Angered.

“You dare,” he said, his voice dropping to something far more dangerous than before.

You tried to twist away, but his hand caught your wrist again, harder now, and he closed the distance without permission. The kiss was not persuasion. It was force. His mouth crushed against yours, claiming and unyielding, swallowing your protest as though it were nothing more than inconvenience.

You struggled, pushing against him, turning your face aside, but he followed, relentless. The more you resisted, the tighter his grip became, as though your defiance only sharpened his resolve.

When you struck him again, he broke the kiss long enough to seize both your wrists in one hand. The movement was swift and unforgiving.

“You think I will be dismissed like him,” he muttered, breathing unevenly now, his composure fraying. “You think I will stand at a distance and ask.”

Before you could react, he dragged you away from the door. The shift was sudden enough to disorient you, your balance faltering as he propelled you backward toward the bed.

You barely had time to brace yourself before the backs of your knees hit the edge of it and you fell onto the mattress. The force was not enough to injure, but it stole your breath all the same.

He followed immediately, looming over you, one knee sinking into the bedding to keep you from scrambling away.

“Aerion,” you warned, fury and fear mingling in your voice.

He looked down at you, chest rising and falling faster now, whatever restraint he had clung to finally stripped away.

“You will not treat me as though I am an afterthought,” he said, the words low and trembling with anger. “Not you.”

The composure he wore like armor at court was gone now. There was no pleasantness, no amusement in it. Only something stripped raw and furious.

“I was meant to stand beside you,” he continued, his voice unsteady not with weakness but with rage barely leashed. “Not him. It was always him for you, wasn’t it? Even when you pretended not to see it.”

His grip tightened at your shoulders.

“You think I did not see you in that garden.” His jaw flexed. “You think I did not watch you close your eyes for him.”

Your breath hitched despite yourself.

“You let him take your first kiss,” Aerion said, and there was something almost disbelieving in it, like the insult still had not settled properly in his mind. “You let him touch you as though he had earned it.”

“You have no right—”

“No right?” he snapped, the words cutting through you. “I have watched you since we were children. I have measured every man who stood too close. I have endured your father parading you through halls as though you were a prize to be admired.” His mouth twisted. “And he walks into a garden and takes what I have waited years for.”

“You waited for nothing,” you shot back, struggling against him. “I was never yours.”

Something in his expression fractured.

“I was the one they would have given you to,” he said, voice dropping again, but this time it was worse. Quieter. “If he had not interfered. If he had not rushed to his father like a boy afraid of losing a toy.”

“I am not a thing to be handed between you two,” you said, anger flaring hot enough to momentarily overpower fear.

He leaned closer, eyes dark and bright in equal measure.

“No,” he said. “You are not.”

His hand slid from your shoulder to your jaw, forcing your face toward his.

“You are something he does not understand how to hold.”

“I will not be replaced,” he said, breath uneven now. “Not by him. Not by anyone.”

“You are insane,” you hissed, struggling beneath him.

“And you are blind,” he shot back.

His face hovered inches from yours, his anger no longer refined into something subtle. It was raw. Almost desperate.

“You think this ends with a kiss in a garden,” he said. “You think you can walk into marriage and forget I exist.”

His grip tightened when you tried to pull free.

“I saw you,” he continued, voice thick now, not just angry but wounded in a way that made him more dangerous. “I saw the way you answered him. The way you melted into it.”

Your silence enraged him further.

“You want warmth,” he said bitterly. “You want gentleness. You want to be cherished.”

His eyes locked onto yours.

“And I would have given you something real.”

There was nothing romantic in the way he said it.

Only possession.

“You do not get to decide what I want,” you said, breath shaking but voice steady, tears kissing your eyes.

For a moment, something uncertain flickered in him, then it hardened again.

His hand fisted suddenly in your hair.

The force of it dragged you upward before you could brace yourself, your breath catching as his mouth crashed against yours. There was nothing careful in it, nothing resembling affection. His teeth caught your lower lip and bit down until you tasted copper, until the sting bloomed bright and immediate.

You made a sound despite yourself, half pain, half protest, and tried to twist away.

He did not let you.

He deepened the kiss instead, as though your resistance only fed the fury driving him. When he finally pulled back it was not far, his forehead nearly touching yours, his grip still unyielding.

“Must you always be so cold to me,” he said, but there was no pleading in it. Only accusation.

Before you could answer, his mouth moved again, not to your lips this time but down along the line of your jaw, to the sensitive curve beneath your ear. His teeth grazed there too, not enough to break skin, but enough to make you flinch.

“Every look,” he murmured against your throat, voice rougher now, less controlled. “Every word you give him so easily.”

His hand slid from your hair, only to settle at your waist, fingers pressing firmly into the structured fabric of your bodice. He worked at the laces with impatient precision, tugging until they loosened beneath his touch. The careful arrangement of your dress began to slacken under his hands.

You pushed at his shoulders again, anger rising through the haze of shock.

“Stop,” you demanded, your voice unsteady but not weak.

He paused only long enough to look at you.

There was heat in his expression, yes, but something else threaded through it now. Frustration. Obsession. The bruised pride of a man who could not endure being denied.

“You shut me out,” he said, his thumb pressing against the base of your throat as though he could feel your pulse racing there. “As if I am a stranger. As if I have not stood at your side for years.”

His grip tightened just enough to remind you how easily he could overpower you, though he did not close his hand fully.

“And yet you melt for him.”

The words were quiet, almost hoarse.

His mouth returned to your neck, slower this time, less frantic but no less intense, as if he were trying to prove something rather than simply take it. His hands continued their restless work at your dress, loosening what had been carefully secured, his movements deliberate and possessive.

“Look at you,” he muttered, not tenderly. “Still fighting me.”

With a final tug, the last barrier of your dress fell away, and he let it slip from your body entirely. He stepped back slightly, taking a long, appraising look at you, eyes gleaming with a strange mixture of admiration and something darker. “He does not deserve this,” he said quietly, almost to himself. “He would not know what to do with someone like you.”

Then, as if daring you to react, he lowered his mouth toward you, his movements slow and torturous, each kiss a deliberate claim. His lips traced a path down your body with painstaking precision, lingering at every sensitive curve, every line of your skin, as though memorizing it.

By the time he reached the hollow beneath your belly, the faint trace of your blood from his earlier bite still on his lips, you felt the shift inside you, impossible to resist. What had begun as violation and force had turned, unbearably, into something you craved.

You wanted him in ways that shocked you. Wanted the weight of his hands on your skin, the rough press of his fingers digging into you, the sharp tug of hair between his grasp. You wanted the heat of him against your throat, the low, commanding pressure that had left your pulse racing from the start.

Your own need rose up suddenly, urgent and undeniable. The breath caught in your chest, the trembling in your hands and thighs betraying the want that you could no longer deny. You wanted him, not as before, not as a threat– but as the fire that consumed you, as the storm you had spent years watching from a careful distance.

You instinctively arched your hips as his head dipped lower, pressed firmly between your thighs. Heat pooled sharply, spreading through you with a tension that had nothing to do with patience or reason. He had removed your small cloth with hurry and determination.

A shiver ran along your spine as his tongue suddenly brushed against you, deliberate, unhurried, dragging sensations that left you gasping and trembling. You threw your head back, hands latching into his hair instinctively, needing to anchor yourself against the overwhelming pleasure.

Every movement, every press of his lips and the teasing of him against your sensitive bud, pulled something raw and urgent from deep inside you.

Your chest heaved, your knees quivering, your body betraying every attempt at composure.

His tongue moved with deliberate precision, teasing and drawing, tasting you in a way that left no room for hesitation or denial. Every flick, every press of his lips, sent shocks of need through your body that made your nails dig deeper into his hair. You gasped, hips bucking instinctively, trying to find a rhythm, any rhythm, against the insistence of him.

“You feel like this,” he murmured, voice low, rough with satisfaction, “like you’ve been waiting for me without knowing it. Every inch of you wants it, and yet you fight me still.” His hands braced against your thighs, spreading you wider, pinning you to the bed with a deliberate weight that left no escape.

Your back arched, a soft cry escaping as his tongue pressed harder, teasing, coaxing, dragging you closer to a point you had only dared imagine. The sound of your own need, raw and uncontrolled, filled the room, mingling with the quiet, possessive hums from him. He didn’t rush, not yet, savoring the control as much as the taste, the power of holding you on the brink.

Your hands roamed, clutching at him, at his shoulders, anything you could grasp, desperate for some way to touch back. Every movement of his mouth drew more from you, more groans, more shivers, more of the burning heat that made your head spin. You were caught, entirely, and you didn’t want to be anywhere else.

“You want it,” he said, almost accusingly, lips brushing against your clit as he spoke, “you crave me, even when you try not to. Even when you pretend otherwise.” His words were punctuated by the deliberate drag of his tongue, the teasing press that made your thighs shake, your nails leaving crescent marks in his skin.

And then, as if sensing the breaking point, he pushed slightly harder, pressing you fully against him, and your body shuddered, a gasp ripped from you, your back arching further as the first wave of pure, overwhelming release coursed through you.

His lips didn’t relent, didn’t ease the pressure, and the next wave hit before the first could fade, leaving you trembling and raw beneath him, utterly undone.

Even in your surrender, in your cries and shudders, he looked at you with that same calm, assessing gaze, the one that always made you feel like you were exactly where he wanted you– and nowhere else could compare.

And so, in the days that followed, as you were wed to Valarr with all the ceremony and dutiful smiles the court demanded, Aerion lingered in the shadows, watching. Every polite bow, every whispered congratulations, every careful touch between you and your husband only stoked the dark fire in him.

It wasn’t jealousy, it was triumph.

Because Valarr may have claimed your kiss first, but Aerion had claimed far more.

He had taken what was his, in the quiet, unspoken ways that no courtly display could touch. Your body remembered him in ways your heart could not yet name, and in that knowledge, he exulted.

Triumph and possession twisted together in his chest, the satisfaction of a predator who had waited and watched and finally taken what had long been within his grasp, leaving nothing for anyone else to claim.

from the moment aerion targaryen met you, he was ruined for everyone else.

he had known it immediately, which offended him greatly.

you had stood in the great hall beneath streaming banners and candlelight, speaking softly to some elderly lord whose name aerion could not remember now, and he had stared at you with the unnerving certainty that his life had just divided itself into before and after.

he had wanted you at once.

not simply for your beauty, though the gods knew you possessed enough of it to make men foolish.

no, it was worse than that. it was the way you smiled when spoken to you. the way your voice softened around frightened animals. the way you listened carefully to him, as though every word mattered.

you were gentle and yet you were smart. unbreakable.

and aerion, for all his arrogance, for all the monstrous streak that lived comfortably beneath his skin, found himself following that gentleness like a frightened man following candlelight.

once he married you, he became unbearable about it.

he could not go anywhere without you.

court meetings became impossible unless you sat beside him. feasts irritated him if you were seated too far away. he would find excuses to leave conversations midway simply because he had caught sight of you across the hall and suddenly needed to hear your voice more than whatever tedious noble was speaking to him.

people noticed, of course they noticed. it was impossible not to.

aerion targaryen, proud and cruel and impossible, followed his wife around like a man enchanted.

and he did not care.

when your gown fittings were scheduled, he attended them as though invited personally by the gods. he would lounge dramatically across velvet chairs in the corner while seamstresses fluttered around you adjusting hems and sleeves. a goblet of wine would rest lazily in his hand while he watched you with shameless devotion.

“you are staring at me again,” you would murmur, smoothing your hands down the front of some pale silk gown.

“you mustn't blame me wife, for you are simply beautiful,” he would answer easily. “we both suffer from consistency.”

the seamstresses would blush furiously. you smiled every time.

sometimes he would rise simply to touch the fabric himself, rubbing it between long fingers before looking at you critically. “no,” he would decide. “this color does not suit you.”

“it is blue.”

“it is horrid blue.”

“you said yesterday that blue was my color.”

“that was a better blue.” then he would press a kiss to your inner wrist as though that settled the matter entirely.

often the two of you escaped to the gardens whenever court became too suffocating. hidden away beneath twisting vines and dragon roses, you would spend hours tangled together beneath the shade.

you liked adventure stories, romance too. aerion preferred gruesome histories filled with betrayals and executions and bloodshed. he would read them aloud with disturbing enthusiasm while you laughed softly beside him, your head resting against his shoulder.

“it is educational, wife, it is not a laughing matter.”

“it is horrifying!”

“that as well.”

you smiled and stole the book from his hands. “then i shall save your soul with something gentler.”

“my soul is beyond saving.”

“mm. i have hope.”

he watched you read the same way he watched flames, utterly entranced. your voice drifting through the gardens became one of his favorite sounds in the world. sometimes he stopped listening to the actual story entirely, too distracted by the shape of your mouth around certain words.

he would kiss you slow and lazy beneath flowering vines while the world continued without you.

everywhere in the red keep there were glimpses of you together. your arms linked through endless corridors. his hand possessively at your waist during feasts and parties.

his favor wrapped around your wrist during tournaments because he insisted his colors belonged on his wife and only his wife.

and you understood him.

you understood the sharpness in him. the cruelty. the terrible anger he carried like another heartbeat. you never excused it, but neither did you recoil from it. you saw all the ugliness inside him and loved him still.

it made him worship you for it.

so when you fell ill, it destroyed him slowly.

you would smile and insist you were well enough, brushing it aside with gentle reassurance whenever his expression darkened with concern. a cough lingering too long after the autumn rain, a fever that came and went in waves, exhaustion settling into your bones until even simple things began to tire you.

but aerion noticed everything about you.

he noticed when you stopped finishing your meals. when your hands felt warmer than usual curled inside his. when you leaned more heavily against him during long walks through the gardens. he noticed the shadows beginning to gather beneath your eyes no matter how carefully you tried to hide them.

and selfishly, desperately, he had hoped it was something else.

he had hoped you were with child.

the thought had rooted itself in him almost immediately, growing quietly into hope before he could stop it. he imagined your sickness explained away by life instead of illness. a babe. your babe. his hands resting against your stomach while you laughed softly at his unbearable protectiveness.

he clung to the possibility with frightening intensity.

“you have been tired for weeks,” he murmured one evening, sitting beside you near the fire while you leaned sleepily against the cushions. “and sick in the mornings.”

you looked up at him over the rim of your cup. “are you attempting to diagnose me yourself now?”

“i am saying there may be another explanation.”

the faintest smile touched your mouth then, soft and knowing. “you think i am carrying your child.”

“i think it would explain things.”

“and if it does not?”

his expression shifted immediately, the fragile hope there dimming just slightly. “it will.”

you reached over to touch his face gently. “aerion.”

“you would tell me if you thought it possible.”

“i would.”

his hand slid over yours quickly, holding it there against his cheek. “i want it to be true.”

you softened instantly, your thumb brushing lightly against his skin. “i know you do.”

for a little while, the possibility sustained him.

he became almost absurdly attentive after that. hovering constantly. insisting you rest. arguing with servants if meals were not prepared exactly right. pulling blankets over your lap himself with quiet irritation whenever he thought you looked cold.

“you need not be so concerned aerion,” you teased weakly one afternoon as he adjusted the pillows behind your back for the third time.

“you are coughing again.”

“it is one tiny cough.”

“it was a terrible cough.”

you laughed softly despite yourself. “you would make a dreadful maester.”

“i would make an excellent husband.”

“that much is true.”

he kissed your forehead immediately at the praise, lingering there for a moment longer than necessary. “then obey your excellent husband and sleep.”

you smiled but closed your eyes obediently anyway, too tired to argue much anymore and that frightened him because you were never this tired.

weeks passed.

the sickness did not improve.

the fevers worsened instead.

and slowly, horribly, the hope inside him began to rot into fear.

the maesters stopped speaking optimistically when he entered the room. their careful expressions told him everything long before their mouths did. he hated them for it. hated their silence. hated the medicines that did nothing. hated the smell of herbs and boiling tinctures that now permanently lingered in your chambers.

most of all, he hated the growing weakness in you.

one evening he found you asleep by the window, a book fallen forgotten in your lap. the sight should not have broken him the way it did. fear struck him so violently, he crossed the room immediately, sitting beside you with his hands wrapping tightly around yours.

“you should rest,” he told you quietly when you stirred awake.

a tired smile touched your lips at once. “i am resting.”

“properly.”

that woke you more fully. your expression softened immediately as you looked at him there beneath you, still dressed in dark court clothes he had evidently never bothered changing out of. his silver hair was disheveled from repeatedly dragging frustrated hands through it. shadows lingered beneath his eyes now too. had he slept at all recently?

“aerion,” you whispered gently.

his grip tightened unconsciously around your hands as he stared down at them, his throat working once. when he finally looked back up at you, there was something raw in his eyes that made your chest ache.

“i do not know what to do,” he admitted quietly.

aerion hated helplessness. hated uncertainty. yet here he was before you like a man praying at an altar, unable to fight the thing slowly stealing you from him.

you lifted one hand carefully from his grasp just to touch his face. “you are already doing it,” you whispered.

“that is not enough.”

“it is for me.”

his eyes closed briefly at that, leaning instinctively into your touch. for a moment he simply stayed there, holding your hand against his cheek like something precious.

then, very softly, almost angrily, he murmured, “i am going to grow old with you. hear me. i will."

he rarely left your side.

meetings were abandoned midway. letters unanswered. duties forgotten entirely. he remained beside you obsessively, sleeping in chairs when he refused to leave your bedside, holding cool cloths to your skin with hands more accustomed to swords than gentleness.

his patience disappeared entirely. goblets shattered against walls when maesters offered uncertain answers. servants flinched when entering the room because even the scrape of shoes against stone seemed enough to provoke him now.

then came the anger. not at you, never at you. at the maesters who could not heal you. at the gods who would dare touch what belonged to him. at himself for being unable to stop it.

“you said the fever would break,” he hissed at one trembling maester after another miserable night left you barely conscious. “you assured me she was improving.”

“she did appear stronger yesterday, your grace-”

“do not lie to me.”

the old man visibly faltered beneath the fury in aerion’s voice.

“she needs rest,” the maester managed carefully.

“she needs curing.”

silence.

aerion’s expression darkened into something terrifying. “get out.”

no one argued with him anymore after that.

the servants cried quietly outside the doors sometimes. you could hear them if the hall fell silent enough. the sound seemed to haunt aerion more than anything else because people only cried like that when hope was beginning to die.

then came the night everything changed.

the room was dim besides the fire and a handful of dying candles. rain struck softly against the windows while thunder rolled somewhere far over the bay.

aerion sat beside you holding your hand tightly between both of his as though warmth alone might anchor you here.

“you will get better,” he told you hoarsely. “you must.”

your breathing caught unevenly before settling again.

“aerion- husband-”

“no.” his voice cracked violently. “do not speak like that.”

you looked at him with unbearable softness. “my love,” you whispered.

“you are not leaving me.” tears filled his eyes instantly, furious and helpless all at once. “you hear me?” he said desperately, leaning closer. “you cannot leave me here. i do not know how to-” his voice broke entirely.

your trembling fingers brushed weakly against his cheek, even now, you were comforting him.

“aerion,” you whispered softly, “look at me.”

and he did immediately, like he always would. your eyes searched his face slowly, lovingly, memorizing him the same way he had memorized you a thousand times before.

“i loved you very much,” you breathed.

“no.” he shook his head instantly, panic rising sharp and ugly in his chest. “no, do not say it like goodbye.”

“you made me very happy.”

“stop.” his grip tightened painfully around your hand. “please.” aerion targaryen did not beg. not kings, not gods, not men. but he begged you.

your eyes softened immediately at the sound of it, filling slowly with tears that slipped silently down into your hair. even now, with death hovering so terribly close, you looked at him with nothing but love.

“do you understand? i cannot- i cannot sit here and listen to you speak as though this is ending.”

your breath trembled faintly. “aerion…”

“no.” his voice cracked violently again. “no, you listen to me now.”

his free hand cupped your face desperately, trembling hard enough that you could feel it against your skin.

“you will stay,” he said, the words frantic now, like if he spoke them firmly enough the world would obey him. “you will survive this. the maesters are wrong. they have been wrong before.”

you gave the faintest shake of your head.

he looked suddenly furious at it. “at least pretend to believe me.”

a weak little smile touched your mouth then, heartbreakingly gentle. “you sound angry.”

“i am angry.”

“at me?”

“no- no my love, never at you. at everything.” his voice splintered on the last word.

the fire crackled softly somewhere behind him, rain tapping against the windows in uneven rhythms. the room smelled of wax and herbs and sickness. aerion thought suddenly, wildly, that he hated every part of it. hated the candles. hated the storm. hated the bed beneath you because it had become a place of dying instead of sleeping beside him warm and laughing.

most of all he hated how cold your hands had become.

he brought them closer between his own instinctively, rubbing warmth into your fingers as though he could force life back into them through sheer desperation.

“you promised me forever,” he whispered brokenly.

your lashes fluttered weakly. “i meant it.”

“then do not leave me.”

you looked at him for a very long moment after that and something in your expression changed with acceptance.

“no,” he said again, harsher this time. “do not look at me like that.”

you had never seen him like this, not truly, not stripped this bare. aerion had always loved fiercely, possessively, almost violently in the depth of it, but he rarely let anyone witness the rawness underneath. he hid softness behind arrogance. devotion behind sharp words.

but there was nowhere left to hide now not while you were dying in front of him.

“you cannot leave me alone here,” he whispered suddenly. the confession sounded childlike. small.

“my husband,” you breathed gently.

his face twisted instantly at the title, grief ripping visibly across it. “you said we would grow old together,” he murmured. “you said we would have children.”

tears slipped harder down his face now. he did not even seem aware of them.

“i bought that little carved dragon you liked in the market because you wanted to have it for our child.” his voice shook violently. “it is still sitting in gift velvet because i thought-”

his breath broke. “i thought there would be time.”

you began crying then too, silent tears slipping into your hair as you watched him unravel before you.

aerion pressed your hand desperately against his lips.

“there is still time,” he insisted suddenly, like he could force the truth backward if he spoke quickly enough. “tomorrow you will wake and i will carry you into the gardens again. to roses near the fountain, you always say they smelled sweeter after rain.”

“aerion…”

“we will read together.” his words tumbled over each other now, frantic and disjointed. “and i will complain through your ridiculous romance stories and you will laugh at me and-”

his voice snapped apart completely.

you gathered what little strength remained in you and brushed your thumb weakly against his cheek. “i need you to be brave for me. my brave dragon.”

“no.”

the answer came instantly like a child refusing.

you tried to smile through your tears. “you are a dragon prince.”

“i am also your husband.” the words came out fierce and broken all at once. “i love you,” he whispered desperately. “do you hear me? i love you so much i cannot breathe when i think about losing you.”

your eyes closed briefly at the pain in his voice. “aerion…”

“i should have loved you less.” but even as he said it, both of you knew it was impossible. he had loved you from the very first moment. too much. too fiercely. with every ruined part of himself. and now the gods were tearing you away from him piece by piece.

“i do not regret loving you,” you whispered. you were breathing differently now. slower. weaker.

panic flooded his face so fast. your fingers tightened faintly around his once. “i am- tired now. aerion.”

“no.”

“i love you- so- aerion-”

“no, stay awake my love. stay with me. look at me.” his voice broke into something desperate and terrified.

you tried. gods, you tried. your eyes found his one last time, full of love so deep it nearly killed him on the spot.

then your breathing faltered.

every part of him seemed to stop existing except for the hand clutching yours.

another breath, still shallow. then another, smaller still.

“no,” he whispered again, tears falling freely now. “please. i love you.”

and then-

nothing.

silence. complete and horrible.

aerion stared at you waiting. waiting for your chest to rise again. waiting for your fingers to twitch in his hand. waiting for the impossible. but you stayed still. and slowly, horrifyingly, your warmth began to fade beneath his hands.

the sound that left him afterward was raw enough to tear through stone.

he folded over you instantly, clutching your hand against his mouth as violent sobs ripped through him hard enough to leave him breathless. his entire body shook with it, years of pride and cruelty and arrogance collapsing into grief so enormous it hollowed him out completely.

“no, no, no-”

he kissed your cold knuckles desperately between broken gasps of air. “you cannot do this to me,” he choked out.

the gods, cruel as they were, had finally taken the only thing aerion targaryen had ever truly loved.

the silence afterward nearly drove him mad.

he had not cried like that since childhood. since lonely nights hidden away in dark chambers where no one came looking for him. he felt small again suddenly. helpless. frightened.

they had given him an hour to calm down, and when his tears subsided and all that was left was anger, grief, and longing, the maester quietly began to approach the bed before aerion turned with such horrifying fury that the old man stopped instantly.

“get out.”

“your grace-”

“get out.”

the room emptied immediately and no one dared argue.

aerion was alone with you. alone in the suffocating silence of your shared chambers while candlelight flickered softly against your still face. he loved you more than he knew what to do with, and now there was nowhere for that love to go.

hours passed before anyone dared enter again. even then, aerion refused to let go of you. it nearly killed him when they tried to take your body from the bed.

“no,” he snarled hoarsely, gripping you tighter. “do not touch her.”

“prince aerion-”

“do not touch her.” his voice barely raised, yet stern. frightening.

they had to pry his hands away, hold him back. he looked- no, he was- half-mad, watching them place you inside the coffin, his face white with horror like he could not comprehend how the world expected him to survive such a thing.

afterward, he refused to clear your rooms.

your gowns remained hanging exactly where you left them. your oils and perfumes stayed lined carefully along the vanity. books remained half-open where you had abandoned them.

your side of the bed stayed untouched.

every now and then, late at night, standing in front of your grand dresser, he would hold one of your dresses against his face, breathing in the fading trace of your perfume with devastated desperation.

the gardens became unbearable to him. the reading alcoves remained empty. and aerion wandered through the red keep like a ghost haunting a life that no longer existed.

people feared him more after your death. he grew colder. crueler. quieter.

but worst of all were the nights.

because sometimes, very late, servants passing your chambers would hear him speaking softly into the silence as though you were lying beside him still.

“i told you to listen to me,” he would murmur. then, quieter, “yes, i know. you are cold tonight.”

there would be the faint sound of movement. a chair dragged closer. a goblet set down. and then, gently, almost tenderly, “you should sleep now.”

no one ever dared open the door. because sometimes they also heard him laugh softly, as though you had answered.

he began to drink heavily.

wine at first. then stronger things brought in quietly by servants too afraid to refuse him. the maesters warned against it, cautiously at first, then more urgently as the pattern worsened.

“your grace,” one of them said carefully one evening, “this will not ease your suffering. it will only deepen it.”

“i am not suffering,” he said. “you are mistaken.” aerion continued calmly. “my wife is simply away. that is all.”

the maester exchanged a look with another before bowing stiffly and retreating.

he began speaking of you in the present tense.

“my wife prefers the roses after rain,” he told a bewildered servant once. “do not cut them yet.” another time, he stopped a maid in the corridor and snapped at her, “have you seen my son?”

she froze. “my prince…you do not have-”

aerion’s expression sharpened instantly.

“see to it that he is with his mother,” he said firmly.

no one corrected him. it was easier not to.

he began to see you again. at first it was fleeting. a reflection in the mirror that was not his own. a flicker at the edge of his vision when he turned too quickly. a warmth in empty chairs.

then it became clearer. you were in your chambers again. sitting at the vanity. adjusting your hair. looking at him as though nothing had ever gone wrong at all.

“aerion,” you would say softly. “must you stare at me, my love? it is quite jarring.”

and he would believe it. he would believe it completely. there was no longer any separation between memory and reality. only you.

until even that began to fracture.

the night he drank wildfire.

he believed it would truly take the pain away, turn him into something different. into a dragon.

maesters agreed, because no one truly denied a targaryen anything for long, suggesting it might “calm the mind” if handled carefully, and with all of aerion’s temperaments they agreed to add in a little something extra, something that might ease the sleeplessness, the agitation, the grief that had begun to consume him.

that night, after drinking, he stood alone in your chambers, holding one of your gowns again. when suddenly his grip tightened violently around the fabric.

“i cannot do this,” he whispered. “i told you,” he murmured hoarsely into the empty room, “i told you i cannot be anywhere without you.”

his vision blurred and he felt a sharp burning sensation from inside himself. the wildfire had burned him, saved him from the madness and grief that had been burned into him long ago.

aerion targaryen could not bring himself to let go of the one thing he had ever truly belonged to. because aerion targaryen, in the end, was exactly what he had always been.

He doesn't visibly enjoy hurting people. He sits across the table from a man who's betrayed him and he says, in a tone so warm it sounds almost affectionate, I think there's been a misunderstanding, and he tilts his head a fraction, and he keeps eye contact while one of his people unfolds a knife behind the man's chair. And the entire time Valarr is smiling that beautiful, slightly apologetic smile and somehow the man on the wrong side of the table believes he deserves this. Believes it is his own fault. Believes that if he'd only been smarter or quicker or more loyal, Valarr would not be doing this to him.

Valarr makes people agree with their own destruction. It's the most frightening thing about him.

He sleeps eight hours a night and never once has nightmares.

The rivalry between them isn't new, either.

It dates back to a summer at the family compound when they were nine and seven and Valarr won a sailing race and Aerion broke Valarr's collarbone with an oar two days later. Their fathers separated them.

Their fathers re-separated them at thirteen and fifteen, after Aerion put Valarr's face through a glass coffee table at a christening. They've been arranged-marriage civil to each other for twenty years and there's not a man in either organisation who doesn't understand that the second Maekar and Baelor are both in the ground, one of them is going to put the other in a hole, too.

The only question is which one. Money says Valarr, because Valarr is patient, surgical and has institutional weight. Money is wrong, because Valarr underestimates Aerion the way the world underestimates a stray dog with a steel jaw.

Aerion thinks Valarr is a phony. A polished show-piece. A man who's never bled for anything in his life and gets to inherit the larger share of the city purely because his father was born first.

Valarr thinks Aerion is a feral, embarrassing liability. A hand grenade with the pin missing. Useful, because he's terrifying and family, but the kind of relative you keep at a distance from your reputation.

They both, on some level neither would ever say aloud, want to be the one their fathers chose.

—

And then you come south.

—

You don't come south because of the family. That's the thing.

You come south because your father is dead.

Barthogan Stark, of Winterfell, of the north, killed not in any spectacular way but slowly, over three years, by something that ate him from the inside while you held his hand and read aloud to him in the long evenings.

The lawyers need you in the city for a month to handle the estate.

Your father's estate is large, and complicated. Your father was a Stark, which is its own kind of weight in this city even before you start opening drawers and finding things you wish you hadn't.

Your father owned half a shipping line. Your father had a standing reservation at a restaurant Baelor's people own. Your father had, you discover three days in, a file in the locked drawer of his study with the name Targaryen on the tab and photographs inside that you don't yet have the stomach to look at fully.

So you come south. Head-to-toe in black, your father's signet ring on a chain at your throat because you can't yet bring yourself to wear it on your hand.

You don't know the scene yet.

You just know your father knew these people, and you know your father is not in a position to explain why anymore.

—

You meet Bloodraven first.

A man approaches you at your father's funeral. White-haired, in a beautifully cut black coat, the wine-coloured birthmark down one side of his face, an old scar slashing through one eyebrow where the eye underneath no longer lives, partially hidden by the silky white hair.

He doesn't offer condolences. He says, "Lady Stark," in a tone of mild interest. "I knew your father."

"So did most of this city, apparently."

His mouth twitches, but it's not a smile. It's a near-smile, the way a knife is a near-flower.

"Not most of this city, no. Very few people knew your father the way I did. Barthogan and I had a long-running arrangement."

That makes you look at him properly for the first time. "Of what kind?"

"Of the kind," he says, almost gently, "that suggests you and I should also speak."

He is, you realise dimly, the most unsettling person you've ever stood next to, and you grew up surrounded by northern men who killed people for a living.

"I don't know who you are," you tell him.

Technically a lie. You've heard the name. You've heard the name in three different rooms in the last forty-eight hours, always in a hushed register, always with a small instinctive glance at the door.

"Brynden Rivers," he says. "I work for the family."

He doesn't specify which one. You understand, somehow, that this is because he works for neither and both.

"I would like to invite you to have a conversation with me, when you've finished receiving people."

"About my father."

"About a number of things."

His eye (the good one, the red one) settles on you with an unblinking focus that should feel violating and doesn't, quite, because there's nothing leering or hungry in it. It's just attention. Complete, terrible, exact.

"Starks have always been of interest to me, Lady Stark. I hope you don't disappoint."

He inclines his head a fraction and walks away.

You stand at your father's grave with this sentence sitting in your chest like a fist and think—what the fuck does that mean.

—

You find out on a cloudy Tuesday.

He sends a car and you almost don't get in it.

You even reach for your phone to call your lawyer and ask whether there's any conceivable universe in which getting into a car sent by Brynden Rivers is a survivable decision. And then you remember that you're a Stark, your father raised you for this, and your father had a file, and so you get in the car.

It drives you to a house outside the city. You expect a warehouse or a grave, frankly, but no, a house, narrow and elegant and packed floor-to-ceiling with books. A woman lets you in without speaking. (You will learn later she's mute, you will learn even later that Brynden himself had her tongue removed). A maid pours you tea you don't drink. Brynden is waiting for you in a study with three ravens perched on a sideboard like ornamental gargoyles.

He doesn't get up.

"Sit, Lady Stark."

"Brynden."

He pauses.

A small thing. He's been mid-gesture, indicating the chair across from him, and his hand stills in the air for half a beat at the use of his given name.

It is, you suspect, the first time he's been called by it in this house in a very long time. The men who come to this study call him Lord Rivers. Call him sir. Call him Bloodraven, when they're not in his hearing. Possibly two people address him the way you've just addressed him, and both of them are dead now.

His good eye crinkles at the corner, and his hand completes the gesture, his mouth turning toward that near-smile thing again.

"As you like."

You sit.

He sets a folder on the desk between you, a folder you recognise.

It is, in fact, a folder from your father's locked drawer, and the only way Brynden Rivers can have it is because your father gave it to him a long time ago and he made copies of his own, or because Brynden Rivers can simply get things and the locked drawer in your father's study did not present a meaningful obstacle.

You suspect the second. You suspect this is going to be true in a great many things from now on.

"Your father and I had what I would call a working friendship. He kept his half of the country quiet. I kept this half informed. When we exchanged information, it was always to the realm's benefit. He was, by my standards, an honourable man, which is rarer in my line of work than it should be." His good eye glitters as he takes you in, considering. After a brief pause, he adds, "I was sorry to hear of his passing. I do not say that often."

"Thank you."

The near-smile comes again at the quiet sincerity in your voice. He files it. He doesn't comment on it.

"You have, I imagine, discovered some of what he kept on the Targaryens."

Your neck prickles, and you choose your answer carefully, "Some."

"Have you read all of it?" he wonders, stirring his tea.

"No."

"May I suggest you read all of it."

It's not a suggestion and you both know it, despite how dry and mild his tone remains. A beat.

"Why are you helping me, Brynden?" you ask.

He gazes at you for a long time. One of the ravens shifts on its perch and gives a rattling croak. Brynden doesn't blink at the disturbance.

When he answers, his voice is still mild, almost amused, almost (and this is the part that will keep you up at night for weeks) fond.

"As I've told you already: Starks have always been of interest to me, my lady. Because your father gave me twenty years of clean information and asked me for almost nothing in return, and I find I would like to repay that. In a fashion he might have approved of. Because the boys you are about to meet—and you will meet them, very shortly, whether you choose to or not—both believe themselves cleverer than they are, and I have a certain professional appetite for watching clever men be corrected."

He tilts his head. "And because the city is approaching an inflection point I have spent fifteen years preparing for, and you, Lady Stark, have arrived at precisely the moment I had stopped hoping someone like you would arrive. I do not believe in providence. I do, however, believe in well-timed pieces."

You bristle. "I'm not a piece."

"No." He allows himself a half-smile this time. "You are a player. That is the part I find encouraging. I would like to be useful to you, while you are in the south. With the understanding—and I want to be entirely clear about this—that I am not a friend. I am not safe. I have my own reasons."

His good eye fixes on yours. "You should never, at any point in our acquaintance, mistake my interest in you for affection. And you should never, at any point, fail to ask yourself what I am gaining from the help I am offering. I will not be insulted by the question. I will respect you less if you fail to ask it."

You stare at him. "And if I disappoint you, Brynden?"

His expression doesn't change. "Then I will be sorry. But you will be a great deal more sorry than I am, my lady."

A very long silence follows those words.

"Alright," you say. "I would like to know one more thing before I agree."

He dips his chin. "Ask."

"What does it mean, practically, to be working with you?" you wonder, watching him carefully.

He considers the question for a beat. Sets his cup down. Folds his hands.

"It means that I have certain... habits. Of watching. Of knowing where things are, and where people are, and what is being said in rooms I am not in. These habits, when applied to a person, can be expensive. They can also be useful."

He pauses, watching his tea with a slight tilt of his head. "If you and I are doing business, my lady, then a number of my habits will, by necessity, settle on you. You will find that things you did not arrange happen on your behalf. You will find that people who might otherwise have been a nuisance discover other commitments. You will find that the city is, in certain narrow ways, easier than it would otherwise be for a woman in your position to navigate."

Your brows furrow. "You're saying I will be under your protection?"

"I am saying," he corrects, mildly, "that I am not in the habit of using that word. Protection implies an obligation. I do not take obligations to people. I take interests. While my interest in you persists, the practical consequences may be very similar to what other people would call protection. They are not the same thing."

"And if your interest in me ceases?"

"Then the practical consequences cease with it," he says simply, frankly, "I will not punish you for it. I will not seek you out. I will simply no longer be... there." His good eye crinkles slightly at the edges. "I tell you this so you understand the structure. I do not deceive my partners about the terms of the arrangement. It is one of my few professional vanities."

"And while your interest persists?"

"While my interest persists, my lady, you will find that certain men in this city become quite remarkably reluctant to inconvenience you. Aerion Targaryen, for example. Valarr Targaryen, for example."

He pauses. Picks up his cup, sipping from it for a moment.

"You are about to do something dangerous, Lady Stark," he says, leaning back into his seat. "I am familiar with what you are about to do, because I have been doing related work for a long time. You are not going to survive it on your own. You may, possibly, survive it with me. I am offering you the second option, because the first one is not, in my professional estimation, available to you."

You absorb this.

"Brynden."

"Yes, my lady?"

You laugh weakly, a slightly hysterical edge to the sound. "That's the kindest thing anyone has said to me since my father died, and it terrifies me."

He dips his chin slightly. "It should."

Another silence. Different in texture from the last one.

"Alright," you say finally. "I accept."

He tips his head. The half-smile spreads further than you have yet seen it spread. He looks, for one second, like a man who's just received a piece of news he's been waiting on for several years.

"Alright. Then we will begin, little wolf."

You look at him sharply.

He gazes back. He's called you my lady three times tonight and Lady Stark twice. He has, just now, chosen something else, and he's done it knowing exactly what he was doing, and his good eye is on yours with the calm expectant focus, curious to see what you'll do with this small test.

"Little wolf," you echo.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because it suits you. Because your father called you something similar, I believe. And because it amuses me to mark the agreement we've just made with a name only I will use, which neither of the Targaryens will be permitted to. Forgive me the vanity."

You consider him.

"That is a great deal of meaning to put on two words, Brynden."

"All my words have a great deal of meaning on them, little wolf. You will learn to read them in time."

He pours you a second cup of tea. You don't drink it this time either. You sit across from the most dangerous man in the continent and you discuss your father's files, your timelines and the people you're about to meet.

When you leave two hours later you're walking out of his house with a hand-drawn map of the city's power structure that you will memorise in your hotel room that night and burn in your bathroom sink before dawn.

You are walking out, also, with the cold clear understanding that you've just made an alliance with someone who could end you in a heartbeat. And you're walking out, also, with the unmistakable, unsettling sense that he likes you.

That this terrifying man, this man who's unmade entire dynasties and re-made governments and put bodies in walls, has decided in the space of one tea service that you're interesting. And that this is going to be, for the rest of your time in the south, both the most useful and the most dangerous fact about your situation.

At the door, as you put your coat on, you say, "Goodnight, Brynden."

He inclines his head. "Goodnight, little wolf. Please do not take the cab to the corner of your hotel."

"I know," you say. "Four blocks. Check three times."

"Very good," he says mildly.

You take a cab home. You do not let it drop you at your hotel. You have it drop you four blocks away and you walk the rest, and you check the street for tails three times before you go inside, just the way Brynden told you to.

—

You meet Aerion first.

It's at a club. One of theirs. Though you don't know it yet.

Brynden didn't tell you outright. Because he doesn't work like that.

Brynden mentioned, over the second pot of tea, that there was an establishment on a certain corner that did interesting business on Wednesdays. And that if you just so happen to be in the neighbourhood on a Wednesday around midnight you might find the atmosphere instructive.

You understood the shape of what he was saying without him needing to spell it out.

When you walk into the club, no one knows you came from Bloodraven's tea table. No one knows you were briefed on the colour of the wallpaper before you arrived. As far as the city is concerned, you're a Stark heir who's decided to take a walk on a Wednesday, and the city is going to draw its own incorrect conclusions about what that means.

You wear black. A simple slip of a dress, hair down, your father's signet ring on the chain at your throat because you can't yet bring yourself to wear it on your hand. You don't look like a girl who walked in by accident.

You also don't look like a girl who knows what she's walking into, which is the part Aerion notices first.

He's at the bar.

Silver hoops catching the red light, ringed fingers loose around a glass of something amber, the half-smile of a man pretending to find his lieutenant's story amusing. He watches you cross the floor in the mirror behind the bottles and doesn't turn around.

By the time you're three feet from him, he's already decided he's going to fuck you. He's already decided he's going to enjoy it. The only question still genuinely open in his head is how long he's going to let you pretend it's not a foregone conclusion.

"New face," he calls out, without turning.

You don't lift your eyes. "New bar."

"Is it?" His mouth twitches at the corner. He still hasn't turned. He tips his glass a fraction, watching you in the mirror over the lip of it. "What brings you in?"

"A recommendation."

"From?"

"Someone."

His eyes (pale, very pale, the kind that always look like they're catching light even when there isn't any) track up the mirror until they find yours in it. He holds you there a beat too long. You don't look away.

He sets the glass down. He turns.

Oh, you think. Oh.

You've met dangerous men before. Your father's house was full of them. You have not met one quite like this.

It isn't that he's beautiful, though he is, in a way that feels almost spiteful. Like he resents his own face for being a thing other people can use against him. It isn't the rings, or the hoops, or the half-visible ink crawling up the side of his neck.

It's the stillness. The way he looks at you like he's three moves ahead of the conversation.

His lieutenant has gone quiet. His lieutenant has gone, in fact, professionally invisible. He's slid one stool down and turned his shoulder and become deeply interested in his own phone, in a way that tells you several things at once, none of them good. The bartender has found a glass to polish at the far end of the bar.

No one is watching you. Everyone is watching you.

"Let me buy you a drink," he says.

"No, thank you," you respond crisply.

"No?"

"No."

A beat. His head tilts a fraction. Amusement curls in at the edge of his full mouth. "You walk into a stranger's bar at midnight in that dress made for taking off and won't take a drink off the house?"

"I didn't realise it was the house offering."

He laughs under his breath, a private sound. "You know who I am."

"I have a guess," you confirm neutrally.

"Do you?" His eyes go down you once, unhurried, assessing not your body but your posture, which is the thing about him he tries to hide and cannot, which is that he's far more clinical than he lets on. "Guess out loud."

"I don't make guesses out loud, Mr—"

You let it hang. You don't give him the name. He watches you not give it to him and his mouth curls, something a touch closer to approval. Not stupid, you can feel him think. Good.

"Sit," he says, and taps the stool beside him.

"No."

His brows lift slowly. "No?"

"I don't sit on command," you tell him flatly. "Ask properly."

A pause. He looks at you. Truly looks. And his expression shifts through several gears in the space of one breath. The half-smile sharpens into something almost predatory and then that drops away into something far more dangerous, which is curiosity.

Genuine curiosity. He's not been told no by a woman in his own establishment in a long time and the woman in question has done it without flirtation, without the breathy little curl of fear that he's used to detecting in women who are pretending to defy him as a form of foreplay. You have meant it. And he's so unaccustomed to meaning that he is, for one half-second, fascinated.

"Please," he drawls with a smirk, almost mocking, like this is a fun game he's indulging.

You watch him for a beat. Then, "No, thank you."

His laugh this time is incredulous. It cracks out of him before he can stop it. The lieutenant beside him doesn't look up from his phone but you can see the small involuntary tilt of his head. A man who's worked for Aerion Targaryen for a long time and has not, in his hearing, encountered this particular sound before.

"Interesting," Aerion says, under his breath. "Who are you?"

You shrug. "Someone passing through."

"Someone passing through doesn't walk into my bar."

He says my and lets it settle in the air between you. Lets you absorb it. So you understand, if you were in any doubt, exactly whose room you're standing in. It should frighten you. You're aware that it should frighten you. He has the power in this room. But you've decided, on the cab ride over, that you will not let it frighten you.

"Yet here I am."

His eyes drift to your mouth. They come back up. And then they catch, and stay, on the line of your throat. On the chain. On what hangs from the chain, the heavy old metal of the signet. The wolf cut deep and familiar enough that you can feel his recognition before he names it.

His hand moves.

He doesn't ask. He leans in (close, closer than is acceptable in a public space) and he hooks two ringed fingers under the chain at your collarbone and lifts the ring out from where it has settled inside the neckline of your dress. His knuckles brush your sternum. Aerion doesn't pretend they didn't.

He holds the ring up between you, between his thumb and forefinger, and tilts it once into the light, and looks at it, and then at you, and looks at it again.

His mouth changes shape.

The smallest possible thing. A flicker. A recalculation happening behind his face in real time. You watch him watch the ring and you watch him arrive at the answer to some internal question. You understand that the next three seconds are the only seconds in this entire conversation in which you have the advantage, because they're the only seconds in which he's been surprised.

He lets the ring drop.

It lands warm against your skin from his fingers. But his hand doesn't retreat all the way. He lets his knuckles trail, deliberately, down the line of your sternum (half an inch, no more) before he withdraws his hand. He's letting you know he did it. He wants you to know he did it. He wants you to think about it later.

"Stark," he murmurs, almost to himself.

"Yes."

"You should have led with that," he says with a lazy smirk.

"You should have asked," you retort dryly.

Aerion laughs again. It is, this time, not startled. Something more dangerous than startled, which is interested. Fully interested. The kind of interested that has costs attached to it.

He drains the last finger of amber in his glass, sets it down without looking at the bartender (who's already refilling it before the glass touches wood) and turns his whole body toward you, finally, properly, all the unhurried weight of his attention.

"Lady Stark," he drawls smoothly, tasting the name.

"Mr Targaryen."

Heat flickers in those pale eyes. "Aerion."

"Mr Targaryen," you say again, flatter.

His mouth twitches. "You're going to be difficult."

"I imagine I am," you agree mildly.

He steps a half-step closer, and you don't move.

You're distantly aware of every place on your body he's not touching.

The half-inch between his sternum and yours. The small distance between his jaw and your temple. The fact that he's breathing a fraction out of rhythm and you can feel it on your collarbone where his face is angled toward you. He's doing this on purpose, you realise, teaching you the geography of him by withholding it.

One of his rings rotates on his finger. You notice it. A tell, you'll learn later, the thing he does when his head is doing work he hasn't yet allowed his face to show.

"Have a drink with me."

It doesn't come out as a question, or offer.

"No."

"Have a conversation with me," he insists, mouth curling.

You tip your chin slightly. "We're having one right now."

"A longer one."

"No."

His eyes are on your mouth again. They have, you realise, been there for some time. He doesn't bother to pretend otherwise.

When Aerion speaks again his voice has dropped, pitched only for you, and there's a thread in it that's not flirtation, exactly. It's something more dangerous than flirtation, which is appetite, the unmasked kind, the kind he's not bothering to pretty up.

"Why are you in my bar, Stark?" he asks.

You keep your expression neutral. "To look at it."

"And?"

"And I have looked at it."

"And?"

"And I'm going to leave," you tell him flatly.

A beat follows.

"No, you're not," he says, smoothly, matter of fact.

the line of your mouth flattens ever so slightly. "I am."

"You're not," he disagrees in that confident, dangerous drawl.

You tilt your head a fraction further, eyes narrowing. "Are you stopping me, Mr Targaryen?"

Silence.

It stretches. Long enough that the lieutenant beside him gives up on his phone and is now openly, if discreetly, watching the side of Aerion's face, waiting for an order, you conclude.

Aerion doesn't turn. His eyes are on yours and his jaw is pulsing and his thumb is tracing the rim of his refilled glass in a small absent circle. You understand (you can see him understand) that the answer to your question, if he gives the honest one, is yes.

That he wants, with a clarity that's almost embarrassing, to put a hand on your waist and walk you to the back room and find out exactly how long it takes to make you stop talking to him like that. And that he is, with effort, choosing not to. Because something about you is making him choose not to, and he's not yet certain whether he resents you for it or wants to put his teeth in your throat about it.

"No," he says, finally. "I'm not stopping you."

"Good."

"Come back," he says and it sounds more like an order.

"Perhaps," you say.

"Come back, Stark."

You gaze at him, and let him have one moment of looking back. You let your eyes drop, just once, to his mouth. To the line where the lower lip meets the upper, to the faint pale scar at the corner that you had not previously noticed. Because you're not above the small cruelty of letting him know you've noticed him too.

Aerion's nostrils flare a fraction. The hand at his side flexes once and stills. This is, you suspect, going to keep him up tonight.

"Goodnight, Mr Targaryen."

His tongue touches the corner of his mouth, hooded eyes pinned to you. "Aerion."

"Goodnight, Mr Targaryen," you repeat pleasantly.

You turn.

He stops you.

Not with his hand. With his voice. Quieter this time. Almost a question. Almost.

"Wolf."

You go still.

It's the first time anyone has called you that since you came south.

You half-turn. Over your shoulder.

"Mr Targaryen."

His mouth curls. A private thing. Pleased with itself. Half cruel.

"That's what you are. You walked in here in a black dress with a wolf at your throat and you'd not be in my bar at midnight if you didn't want to be looked at. Don't make me call you Lady Stark, sweetheart. We're past that."

"We're not past that."

He loosens a small, throaty sound. "We are."

"Goodnight, Mr Targaryen."

"Goodnight, wolf."

You walk out of his Wednesday establishment in a black dress and a Stark ring at your throat and the eyes of every man in the room on your back, and you don't look back, and you don't check your phone in the cab.

You do not let yourself smile until you're inside your hotel room with the door locked and the chain on.

You stand in the dark in front of the mirror and you lift your father's ring from your sternum and you look at the heat where his knuckles touched you, the small downward trail of it, and you think calmly, that one is going to be a problem.

Your phone, on the bedside table, is silent.

It will stay silent for almost six hours, which is the longest Aerion Targaryen has ever waited to make a second move on a woman he wanted. You don't yet know this. But Brynden will tell you over the next pot of tea, because Brynden knows everything, and Brynden will set the cup down and offer a thin smile and say, that is interesting, little wolf. That is very interesting indeed.

—

You meet Valarr four days later.

At a gala. Your mother's foundation has a table and your mother's foundation now requires, by the inconvenient reality of inheritance, your face above one of the chairs.

You've been doing duty appearances for two weeks now, smiling at men who knew your father and women who knew your mother and accepting condolences from people who really only want to know what you intend to do with the shipping line. You're tired. But you're good at not showing that you're tired, which is its own kind of exhausting.

You're in dark green tonight. Not black.

You've made the small decision, in front of your hotel mirror, that you will not wear black to every event for the rest of your life. Your mother would not have wanted it, and your father would have been embarrassed by the theatre of it. So. Dark green. Heavy silk, high neck, long sleeves. The ring is on your hand tonight, finally. The chain is in a drawer in your hotel room.

You've decided that you can carry this much of him now.

You're at the bar, because the table is full of people you've already done your duty by, and you're looking at a glass of champagne you're not going to drink, when you become aware that someone has crossed the room toward you.

You don't see him coming. That is, you'll learn, the trick of him. He doesn't come at anyone; he arrives. You become aware of him in increments: a small change in the volume of the conversation behind you, a redirection of a waiter's path, the soft polite shifting of two men you'd been half-listening to as they make room without quite acknowledging that they're making it.

By the time you turn your head he's already at your elbow, easy, unhurried, with the half-smile on.

"That's a Krug," he says conversationally, looking at your glass. "You're not drinking it."

"I don't like champagne."

"Why hold it?"

"Because if I put it down they bring me another one."

His smile widens.

It is (god) it's a very good smile. You're going to have to be careful about that smile. Because it's not some practised, professional smile of a man who's been taught how to smile by a publicist. It's real. That's the problem.

His eyes are involved in it; the corners crinkle a fraction, a small genuine warmth pulling at his mouth, and the brown eye and the pale blue eye both go a touch softer. You feel (physically, in the sternum, in a way you do not allow on your face) the small unwanted lurch of someone clocking an exceedingly attractive man at very close range without the benefit of warning.

"I have a solution," he offers.

"Do you now?"

"Give it to me," he offers. "I'll hold it until they stop bringing them."

He extends one hand, palm up, and it's a beautiful hand. The white streak at his temple catches the chandelier light when he turns.

You look at him. You look at the hand. You look at him again.

"Why?"

"Because I'm trying to get you to talk to me, and you're not going to do it while you're holding a drink you do not want. Your posture says I'm not going to be here in three minutes."

You almost laugh but you don't let yourself.

"That obvious?" you wonder.

"To me." He tilts his head a fraction. "And only to me, I would say. You do it very well."

You regard him for a beat. Then you put the champagne flute into his palm.

His fingers close around the stem and brush yours in the handover. It's a deliberate, courteous, almost ceremonial touch, and Valarr doesn't let his fingers linger and that is the entire point. Because the brevity of it is what makes you feel it. He's given you the smallest possible amount of skin and let you understand that you're going to spend the next several minutes thinking about it.

He sets the flute on the bar behind him, turns the stem so the foundation's logo embossed on the napkin underneath is no longer facing you, and steps a half-foot closer. Not enough to be inappropriate. Just enough to drop the volume he needs to use.

"Thank you."

Your brows lift ever so slightly. "You're welcome."

"Valarr."

"I gathered," you tell him.

His eyes crinkle again. "Have we met?"

"No."

He tilts his head slightly and it's devastatingly handsome gesture. "How did you gather?"

"The streak," you tell him bluntly.

His hand drifts up, almost involuntary, the pads of two fingers brushing back through the white at his temple. It's an unconscious gesture and the moment he realises he's made it his mouth flickers in a different way. A private, rueful thing, the look of a man who's been caught.

Which he doesn't mind being caught at by you, because being caught at it suggests you've looked at him long enough to know which thing about him is a tell.

"That obvious?" he wonders lightly.

Your mouth curves. "To me."

He laughs. A delighted, slightly startled sound. The laugh of a man who's realising he's going to have to recalibrate the next forty minutes of his evening.

"And you are?"

You tell him.

A calculated risk. But you take it deliberately. You watch his face when you say Stark, and you watch his face do... nothing.

Not the recalculation Aerion's did. Not even a flicker. Valarr Targaryen has known you were a Stark since you walked in. Valarr Targaryen has had a brief on you sitting in a folder on his desk for ten days. Valarr Targaryen recognised you across the room when he came in and chose his approach accordingly. He was already most of the way across the floor before he allowed himself to look directly at your face. And the fact that his face didn't change when you said the name is not because it didn't matter to him. It's because he was prepared for it to.

You notice all of this. You say nothing.

"Lady Stark," he says, instead. And the way he says it (unhurried, faintly amused, with a small careful weight on the lady) tells you that he knows you've read him, and he respects it, and he's choosing not to lie about it.

"Mr Targaryen."

"May I," he gestures fractionally at the stool beside you, "or are you going to refuse me on principle?"

"On what grounds would I refuse you?" you question, half genuinely curious, half interested in what he'll say.

He manages to look bashful when he says, "On the grounds that I've just confessed, more or less, to having you on a list."

"Do you not have everyone on a list?" you wonder.

His eyes warm. "Yes. But not everyone gets the seat."

You tilt your head. "Sit down, Mr Targaryen."

He sits.

He does so smoothly, settling onto the stool with the practiced grace of a man who's been taught posture by people who took it seriously, jacket falling clean without bunching, the cufflinks at his wrists catching the light when he sets his hand on the bar.

Valarr doesn't look at you while he sits. He looks at the bartender and orders, without asking you, two glasses of something that's not champagne. A rich burgundy that is, you realise when it arrives, the wine your father used to keep at the house.

You don't ask how he knew. You assume he knew. You assume he has known for some time.

"I am sorry about your father."

It's the only condolence anyone has offered you tonight that has not felt rehearsed. It sits in his mouth simply, without weight or catches.

You take the glass he hands you and you set it on the bar between you and say, "Thank you."

"I met him twice," Valarr offers.

"I know."

"Did you?" His head turns. "How?"

"My father kept very thorough notes."

A pause, short one. And then his smile turns a fraction sharper, a fraction more amused, a small genuine respect surfacing under the polish. "I see."

"Do you?"

"I am beginning to."

You sip the wine. It is, of course, perfect. You put it down. You look at him over the rim of the glass.

"Why did you come over, Mr Targaryen?"

He gazes at you with intent, simple heat. "To look at you."

"And?"

"And now I would like a great deal more time to keep looking at you."

Such simple sentence. No performance in it. That's the thing about Valarr that you're going to have to remember, you understand, in the moment he says it, he doesn't perform. He means what he says, while he's also playing you, and the two things are not, for him, in conflict. He can tell you the truth and use the truth as a move at the same time.

It's far more dangerous than lying would be.

You set the glass down.

"How much more time, Mr Targaryen?"

He knuckles settle against his mouth. "As much as you'll give me."

"That's not an answer."

"No," he agrees, pleased. "It's a proposition."

A beat.

"Dinner," he says smoothly. "This week. You choose the place. You choose the night. I'll be there at whichever hour you tell me to be there."

"And if I say no?" you ask.

A tiny smile curves his lips. "Then I'll ask again next week."

"And if I say no again?"

His smile shrinks. Goes private. And it doesn't reach his eyes the same way the first one did. And you understand (for the first time tonight, in a way that's almost a relief) that you've just seen the underneath. The thing Brynden warned you about. The dark well underneath the gold.

"I'm a patient man, Lady Stark."

"How patient?" you question coolly.

A soft laugh tickles out of him. "More patient than is good for the people I'm patient about."

Silence.

It stretches. You hold his gaze. He holds yours. The brown and the pale blue, and underneath both of them, quietly, the dark flicker underneath everything.

"Friday," you say lastly.

His expression doesn't so much as flicker. But his hand, where it's resting on the bar beside his glass, makes one small involuntary movement (the index finger lifts a quarter-inch and sets back down) and you tuck that away. A tell. Good. Everyone has one. You've just found his.

"Friday," he agrees. "Where?"

You name the restaurant.

He inclines his head a fraction. He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and produces a small card )cream, simple, a number printed on it and nothing else) and sets it on the bar between you with two fingers, sliding it the last inch toward your glass.

"In case you change your mind," he says smoothly.

"I won't."

"In case anything else changes."

You pick the card up, but you don't put it in your bag. You slide it, without looking, into the cuff of your sleeve, against the inside of your wrist, where it sits warm against the pulse. You watch his eyes track the movement and stay there.

He doesn't pretend he isn't watching. He's been letting you see, all evening, the small disciplined ways in which he's paying attention to you (your mouth, your throat, the cuff of your sleeve) and there's something more affecting about being looked at like this by a man who's in this much control of his own gaze than there would be about being grabbed by one who was not.

"Mr Targaryen," you say neutrally.

"Valarr, when we're alone," he says softly, still drinking you in.

"We're not alone."

"We are, in fact, alone," he says with a wry little smile.

You glance around, then back at him. You've been at this bar for eleven minutes and the four people who were standing within earshot of you when he sat down are no longer there. You didn't see them go. You did not see anyone signal them. They're simply gone, the way the bartender is now polishing glasses at the far end of the bar with the absorbed concentration.

You turn back to him.

"How did you do that?"

His eyes light up with almost playful light. "Do what?" he asks innocently.

"Mr Targaryen."

His mouth twitches. "Valarr. Please."

"How?" you demand.

"A man has to be useful for something, Lady Stark."

He stands, buttons his jacket. He picks up your glass and his own and sets them on the bar in front of the spot where you're sitting, a small arrangement, your wine on the right where your hand can reach it. He leans down (just enough to be heard, no more) and you smell him for the first time. Clean. Something cedar. Nothing showy. Nothing about him is showy and that is, you realise with a small internal alarm, going to be the most dangerous part.

His mouth, when he speaks, is closer to your ear than is correct. Not touching. He doesn't touch you. It's the not touching that does the work.

"Friday, love."

You go still.

Same trick. Aerion did this with wolf, except he's doing it the other way. Quietly, almost as an afterthought, slipping the endearment in under the noise of the gala as if he's been calling you that for months. As if it's already settled.

You've given him no permission.

You can hear, faintly, the small intake of breath this is doing to you. You suspect he can hear it too. He chose this exact distance for that reason.

"Mr Targaryen," you bite out politely.

"I'll see you Friday."

Valarr straightens, stepping back. He inclines his head to you the way a man inclines his head to an equal in a room full of subordinates, and he turns, walking back into the gala. Within thirty seconds he's in a conversation with a senator and his wife, laughing at something the senator has said. He doesn't look at you again. Not once. For the rest of the night.

You watch for it. He doesn't look.

You understand this is its own kind of move.

You finish your wine, sliding off the stool. You walk out of the gala with his card warm against the inside of your wrist and ghost of cedar in your hair where he leaned in. You ride back to your hotel in the dark of the car with your hand pressed flat against your sternum and think, very calmly, that one is also going to be a problem.

Your phone buzzes when you walk into your room.

A single message. A number you don't have saved.

Looking forward to Friday, love.

You don't answer.

You put the phone face-down on the dresser. You slide his card out of your cuff, setting it beside the lamp. You go to the window and gaze down at the city, all that gold and red and dark glass. You think about the two of them (Aerion's knuckles trailing down your sternum, Valarr's mouth at the air beside your ear and the word love tucked inside it) and you understand, in a way you did not understand four hours ago, that you're in genuine trouble.

Your phone, in the dark, lights up a second time.

A different number. One you also don't have saved.

You went home alone, wolf.

You stare at it.

You don't type how do you know. Or type how did you get this number. You don't type anything at all.

You put the phone face-down again and you stand at the window in your dark green dress with a Targaryen on each shoulder of your nervous system, and remember: Brynden told me to be expensive.

You're going to be exactly that.

—

And this is where the game begins. Properly.

—

The following three weeks unfold as follows:

—

Aerion chases you with animal focus.

He doesn't pretend otherwise. He turns up where you are. He sends a man to drive you home from a dinner you did not request a ride from and the man is perfectly polite when you get into the car because the alternative is making a scene. Aerion is leaning against the hood of his own car waiting for you at your hotel one night, smoke in one hand, the silver hoops catching the streetlight.

You say, "This is harassment."

"This is escort, wolf. Don't be dramatic."

His eyes drop to your mouth and stay there a beat too long. He doesn't touch you. He doesn't have to. He's been touching you for four days through the air between you and you both know it.

He kisses you for the first time in the stairwell of a building neither of you owns.

You've followed him into it because he told you he had something to show you, and you went, knowingly, because not going felt like a kind of cowardice you were not prepared to extend to him.

The stairwell is dim. The kiss is not gentle.

Aerion doesn't let it be gentle. He has you against the wall, one ringed hand braced flat beside your head, the other at the line of your jaw, his thumb under your chin to tilt your face up the half-inch he wants it. He doesn't ask, doesn't pause. He kisses you the way a man eats after he's been told he might starve.

You taste smoke. The cinnamon thing he was chewing earlier. Expensive alcohol. Something hot underneath all of it that's just him.

You kiss him back like you're trying to mark him with your teeth. Aerion makes a noise in his throat that he's going to deny later—a raw, involuntary sound—and his hand at your jaw slides back into the hair at the nape of your neck and he uses it. He tilts your head exactly where he wants it and then he makes a pleased noise against your mouth at having gotten it there.

His hips press in once. Deliberate.

He's hard against you within thirty seconds and he doesn't pretend he isn't. He grinds in, once, and your breath stutters out of you against his mouth and he feels it (you feel him feel it) and his teeth catch your lower lip in something almost like punishment for letting him have it. He pulls back enough to look at you. His pupils are blown so wide the pale of his eyes is almost gone. His thumb drags across your wet lower lip.

"Fuck, you're fun to kiss," he murmurs. "Wolf."

"Aerion."

"Mm." His mouth twitches. He likes that, likes that he got the name out of you. He drags his mouth down the line of your jaw, taking his time about it now. He kisses the place where the chain would be if the chain were there tonight. Which it isn't, which means he's noticed the absence.

Aerion drags his mouth lower. He puts his teeth lightly where your pulse is. He waits there. He waits until you make a sound you have not given a man permission to drag out of you in some time. He lifts his head.

"I like that sound," he drawls, a raspy, smug tone in his voice.

"Aerion."

He drags his tongue across your pulse, humming. "What."

You glare are him, angling your head away.

"What?" He's smiling, a lazy, mean thing. His thumb is at your bottom lip again, dragging it down. "We both know you came down here because you wanted me to put my hand under your dress in a stairwell."

"I have a meeting," you say flatly.

He laughs against your mouth. Laughs. He bites your lower lip. Tugs, rolling it between his teeth with hungry, low growl.

"Of course you do."

He kisses you one more time. Deep, bruising. The kind of kiss that's more humiliating than the hand under the dress would have been because of how thoroughly he's making sure you will think about it later. When Aerion pulls back his hand stays at the nape of your neck for one more second. His forehead drops to yours.

"Go to your meeting, wolf."

You go to your meeting.

You sit through it with the ghost of his teeth on your lip and his hand in your hair and you don't let a single person in the room see it on your face. You go back to your hotel and stand in the shower for forty-five minutes. You make yourself come twice. You don't let yourself think his name once while you do it, on principle.

You fail. Both times.

He texts you the next morning at six. You're going to come back to that stairwell.

Am I?

Yes.

Are you asking?

A pause.

Please.

You roll your eyes, don't answer.

You go to a board meeting, turn your phone face-down on the conference table and three of the other directors notice and none of them comment. When you check it after the meeting there are no further messages, which is its own message.

Aerion has learned not to push. Aerion has also learned that he can push you to a place and stop and you will, eventually, come back to that place on your own. And this is the thing he's most dangerous about. He understands restraint as a form of seduction, even though restraint is not native to him, even though every cell in him is howling and burning.

He's genuinely cruel sometimes.

He turns up at a restaurant where you're having dinner with one of your father's old contacts and he sits at the bar across the room. Doesn't approach but doesn't leave, and the contact across from you eventually says, Lady Stark, is that man bothering you? and you say, evenly, no, and the contact looks once at Aerion and once at you and decides not to ask any further questions.

When you leave, Aerion is on the curb. He flicks his cigarette into the gutter.

"Old," he remarks dryly, mockingly.

"None of your business, Mr Targaryen."

"Sixty if he's a day," he goes on, one hand slipping into his dark jeans.

You roll your eyes, walking past him. "Goodnight, Mr Targaryen."

"Wolf."

You stop, turn.

He's leaning against the lamp-post now, hands fully in his pockets, the silver hoops catching the streetlight, that pale steady stare on you, and you understand (looking at him) that he's angry. Not visibly or in a way anyone else could identify. There's a thread of it under the casual posture, in the set of his jaw, in the way one of his rings is rotating on his finger.

"I don't share, wolf."

You snort. "You don't have me," you remind him coolly.

"Not yet."

"You may not get to," you say, harder this time.

His jaw works. He pushes off the lamp-post, crossing the three feet between you without hurry and stops just shy of touching you. His voice, when he speaks, drops enough that the doorman at the restaurant cannot hear it.

"Get in the car."

"No."

He rolls his eyes, opening the door of the sleek, black thing he drove here with. "Please get in the car."

You get in the car.

He doesn't touch you in it. He keeps both hands on the wheel and he drives like a man who's consciously not doing several things at once, and the silence in the car is thick enough that you can hear your own pulse in your ears. At a red light Aerion turns his head and looks at you. He doesn't blink, neither do you.

"You let him pour your wine," he drawls calmly, too calmly.

"I let him pour my wine."

"I don't like that."

"Mr Targaryen."

"I know." His jaw moves. He turns back to the windshield. The light goes green. "I know I don't get to not like it. I'm telling you anyway."

The car slides forward into traffic.

He drops you at your hotel without a word. As you reach for the door he says, without looking at you, "I'm going to ruin you, wolf."

You pause, bristling. You look at him over your shoulder, reaching out until you hand ends up at his sharp jaw. You thumb traces over this full bottom lip, and you say, "You're going to try, Mr Targaryen."

His lips part, eyes narrowing. "Wolf."

"Goodnight, Mr Targaryen," you say politely, letting your hand drop.

You get out, shut the door behind you.

He waits at the curb until you're inside. You see him through the lobby glass. Aerion sits for a long moment with both hands on the wheel and his head tipped back against the rest, and then he drives away.

You make yourself come three times that night and let yourself think his name twice. You consider it a fair compromise.

—

Valarr's version of the chase is worse, because its buried under so much polish that you don't see it until he's already taken what he came for.

There's nothing performative about his charm. That's the part that disarms you and disarms him in equal measure.

He genuinely is funny. He genuinely is attentive. He genuinely does listen to the small thing you said in passing at the gala about preferring grey to white and does remember it three weeks later when something grey arrives at your hotel as a thank-you for a meeting. He doesn't perform interest in you. He is interested in you.

That's the trap. The cruelty of Valarr Targaryen is not that his charm is fake but that his charm is real and the darkness underneath it is also real, and the two are not in opposition, they're the same thing in different lights.

He doesn't turn up where you are. He arranges.

You go to a restaurant and he's already at the table next to yours, alone, reading something, looking up with mild surprise as you pass. You accept a charity board seat and discover the meeting is at a building he owns. Your lawyer mentions, conversationally, that a competing offer has come in on a piece of property you'd been quietly inquiring about, and you don't have to ask who the competing offer is from.

He's funding the property out of his personal portfolio. You buy it anyway, at the inflated price, because losing it would be a worse signal than the cost. The next morning Valarr sends you a card congratulating you on the acquisition and offering you, as a gift, a piece of information about the building's foundation that you did not have and that materially changes the financial picture.

I would not want you to be disadvantaged on a property you fought me for, love, the card says, in his beautiful hand. I want to be a worthy opponent.

You read the card three times. You stare at the love a long moment. Then set the card on fire in your bathroom sink, the way Brynden taught you, and you stand watching it burn and you think, oh, you absolute bastard.

He takes you to dinner on Friday.

You've prepared. Spent an hour with Brynden the night before, going through a third pot of tea, while he gave you a thoughtful little précis on which restaurant Valarr was most likely to favour and what his ordering habits suggested about his cognitive patterns.

You go in prepared. Valarr knows you're prepared. Valarr is also prepared. This is the second-most fun you've had in six months and the most fun belongs to the stairwell, which Valarr doesn't yet know about, which Valarr will eventually know about because Valarr knows everything, but which Valarr doesn't yet have confirmation of, and which is therefore not yet weaponised.

You eat duck. He eats fish.

He asks you about the north, and you tell him true things, because lying to Valarr is a fool's game—he has the resources to verify everything and the patience to do it because it's you, and no stone is unturned when it's you—and you also tell him carefully selected true things, because Valarr doesn't need to know every true thing you know.

He reciprocates. He tells you a story about his mother that he's not, you're fairly certain, told many other people. He's doing this deliberately. You appreciate the move. You don't commend him for it aloud.

He looks at you, across the table, the way a man looks at a problem he has decided is going to be the most interesting problem in his life. And one he's determined to riddle out.

He does it without looking, mostly. That's the part that does the work. He keeps his eyes on yours during the conversation, polite, level, attentive. But in the small silences, the moments when the wine arrives or the dish is changed, his gaze drifts to your mouth, to the line of your throat, to the place at your wrist where the cuff of your sleeve sits, and stays there a beat longer than is appropriate before returning to your eyes.

There's a quiet, devouring hunger in this man that could burn you down to nothing if you were a lesser woman.

You're not a lesser woman.

He's letting you see him do it. That's also a move.

Halfway through the meal he reaches across the table.

He doesn't take your hand. He picks up the wine glass next to it, drinks, sets it down (his glass, not yours, although for half a second you'd thought he meant yours and your pulse had jumped, which he can see) and when Valarr's hand returns to his side of the table his fingertips brush the back of your wrist, once. Briefly. The bare strip of skin between your sleeve and your ring.

It's not really a touch. It's the suggestion of a touch.

It's followed by him resuming his sentence without looking at his hand, as if his body has not just made an entirely separate move from his face.

"You are staring, Mr Targaryen."

"I am, love," he admits, utterly unabashed.

"Why?"

"Because I'm trying to decide whether you know how very beautiful you look in this light, or whether you have decided not to know on purpose."

You set your wine down.

"That's an extremely Valarr Targaryen thing to say."

He laughs, gentle and genuine, a dimple appearing. "Is it?" he wonders, his head cocking.

"It's the kind of compliment that has a hook in it," you clarify.

His smile is quiet. Pleased. The brown eye and the pale blue eye are very steady on yours, a low, simmering devouring.

"Lady Stark."

"Mr Targaryen."

He hums, eyes crinkling at the crisp sound of his surname. "I'm going to ask you a question, love. You may, of course, refuse to answer."

Your spine sets. "Ask."

"Are you going to let me kiss you tonight?" he asks softly.

You stare at him.

He's not moved closer or lowered his voice. The waiter comes back to refill your water and Valarr keeps watching you watching him, and for a long moment, neither of you gives ground.

You consider him.

"No," you reply simply.

He nods, once. Not surprised. "Alright."

"Alright?"

"Yes." He picks up his wine again. "Alright."

That's all. No pushing, no teasing, nothing. He doesn't look wounded. Doesn't adjust his strategy. Valarr takes the no the way a man takes a card off the top of a deck. Looks at it, files it, plays the next hand. And it is (god) it's more affecting than if he had pushed. It is, in fact, the most attractive thing he's done all night, which you suspect he knows.

You finish dinner. He pays. You didn't see him do it.

At the end of dinner he walks you to your car and he doesn't kiss you.

He stops, two feet shy of the car door. The driver has the engine running. The street is mostly empty. Valarr turns to face you and he does the thing he has been doing all night, which is look at you too steadily with that devouring, soft intensity without performing the looking, and then he lifts your hand.

He kisses your knuckles. Brief. Gentle.

Then he turns your hand over. His thumb presses, once, on the inside of your wrist where your pulse is. He holds it there a half-second longer than is correct. Long enough to feel the kick.

He smiles. A small private thing. He felt it.

"I had a very pleasant evening, love."

Despite yourself, you admit, "As did I, Mr Targaryen."

Because it's true, and pretending otherwise would be foolish.

"Do you think next week we could try first names?" he jokes lightly.

Your mouth twitches slightly. "We'll see how the week develops, Mr Targaryen."

Valarr laughs, delighted, and he gets the car door for you. As you slide in he leans down and says, just close enough that no one else in the world can hear, "You're going to be the most enjoyable problem I have ever had."

You glance at him. "That's the plan."

Valarr closes the door and you watch him in your wing mirror as the car pulls away. He's standing on the curb, hands in his pockets, his white streak gleaming under the streetlight, watching you go.

You go home.

You don't make yourself come thinking about Valarr Targaryen. You instead lie in the dark of your hotel room with your hand pressed flat against your sternum and your thumb on the inside of your wrist where his was, and you think, in a tone of considerable alarm, I'm attracted to both of them. I'm genuinely attracted to both of them. And you understand, in the same moment, that this is, structurally, the thing that's going to make this work.

—

And then the rivalry gets worse.

—

It's a Thursday at one of their family's clubs. The bigger one. The legitimate one. The one Valarr's side technically owns and Aerion's side technically launders through.

You're at the bar and you've not invited either of them.

Because you're there with Brynden.

Brynden is the one you came with. Brynden in a charcoal three-piece suit, drinking water, the most unsettling man in the room and the room knows it. No one approaches you, no one even dares to look.

Brynden Rivers turning up at one of the family clubs with the Stark heir on his arm is the kind of social event that's going to be discussed in three boardrooms by morning, and Brynden knows this, which is precisely why he's done it.

"I'm being used as a signal flare, Brynden," you murmur.

"You're being used as a negotiating position, little wolf. There's a difference. You understand the difference, and you've already agreed to it. Drink your water."

You drink your water.

Aerion spots you first.

He comes in from the back and his eyes find the bar before they find anything else, the way they always do now. The moment they land on Brynden beside you Aerion's whole body locks into stillness. You can feel it from across the room.

He comes toward you.

He doesn't approach Brynden. He stops three feet short of you and he says, in a voice that's not his charming voice, "Lady Stark."

You incline your head. "Mr Targaryen."

Aerion's pale, unblinking stare slides to your companion. "Lord Rivers."

"Aerion," Brynden returns mildly.

You watch them. Aerion's jaw is set. One of his rings is rotating on his finger (a tell of his you've started to notice) and his eyes are on Brynden, not you. And then they're on you. And then they're back on Brynden.

You understand, in real time, that Aerion has just received a piece of information he doesn't know what to do with, which is that the most dangerous man in the continent has decided to escort you into one of Aerion's family's establishments without telling him first.

"May I borrow her?" Aerion asks Brynden.

The fact that he asks almost makes your jaw drop. You've never seen Aerion ask anyone anything. He takes. Always.

"That," Brynden says idly, without looking up from his water, "is a question for the lady."

Aerion's eyes flick to you. Hard, burning.

And then Valarr walks in.

Valarr is in a dark blue suit, no tie. He's in the middle of a conversation with one of his lieutenants when he walks in, head turned a fraction to the side, listening.

And then he comes through the doorway and his eyes go to the bar by pure professional habit (Valarr always clocks every entrance and exit and every person of significance in a room within four seconds of entering it) and his eyes land on Brynden beside you and his face does not move.

That's the part that's genuinely impressive. No flicker or doubletake. His face doesn't move at all, but the man he's speaking to falls silent without being told to. Because the temperature in the room has just dropped a second time, and the room feels it.

Aerion sees Valarr in the mirror behind the bar.

Valarr sees Aerion seeing him in the mirror behind the bar.

They both turn their heads, fractionally, and they look at each other, and you watch the entire ten-year cold war between Aerion Targaryen and Valarr Targaryen reignite in the space of one breath.

Neither of them moves. Neither of them speaks. You're standing between them, at the bar, with Brynden Rivers at your elbow drinking water like a man at a Sunday brunch.

You've just become the most fought-over object in the city.

Brynden, almost into his glass: "This is going splendidly, little wolf."

"Shut up, Brynden."

"Yes, my lady."

Valarr crosses to you first.

You've wondered, after, which one of them would have moved first if Brynden hadn't been there. You suspect Aerion. But Valarr is better at public spaces, and Aerion's expression has gone to a place that Valarr clearly doesn't want him acting on in the middle of a club full of men with phones, and so Valarr crosses first.

He comes up to your other side. He doesn't look at Aerion.

"Lady Stark," Valarr says in that smooth, charming voice of his.

"Mr Targaryen."

Valarr inclines his head towards Brynden. "Lord Rivers."

"Valarr," Brynden returns, equally as mildly as earlier with Aerion.

Valarr peers at you, face open. "May I buy you a drink, love?"

You feel Aerion go still at your other shoulder. Not the practised stillness, but the other one. The bad one.

"I have one, thank you," you reply carefully.

"Another one, then," he hedges. "When that one is finished."

"Perhaps."

A pause. Valarr's mouth twitches. You can feel Aerion at your other side practically vibrating. Brynden has set his water down on the bar and is now standing with both hands clasped behind his back, his good eye on the middle distance, the very picture of a man who's professionally ignoring the situation he's personally engineered.

Aerion says, under his breath, "Valarr."

Valarr doesn't turn. "Aerion."

"You're at my Thursday establishment."

"I'm at our Thursday establishment, cousin," Valarr dismisses. "I sign the licence."

"You sign the legitimate licence."

"Yes." Valarr's smile is small and too polite, almost predatory. "The one that allows you to remain operational. You're welcome."

"Valarr." Quieter this time.

You've learned what that quieter register from Aerion means.

"Gentlemen," you interrupt.

Both of them turn to you simultaneously.

It's almost comical. Or it would be comical if it weren't also one of the most dangerous moments of your life. You have the absolute attention of both of them and you can feel Brynden (feel him, without looking) begin to laugh, internally, in a way that doesn't move a single muscle in his face.

"I'm here with Brynden. Who is, as I understand it, a guest of both of your fathers. It would be courteous of you both to permit him to enjoy his evening unmolested." You offer them a cool, bland smile that turns just a little more cutting, promising, around the edges as you gaze at them. "It would also be courteous of you both to permit me to enjoy mine. You may each, separately, ask me to dinner this week, and I will, separately, consider both invitations on their merits. Is that acceptable?"

Aerion's jaw works.

Valarr smiles his beautiful, awful smile. "That's acceptable to me, love."

You angle your head. "Aerion?" you say.

He tries for a smirk, but there's a dangerous edge to it. "Whatever you say, wolf."

You hear Valarr's breath do a small, almost inaudible intake at the wolf. You don't turn your head.

"Thank you," you say, turning toward the pale haired man behind you. "Brynden, I would like another water."

"Of course, little wolf."

Both cousins watch Brynden signal the bartender for a glass of water for you, in their family's establishment, with their family's bartender, in front of their family's men, and use a name for you that neither of them has heard him use before. Neither of them speaks and you almost smile at the subtle power play.

You sip the second water, turning your back on both of them, and you continue your conversation with Brynden as if they're not there.

It takes Valarr forty-five seconds to leave and Aerion three minutes.

When you and Brynden walk out an hour later both of them are gone and the bartender has placed two notes under your coat at the coat check, one in each pocket. Neither of which you read until you're back in your hotel room and Brynden has gone home. You lock the door and run a shower for the ambient sound, the way he taught you to.

Aerion's note says: Saturday. Anywhere. You choose.

Valarr's says: Saturday. Anywhere you wish, love. Let me know what to wear.

You read them both, set them side by side on the desk. You don't respond to either of them until Friday afternoon.

You accept both.

Aerion at seven. Valarr at ten. Neither of them, of course, knows.

You call Brynden. He picks up on the first ring. He always does when you call him.

"Little wolf."

"I have a question of operational ethics, Brynden," you begin, fingers brushing idly over both notes.

A rasp of a breath. "Go on."

"I've just accepted dinner with both of them on the same night," you tell him.

A pause follows your declaration.

And then—and you will, for the rest of your life, swear that this is what you heard—Brynden Rivers, the most dangerous man in the country, makes a sound on the other end of the line that's unmistakably a laugh. One short, quiet laugh.

"Little wolf."

It takes you a second to respond from sheer shock. "Yes?"

"You're not going to disappoint me, are you?"

You smile slightly toward the horizon through the hotel window. "No, Brynden."

"Good," he says, a beat, "Wear black."

He hangs up.

—

And here, finally, is the twist.

The thing they don't know. The thing they'll not know until you choose to let them know, in your time, on your terms, with the maximum possible benefit to you.

Your father's file was not a file on the Targaryens as criminals.

Your father's file was a file on the Targaryens as victims of one.

There is, somewhere very high in Maekar's organisation and somewhere equally as high in Baelor's, a man both of them trust who's been quietly working for someone else for fifteen years.

A man your father had been tracking, on Brynden's behalf, since before you were born, because Brynden suspected and your father confirmed and your father then kept the file, because your father didn't trust Brynden completely either.

Because your father, Barthogan Stark, was nobody's fool.

The photographs in the locked drawer—the ones you finally looked at, fully, in the small hours of a Thursday morning, sitting on your hotel bathroom floor with the door locked because you didn't trust the rest of the building—show this man in three meetings, over three years, with people he should not have been meeting.

And you've decided (and Brynden agreed, with the small private fondness you've learned to read on his ruined face) that you're not going to give this information to either of the Targaryens until you've used it to its absolute maximum value to you.

You're going to date them.

You're going to learn their rooms, their men, their weaknesses, the architecture of their loyalties.

You're going to let Aerion fuck you stupid in stairwells and you're going to let Valarr take you to dinner at his mother's table and you're going to enjoy both of these things genuinely. Because you're not a liar and your attraction to both of them is, troublingly, real.

And you're going to wait.

At the exact moment of maximum leverage (at the sit-down you can already see coming, at the moment when both branches of the family are in one room, when the rivalry between them is at its peak, when each of them believes that you are his) you're going to walk in with Brynden Rivers at your shoulder, and you're going to set the file on the table, and you're going to name the man.

Both branches of the family are going to owe you a debt larger than the one your father is owed.

You're going to extract from that debt exactly what your father would have asked for, which is the thing he died waiting for and did not get.

Your father did not die of nothing. Your father was poisoned. Patiently. Over three years. By the same man in the file.

And Brynden Rivers knew the second he heard of the passing.

Brynden Rivers told you, over the second cup of tea at the second meeting, when he set the photograph down on the desk between you and watched your face for the moment of recognition. Watched you not cry, and watched you instead set the photograph back down and ask him who else knows, and listened to your voice when you asked it and decided, then, finally, that you were going to be useful.

Starks, he had said, have always been of interest to me. I hope you don't disappoint.

You're not going to disappoint him.

The only thing he regrets is that he's not more ruthless. That he's still playing this slow game when he could just corner you in a corridor, press you against the wall, and make you admit you want him too. Because you do. He sees it. The way your eyes linger on his mouth when he talks. The way your breath catches when he stands too close. The way you forget yourself in the meadow and reach for him like it's natural. You want him. You're just too duty-bound and proud to admit it. Yet.

He thinks about you constantly. Obsessively. What you'd taste like. What sounds you'd make. How you'd look with his hands in your hair, his mouth on your throat, your legs around his waist. He thinks about it in council meetings. At feasts. In the yard. Lying in bed at night with his hand on his cock and Caraxes's satisfied purr rumbling through the bond because the dragon can feel it, can feel Aerion imagining you, and approves.

He's memorised you. The shape of your collarbone, the small scar on your knuckle and the way you bite your lower lip when you're thinking. The particular shade of your eyes in sunlight versus torchlight. He knows how many steps you take from the great hall to your chambers (forty-three). He knows you favour your right leg slightly when you're tired (old injury, probably, he hasn't asked). He knows the exact pitch of your laugh when you're genuinely amused versus being coolly polite. He knows you better than Baelor does, and Baelor's the one who gets to touch you in public.

That's going to change. It's not a question of if. It's a question of when you stop fighting it and let him have what you both want.

Caraxes is notorious, that's the thing. The Blood Wyrm. The most ill-tempered, vicious, foul dragon alive except for the Cannibal himself. He snaps at keepers, screeches at other dragons, has bitten three handlers and burned two others. The only person he tolerates is Aerion. Everyone else is an enemy or food.

The dragonkeepers draw lots to see who has to feed him. No one wants the duty. He's mean. He'll snatch the sheep out of their hands and snarl. Will rake his tail across the ground and force them to jump back. Once pinned a keeper to the wall with his snout and just breathed on him (hot sulphurous breath, smoke curling from his nostrils) until the man pissed himself. Aerion had to come down and call him off. The dragon was smug about it for days.

Other dragons give him space. He's not the largest (that's Vermithor, old bronze bastard) but he's the meanest, the quick and the most vicious. Willing to bite first and worry about consequences never. The dragonkeepers say he's mad. Aerion says he's just particular.

Once, a new keeper (young, stupid, didn't know the rules yet) tried to approach you while you were petting Caraxes. Wanted to ask if you needed anything. Got within five feet and Caraxes's head snapped around. The growl that came out of him made the keeper go white. You had to put your hand on the dragon's neck, murmur, "He's fine, he's just doing his job" before Caraxes settled. The keeper learned. Everyone learned. When Lady Stark is in the pit, you don't approach. You stay back. You wait for her to leave.

Caraxes has bitten anyone who speaks to you dismissively in his hearing. Well, tried to bite. The pit has thick walls and the dragonkeepers are fast, but the intent is there. Once, Aerion was in the pit with you and some lord made a passing jape from the gallery above (something about northern girls being too wild for southern courts). Caraxes lunged at the gallery wall, not because he understood the words but because he felt how his rider felt at those words. Claws scrabbling on stone, screaming. The lord fell backward. Aerion only gave a disdainful snort and it took a pointed stare from you for Aerion to call Caraxes off. Eventually.

You're the only person besides Aerion who can touch him without getting bitten. The keepers are baffled. "He's never let anyone—" "She's not anyone," Aerion says, and doesn't elaborate.

For Caraxes, it's a lot simpler, he views you in rather simple terms: MINE. OURS. OURS. OURS. KEEP. CLAIM. TAKE.

You smell like cold and stone and pack and something sharp, not Targaryen, not fire, not anything he's supposed to want. Doesn't matter because he wants you anyway. You're his rider's which makes you his. It's the only truth that matters.

Doesn't understand why you aren't already in the nest. Doesn't understand why his rider keeps circling you, watching you, aching for you, and not simply taking you. That's what you do with precious things. You take them. You keep them. You bite and burn anyone who tries to take them away. You claim them. His rider is being stupid about this.

The other one (the one who touches you, the one whose scent is on you when you comes near the pit, the one whose name makes his rider's chest go tight and furious and hungry) he's wrong. Needs to leave. Needs to stop putting his hands on what belongs to them. Needs to die or go away or at minimum stop touching you. Caraxes has explained this to his rider many times (through growls, through the bond, through thrashing fits when the wrongness gets too strong) but his rider keeps saying not yet and patience and Caraxes is tired of waiting.

The bronze one (Vermithor) is part of the problem. The bronze one carries the wrong-one. The bronze one is old and slow and in the way. Caraxes could shred him throat to tail. Has imagined it in explicit detail: where to bite, how to tear, the satisfaction of watching the bronze one fall. His rider has felt every second of it through the bond and has not said no. Has not said stop. Has only said not yet. This, at least, is promising.

Every time you come to the pit, something in him settles. The restlessness eases and the world makes sense again. You're here. You're close. You smells like cold-stone-pack and under it all, faintly, you smell like them now. Like smoke and open sky. Like you've been marked. Good. You should smell like them, should smell like his rider, like you've been claimed.

When you leave (when you walk away, when your scent fades, when his rider's chest goes tight with watching you go) the world is wrong again. Unbearable. Needs you back. His rider needs you back. The wanting is a physical ache in both of them, traveling the bond until neither of them can tell whose want it is anymore. Want-ache-need. Hunger that isn't satisfied by sheep or goats or anything that isn't you.

You touch him, puts your hands on his scales. Your palms are small and warm and you pet him like he's something gentle, something safe, and not an ancient creature that's devoured and burned thousands, and he loves it. Craves it. Every time you reach for him his rider's breath catches, his rider's chest goes tight with want, his rider's body goes hard, and Caraxes can feel it all: the jealousy-pleasure-aching need. His rider wants your hands on him like that, wants your touch. Wants the gentleness and your fierceness and your everything. Caraxes gets it instead and his rider suffers and it's delicious and terrible and perfect.

You're affectionate with him in ways you're not affectionate with his rider. You kiss his great snout, scratch under his jaw. Murmurs soft things in strange tongue he doesn't understand but it's rough and warm and he likes it very much. You lean into him when you're tired. And every single time, his rider burns with it—desire and jealousy and the aching knowledge that you could do this to him if you'd let yourself. The bond carries it all. Caraxes feels his rider's hunger. Knows his rider is imagining your mouth on his skin, your hands in his hair, your body against his. Knows his rider is half-mad with it. Good. They should both be mad. Madness is language of dragons, of predators.

You keep the barrier between you. You're a Stark. Duty-bound. You don't let him get too close in the keep, don't let him walk you back from the yard, don't meet his eyes too long at feasts. You're careful. So, so careful. It would be admirable if it wasn't so fucking futile.

Because in the meadow? In the sky? You forget yourself.

The first time he took you there was an accident, but not the times after that. The meadow sits two hours south of the city. Wildflowers everywhere, knee-high grass, clean sky, no one for miles. Caraxes settled in the middle of it like a red stain on green cloth and started humming, this low satisfied sound, and when Aerion helped you down your legs were shaking. From your first flight. From the adrenaline. From the way his hands lingered at your waist and he said, quiet, "I have you."

You spent the afternoon there. Aerion sprawled in the grass, kissed by warm sunlight, shirt unlaced at the throat, utterly at ease in a way you've never seen him at the keep. Caraxes drowsing nearby, neck curled, one eye half-open watching you. You sat a careful three feet from both of them initially and Aerion watched you try to maintain the distance and smiled to himself. She thinks she's safe here. She's not. This is my place. My dragon. My rules. But I'll let her think it for now. It only took an hour for his head to end up in your lap.

Later, when you asked why he brought you here, he didn't answer for a long time. Then: "Because you looked like you couldn't breathe in the keep. And I wanted to see what you look like when you can." A pause. His eyes on yours, pale and too steady. "Also because Caraxes has been insufferable about you and this was easier than listening to him destroy the pit."

He keeps bringing you back. Once a week. Then twice. Then whenever Caraxes gets "restless" (which is code for Aerion wants an excuse to steal you away and the dragon is a convenient scapegoat).

You learn the shape of it by heart: the slant of the light through the grass in the afternoon, the way the wind smells clean and green and nothing like the city, the particular flower (some low purple thing) that grows in thick patches near the big oak. It becomes yours. The only place where the rules of the keep don't apply away from Winterfell.

Aerion brings things. Wine, sometimes. Food. A book, though he never reads them, just uses them as pillows while you sit nearby and he watches you through his lashes. A thick fur, because the grass is damp and he doesn't want you cold (doesn't say that, just spreads it out and tells you to sit, stop staring, just sit, will you?). He's building something here, making it comfortable. Creating a place you'll want to return to, making it impossible for you to imagine not coming back.

The dragon has opinions about the meadow. Specific spots he likes. Will huff and shift his bulk until you move closer to his preferred location. He's decided the space under the oak is his spot and you should sit there (in the curve of his side) and Aerion should sit there (close enough to reach you) and if you try to maintain more distance he grumbles until you come back.

Aerion has started lying with his head in your lap sometimes after that first time. Sprawls out in the grass and rests his head on your thigh like it's his right, every time you say his name in warning, without opening his eyes, he says, "Caraxes gets to. Why not me?" And you don't have an answer for that. So now he does it and you let him. Your hand hovers sometimes, like you want to touch his hair again but don't dare. He waits. He's patient. You'll give in eventually.

You've started bringing things too. The fur (you brought it the second time, said you didn't want him to have to carry everything). A flask of something stronger than wine, which you share, passing it back and forth until you're both warm and loose-limbed. Honey-cakes from the kitchen, which Aerion eats too fast and then complains his teeth hurt and you laugh, bright and genuine, and the sound does something very dangerous to him.

He's told you things in the meadow he's never told anyone. About his father, about what it felt like when his mother died and no one seemed to care. About how Caraxes was the first thing that ever chose him, the first thing that looked at him and didn't see a spare prince or a problem or a mistake, just saw Aerion, too bright and volatile, and wanted him anyway. His voice goes rough when he talks about it and you reach for him without thinking, hand on his arm, and he stares at your fingers on his wrist and doesn't pull away.

You've told him things too. About Winterfell. About your father. About duty and losing your own mother. About how sometimes you look at Baelor and feel safe but not alive, and you don't know what that makes you.

It's his favourite place in the world now, because he gets to see you, unguarded. Soft in ways you never are at court. Your hair coming loose from its pins. Your laugh bright and easy. Your hands gentle on Caraxes, on the grass, sometimes (gods, sometimes) on him.

The way you look at the sky when Caraxes flies overhead, showing off. Like you're proud. Like the dragon is yours to be proud of.

The way you've stopped flinching when Aerion gets close. The way you've started leaning toward him instead of away.

The exact shape of you drowsing in the sun, head on Caraxes's side, hair fanned out in the grass, face soft and younger than it ever looks in the keep.

The little unconscious things: the way you hum sometimes, tunelessly. The way you braid grass while you talk. The way you reach for him without thinking when you're excited or surprised.

He sees the exact moment you forget, every single time, that you're supposed to keep the barrier. The moment you relax. The moment you let yourself just be with him and Caraxes, no duty, no betrothal, just this.

And he hoards it. Every moment. Every smile. Every touch. Takes it back to the keep with him and uses it to feed the wanting.

One time you're in the meadow in late afternoon, sitting in the grass, and Caraxes is drowsing nearby with his great head in your lap. You're petting him. Long, slow strokes down the scales of his hot snout, murmuring to him in that soft voice you use with creatures you think can't understand you ("You're not so bad, are you? Terrible, beautiful thing."). Aerion is ten feet away, ostensibly reading, actually watching you through his lashes with his jaw tight.

And then you look at him. Smile. Small and genuine and unguarded. Reach your hand out without thinking, beckoning him closer. "Come here, he's being sweet." Like it's natural, as if there's no reason he shouldn't be in your space. Like you've forgotten you're supposed to keep three feet of air between you at all times.

He nearly swallows his tongue, putting the book down slowly. Comes over. Sits next to you in the grass, close enough that your knee brushes his thigh. You don't move it. Don't pull away. Just keep petting Caraxes, smiling at the dragon, and Aerion can barely fucking breathe because this—you, soft and unguarded, wanting him close—this is what he's been starving for.

Through the bond: Caraxes's smug, satisfied pleasure. The dragon can feel Aerion's heart racing, can feel the want spiking sharp and desperate, and is pleased. Yes. Closer. Good. Keep her close.

You stay like that for an hour. Your knee against his thigh. Your hand occasionally brushing his arm when you gesture while talking. You don't seem to notice. He notices. The warmth of you. The faint scent of you, soap and something sharp and cold, lavender underneath maybe. The small unconscious smile you wear when Caraxes purrs under your touch. He commits it all to memory. Takes it out later, alone in his chambers, and uses it, over and over.

You keep reaching for them in small ways. It keeps happening. Small moments where you forget the barrier and reach for him like it's instinct.

After a flight, wind-rattled and laughing, you stumble slightly on landing and grab his forearm to steady yourself. Your fingers wrap around his wrist (small hand, strong grip) and you squeeze. "Thank you." Breathless. Grinning. Your hand lingers for three seconds too long before you seem to remember yourself and let go. He feels the absence of your touch like a wound for hours.

Once, you're both sitting in the meadow, watching Caraxes hunt (the dragon likes to show off, dive for rabbits in the field, making a game of hunting without flame). You're laughing, delighted, and without thinking you grab Aerion's hand. Lace your fingers through his and squeeze, pulling him closer to watch. "Look, he's playing with it—" And then you realise what you've done. Your hand goes still in his and you look down at your interlaced fingers. You hold on for another heartbeat, two, three, before you slowly pull back and murmur something about the heat making you forget yourself.

Aerion says nothing. Just flexes his hand, feeling the ghost of your grip, and files it away. That night he lies in bed and remembers the exact pressure of your fingers, the warmth of your palm, the way you held on even after you noticed.

You fall asleep in the meadow once with your head pillowed on Caraxes's side. When you wake up, groggy and sun-warmed, you find Aerion sitting closer than he was. Not touching you, but close, close enough that you could reach out and touch him. You blink up at him, sleep-soft and unguarded, and instead of moving away you smile. Reach up without thinking and push a strand of pale hair back from his forehead. Your fingers graze his temple. Linger there. "You have grass in your hair." Your voice is low, affectionate, the voice you'd use with a friend or a lover, and then you seem to wake up fully and realise what you're doing. Your hand jerks back. You sit up quickly, muttering something about the sun making you thoughtless.

He doesn't move or speak. Just watches you with those too-pale eyes while Caraxes rumbles, pleased, and through the bond Aerion feels the echo of your touch like a brand. He wants to grab your wrist, yank you back. Put your hand back in his hair and tell you to keep touching him, to claim and rip. He doesn't. Not yet. But he wants.

You're affectionate with his dragon in ways that make Aerion insane. You don't seem to understand what it does to him. How the bond works, how every touch you give Caraxes, Aerion feels in an echo.

You scratch under the dragon's jaw and Caraxes purrs, this deep rumbling satisfied sound that vibrates through the ground, and Aerion feels it in his own chest. Feels the pleasure of your touch. Your fingers are gentle, rhythmic, finding the spots that make the dragon's eyes half-lid in bliss, and Aerion is sitting ten feet away, hard and aching, because he can feel it. Can feel your touch like it's on his own skin and it's not enough. It's fucking torture. It's the closest he's gotten to having you and it's not enough.

You kiss Caraxes's snout once, just a quick press of lips to warm scales, laughing at something, "There, you ridiculous creature, happy now?" and Aerion has to turn away. Has to walk away before he does something stupid like take you right there in the open until you can't deny how much you want this. Because Caraxes's pleasure slams through the bond and mixes with his own desperate want and he can feel what your mouth would be like on his skin. Soft. Warm. The pressure of it. He's halfway across the meadow, hands in fists, breathing hard, and you call after him confused ("Aerion? Are you all right?") and he can't answer because if he opens his mouth he'll say something he can't take back.

You lean into the dragon when you're tired. Bury your face in the curve of Caraxes's meaty neck, arms around hot scales, and just breathe. Like the dragon is a comfort, like he's safe. Caraxes rumbles, pleased and protective, and curls his neck around you gently, and Aerion watches. How you go soft and trusting in the dragon's embrace. Watches the way your fingers stroke absently over each scale, and he wants. Wants you to lean into him like that. Wants your face buried in his neck, your arms around him, your trust. Wants to be the thing you turn to when you need comfort.

Through the bond, he feels Caraxes's satisfaction. The dragon's smug pleasure at being trusted, at being chosen for affection by their she-wolf. And under it, the dragon's certainty: She does this with me. Soon she will do this with you. Patience. She is learning us. Learning that we are safe. Soon.

You pet the dragon absently while talking to Aerion, fingers tracing the ridges of scales, following the line of Caraxes's terrifying jaw, gentle and unconscious. You have no idea what it does to him. How he can feel every stroke of your hand through the bond. How Caraxes is smug and pleased and purring under your attention like a preening cat, and Aerion is sitting three feet away, imagining it's him you're touching. Imagining your hands in his hair, on his skin, on him.

The worst part is that you're gentle with the most terrifying dragon alive. Tender. You murmur soft things ("Good boy, yes, you're being so good for me.") and Caraxes melts under it, and Aerion feels the echo of that praise like a hit of wine. He wants you to speak to him like that, to purr those praises into his ear while he's inside you. Wants your gentleness and your tenderness and your approval. It's degrading how much he wants it. He doesn't care.

You've started doing this thing where you look at the dragon and then look at Aerion, and your expression softens. Like you're starting to see them as a unit, affection for one is bleeding into the other. You don't even notice you're doing it. But Aerion notices. Gods, he notices. Notes every time your guard drops like that. Each smile meant for Caraxes that you accidentally give to him too. Every soft look and gentle word. He hoards them like a dragon hoards gold.

Once, you're watching Caraxes preen his wings in the meadow sun, and you say, without thinking, "He's beautiful, isn't he?" And then you glance at Aerion, and something in your face shifts. Your eyes drag over him—the sharp lines of his face, the pale fall of his hair, the lean dangerous shape of him in the grass—and you look away, but not before he sees it. The recognition, the heat, the unwilling attraction. You think he's beautiful too. You don't want to, you fight against it, but you do.

You've started sitting closer to him. Not intentionally (you still keep the careful distance in public) but in the meadow, you'll start three feet away and by the end of the afternoon you're close enough that your shoulders brush when you lean forward. Close enough that when you laugh you sway into him slightly. You don't seem to notice. But every inch you give him, he takes greedily.

Sometimes you forget yourself entirely. You'll be mid-sentence and reach over to adjust his collar, brush grass off his shoulder, push hair out of his face, casual and familiar. The kind of touch you'd give someone you're comfortable with. And then you'll freeze, realising too late what you've done, and pull back at once. But the damage is done. He felt it. The ease of it. The way you touched him like you had the right. Like some part of you already thinks of him as yours.

Once you're in the meadow, sitting between them, Caraxes on one side, head resting near your hip, Aerion on the other, stretched out in the grass with his eyes closed against the sun. You're talking. Something about Winterfell, about your father, he's only half-listening because he's focused on the sound of your voice, the cadence of it, the way it softens when you talk about home.

And then your hand is in his hair.

Just... there. Fingers carding through the short pale strands absently while you talk, the same way you'd pet Caraxes, gentle and rhythmic and unconscious. You don't even seem to notice you're doing it. You just keep talking, fingers moving slow and careful against his scalp, and Aerion goes still, stops breathing. Every nerve in his body lights up. His cock goes hard so fast it's almost painful in how humiliatingly fast it happens. Through the bond, Caraxes's pleased rumble reaches him (yes, good, touch him, he needs it, give him what he wants, such a good mate) and Aerion is drowning in it, the feel of your hands on him, gentle and sure, and he wants to grab your wrist and beg. Wants to turn his head and press his mouth and teeth to your palm. Wants to pull you down into the grass and put his hands on you and make you feel even a fraction of what he's feeling.

You keep petting him. Thirty seconds, a minute. Your nails scratch lightly against his scalp and he bites back a starved, animal sound. And then you notice. He feels the exact moment you catch yourself in what you're doing. Your hand goes still, your breath catches, and when he opens his eyes you're staring at your own fingers in his hair like you don't know how they got there.

You jerk your hand back. "I didn't—I wasn't thinking—"

He sits up slowly. Looks at you. His voice comes out rougher than he means: "It's fine."

It's not fine. He's so hard he can barely think over his pulsing need. He can still feel the ghost of your touch. He wants to tackle you into the grass and find out if you'd keep touching him like that if he asked. If he begged, if he made you, if he offered his throat or sucked on tongue.

You won't meet his eyes. You get up quickly, murmur something about needing to head back before dark, and Aerion watches you retreat and thinks: soon. Soon you're going to stop pulling away. Soon you're going to give in. He can feel it. You're starting to forget why you're supposed to keep the distance. Starting to reach for him like it's natural, like you want to.

You do want to. He knows you do. You just haven't admitted it yet.

He knows your routine better than you do. Knows you walk the battlements after breakfast, east stair not west because the west gets too much sun and you don't like the glare. Knows you stop at the third landing to catch your breath and that you take the long way back through the gallery because you like looking at the tapestries. Times his own movements to "accidentally" cross paths with you. Has gotten very good at looking surprised to see you.

Can tell when you've been with Baelor by scent alone. His uncle wears some kind of Dornish oil (sandalwood, maybe amber) and it clings to you. Makes Aerion's jaw tight and makes Caraxes snarl with fury. He takes you flying as often as he can because it gets the wind to strip the scent away, replaces it with sky and smoke and them.

Has started stealing things. Not from you, of you. A ribbon you left on a bench in the yard. A glove that fell from your pocket in the hall, a hairpin you took out absently during a feast and forgot. Keeps them in a locked box in his chambers. Takes them out sometimes late at night. Holds the ribbon and remembers the way it looked in your hair. Brings the glove to his face and breathes in the faint scent of you. He knows it's mad. He doesn't care. They're his. Pieces of you that no one else knows are missing.

Watches you at feasts from across the hall. Counts how many times Baelor touches you. (Seven times at the last feast. Hand on your shoulder twice, hand on your back three times, fingers grazing yours when passing you wine once, lips to your temple once.) Counts how many times you smile at him. (Four times. Polite smiles, mostly. Only one that reached your eyes.) Tells himself he doesn't care. Lies. Caraxes, in the pit, thrashes every time the count gets too high.

Has imagined killing Baelor in every possible way. Poison in his wine. A blade between his ribs. An "accident" in the yard, a training sword that slips just a little too far, though this one he only entertains during his most foolish, feverish moments. His uncle might be old, but he's still a fierce warrior. Which is why his mind drifts towards Caraxes doing it for him, quick and clean, just a snap of jaws. Imagines it in explicit detail: what Baelor's face would look like, how long it would take, whether you'd cry. Whether you'd forgive him. (You wouldn't. That's the only thing that stops him. Not guilt. Not love for his uncle. Just the knowledge that you'd hate him for it, and he needs you not to hate him.)

He memorised the shape of your mouth. The exact curve of your lower lip. The small scar at the corner (you bit through it once as a child, he asked, you told him the story in the meadow, something about falling off a horse). He knows what your mouth looks like when you're about to cry (tight, corners turned down, the way you press your lips together to keep them from trembling). Knows what it looks like when you're trying not to laugh (bitten, the corners twitching). He wonders what they might look like bruised and wet from kissing him (perfect, they would look perfect). Wants to know what curve they would make when wrapped around his cock. Thinks about it constantly.

Knows you bite the inside of your cheek when you're thinking hard. That your eyebrows lifts slightly when you're sceptical. You touch your throat when you're nervous. Knows the small tell when you're about to argue with someone (your chin lifts, your shoulders go back, your voice drops half a register). Uses all of this against you in arguments because he fights dirty and if he can't have you he can at least make you feel as raw and off-balance as he feels.

Lies awake at night and feels Caraxes dreaming. The dragon dreams of you: your scent, your shape, the sound of your laugh, the feel of your hands on his scales. The dreams bleed into Aerion's head and he wakes hard and furious and aching and sometimes he gives in. Fists his cock and thinks of you or ruts against the hardness of his bed, thinks of your mouth, your hands. The small sounds you'd make for him. The way you'd look under him, over him especially, but all his. Comes with your name caught behind his teeth and Caraxes's satisfied rumble in the bond, because the dragon can feel it, feels Aerion's pleasure, approves.

He's stopped bedding other girls months ago. Tried once, after a particularly bad day watching you and Baelor in the yard. Got the girl back to his chambers, got her on her knees, all doe-eyed and pliant, and Caraxes shrieked in the bond so loud Aerion went to his knees too, head in his hands, because the wrongness of it was searing. Wrong girl. Wrong mouth. Wrong scent. Wrong everything. Sent her away and stumbled down to the pit. Spent two hours with his forehead pressed to hot scales while the dragon growled not-her-not-her-WRONG and Aerion finally, finally understood: it's you or nothing. Caraxes has decided, and what Caraxes decides, Aerion feels. He couldn't fuck someone else now if he tried. His body won't let him. The bond itself won't let him. You've ruined him and he's never hated anyone more.

He knows when you're about to bolt. You get this look: eyes too flat, breath shallow, a wolf two seconds from lunging. He's learned to back off when he sees it and give you space. Let you think you're in control. It's strategic. Push too hard and you'll run. Let you come to him and you'll stay.

Can tell the difference between when you're touching Caraxes because you want to and when you're doing it to avoid looking at him. When it's the latter, he moves closer. Makes it impossible to avoid him and watches you squirm. Enjoys it more than he should.

Sometimes he'll be in a council meeting and he'll feel it: Caraxes's sudden spike of fury. He'll have to excuse himself, go down to the pit, and find out what happened. (Baelor touched you. Baelor made you laugh. Baelor kissed your hand in the fucking courtyard and half the keep saw and Caraxes wants to burn something.) Aerion stands there, hand on the dragon's neck, breathing through it. "I know. I know. Soon."

Watches Baelor with you and feels nothing for his uncle except cold assessment. How to separate you, how to undermine him, how to make you see that Baelor is old and good and boring, and Aerion is alive and dangerous and exactly the thing you actually want and need.

Sometimes, just to stay sane, he works through his options:

Option one: wait until you break. Let the tension build until you reach for him first, kiss him first, beg him first. This is the smart option, the one that means you can't take it back, can't say he forced you into anything. This is the one he covets above all else. He needs you to claim him.

Option two: take you the next time you forget yourself in the meadow. The next time your hand lingers in his hair or you fall asleep against him. Pull you into his lap, put his mouth on you, make you admit you want this. Risky. You might bolt. But gods, the idea of it makes him so hard he has to pace and snarl into empty air.

Option three: wait until the betrothal is announced and then take you. Ruin you for Baelor, make it impossible for his uncle to have you without shame, seat you on top of Caraxes and fly East until you run out of horizon. This is the nuclear option. The one that burns everything down in both your lives, but he's keeping it in reserve. Just in case. Just.

Whatever he chooses, Caraxes will be there. The dragon is part of this. Part of them. And Aerion knows (knows with cold certainty) that you're already half in love with the dragon. You just haven't realised that loving Caraxes means you're halfway to loving him too.

Caraxes shows his affection differently. Mostly he brings you dead things. Goats, mostly. Sometimes a sheep. Once, an entire boar, charred to ash, dropped at the entrance to the pit like an offering to a goddess. The dragonkeepers are baffled. Aerion is smothering his amusement (fails). You're trying not to laugh and failing. Caraxes is smug. She is pleased. She is laughing. He has provided for his rider's mate. Good.

He also has a specific hum he only makes for you. Lower than his usual rumble or high-pitched snarling. Almost a purr. The dragonkeepers have started calling it "the Stark sound" when they think Aerion can't hear them. (He can. He doesn't correct them. It's true.)

Refuses to let anyone else near his saddle when you've been in it. Snaps at keepers who try to adjust the straps. They smell like you now. The leather has your scent, the saddle is yours. No one else touches it. One keeper got his hand bitten for trying. Aerion didn't even reprimand the dragon. Just looked at the keeper and said, "He's territorial. Don't touch what's his."

He sleeps better when you've visited. The keepers have noticed, started captiously asking Aerion to "bring the Lady Stark by" when Caraxes is having a particularly bad day because it's the only thing that settles him. Aerion hates that they've noticed, hates that it's true even more. But he does it anyway because a calm dragon means a calm bond means he can sleep instead of lying awake aching for you.

Has started hoarding things in his nest. Shiny things. A buckle that fell off your belt (Aerion saw it fall, watched the dragon flick it toward him with his tail, said nothing). A coin you dropped in the pit. A scrap of cloth from your hem that tore on his scales (Caraxes tore it on purpose, Aerion felt the intention through the bond, the dragon wanted a piece of you to keep and Aerion saw no reason to refuse him). Aerion finds them all buried in the straw sometimes and feels a complicated swell of emotions: pride (his dragon is clever), wry amusement (his dragon is obsessed), resignation (they're both damned, what's the point in pretending otherwise?).

Caraxes knows Baelor's scent now and hates it. Sandalwood-amber-WRONG. If you come to the pit smelling like Baelor (his hand on your back, his cloak around your shoulders, his mouth on your temple), Caraxes won't settle until Aerion takes you flying. High and too fast. Lets the wind strip every trace of Baelor away until you smell like sky and smoke and them again, always them. Only then does the dragon calm.

He can smell when you're drawn to his rider, too. Your scent changes, goes sharper, then sweetens. Caraxes notices. Rumbles approval. Pushes you toward Aerion with his snout. Go. Touch him. He wants it. You want it. Stop being STUPID about it.

Knows when his rider is hard for you, can feel it through the bond. Approves enthusiastically. Sometimes makes pleased little chuffing sounds when it happens. Aerion wants to kill him. The dragon doesn't care. Good. Want her. TAKE her. What are you WAITING for.

He guards the meadow. Once, a farmer wandered too close (didn't even see you, just cutting through the field) and Caraxes screamed. Wings mantling, neck arched, mouth open showing every one of those blade-length teeth. Aerion had to physically put himself between the dragon and the farmer, hand on Caraxes's neck, snarling in Valyrian: "Daor. Daor. Issa sȳz. Jikagon. DAOR." (No. No. It's fine. Go. NO.) The farmer ran away. Caraxes settled, but slowly, grumbling the whole time. His rider's mate is HERE. In HIS meadow. No one else gets to be here. This is THEIRS.

Watches the sky when you're in the meadow. Always. One eye on you, one eye up. If Vermithor flew overhead right now, Caraxes would attack, no hesitation. Doesn't matter that it would start a war. Doesn't matter that Aerion would try to stop him. The dragon has decided: the bronze one does not get to share the sky when she is here.

Positions himself between you and any perceived threat. Once, a snake in the grass. Caraxes moved, faster than something that size should be able to move, put his bulk between you and it, tail lashing. Aerion watched you press your hand to the dragon's side, murmuring thanks, and felt it through the bond: Caraxes's fierce satisfaction. Protected her. Kept her safe. MINE.

When you touch Caraxes, the pleasure travels the bond to Aerion. When Aerion wants you, the want travels the bond to Caraxes. They're locked in a feedback loop of wanting and having (sort of) and wanting more. It's unbearable. It's delicious. Neither of them would stop it if they could.

The dragon has started pushing, and not subtly. When you're petting him, he'll shift slightly, move his head, manoeuvre you closer to Aerion. When you're sitting next to his rider, Caraxes will rumble approval, loud and too obvious. When you pull away from Aerion, the dragon growls. Disapproval. She is being STUPID. She wants the rider. The rider wants her. Why is she FIGHTING it.

Caraxes has decided you belong to them. Both of them. The bond means they're one creature in two bodies, and you are theirs. Not Baelor's. Not anyone else's. Theirs. The dragon is simply waiting for you and Aerion to catch up to this obvious truth.

The meadow makes the attraction worse. There are no witnesses here. No court. No duty. Just you and Aerion and the dragon and the tall grass and the want that fills the space between you like smoke.

Sometimes you'll be talking, normal conversation, and you'll both just... stop. Look at each other. The air goes tight. Caraxes rumbles, low and pleased, feeling the spike of want through the bond. And neither of you moves. Neither of you dares. You look away first, every time. Always. Aerion lets you. For now.

He's gotten very good at reading the small signs of your desire. The way your breath quickens when he stands too close. The way your eyes track his hands. The small unconscious way you lean toward him before you catch yourself. He sees all of it.

You've started looking at his mouth. He's caught you three times now. Just... staring at his lips while he talks. You don't even seem to notice you're doing it, but he does. And it takes everything in him not to close the distance, put his mouth on yours, and make you admit what you want.

Once, in the meadow, you tripped over a root. He caught you. Hands at your waist, pulling you against his chest, and for three seconds you were pressed together, his mouth an inch from yours. You looked up at him. He looked down at you. Caraxes went serpentine still and the moment stretched. Your lips parted. His hand tightened on your waist. And then you pushed away, muttering words he can't recall, and he let you go because he could feel how close you were to bolting.

Another time, you were lying in the grass, drowsing, and he was watching you. Just watching. You opened your eyes and caught him staring. Didn't look away. Neither did he. Just held your gaze. Five seconds. Ten. Your stare went molten and wolf-like, wild around the edges. His hand moved, half-reaching. And then you blinked and sat up abruptly, said something about needing water, and escaped. He sat there, hand still half-extended, and laughed, low and wicked under his breath. You're breaking. Slowly. But you're breaking.

Worse of all is that you make him reckless. He's always been dangerous but you make him stupid with it. Makes him take risks he shouldn't. Flies Caraxes too hard, too fast, just to feel the adrenaline that's a pale shadow of what he feels when you look at him.

You also make him cruel. He's sharper with everyone else because all his softness (what little he has) is spent on you. He snaps at servants, provokes his brothers, sheds needless blood in the yard. Comes back to the meadow with bloody knuckles and you notice, reach for his hand without thinking, and he nearly drags you into his lap right there and then every time.

But you also make him patient in ways he's never been patient. He wants to grab you, kiss you, fuck you, make you his in every way that matters. But he waits. Lets you come to him in pieces, lets you get used to his presence, his touch, the idea of him. Because when you finally give in (and you will, he knows you will) he wants you to do it with your eyes open. Wants you to choose him. Not be taken. Choose.

You also make him vulnerable in ways he hates. You could destroy him with a word, tell him you'll never want him, you'll marry Baelor, you'll never come to the meadow again. And it would break something in him. Caraxes would feel it. They'd both go mad. He's given you that power without meaning to and it's terrifying and he wouldn't take it back if he could.

You think about him, more than you would ever admit. Late at night. In the bath. In quiet moments. You think about his hands. His mouth. The way he looks at you like you're something he wants to devour. You tell yourself it's just curiosity. It's not. It's want. And you're starting to run out of ways to deny it.

You've started dreaming about him. Waking up flushed and aching and furious with yourself. In the dreams, you don't stop him, you don't do the right thing, don't pull away. You let him kiss you, touch you, take you apart, you take him apart, and you like it. You wake up hating yourself for liking it, but the dreams keep coming.

The court doesn't help. You sit at the high table. Baelor on one side, your father on the other. Aerion is three seats down, angled so he can watch you without being obvious about it. He's gotten very good at watching you in public. No one notices. Except you. You can feel his eyes on you. On your throat when you swallow wine, your mouth when you speak. On your hands. Always your hands.

He times it so he arrives at the wine table when you do. Stands too close while you wait for a servant to pour. His shoulder brushes yours. You don't move away. He says something innocuous ("The Dornish red is better than the Arbor gold tonight") and you answer, and to anyone watching it's just polite conversation. But his hand is an inch from yours on the table. If you moved your fingers slightly, you'd touch. You don't move them. Neither does he. The space between your hands is charged.

You've caught him staring at you across the hall and held his gaze for longer than you should. Long enough that Baelor noticed and followed his nephew's line of sight to you and frowned slightly. You looked away first, but not before Aerion smiled, small and private.

After feasts, when everyone's drunk and loose, he'll find you on the battlements. You go there to breathe, to escape the heat and noise. He knows this, joins you, stands beside you in silence, looking out at the city torches. Sometimes you talk. Sometimes you don't.

You sometimes watch Baelor train in the yard. Dutiful. Aerion has started training at the same time. Not near Baelor but across the yard. Close enough that you can see him if you turn your head. You try very hard not to turn your head. He knows when you're not watching. Fights harder, meaner, shows off. Once took a man down so brutally (swept his legs, put him on his back, and cracked his wrist) that you gasped. Aerion heard it across the yard, looked up and met your eyes. Smiled. You looked away, eyes narrowed. Caraxes, in the pit, was too busy laughing.

Afterward, he's sweaty, unlaced, breathing hard. Walks past you to the water barrel. You refuse to look and give him the satisfaction. He knows you're struggling though, taunts you by drinking slowly. Lets you watch. Pours water over his head and you track a droplet down his pale throat and have to look away before you do something stupid.

He's started doing this thing where he "accidentally" ends up walking the same direction as you through the keep. Falls into step beside you. Talks about nothing important. But his hand will brush yours. His shoulder will bump yours. Small touches, deniable, constant. You've stopped flinching, now you have to fight from leaning in.

Caraxes does this thing where he curls around you when you're in the meadow. Not trapping you just... surrounding you. Wings half-furled to block the wind. Neck curved to make a warm shelter. You lean into him without thinking and he rumbles, so pleased, and through the bond Aerion feels it like sunlight.

Once, you fell asleep against Caraxes in the pit. Just dozed off, exhausted from some long day. Aerion found you like that, curled into the dragon's side, Caraxes's wing stretched over you like a blanket, the dragon's breathing slow and even to avoid disturbing you. Aerion stood there for ten minutes just watching. The dragon opened one eye, looked at him. Through the bond: See? She trusts us. She is OURS. Aerion couldn't argue.

You fly on him alone once. It happens by accident. You're in the pit, waiting for Aerion (he's late, got held up in council), and Caraxes is restless. Pacing. You can feel it, the same way you've learned to read his moods and Aerion's both. He wants to fly. Needs it.

You stand, walk over to him, put your hand on his neck. "Want to go up?" you ask, and you're joking, you're not even remotely serious, you know dragons obey no one but their riders, that's what makes Targaryens special but Caraxes goes still like he understands your intent, turning his great head to look at you. Through the bond, Aerion feels the dragon's sudden certainty.

Caraxes lowers himself, an invitation. You stare. "You're serious." He rumbles. You look around. No keepers. No Aerion. Just you and the dragon. You've flown with Aerion dozens of times. You know how the saddle works, how to hold on. You climb up, settling into the saddle. It smells like Aerion, leather and smoke. Your hands shake slightly on the reins.

Caraxes launches.

It's different without Aerion holding you to his chest. Terrifying. Exhilarating. The dragon is gentle with you. No sharp banks, no dives, just smooth powerful strokes of his wings, but you can feel his raw strength. His leashed violence, the sheer power of a dragon that was once ridden by the Rogue Prince, that's seen hundreds of battles. He could throw you off with a twitch. Could burn you with a breath but chooses not to. Chooses to carry you carefully, like you're precious.

You fly for twenty minutes. Just over the city, out toward the coast, wheeling through clean sky. Caraxes rumbles the whole time: pleased, proud, happy, and you're laughing. Wind in your hair, hands tight on the reins, and you feel so, so alive.

When you land, Aerion is in the pit. Waiting. He watched you take off from the council window and ran. You slide down from the saddle, legs shaking, grinning like mad. "He let me—" you start, breathless. Aerion crosses to you in three strides, grabs your shoulders. You think he's furious, brace for his rage, but he's not. His eyes are bright, wild, feverish. "I felt it," he says. "Through the bond. I felt you up there. Felt how happy you were." His hands tighten. "Do you know what you just did? He's never let anyone else fly him. Never. Just me. And now you."

You stare at him, at the intensity in his face. At Caraxes behind you, smug and satisfied. "What does that mean?" you ask quietly. Aerion's jaw works. "It means—" He stops, steps back, running a hand through his hair. "It means everything."

You fly Caraxes alone sometimes after that. Not often. Once a moon, maybe. Always with Aerion's permission (he has to tell the dragon it's allowed, has to send the permission down the bond, or Caraxes won't let you up). Every time, Aerion feels it. Feels your joy, your exhilaration. Feels the dragon's pride in carrying you. It's intimate in ways he can't explain but only makes him hungrier. You on his dragon, his dragon loving you. The bond singing with it.

Aerion notices, over the course of several weeks, how you've been sadder. Not crying, just... diminished. Quieter. You stare out windows more. Touch your direwolf pendant more (you wear it always, silver wolf on a chain, tucked under your gown). You talk about Winterfell in your sleep. He knows because Caraxes knows, the dragon can hear you from the pit when your window's open, and what the dragon hears, Aerion hears.

He asks you about it once, in the meadow. "Do you miss it? The North?" You don't answer right away. Then: "Every day. Every single day. The keep here is... it's beautiful. But it's not home. I miss the cold. I miss the snow. I miss the way the sky looks before a storm." Your voice cracks slightly on the last word and you clear your throat, look away. Aerion watches you and feels an idea begin take shape inside his head.

He doesn't tell you what he's planning. Just makes arrangements. Tells the dragonkeepers he's taking Caraxes north for training exercises (a lie). Tells Father he'll be gone for a day (also a lie, but Maekar doesn't care enough to ask questions as long as he's disgracing himself). Doesn't tell anyone he's taking you.

He comes to your chambers before dawn one morning, knocks softly after dismissing the guards. You open the door in your nightgown, hair loose, sleepy and confused. "Get dressed," he says. "Flying leathers. Warm ones. We're leaving." "What—" "Don't ask. Just trust me."

You do. You trust him.

He flies you north. Far north. Past the Neck. Past the wolfswood. You don't realise where you're going until you see it: Winterfell. Grey walls rising from white snow. Smoke from the chimneys. Home.

You make a sound. Choked and stunned. Your hands tighten on his arms (you're pressed against his chest in the saddle, his arms around you on the reins). "Aerion—" "Shh," he murmurs in your ear. "We're not landing. Can't risk it. But I thought—you said you missed it. So."

Caraxes circles Winterfell three times. Low enough that you can see the yard. The glass gardens and the godswood. Everything. Silent tears drip down your face, down your cheeks. Aerion can feel them on his wrist where his arm crosses your chest, can feel your breath shaking.

"Thank you," you choke out. "Thank you thank you thank you—"

He doesn't answer. Just holds you tighter and lets Caraxes circle one more time before turning south.

He lands in a clearing a few miles from the castle. You slide down from the saddle and your legs won't hold you. Aerion catches you. You're shaking. From cold, from emotion, from everything. He holds you up, hands at your waist, and you just... collapse into him.

You hug him.

You throw your arms around his neck and bury your face in his shoulder and hold on. Tight and desperate, grateful. "Thank you," you say again, muffled against his throat. "You didn't have to— I can't believe you— thank you—"

Aerion stills under the weight, the sensation. His hands hover for a second, not sure where to go. Then they settle on your back. Careful. He can feel you crying into his shoulder.

It wasn't supposed to feel like this. He did it because Caraxes was restless, because you'd been sad, because it was a way to make you happy and gods know he's selfish enough to want your happiness directed at him and only him. He did it because he's selfish but this— your arms around him, your face in his neck, your breathless gratitude—this lands somewhere deep and dark.

You pull back eventually. Wipe your eyes. Embarrassed. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—" "Don't apologise." You look up at him and whatever you see on his face makes you nod once.

Caraxes, sprawled nearby, is purring. So loud it vibrates the ground. Through the bond, Aerion feels the dragon's satisfaction: She is happy. We made her happy. OURS.

You stay in the clearing for an hour. Sit in the snow (you build a small fire, and you both huddle close to it). You talk about Winterfell. About your father. About your childhood. Things you've never told him. He listens, doesn't interrupt. Just listens.

When you fly back, you fall asleep against him. Head on his shoulder, arms loose around his waist. He holds you the whole way. Lands at the Red Keep after dark. Carries you from the saddle to the ground (you wake, groggy, mumbling apologies). His hands linger at your waist. "Sleep," he says quietly. "I'll handle the questions."

There are questions. As many questions as he expected. Where were you? Where was she? Do you have any idea how many people were looking for her? How this looks? Father is furious. Baelor stares, finally, not with vague suspicion but with knowing. Your father is somewhere between rage and relief. Aerion takes it all, doesn't give them anything. Just says, "She's safe. She missed home. I brought her back. That's all that matters."

They punish him. Grounded from flying for two weeks (it nearly kills him—and Caraxes, who screams for days). Confined to the keep, formal reprimand. He doesn't care, doesn't regret it. Not for a second.

You come to see him the next day. He's in his chambers (confined, remember). You slip past the guards (they don't stop you—you're a lady, not a prisoner). He opens the door and you're there. "You shouldn't be here," he says. "I know," you answer. You step inside, close the door and cross to him. And then you hug him again, slower this time, fiercely. Your arms around his waist, your head on his chest. "Thank you," you whisper. "For yesterday. For giving me home. For— everything." His arms come around you, too tight. He doesn't say anything. Can't. The feeling in his chest is too big for words and he hates it.

When you pull back and leave, he stands there for ten minutes, just stands there. Feeling the ghost of you in his arms, the scent of you in his room (lavender, something cold, you). And he thinks: I'm fucked. I'm completely fucked.

Caraxes, in the pit three floors down, rumbles agreement.

You're not soft. You look soft sometimes that's Caraxes favourite thing about you. You're gentle with children, kind to servants, diplomatic at court, but Caraxes knows better. Can smell it on you. The wolf. The thing under the courtesy that has teeth.

The dragon has a theory: strong mate makes strong eggs, strong hatchlings. Not that there will be eggs (you're human, not dragon, the logistics don't work) but the instinct is there. He wants his rider to have a mate who can fight. Who can hold her own, who won't break under pressure. You fit. You're perfect.

You've snarled at Caraxes once, actually snarled. He was being difficult about something (wouldn't settle so you could mount, being a brat), and you put your hands on your hips and growled at him: "Stop being an ass and lower yourself. Now." The audacity. The dragon was so delighted he obeyed with a wry little huff. Aerion laughed until he couldn't breathe. Through the bond: She commands me. She has the right. OURS.

Once, you and Aerion were arguing (about something stupid, he can't even remember what). You were furious, eyes flashing, voice cutting and you shoved him. Actually put your hands on his chest and pushed. He stumbled back a step, shocked. You stepped into his space, chin up, fearless. "Don't patronise me, Aerion. I am not one of your simpering southern girls. I am a Stark."

He doesn't want someone soft. He's too sharp for soft. He'd destroy soft. But you? You can take it. Can take him, can match him, push back when he pushes, snarl when he snarls, hold your ground.

You've started to see it too. The way you and Caraxes are alike, the way you and Aerion are alike. Fierce, protective, all with teeth. You're comfortable with the dragon in ways you're not comfortable with most people because he gets you. Doesn't expect you to be soft. Likes you because you're not.

Once, you told Aerion: "He's not as bad as people say. He's just—he doesn't trust easily. Neither do I." Aerion looked at you, then at his dragon. At the shape of what you were building together (you and him and Caraxes, the three of you tangled into something that has no name). "No," he agreed. "Neither do I." A pause. "But we trust you." You looked at him. "I know," you said quietly. "I know you do."

It's been months. Months of stolen flights, secret meadows, Aerion's hands carefully not crossing the line, Caraxes's growls every time you leave.

The betrothal announcement is coming. Everyone knows it. Baelor will ask formally. You will say yes. There will be a wedding.

Aerion can feel it closing in like a noose.

He's done being patient.

Next time you reach for him in the meadow, next time you pet his hair, touch his hand, look at him with those soft unguarded eyes... he's not pulling away.

He's going to kiss you. Properly. Going to put his hands on you and make you admit you want this.

The next time you come to the meadow, everything changes.

But you weren’t entirely foolish. You were skilled in combat, taught to you by your older brother. And you made sure to leave a note for your husband in the case of an emergency. You wouldn’t be surprised if the Kingsguard were already surrounding you at this moment, unseen but present. 

Aerion was aware of the suffocation court held and allowed you this small freedom. 

The snap of a twig makes you freeze. The guards don’t typically announce themselves when you’re at the pond, allowing you a dream-like bliss of solitude. 

Before you could turn, a hand clamps over your mouth. You twist instinctively, your elbow drives back, but the grip only tightens. 

“Dont,” a voice hisses low against your ear. 

You shift your weight, your fingers curling against the weapon tucked in your sleeve. With just enough strength, you twist free and imbed the dagger into him. 

Without looking behind you, you run for the treeline, trying to lose your captor. 

Your ankle twists, pain shooting up your leg as you lose balance. Stumbling over a fallen trunk, your head strikes a large stone. 

The trees above blur, their branches twisting together into something unrecognizable. 

The last thing you register is the sound of distant shouting and the white cloaks breaking through the trees as your vision darkens. 

~

Gasping for breath, your eyes snap open. 

Your chest rises and falls unevenly, a thin layer of sweat clinging to your skin. Lying there for a minute staring up at the ceiling, you wait for your heartrate to calm.  

Could that have been real? Could it have been the moment that led to your injury?

Surely not. The Targaryen family would not take kindly to one of their own being harmed. They would have questioned you as soon as you woke up.

Unless whoever attacked you had slipped through unnoticed. 

Through the heavy velvet curtains, you could make out the bright sunshine attempting to seep into the darkened room. 

You shift slightly and a strong arm tightens around you. 

Twisting around, you lay face to face with Aerion. Warmth from his bare chest reaches you through the fabric of your thin nightgown. The steady rise and fall of his breathing brushing softly against your skin. 

His grip was not harsh, but not loose either. Even in sleep, he wasn’t able to let you go. 

In sleep, you’d never be able to imagine the stories whispered about his manic cruelty. Ruffled silver hair falls messily against his forehead. His face was relaxed in deep sleep and he looked closer to a kitten than a dragon.

Your eyelids grow heavy, the warmth of his body and the steady rhythm of his breathing lulling you back under. 

It does not last long as a hand closes around your throat.

Your eyes snap open, you see a flash of silver hair before his lips are against your, stealing the breath from your lungs before you could gasp. 

Pressing his thumb against your jaw, he forces your mouth open. His body above you pressing you into the mattress. As if instinctively, you fall into the rhythm as your tongues brush against one another. 

Something hard presses against you– 

You shove hard against his chest, wiping the back of your hand against your lips in disgust. 

“Good morning, wife.” his tongue darts out swiping over his lips. 

“Don’t look so upset,” he shifts, pushing himself up from the bed. “I had to wake you for breakfast. My father doesn’t take kindly to tardiness.”

“Don’t ever do that again.” Your chest is still rising too quickly. “I don’t want your dirty mouth on mine.”

“Never bothered you before,” he stands now, birthday suit on display. 

Heat rises to your cheeks as you look away. You don’t need to avert your eyes for long as the large oak doors open, a flurry of maids rushing in. 

“My lady–” one begins, before faltering mid-step, her eyes darting between you and Aerion. 

Aerion does not so much as glance towards them. 

Instead, he lazily pulls on a pair of lounge trousers as his own valet de chambre file in, not a care in the world for the display he just put on. His gaze flicks towards you briefly, and it's clear through his satisfied look that he wanted them to see. He wanted their whispers about your relationship to travel beyond these chambers. 

You are both dressed in silence, the quiet between you uneasy and broken only by the shift in fabric and murmur of servants. Still, his gaze burned into the back of your head, but you refused to acknowledge him. 

You murmur, “Was that necessary?”

One of the servants offers him a shirt, which he takes without comment as he pulls it over his head. Only then does his attention return to you. 

“You are my wife,” he says simply. 

“That doesn’t mean you get to parade me around.”

You could feel the anger seeping through his bones, but he doesn’t grace you with a reply. 

He finishes dressing and leaves the room without another word. 

The dress sat off your shoulders, the neckline cut straight, holding its shape rather than softening to you. The fabric was black with red threads that caught the light when you moved. Along the top, fine gold gems detailed into dragon scales. Large rubies draped over your next, set in ornate gold. 

You were escorted by a knight, Ser Ronnel Darklyn, to the main hall, after being left behind by your insufferable husband, who was painfully aware of your memory loss (after warning you about how Maekar would be displeased with lateness).

You were in the clear to make the assumption that the two of you did not get along through your marriage so far. 

The main hall was filled with chatter as the Targaryen family filled the long wooden table that seemed to stretch endlessly beneath the high ceilings. At the head sat King Daeron with his son Baelor at his side and Myriah at his other. Other members of the family filled the middle of the table, their conversations blending into a low hum. At the far end sat Maekar with his gaggle of children surrounding him, their presence far louder. 

You took the empty chair next to Aerion, reluctantly. 

“Good Morrow, sister.” Aemon greeted you with a kind smile, only to receive a death glare from his brother. 

“Good Morrow, Aemon. I hope you slept well.”

Breakfast continued around you, the table filled with conversation that moved easily from one topic to the next. You focused on the food in front of you, cutting into it with more attention than necessary. Not yet certain with what you should know or what you were expected to say. 

The chatter dims when the King turns his attention towards you.

“I trust you are recovering well.” 

You stare at him for a moment longer than you should, scrambling for the appropriate response. 

“Yes, your Grace.”

“Very well, I await your thoughts on the book I lent you.” he continues. “Perhaps you could join me in my solar this afternoon.”

Your grip tightens around your utensils. Before you respond, Maekar’s voice cuts in. 

“Father,” he says firmly. “She has suffered a bout of memory loss. The Maester assured us she will recover in due time.”

“I see,” The King says after a moment. “That is… unfortunate.”

“And you remember nothing?” he continues. 

Setting your fork down carefully, aware of all the many pairs of lilac eyes focused on you. 

“Very little, your Grace,” you answer, keeping your voice steady. “Only what I have been told.”

Beside you, Aerion sighs only loud enough for you to hear, laced with impatience and irritation.  

The King nods slowly, already shifting the conversation elsewhere. 

~

You decide to spend your afternoon strolling through the gardens, keeping close to the castle walls where the paths are familiar enough. The air is calmer here, quieter than the main halls, and for a moment it almost feels like you can breathe without being watched. 

Even so, you can feel them. 

Hidden along the edges of the garden, just out of sight, lies the Kingsguard silently watching every movement for a sign of a threat. 

Not far from you, the sharp sound of steel cutting through air draws your attention.

Aerion stands in the training yard just beyond the hedges, already deep into his morning practice. His movements are controlled, each strike deliberate. So opposed to his reckless nature. 

You slow without meaning to. Your gaze lingers longer than it should, watching as the droplets of sweat trail down his naked chest. His broad back flexing with each swing of his sword. His trousers hanging low on his waist, revealing a deep V trailing down… 

As if sensing your gaze, his eyes turn in your direction. When he catches your eye, a smug grin spreads over his face. 

The moment ends abruptly as a small hand tugs at your wrist. 

“You must come with me” You barely have time to react before Aegon is pulling you along the path, his energy bouncing off him. 

As you reach the stables, he begins introducing you to each stallion. And there are many. 

The stables are large, as expected from a dragon dynasty, filled with the low sounds of shifting hooves. 

“And this is Nightshade,” he says, patting the neck of a dark mare. “And this one is Maekar Jr, this one– You must pay attention.”

“Come on,” he says, already turning away. “You can feed them.”

He presses a small handful of grain into your palm before you can protest, closing your fingers around it. 

“You have to hold it flat,” he adds. “Otherwise they’ll nip you and Aerion will be upset.”

You let out a quiet breath, more amused, and follow his instructions. Nightshade leans forward, her breath warm against your skin. 

You almost pull back, but Aegon’s voice cuts in. “Don’t move, she’ll think you’re nervous.”

“She remembers you,” Aegon adds casually. “This is Aerion’s mare.”

Before you can respond, a smaller figure darts between the stalls. 

“Aegon!” Daella’s voice is bright and breathless as she comes to a stop, her hair half-done, ribbons already slipping loose. 

Rhae follows more quietly behind her, clutching a small basket to her chest.

“We’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Daella continues, though her attention quickly shifts to you. “Oh! You’re here.”

Rhae steps closer, peering up at you with careful curiosity.

“You didn’t come this morning,” she says softly. You hesitate, unsure how to answer.

“I wasn’t feeling well,” you settle on.

Aegon scoffs lightly. “She forgot everything.”

“Aegon,” you warn, without real heat.

Daella’s eyes widened immediately. “Everything?”

Rhae doesn’t speak, but her hand slips into yours without hesitation, her grip small but firm.

“It’s alright,” she says quietly. “We can show you again.”

Aegon nods, “Yeah. We’ll teach you the important things.”

“Like braiding hair,” Daella adds quickly.

“And the horses,” Aegon insists.

“And which servants sneak us lemon tarts,” Rhae says, almost conspiratorially.

A shadow stretches across the ground in front of you. 

You turn, as Ser Ronnel Darklyn steps forward.

“My lady,” he says with a slight bow, “His Grace has requested your presence.”

There is no urgency in his voice, but no room for delay either. 

Aegon crosses his arms. “You can come back after,” he says, “We’re not done.”

~

It was late when you returned to your chambers. What you expected to be a brief pleasantry stretched far longer than you would assume between a King and his grandson’s wife. 

The King began with careful questions circling your conditions, testing what you could recall (a whole lot of nothing). The topic shifted to books which he spoke animatedly about. Halfway through, you got the hint that you had already had this conversation before and that he was taking advantage of your memory loss to talk your ear off about his passions.

King Daeron and the Queen Consort, Myriah, insisted you dined with them privately in their solar instead of the three of you joining the family in the main hall.

When you step into your chambers, the fire has burned low, casting a dim glowing across the room. 

You exhale slowly, reaching up to loosen the weight of the necklace at your throat, the rubies warm against your skin. 

“It’s late,” a voice cuts through the silence. “A wife ought to dine with her husband.”

Rolling your eyes at his dramatics, you cross the room until you stand directly before him. 

“A husband ought to escort his wife to breakfast,” you reply evenly. “Especially when she has no memory of where she is going.”

“A wife ought to fulfill her wifely duties.”

“A husband ought–” 

Before you could finish the sentence, his hand catches your wrist and he pulls you forward. The sudden shift in balance sends you straight into him, his other arm wrapping around your waist as he settles you into his lap. 

“What are you doing?” you demand. 

“Reminding you of your duties.”

His mouth lands on yours, taking advantage of your shocked expression. But before he can repeat the morning activities, you push at his chest. 

“Enough of this–”

“The Maester said you must continue your routine,” he interrupts, tone eerily calm. 

You stare at him, incredulous. “My routine?”

“Yes.” His grip tightens slightly at your waist, enough to keep you from pulling away completely. “Familiar habits. Familiar patterns. It is supposed to help your memory.”

Your brows knit together, the explanation settling poorly. “And you decided what, exactly?”

“I decided,” he says quietly, “that I will not have you treating me like a stranger in my own chambers.”

“That’s because you are a stranger to me,” you shoot back, “I don’t remember you or this.”

“And yet, you responded this morning”

“It means nothing. My body reacted.”

He doesn’t argue further. Instead, his hands tighten around you, he lifts you and carries you to the bed. You land against the mattress with a soft thud, the cushions shifting beneath you as you push yourself up. 

His arms circle around you, undoing the laces of your dress with expertise. The fabric loosens, slipping from your shoulders, the cold air causing goosebumps to spread over your skin. You did nothing to stop him as he haphazardly threw the gown somewhere across the floor. His gaze travels along your naked body, taking every inch of you in as he begins to unbuckle his belt. 

Dampness pooled between your legs as you greedily soaked in his figure. 

Instead, he turns away, walking towards the dressers. Aerion grabs a sheer nightgown, and pulls it over your head with far less care, the fabric settling lightly against your skin. 

You stare at him confused, “What–?”

“I won’t touch you until you beg for me.” His gaze meets yours, “And, my love, you will beg for me.” 

He moves around the room, extinguishing the candles one by one until the room is left in near darkness, only the glow of the dying fire remains. When he returns to the bed, he pulls you back against him, his arm settling around your waist.

Sleep would not come easily tonight. Your mind was racing and the ache between your thighs persisted. 

~

tags. @thorscrown @hnslchw @writtingforfun @starkleila @mismwaa @goldenrosequeen @dabishou @akstranger-16x @cherrypieyourface @snorklingfae @rebeccawinters @unicoo

Then he was gone.

The moment the door shut, Rhae burst into motion.

“I can fix it,” she said, already rummaging through her things, knocking over a small vial in her haste. “There must be a counter-potion. Something to reverse the binding, perhaps a dilution, or...”

“Rhae,” Daella said, rubbing her temple, “you do not even know what you made.”

“I do!” Rhae insisted. “It is a love draught. A very potent one, clearly.”

“That you made by guessing,” Daella replied dryly.

Rhae ignored her entirely, muttering to herself as she began sorting through herbs and powders.

You watched her for a moment. Then you turned away. There were more immediate problems.

You wrote to your uncle Lyonel that same day.

You did not mention potions or spells or foolish drunken decisions. You were not that reckless. But you told him enough.

You told him that Aerion had been improper with you, rude, lewd in a way no lady should tolerate. You told him that his sudden declaration of love felt unnatural. That you did not trust it. That you feared being made a spectacle of, a laughingstock at court if this proved to be some cruel whim.

You did not exaggerate. You did not need to.

You sealed the letter and sent it off with steady hands.

If nothing else, Lyonel Baratheon would come.

And Lyonel Baratheon did not take kindly to anyone slighting his family.

The reply came swiftly. Not to you. To Maekar.

A short, brisk message, delivered with all the subtlety of a storm breaking over the Narrow Sea.

He would come to King’s Landing personally to discuss the matter of his niece’s betrothal.

If there had been any hope that things might quiet in the meantime, it died quickly. Because Aerion did not leave you alone.

You were walking through the gardens when he appeared at your side, as though conjured.

“You did not come to break fast,” he said, his voice softer than you had ever heard it.

You did not slow. “I was indisposed.”

“You should have sent for me.”

You stopped then, turning to him with a sharp look. “Why would I do that?”

His expression softened, as though you had asked something terribly gullible.

“Because I would care for you,” he said simply.

It unsettled you more than his usual arrogance ever had.

“I do not need your care,” you replied.

“I know,” he said quickly. “But I wish to give it.”

You resumed walking. He followed.

You tried to be rid of him. You truly did. You snapped at him when he grew too close. You cut your words sharp and precise, hoping to pierce through whatever madness had taken hold of him.

“You are insufferable,” you told him once, when he would not stop hovering at your shoulder.

He only smiled.

“You may insult me as you please,” he said. “It does not change what I feel.”

“It should,” you retorted. “Any sane man would reconsider.”

“I am not any man,” he said lightly.

That, at least, was true.

You cornered him once, away from the others, your patience fraying.

“This is absurd,” you told him, your voice low and cutting. “You do not know me well enough to love me.”

“I know enough,” he replied.

“You knew enough to pinch me like a tavern girl,” you snapped.

He stilled. For a moment, you saw something flicker across his face. Regret? Shame? It was gone too quickly to be certain.

“I will not do that again,” he said, quieter now.

“That does not undo it.”

“No,” he agreed. “But I will spend the rest of my life making amends, if you allow me.”

You stared at him. He stepped closer, too close.

“You may hate me,” he continued, his voice dropping, something almost desperate threading through it now. “You may strike me, curse me, turn your back on me in public and private. I do not care. Only...” His breath hitched, just slightly. “Do not refuse me.”

“This is not love,” you said.

“It is,” he insisted.

“It is obsession.”

“Then I am obsessed,” he said, without hesitation.

You recoiled. He did not falter.

It worsened.

He began to trail after you openly, no longer caring who saw.

At feasts, he sat too close. In halls, he appeared at your side as though tethered to you.

“Do not send me away,” he murmured once, catching your wrist lightly when you turned from him.

“I will give you anything,” he said, his voice low, almost unsteady. “Anything you ask.”

You pulled your hand free. “I want you to leave me alone.”

Aerion shook his head, as though the very idea was impossible.

“Ask something else,” he said.

You stared at him, incredulous. “You cannot simply decide which of my wishes you will grant.”

“I can if one of them is to lose you,” he replied.

You had no answer for that.

He spoke endlessly.

Of things that made your skin crawl. And things that, against your will, made something in your chest ache.

“I will give you the finest gowns,” he said, pacing before you as you sat, utterly exhausted by him. “Silks from Lys, jewels from Volantis, whatever you wish.”

“I do not care for such things.”

“Then I will build you something better,” he said immediately. “A palace. Not here, somewhere grander. Somewhere worthy of you.”

You scoffed. “You cannot simply build palaces on a whim.”

“I can,” he said, utterly serious. “For you, I will.”

You rubbed your forehead.

“I will fill it with anything you desire,” he continued, relentless. “Books, if you wish. Gardens. A place where storms rage, if you miss them.”

Your breath caught, just slightly. You hated that he noticed.

“I will give you sons,” he went on, softer now. “And daughters. They will have your strength.”

You looked away.

“You will never be overlooked again,” he finished.

That, more than anything, got stuck in your mind. You hated him for it. Well, you tried to. You truly did. But it became…complicated.

Because beneath the madness, beneath the unnatural devotion, there was something else. It was not like he could control it. His voice softened when you spoke, even when your words were sharp. He faltered not in arrogance, but in uncertainty when you pushed too hard. He had not asked for this. He had not meant for it. And still he bore it because he had no choice.

You softened. Not enough to encourage him but enough that your cruelty dulled. Enough that, when he leaned too close, you did not always push him away immediately.

Valarr did not let it rest.

He returned the next day, and the next, and the next after that, each time with the same restless air about him, as though something had shifted beneath his feet and he could not quite understand where the ground had gone.

It was never a single question, never a simple inquiry. He circled the matter, as though careful probing might reveal a crack.

“You must see how sudden it all seems,” he said one afternoon, standing before you while Daella idly flipped through a book and Rhae pretended very poorly to be absorbed in her notes. “Aerion has never shown you any particular…regard before. Not of this kind.”

You folded your hands in your lap, posture straight. “Men are allowed to develop affections.”

“Yes, but...” He hesitated, frowning slightly. “Affections do not usually bloom overnight. Not like this.”

Daella snorted softly, not looking up. “Perhaps you simply never noticed.”

Valarr’s eyes flicked toward her, briefly annoyed, before returning to you. “And you,” he continued, “you never spoke of him either. Not once. You spoke of…many things. But not him.”

You tilted your head faintly, as though considering. “Must I report every passing interest to you?”

“That is not what I meant,” he said quickly, though his composure was beginning to fray. “I only mean that I thought I would have known if there had been…something.”

There had been something, you thought.

Just not what he imagined.

Rhae suddenly interjected, far too brightly, “People can be very secretive about matters of the heart.”

Daella shot her a look.

Valarr’s gaze sharpened. “Secretive? Since when?”

“Since always,” Daella said lazily, closing her book with a soft snap. “You are not entitled to every detail of her life, cousin.”

Valarr exhaled through his nose, clearly dissatisfied, but there was nothing he could press that would not make him seem...what? Petty? Possessive? Something he had never allowed himself to be.

And so he left again, though this time more slowly, as though reluctant to turn his back.

You watched him go. You felt something like vindication. It did not taste as sweet as you had once imagined.

Rhae hadn't slept properly since that fateful day.

At first, it had been frantic scribbling, muttered theories, a scatter of ingredients that grew more chaotic with each passing hour. But as the reality of the situation dawned: Lyonel on his way, Maekar already in agreement, Aerion growing only more attached, her efforts shifted from frantic to feverish.

“This is not simply infatuation,” she insisted one night, pacing the length of your chamber while Daella lay sprawled across your bed, watching her with half-lidded eyes. “It is binding. There must be a way to break a binding.”

“You do not even know how you made it,” Daella pointed out for the hundredth time, already resigned to what fate had willed.

“I know enough,” Rhae snapped, whirling toward her. “There were elements of suggestion, of amplification, of desire already present...”

You lifted a brow. “Desire?”

Rhae faltered for half a second, then recovered. “Perhaps not conscious desire. But something. The potion does not create from nothing, it enhances...”

“Then you have enhanced something deeply unfortunate,” Daella muttered.

Rhae ignored her again, turning back to her table, hands moving with increasing precision now. “If it binds, it can be unbound. It must. Otherwise…” She trailed off, her mouth tightening.

Otherwise, Lyonel would arrive to find you entangled in something unnatural, Maekar would defend his son, and neither man was known for yielding.

Aerion did not give you much space to think.

He found you everywhere. In the corridors, where he would fall into step beside you as though summoned by your presence alone. In the gardens, where he would appear at your shoulder, speaking your name with a familiarity that still felt jarring. At meals, where he abandoned his place without hesitation if it meant sitting closer to you.

“You did not come to the yard this morning,” he said, falling into step beside you as you walked along the outer gallery. “I looked for you.”

“I did not know you kept such careful watch over my movements,” you replied, not slowing.

“I would, if you allowed it,” he said, entirely serious.

You glanced at him, irritation flaring. “I do not.”

He smiled faintly, as though indulging you. “Then I will settle for watching from afar.”

“You are not watching from afar,” you pointed out.

“No,” he agreed, and there was something almost pleased in it. “I am improving my position.”

You huffed a quiet breath, shaking your head, but you did not send him away.

You had learned by now that cold rejection did not deter him, it only twisted into something softer, more pleading, more difficult to withstand.

“You should not encourage me,” he added after a moment, his voice lowering slightly as he studied your expression. “You look at me as though you are considering something unkind.”

“I am considering many unkind things,” you said dryly.

“Will you tell me?” he asked, almost eagerly.

“No.”

“Then I will imagine them,” he said, and for once there was a flicker of something like amusement in his tone. “I suspect they will be worse.”

You sighed and bit back a frustrated scream.

“I have been thinking,” he said, sitting down too close beside you on a bench as you tried unsuccessfully to read. “If you do not wish to remain in King’s Landing after we are wed, we need not. We could go elsewhere.”

You did not look up from your book. “Where would you go? You are a prince.”

“I would go where you are,” he said simply. “The rest can be arranged.”

“That is not how kingdoms work.”

“It is how I would make them work,” he replied.

You sighed, closing the book at last. “You cannot bend the world to your will simply because you wish it.”

His gaze softened, unbearably so. “Not the world. Only my life. And you are part of it now.”

You looked away. He leaned closer.

“Are you unhappy?” he asked quietly.

The question caught you off guard. “…what?”

“You seem…” He hesitated, as though searching for the word. “Distant. When I speak of these things.”

You swallowed. “I am not accustomed to them,” you said carefully.

“I will give you time,” he murmured.

You almost laughed at that.

Time was the one thing you did not have.

The days slipped by too quickly. Lyonel would arrive soon.

Rhae worked relentlessly. And finally, she came to you with something that did not look like a disaster waiting to happen. It was a small vial with clear liquid inside with faint lavender hue.

“This will work,” she said, with a conviction that made even Daella sit up straighter.

Rhae thrust the vial toward you. “This is different. It is not a draught, it is a dissolving agent. It will break the binding. I am certain of it.”

You took it. It felt far too light in your hand for something that might decide the course of everything.

“You must give it to him,” Rhae added, her voice dropping. “Soon. Before your uncle arrives.”

You nodded. Because what else could you do?

It was not difficult to get Aerion alone. You sent for him, and he came immediately as though he had been waiting for the summons.

He entered your chamber with an ease that still felt inappropriate, his gaze finding you instantly, softening in that now-familiar way.

“You sent for me,” he said, and there was something almost pleased in it, like a man rewarded.

“I did.”

You had prepared for this. You had rehearsed it in your mind. It should have been simple. Offer him the drink. Watch him take it. Wait.

Instead, you found yourself hesitating.

Because he was looking at you. He looked at you as though you were...everything. It was too much.

“You seem troubled,” he said, stepping closer. “Has something happened?”

You tightened your grip on the vial, hiding it within your sleeve. “No.”

“You are a poor liar,” he murmured, and there was no mockery in it., only concern.

“I am not lying.”

“You are,” he said gently. “And I do not like it.”

You exhaled slowly. “I am merely…tired.”

“Then you should rest,” he said at once. “You should not be standing. Sit...”

“Aerion,” you interrupted, more sharply than intended.

He stilled.

You softened your tone, forcing steadiness into it. “I asked you here for something else.”

His attention sharpened immediately. “Anything.”

You reached for the goblet you had prepared, pouring the contents of the vial into it.

“For me?” he asked, watching you curiously.

“For you,” you said, offering it to him.

Aerion took it without hesitation but did not drink.

Instead, he looked at you longer than necessary.

“You are sad,” he said softly.

Your throat tightened. “I am not.”

“You are,” he insisted, stepping closer, the goblet momentarily forgotten in his hand. “You look as though you are about to send me away.”

Something in your chest twisted. “I am not sending you away.”

“Not yet,” he murmured.

You swallowed.

He reached up slowly, and brushed his fingers along your cheek, as though testing whether you would pull back. You did not.

“May I kiss you?” he asked tentatively.

The question struck harder than any demand could have.

For a moment, just a moment, you wavered.

Because this...this gentleness, this asking, this was more than you had ever been given. More than Valarr had ever offered.

And it was not even real.

You forced yourself to move. You closed your hand lightly over his, guiding it down, pressing the goblet back toward him instead.

“Drink first,” you said, your voice softer than you intended. “Please.”

He studied you.

Then, because it was you and he was bewitched, he obeyed.

He drank all of it without question.

You looked away.

Because you could not bear the way he would be looking at you when he finished.

The potion did not work.

At least, not as Rhae intended.

Aerion's expression shifted, his mouth twisted.

He doubled over violently.

The goblet slipped from his hand, shattering against the floor as he staggered, one hand bracing against the table, the other clutching at his stomach.

“Aerion...” you started, alarm flaring.

He did not answer.

He was already retching.

part 3: pending...

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