mica

“I do not care if you have to search for him in every inn in Flea Bottom or if you have to scour the entirety of the Street of Silk, find him, for fuck’s sake”. 

The prince storms through the never-ending halls, yelling commands to the knights of the Kingsguard to find his son at once. Of course he had to be missing today of all days, mere hours away from their departure from King’s Landing to Storm's End. 

In Daeron's defense, he had not failed to communicate his wishes beforehand — to stay at the keep and drink his nights away, that is. The young prince was nowhere to be found in the keep, the guards told Prince Maekar once they were sent to fetch him, only to find his chambers devoid of life, with three empty bottles of Dornish red lying carelessly by his unmade bed.

These are not my usual dreams. 

Daeron thinks to himself as he lies unconscious on the wooden table of an inn he frequents, confused once again by the contents of his usually tortured mind. There is no fire now. In its place, pouring rain and thick fog. He feels his cloak weighed down by the rainwater he’s currently drenched in. He does not know where he is, though the place is familiar, and he finds himself looking around for something. Anything. 

Everywhere he looks seems the same: black rock, covering anything and everything. Focused on the bleak landscape, the prince fails to notice the rainwater beginning to turn blood red, and by the time he does, it seems to be entirely too late. The water continues to rise at an alarming pace, surrounding him completely. There’s nowhere to go. Daeron knows that looking around for a way out, will once again prove fruitless, but he does so anyways and —

Was that here before?

A stag. A dark brown stag with fierce eyes, covered in blood. Pretty, Daeron thinks. It makes its way over to him through the fog, and the prince squints to see it better, shielding his face with his hands from the blood rain. It’s coming closer and as it opens its mouth–

“My prince”.

He wakes up with a gasp.

“My prince, your father is calling for you. We are to take you to the Keep at once”. He looks around in a daze as he spots the two kingsguard, then he notices his wet strands of hair and his now completely drenched cloak. 

“Did you throw water on me?” He asks as he sits up and his mouth hanging slightly opened in offense, entirely baffled at the new situation he finds himself in. The kingsguard share a look, though they do not answer. He goes with them anyways. He’ll get an earful from his father either way— probably more than an earful. 

Traveling along the Kingsroad does not make a trip that takes nearly half a moon’s turn any easier, especially when it’s on horseback. His father and his uncle, Prince Baelor, insisted that no wheelhouses were needed for such a short journey, as the princes were old and experienced enough to travel on their own horses, even his youngest brother, Prince Aegon. 

It did not stop them from complaining, though. Aerion had grown increasingly more irritated as the days passed and they had yet to reach the Stormlands, while Daeron was barely keeping himself upright on horseback, the wine leaving him uncoordinated but pliant enough to not enrage their father further. Egg’s excitement for adventure had faded after the first three days or so, as he now pestered their father every few hours, asking if they were there yet. 

“You will know we are there when you are able to see the castle, boy. ¿Do you see the castle?” Prince Maekar answered with a deep scowl on his face. 

“No”, said the young prince. 

“Then we are not there yet”, Maekar answered, raising his voice slightly as his patience withered. He would need to replenish his energies somehow, he had the feeling he would need it. Especially during the entirety of their stay at Storm’s End, and everything that entailed.

King Daeron II thought wise for the royal family to further strengthen its alliance to House Baratheon, as Lord Lyonel Baratheon celebrated his nameday with a feast large enough to feed the entire realm and a hunting trip to the Rainwood that would last for days, it seemed the perfect occasion for the dragon family to show a united front to all of the noble houses in Westeros. Prince Baelor, ever the dutiful heir, had accepted immediately thinking it would be a good idea to take Valarr in order to polish his diplomatic abilities as the next heir to the Iron Throne. It had also been so long ago since he had last seen Lyonel, a man he had come to consider his friend. 

They fared well on the travels, of course they did. Father and son conducted themselves with their usual composure and grace, much to Maekar’s dismay— Do they have to be so perfect all the fucking time? Maekar looked back at his own sons, and sighed. 

You opened your eyes as the sun shone brightly though the windows of Storm's End. Your fortress. It was the very place you called home. The place that rarely, if ever, remained quiet. Today was no exception, especially considering your father’s nameday celebrations were taking place.

“It is not only a day, my darling. It will last the whole fucking moon’s turn if I can help it!” he told you once, as you conjured the memory of his spirited face and bright smile from a few namedays ago in your mind. He seemed convinced by the idea that he would be a failure to himself and your house if he were unable to improve and upscale the celebrations year after year. Which resulted in you being woken by his shouting, which seemed to bounce off of every brick in the fortress. 

“No, no, no! You are doing it completely wrong! Again!” He yelled at the musicians, who had apparently been practicing your father’s favourite songs repeatedly and had yet to reach perfection, according to Lyonel.

You climb out of the comfortable silks of your bed and do not bother to call your maids to help with your dress. It was a particularly humid day in the summertime, so a light dress made with fresh fabrics would have to do. Hair still unkept and barely awake from your slumber, you march into the great hall determined to yell at your father for ruining a perfectly good morning’s sleep. As you make your way through the halls and reach your destination you see your father’s tense back and the musician’s tired faces. 

“Are you aware of the time, you absolute madman?” You yell at Lyonel, though no real anger is present in your voice, only slight amusement at his usual antics – and vague irritation. He turns around to face you with a big, stupid grin. 

“My darling girl! You are awake at last!” 

“The sun isn’t even up-” 

“Here, come. Tell these buffoons that this subpar so-called music has no place in my nameday celebrations-” 

“The songs sounded completely fine.” 

“-that their mediocrity will not be tolerated.” A small laugh escapes you. 

“I will tell them no such thing,” you say. Your father turns to face you, as if you had stabbed him in the back with your own dagger. He frowns down at you, as you fail to remain serious in the face of his dramatics. 

“You wound me, my girl.”

You laugh.

Halfway through the day, guests begin to arrive and you are forced to wear more appropriate clothing to greet the lords and ladies from different houses of the realm. Not that your father minds which dresses you wear, but someone has to be the face of House Baratheon while your father parties day and night. Someone who remains sober, at least. Or someone who keeps their clothes on. As the night approached, you noticed a certain dragon family had yet to make an appearance. Perhaps they enjoy being fashionably late, you thought. You were seemingly wrong, though. 

House Targaryen would not arrive on Storm’s End for yet another day, as they experienced a slight setback during their journey from King’s Landing. As in, the food from the night before had not settled well in Egg’s stomach, and caused the young prince to throw up all over his horse. And so, they had to stop for a few hours to clean Egg’s horse and wait until he felt well enough to ride again.

Daeron had thrown up as well, though for… different reasons. 

Truth be told, he could have escaped the guards once again and hidden long enough for his family to be forced to leave the Red Keep without him, but something about his dreams at the inn kept him curious enough not to resist wholeheartedly. Daeron had long since given up trying to understand his dreams, all of them horrid in nature, always featuring great fires, the putrid sight of black blood beneath the moonlight, and burning dragons. 

He tried with all his might to recall whether he had ever dreamt of stags before, but it proved fruitless. If he had ever dreamt of stags and lakes of blood before, then either the dream had been completely inconsequential, or the wine had managed to erase all memory of it. It was probably the latter.

As they arrive at their destination, Storm's End's surrounding walls stand tall and intimidating as the royal family approaches. While Baelor and Maekar remain indifferent to the sight, having visited the black fortress on political matters when they were boys themselves, the younger princes gape at the sheer sturdiness of its walls. All save Aerion, who is rarely impressed by anything at all—though even he has to admit that the stronghold looks more formidable than the Red Keep. 

The Targaryens follow behind, with knights surrounding them on all sides. The farther they move into the fortress, the more the sounds of laughter and music envelop them, and the younger princes exchange glances, instinctively looking toward their fathers, who already seem to know exactly what is about to happen.

"Baelor!"

Lyonel's booming voice carries across the courtyard as he emerges through the castle doors, with you trailing behind him while he practically runs to greet the royal family without any semblance of propriety whatsoever. As the princes dismount their horses, Baelor braces himself for the incoming assault, and Maekar sighs.

Lyonel laughs loudly, the sound echoing throughout Storm's End as he closes the distance between them and throws his arms around the heir to the Iron Throne in a crushing embrace.

Valarr remains rooted to the spot.

Of course, his father had told him stories of the Laughing Storm during their campaign against the Blackfyres, of how fiercely the Storm Lord had fought beside both him and his uncle Maekar. Still, hearing those stories was one thing. Witnessing Lord Baratheon all but tackle the heir to the Iron Throne before the horses had even come to a full stop was quite another.

Baelor, for his part, takes it in stride. He returns the embrace with the composure only a man raised in a den of vipers, where kindness is so often mistaken for weakness, could possess. He pats Lyonel's back before offering him a warm smile.

"Lord Baratheon. It has been too long."

Still laughing, Lyonel waves a dismissive hand. "What's with the formalities, dragon? As if I haven't seen your bare arse covered in rebel blood before."

Daeron has to fight the urge to laugh at the remark, while Valarr, Aerion, and Egg can only stare in bafflement. They had never seen anyone speak to their uncle with a familiarity usually reserved for, well, family. Lyonel's attention then shifts to Maekar, causing the prince to close his eyes in anticipation.

"Gods, you look even more brooding than the last time I saw you."

Maekar groans.

You watch the interactions unfold, thoroughly amused by your father's antics and Prince Maekar’s barely concealed irritation at the theatrics for which the Storm Lord was so well known. The young princes, meanwhile, seem absolutely bewildered by the spectacle, clearly unaccustomed to seeing their fathers interact in such a manner and not yet knowing what to make of it. 

Then, they glance at you. 

They had never met you before. Their fathers had always considered them too young to accompany them on the few visits they paid to Storm's End. As the years passed, the family had been struck by tragedy not once but twice, as both princes lost their wives, and the children their mothers. 

Your own mother had died in the birthing bed as well. Not that your father had ever allowed you to fully feel her absence, as he had made certain you lacked for nothing— be it love, friendship, or a shoulder to cry on. As you look upon the young princes, you become aware for the first time that they had not been afforded the same fortune. 

You set your eyes on Prince Valarr first. He is a difficult man to overlook, with his mismatched eyes and a striking white streak of hair on the side of his head. He looks perfect. Perhaps a bit too perfect. 

His posture is so impeccably straight to the point where you question if it pains him to maintain it  for a long time. His smile is equally flawless, not too warm yet not vain. His hands rest neatly behind his back as he inclines his head in greeting. Everything about him looks utterly exhausting. 

“Ah, yes!” Lyonel claps a hand against his own head, as if he had only now remembered that several people need to be introduced and especially, that the particular task is his duty. “Your Graces, this is my lovely daughter” Your father introduces you by name to the family, as you fought the overwhelming urge to glare at him for his complete lack of propriety. 

“Father”

“What?” He grins. “You are lovely.”

Deciding that glaring at your father—or pinching the bridge of your nose as you desperately wished to do —would only make matters worse, you dip into a curtsy before the princes of House Targaryen. 

“Your Graces, it is an honour to welcome you to Storm's End.”

Prince Baelor steps forward first, there is little about the heir to the Iron Thone that comes as a surprise to you; everything you had ever heard of him proves true at first glance. He carries himself with effortless confidence, his eyes filled with quiet wisdom, every movement experienced and measured without ever appearing rehearsed. His smile is warm and genuine, though restrained, a concept that strikes you as entirely foreign. 

“Lady Baratheon. A pleasure to finally meet you.”

As the introductions carry on, you properly greet the rest of the princes. Prince Valarr greets you in the practised manner of a chivalrous prince, one that must’ve taken ages to fully master. 

Prince Maekar appears to be a man of actions rather than a man of words, as he voiced nothing more than a simple, “My Lady” before fixing you with a steady stare. Right. 

Prince Aegon seems excited enough for the entire family, tummy ache completely forgotten, as he greets you without truly looking at you, his attention instead fixed upon the towering castle walls with open fascination. 

Prince Aerion neither smiles nor bows particularly deeply, he merely offers a curt Lady Baratheon as his gaze sets upon you. There is something restless about him. Something unnerving. It almost makes you want to look away first, but something tells you that doing so would read as a retreat of sorts, and you decide almost immediately that you would do nothing before him that could be perceived as weak. And so, you simply nod at him. You could swear he seems almost pleased by the gesture. 

Only one prince remains now. Curiously, he has not moved. And so, you look. 

He is already looking at you.

Lavender eyes find yours with an intensity that gives you pause. He stares unabashedly at you, his expression carrying something akin to recognition. As though, somewhere deep down, this is a meeting he had expected and was only now realizing so. The silence stretches a fraction too long, you are not the only one that seems to be aware that something deep stirs behind the heir of Summerhall's eyes.

“...My prince?” You whisper to him. Unsure on how to proceed, you find you do not wish to startle him. 

He blinks. “Oh.” he speaks, his voice softer than you would’ve imagined. Softer than all the others’. “...Daeron.” Nothing more. Not Prince Daeron. Not a proper greeting, not even a Lady Baratheon. Simply his name, as though he had forgotten the rest. Prince Maekar clears his throat. Daeron tears his gaze away from you, and his eyes find the floor. “...My Lady.”

You incline your head. “My Prince.”

Daeron’s eyes snap back at yours.

Gods, you think, he’s an odd one. 

The sun is wrong again. 

Or it may not be the sun. 

There is something gold before him, round only when he looks at it from the corner of his eye. When he tries to face it directly, it stretches into a doorway, then a piece of cloth, then light caught beneath dark water. Red moves across it without falling, it spreads upward from somewhere he cannot see, thinning in places until the gold shows through and then closing over it again. 

Someone stands beneath it. 

No. Someone lies there. 

He sees a shoulder, perhaps, or the bend of an arm. A hand lifted briefly against the light. The fingers open, and the red passes between them. 

Daeron tries to call out, but his mouth is full of heat. 

The ground shifts beneath him. It is stone, then mud, then the softness of a bed he does not recognize. His foot sinks. When he looks down, his hands are already wet, though he does not remember reaching for anything. 

Something is speaking behind him, but he cannot hear the words. He knows only that he has heard them before and failed to understand them then. 

The gold darkens. 

The figure beneath it turns, and for one instant he sees hair, the line of a cheek, a flash of gold at the throat. Then the face is gone again, hidden by red light or smoke or the inside of his own hand. 

He reaches. 

The distance changes. 

The figure is very near. The figure is impossibly far away. He is kneeling beside it. He is still trying to cross the ground. 

The sun opens like an eye. 

Daeron wakes before it sees him. 

For a moment, the bed remains part of the dream. The covers lie heavy across his legs, the canopy above him swallowed by darkness. His hand is closed around a fold of linen damp with sweat, and something in him waits for the gold overhead to darken. 

Then the room returns in pieces: the low fire, the lamp left burning near the wall, your breathing beside him. 

He releases the sheet. 

Only a dream. 

The words he tells himself come quickly, practiced enough that they almost sound like knowledge. 

Nothing had spoken to him. No God had bent over his bed to put blood inside the sun. His mind had simply taken firelight, fear, whatever scraps of the day it had refused to digest, and made another shape from them. That is all. His own head has always been willing to frighten him without divine assistance. 

Only a dream conjured by a mind that could not be trusted to sleep quietly. 

He knows this. 

He repeats it anyway. 

You are asleep on your side, one hand beneath the pillow and the other lying open where his shoulder had been. Nothing marks you except the crease of sleep across your cheek. 

Daeron knows where he is, he knows what he saw was a dream and not a warning placed inside him by something that had already decided how the future would end. But neither fact makes the bed feel safe enough to remain in it. 

He moves carefully, lifting the covers without dragging them across your legs. You stir when the mattress shifts, but do not wake. Daeron waits until your breathing settles again before he stands. 

The floor is cold beneath his feet. He takes the blanket from the chair near the fire and wraps it loosely around his shoulders, then crosses to the wall beside the door and lowers himself to the floor. 

He does not intend to remain there long. 

The stone is solid behind him. The room looks different from this height: the bed too high, the dying fire hidden partly by the iron grate, the door close enough that he could reach its latch without standing. He rests his forearms across his knees and listens to the quiet. 

The dream has already begun to lose what little shape it had. He can no longer remember whether the gold had been above him or in front of him, whether the red had covered it or come from within. The figure remains only as the certainty that someone had been there and that he had failed to reach them. 

It means nothing. 

Dreams change while a man remembers them, fear fills whatever is missing. By morning there may be no figure at all, only heat and color and the sour knowledge that he has frightened himself again. 

That is enough to keep his eyes open. 

Daeron does not know how long passes before the mattress moves. 

The sound is small, followed by the rustle of linen and a pause. He keeps his face turned toward the fire. Perhaps you will find the other side of the bed empty, understand where he has gone, and decide that sleep is the wiser choice. 

Bare feet touch the floor. 

He closes his eyes briefly. 

You do not speak as you cross the room. The blanket from the bed trails around your shoulders, gathered clumsily beneath one arm. Your steps slow when you reach him. 

Daeron shifts before you ask. 

His knees part, making room between them, and you lower yourself onto the floor with your back against his chest. The movement is practiced enough that neither of you needs to arrange it aloud. You pull the blanket over your legs, then take hold of one edge of the one around his shoulders and draw it across yourself as well. 

His arms settle around you. 

Your body is warm from the bed. The back of your head fits beneath his chin, and when you lean more fully into him, his hands move across your stomach to hold you there. 

For a while, neither of you says anything. 

Your fingers find one of his beneath the blanket and turn his hand over. You run your thumb once across his palm, perhaps looking for something the dream has not left there. 

“You should go back to bed.” Daeron says. 

His voice comes out rough from sleep. 

You make no effort to move. “Will you join me?” 

“Eventually.” 

You are quiet long enough that he knows you do not believe him. 

Daeron lowers his mouth to your hair. “I did not mean to wake you.” 

“You did not.” 

He looks toward the bed. “Then what are you doing here?” 

“I woke and you were gone.” 

There is nothing wounded in the words. You say them as simply as you might say the fire has gone low or the room has grown cold. Still, his arms tighten slightly before he notices. 

“You need not stay awake because I am.” 

“I know.” 

You settle your head more comfortably against him. 

The answer leaves nothing for him to argue with. He could tell you again to sleep, but you would remain regardless of his objections, and he would have turned your presence into a contest neither of you wanted. 

His thumb moves against the fabric over your stomach. 

The fire shifts in the grate. A small piece of wood collapses inward with a soft crack, briefly lifting the light across the floor. 

You look toward the door. 

“You sat here that night as well.” You murmur, the Dornish tilt to your words harsher. 

Daeron’s hand stills. 

“What night?” 

“The first one.” 

It takes him a moment to understand. The wedding chamber comes back without invitation: candle smoke, wine, the untouched bed. Your hand pulling at the fabric around your wrist. 

“I was not sitting here.” He says, though he does not know why he is certain. 

Your fingers close around his again beneath the blanket. “You sat beside the door.” 

Daeron searches what remains of the memory and finds only himself standing too far from the bed, the cup in his hand, his own voice arriving in fragments. 

“I do not remember sitting.” 

“You did, eventually,” There is a slight change in your tone now, the first suggestion that you have looked back and realized he is not following you. “You asked whether I wanted the door left unlatched.” 

Daeron looks down at you, though he can see only the side of your face. 

“Did I?” 

You turn your head enough that he sees your brow draw together. 

“Yes.” 

The surprise in your voice is quiet. It hurts more for that. 

Daeron looks toward the latch. “I do not remember.” 

“You asked twice,” Your thumb has stopped moving across his palm. “I had already answered, but I do not think you remembered asking the first time.” 

That sounds possible. More possible than most things he remembers from the night. 

“What did you say?” 

“That I wanted it unlatched.” 

“And I left it?” 

“Yes.” 

He waits for more. You seem to be waiting as well, perhaps for recognition to arrive now that the facts have been placed before him, but nothing does. 

Daeron remembers the door closing behind the both of you. He remembers hating the sound. He cannot find himself opening it again. 

“You sat beside it afterward,” You continue. “You said no one would enter unless I called for them.” 

He lowers his eyes to your joined hands. 

“I said that?” 

“You did.” 

Your voice has softened, but not into reassurance. You are studying the absence in him, beginning to understand its size. 

Daeron can almost hear the man you remember. Drunk enough to repeat himself, frightened enough to put his body between the bed and the door, trying to provide choices after every meaningful choice had already been made by other people. 

He cannot feel himself inside the image. 

He remembers saying he would not touch you. He remembers the words as blunt and ugly, a refusal dropped at your feet because he had no graceful way to offer anything. He remembers waking with shame already formed before he understood what had happened. 

“What else did I say?” 

You breathe in slowly. 

“Not much that made sense from beginning to end.” 

“That sounds more familiar.” 

It is meant to lighten the question. The words do not quite manage it. 

“You kept telling me I could sleep,” you say. “Then you asked whether I wanted the candles left burning. You moved the wine because you thought the smell was making me nauseous.” 

Daeron closes his eyes. 

The details do not return when you speak them. They remain yours. 

“Was it?” 

“The wine?” He nods against your hair. You shake your head. “No. I was just frightened.” 

His arms loosen instinctively, but you catch his wrist before he can move away. 

“I did not know you, not really,” You remind him. “I had spent the whole day being looked at and dressed and spoken about as though I was already lost. Then the door closed, and you….you were very drunk.” 

Daeron does not interrupt. 

“I was frightened before you said anything. I do not think there was a thing you could have said that would have changed that.” 

The honesty enters cleanly. You do not soften the night to protect him from it. 

His thumb has stopped against your stomach. You guide his hand back into place, holding it there until his fingers close around the fabric again. 

“But you asked about the door,” You say. “And when I answered, you listened.” 

Daeron looks at the dark line beneath it. 

“I barely remember your answer.” 

“You listened then.” 

The distinction quiets him. 

You are still facing away, your body resting easily inside the space he made without thought. His legs frame yours beneath the blankets. Your hand lies over his where it rests against your stomach. 

He thinks of you standing beside that other bed with your fingers closed around your sleeve. He remembers the movement and not what followed. You remember him noticing. 

“What did you think of me?” He asks. The question is out before he can decide whether he wants the answer. 

You lean your head back against his shoulder. “That night?” 

“Yes.” 

“At first?” He feels the answer coming and nearly tells you not to give it. “I thought you were exactly as drunk as everyone had warned me you would be.” 

Daeron lets out a breath through his nose. 

“And afterward?” 

You are quiet. 

“I thought you were trying very hard not to frighten me more.” 

Something in his chest shifts painfully. 

“That is a charitable memory.” 

“It is mine.” 

He has no answer to that. 

The fire has nearly fallen in on itself. Its light no longer reaches the bed, leaving only the lamp beside it and the pale edge of the curtains. You should both be asleep. Morning will come whether he closes his eyes or not. 

Instead, you remain against him, awake because he is awake, holding his hand as if there is nowhere else it ought to be. 

Daeron lowers his face to the side of your neck. 

You tilt your head slightly, giving him room. His mouth rests beneath your ear, then against the warm place where your neck meets your shoulder. The kiss is slow and without urgency. He feels your breath deepen under his hand. 

You turn your face toward his hair and press your lips briefly to his temple. 

The dream feels farther away now. 

Not gone, the red light remains somewhere behind his eyes, waiting for sleep to give it another shape. But the room is solid around him, your weight rests against his chest, your fingers are threaded through his. 

He has you here. 

The thought comes with its own old wound. 

For a long time, he had believed every piece of this was temporary: the shared bed, your hand seeking his beneath blankets, the ease with which your body now settles into his. Something borrowed from your patience and his improbable luck, to be returned once he finally gave you sufficient reason. 

Daeron keeps his face hidden against your neck. 

“For a long time,” He admits, voice roughened, “I thought you would ask.” 

Your fingers move slightly between his. 

“Ask what?” 

He could leave it there. Pretend he meant for another candle, another room, some ordinary thing from the months between then and now. 

“To have it undone.” 

You go still. 

Not gradually. The warmth and weight of you remain against him, but every small resting movement stops. 

Daeron lifts his face. 

You do not speak at once. He can see only the line of your cheek and the corner of one eye as you stare toward the darkened fire. 

“Our marriage?” You ask. 

“Yes.” 

The word is almost soundless. 

You draw one slow breath. Then your hand leaves his, and for one instant Daeron thinks he has finally said the thing that makes you move away. 

Instead, you gather the blanket around yourself and turn within the circle of his legs. 

Your knee brushes his hip. One hand presses to the floor for balance while you shift to face him, close enough that the blanket remains around both of you. 

Daeron lets his arms fall. 

You look at him as though the room has changed shape while your back was turned. 

“For how long?” You ask. 

Daeron looks down at the blanket gathered between you. One corner has caught beneath his heel; he fixes his attention on that rather than your face. 

“I do not know.” 

You study him in silence, trying to understand what kind of answer that is. 

“From the beginning?” 

“Near enough.” 

The words sound careless once they are spoken. He had not meant them to. There is simply no date he can offer you, no first morning when the fear arrived and announced that it intended to remain. 

It had never lived in him evenly. Sometimes weeks passed without it, sometimes a look held too long across breakfast was enough to wake it. A night when he drank more than he intended, an answer from you that came quieter than usual, a letter bearing a Martell seal left beside your hand; any of them might bring it back. He had learned not to give the fear a name when it came, because naming things had never made them kinder. 

You watch him struggle with the explanation, your expression growing more troubled as the silence lengthens. 

“Did you think I wanted the marriage undone all that time?” 

“I did not think you wanted it,” He rubs his thumb against the edge of the blanket. “I just…thought you might come to.” 

You look away from him then, toward the bed and the pale folds of linen abandoned there. When you turn back, there is something newly guarded in your face. 

“Why did you never ask me?” 

“I did not know how.” 

“Love, you have asked me far stranger things.” 

A rueful little smile touches his mouth, born from habit rather than amusement. “That is true.” 

“Daeron.” 

There is no sharpness in your voice, but he hears the effort underneath it, the first sign that patience is no longer coming easily. 

The smile disappears. 

You shift closer, though not enough to touch him. The blankets have slipped from one shoulder, leaving the thin fabric of your nightclothes exposed to the cold, but neither of you reaches to pull them back into place. 

“Why did you never ask?” 

Daeron draws one knee higher and lays his arm across it, putting a small barrier between you without meaning to. 

“If I asked, you would have had to answer.” 

You stare at him for a moment. “Yes.” 

“I did not want the answer.” 

The admission leaves him briefly hollow, as if something has been removed from behind his ribs. 

Your hand presses flat against the blanket over your knee. “So you preferred to believe I was waiting to leave?” 

“No. I preferred not to know whether you were.” 

The distinction had seemed meaningful inside him. Spoken aloud, it sounds like cowardice dressed in finer clothes. 

You draw a slow breath and let it out through your nose. Daeron watches your fingers tighten in the blanket and is afraid of every movement before you make it. 

“I thought perhaps asking would only put it in your mind,” He continues. “If it was not there already.” 

For the first time, something like anger passes across your face, something like disbelief sharpened by hurt. 

“You thought I had never considered my own marriage because you had not mentioned it?” 

“No,” He looks toward the door, then forces his gaze back. “But I was afraid to remind you.” 

Your mouth closes. The room is quiet enough that he can hear the faint hiss of sap in the dying fire. 

“My grandmother spoke to me before I left Dorne.” You say at last. 

Daeron’s fingers curl against his leg. 

You see it and continue before he can decide what the movement means. 

“She told me what the marriage would require of me, or what men might try to require. She told me what could be done if you were cruel, if I was unsafe here, or if the marriage became something I could not bear. She did not know exactly what sort of husband you would be, and neither did I.” 

You hold his gaze while you speak, refusing to hide the fact that this conversation happened long before you knew him. 

“My House did not send me here blind.” 

“You knew.” 

“I knew there were ways home.” 

Daeron’s eyes move toward the door before he can stop them. 

Your hand tightens once around the blanket. 

“Do not make that mean I wanted to go.” 

“I did not say that.” 

“You did not have to. I saw it happen.” 

Your voice remains quiet, but the softness has thinned. Daeron says nothing, because denying it would only ask you to pretend you had not seen him clearly. 

“Of course I considered leaving,” You admit. “I did not know you.” 

The sentence lands in his chest, though he had expected it. 

“You knew what people said about me.” 

“Yes.” 

“And you agreed to the marriage anyway.” 

“I agreed to marry you. That is not the same as agreeing to remain regardless of what you did afterward.” 

The answer is not cruel. You do not speak it to wound him, and that makes it impossible for him to dismiss as anger. 

You pull the blanket back over your shoulder, then smooth it down without looking away from him. 

“I knew that if you were violent, if you humiliated me, if you treated me as something owed to you, my father would do whatever he could to bring me home. I knew there would be scandal and that none of it would be easy. I did not know every law or every argument someone might place before the Faith, but I knew I was not without recourse.” 

Daeron had imagined pieces of this conversation often enough. Hearing you speak of it so plainly should make his fear worse. 

For a moment, it does. 

Then another fact enters beside it. 

You knew, and still he woke beside you this morning. You found him missing from the bed and crossed the room to sit on a cold floor with him. Your body had settled into the space between his legs as though it belonged there, because he had made room without needing to be asked. 

“You could have left.” He states. 

“Yes.” 

The word comes easily from you. Daeron lowers his gaze, unable to keep looking at the person who can say it without flinching. 

Your hand rises toward him, pauses in the narrow space between you, then comes to rest against his cheek. 

“Look at me.” 

He does, though slowly. 

“I could have left,” You repeat. “That is not the same as wanting to.” 

Daeron cannot make himself answer. 

Your thumb moves once beneath his eye. The frustration in your expression has softened into something quieter and more wounded. 

“What did you think I was doing all these months?” 

He frowns. “What do you mean?” 

“You thought I stayed because I was proud, or because my father would be ashamed? Perhaps because returning home would have been…inconvenient?” 

“I did not know what to think.” 

“You must have believed something.” 

Daeron looks past you toward the bed. The lamp beside it leaves a narrow wash of gold across the covers. 

“I thought you were making the best of it.” 

“Of the marriage?” 

He hesitates. Your face changes before he answers. 

“Of you,” You say. The words are not a question, and Daeron does not deny them. 

You sit back, putting a little more space between your knees and his. Your eyes shine faintly in the low light, though you do not look close to tears. The hurt is quieter than that and perhaps harder for him to bear because of it. 

“You thought every kindness was endurance.” 

“Not every kindness.” 

The correction comes weakly. 

You look away. “That is worse.” 

Daeron opens his mouth, but nothing that belongs there comes. His hands remain uselessly folded against his raised knee while you rub one thumb over the opposite wrist. 

The movement brings the wedding chamber behind his eyes again: gold at your throat, wine in his mouth, your fingers worrying the fabric while he tried not to become another danger in the room. 

“I did not stay because I knew I would love you,” You admit. His attention returns fully to your face. “I did not know that. I could not have known it.” 

The words do not wound him in the same way as the others, perhaps because you are not offering them as a wound. You are trying to tell him the truth in the order you lived it. 

“At first, I stayed because I had agreed to try. One terrible day and one drunken night were not enough to tell me what the rest of my life would be. You frightened me, yes, but you had also listened when I said I wanted the door left open.” 

Daeron’s throat tightens. 

“You sat beside it,” You continue. “You could barely keep your eyes open, and every few minutes you asked whether I was certain no one should be called. You would not come near the bed. You would not let anyone else enter the room.” 

“I do not remember.” 

“I know.” 

The sadness in your voice makes him wish, briefly and uselessly, that the night would return whole. Not because he wants to relive it, but because you have carried a version of him that he has never been able to possess. 

“I thought you were trying,” You say after a pause. “Badly. You were drunk and frightened and ashamed, and I understood perhaps one sentence in three. But you were trying not to make the night worse for me.” 

“That was a low measure.” 

“It was the measure I had.” 

Daeron lowers his face. 

You reach across the space he has created and place your hand against his cheek again. He stills beneath the touch. 

“You were not what I had been told to expect.” 

“That is not always a compliment.” 

“It was that night,” Your thumb traces once along the bone beneath his eye. “I stayed because I wanted to know whether that man existed when he was sober.” 

A breath leaves Daeron that might have become a laugh in another room. 

“And did he?” 

“Occasionally.” 

He looks at you. 

The corner of your mouth moves, not quite becoming a smile. Relief stirs in him before he knows whether he is permitted it. 

“You were not easy,” You say. “You still are not.” 

“That sounds more credible.” 

“I am not trying to flatter you.” 

“No. I had noticed.” 

Your hand remains against his face, and for a little while the room grows quieter around that touch. 

“I stayed longer because I began to know you,” You say. The words come more slowly now, less like an argument and more like something you are discovering while you speak. “Because you listened, sometimes. Because you made room for me and then pretended you had done no such thing. Because you could be kind when you forgot to be frightened.” 

Daeron’s eyes lower. 

Your fingers shift along his jaw and guide his face back toward yours. 

“And then I cared for you,” You say. “Then I wanted you. None of that happened because I had nowhere else to go.” 

The fire settles behind you. Somewhere inside the wall, old wood gives a quiet creak as the room cools. 

“You have found every reason for me to stay except that I wanted to.” 

Daeron’s mouth goes dry. 

“I thought wanting me would pass.” 

Your fingers become still against his jaw. 

He watches the words move through your face and wishes he had stopped with the first truth. He should stop. Instead, he hears himself continue, 

“Or become something else,” He shrugs. “Habit. Pity, perhaps. You are capable of making a life wherever you are.” 

Your hand falls away. 

The loss of it is immediate. Cold finds the place your palm had covered, though the room itself has not changed. 

For a few breaths you only look at him. Then you draw the blanket more closely around your shoulders. You do not move away, but the warmth between you is no longer careless. 

“Do you think I come to your bed because I pity you?” 

“No.” 

“That I woke and found you gone, crossed the room, and sat on this floor because I felt sorry for you?” 

“No.” 

The second answer comes lower. 

You look down briefly at the way he has arranged himself: one knee raised between you, his forearm laid across it, his body still building small defenses long after the conversation has passed them. 

“Then what do you think?” 

He has answers. Too many. 

Duty. Pride. Your affection for his sisters and Egg. Your unwillingness to admit that any place had defeated you. The ease with which you had begun to move through Summerhall. 

“That I am lucky.” He says. 

Your eyes close, only for a moment. When they open again, the frustration in them is plain. It has not made you cruel, you simply stop trying to make the truth easy for him. 

Your hand returns, but not gently. Your fingers close around his jaw and turn his face toward yours before he can look again at the door. 

“I knew it was there,” You say. He does not need to ask what you mean. “I knew there was a door. I stayed.” 

The words are quiet. You stop there. 

Daeron looks at your face. 

You could have left. The thought still hurts. 

You did not. That hurts differently, and his breath catches low in his chest and will not leave cleanly. 

His hand loosens against the blanket over his knee. Questions begin to form anyway: whether you had ever packed a chest in your mind, whether there had been mornings when you had measured the road south, whether some mistake of his had brought you close enough to the threshold to feel the air beyond it. 

He lets them die unasked. 

Your fingers remain around his jaw. 

“I thought one day I would make staying worse than leaving.” He admits. 

Your grip on his jaw eases, and your eyes move over his face before you answer. You look at him for a long time. 

“But you have not.” 

“Not yet.” 

Your mouth tightens. 

Daeron feels the old instinct toward cleverness rise and catches it before it reaches his tongue. The jest does not come. 

You shift closer. Your folded legs press against his, the blanket bunching warmly between you. Your free hand comes to rest on his raised knee. 

“Then ask me.” 

He frowns. 

“The next time you decide what I must be feeling.” Your thumb moves once along his jaw. “Ask me.” 

He looks at you. The answer should be easy. It isn’t, but his tongue presses once against the back of his teeth before he nods. 

Daeron lets his knee lower. 

The small barrier between you disappears beneath the blankets. 

“I do not know that I will like the answer.” 

“You did not like the one you gave yourself.” 

A breath leaves him, nearly a laugh and not quite. Your expression softens at the sound, though the weariness remains around your eyes. 

“No,” He concedes. “I did not.” 

Your hand slides from his jaw to the side of his neck. The heel of your palm rests beneath his ear, where his pulse moves too quickly against your skin. 

For a while neither of you speaks. 

The floor presses cold through the cloth over his legs. The wall remains hard against his back. Beyond you, the bed lies in the low reach of the lamp, its covers thrown aside where you woke and found him gone. 

Your thumb moves slowly against his neck. 

Daeron looks at you and finds no uncomplicated tenderness waiting to relieve him of what he has done. You are still frustrated. Still hurt. Affection sits beside both without erasing them. 

Nothing in your face resembles pity. 

His hand lifts from his knee. He touches your wrist lightly, then closes his fingers around it, holding your palm against his skin. 

“I should have asked.” 

“Yes.” 

You do not soften the answer. 

Daeron nods once. 

Your gaze falls to his mouth. The change is small, but he feels it through your hand before you move. 

You lean forward and kiss him. 

There is no hesitation in it. Your mouth meets his firmly, your fingers tightening at the side of his neck when he fails to answer quickly enough. 

Daeron inhales against you. 

You shift closer until your knees press on either side of his hips. The blanket slips from one shoulder and gathers around your waist. 

Daeron’s hands hover near your sides. 

You feel the hesitation and draw back only far enough to see him. Your breath passes warm over his lips. 

“Touch me.” 

His eyes search yours. 

You take one of his hands before he can decide what uncertainty he is looking for. Your fingers close around his wrist and guide his palm beneath the loosened edge of your nightclothes, placing it against the bare skin at your waist. 

“Here.” 

Your skin is warm beneath his hand. 

Daeron’s fingers close carefully against you. His thumb moves once over the shallow curve of your side, and your breath catches. 

You kiss him again. 

This time he answers. 

His other hand comes to your back, finding the thin fabric between your shoulder blades. You move nearer until your chest meets his and the blanket slides lower around you both. 

Your fingers enter his hair. His palm spreads more securely against your waist, and when you shift over him, the sound you make against his mouth reaches him plainly. 

His hand tightens at your waist before he thinks about stopping it. Daeron draws you closer. 

The floor is cold beneath his legs. The edge of the wall catches his shoulder when you move. Neither matters until you pull your mouth from his and begin gathering the blankets from around you. 

For one frightened instant, he thinks he has misunderstood again. 

Then you rise. 

You stand before him with the blanket hanging from your shoulders, one edge trailing over the stone. Your hair has fallen untidily across your face. Some of the frustration remains in your expression. 

So does the desire. 

You hold out your hand. 

“Come back to bed.” 

Daeron looks at your fingers, then places his hand in yours. 

You draw him up from the floor. His legs have gone stiff, and he nearly stumbles when he straightens. Your free hand catches at his waist before he can reach for the wall. 

A smile appears despite you. 

“Do not.” He murmurs. 

“I said nothing.” 

“You were about to.” 

“I was considering it.” 

The lamp throws your shadows ahead of you, joined and distorted over the stone. 

At the bedside, you let the blankets fall. Your nightclothes have slipped low on one shoulder, exposing the faint mark his mouth left beneath your ear earlier. 

Daeron reaches automatically to pull the fabric into place. 

You catch his wrist. 

“No.” 

He looks at you. 

You guide his hand instead to the uncovered skin of your shoulder. 

The gesture is simple. The same hand that remembers your fingers tightening around a sleeve now feels you move the cloth aside yourself. 

His breath leaves him slowly. 

You climb onto the bed and pull him after you. 

There is no feast beyond the door, no household waiting to read proof in the morning. The latch remains as you left it. The lamp continues burning because neither of you has thought to put it out. 

Daeron kneels over you, leaving more space than your body asks for. 

Your hand rises to the back of his neck. 

You draw him down. 

He catches himself on one forearm, afraid of putting too much weight on you. You continue pulling until his chest settles against yours and your legs part around him. 

“Stay.” You say against his mouth. 

Daeron lets you keep him there. 

Daeron passes the inner garden three times before he goes in. 

The first time, he is on his way to the library. He reaches the end of the passage before remembering that he has no business there and no desire to invent any. 

The second time, he is looking for Egg. Egg is plainly visible through the arch, crouched beside one of the new flowerbeds with both hands in the soil. 

The third time, Daeron stops. 

You sit on the low edge of the fountain with Rhae tucked against your side. One of her slippers has come loose. She has a fallen yellow flower closed carefully inside both hands and keeps opening them to check that it is still there. Daella stands nearby with a length of green silk folded over her arm. Egg is leaning so far across the new bed that his knee has begun to press into the soft earth. 

“Egg,” You call. He looks back. “Move your knee.” 

He does, leaving a small hollow in the soil. 

None of you looks toward the arch at first. Or perhaps you notice Daeron and decide not to make anything of his arrival. 

The flowers are smaller than they appeared in the drawings the gardener showed him. Red and yellow heads bend above the dark soil, still unsettled after the journey north. They have been planted along the warmest wall of the court, where the stone keeps the sun into the afternoon. The steward had objected to the expense. Daeron had told him to find the money elsewhere. 

Daella sees him first. 

“You have walked past twice.” She states, big eyes narrowed in his direction. 

Daeron looks toward Egg. “I was looking for him.” 

“I have been here.” Egg says. 

“So I see.” 

You lift your face to Daeron. Sunlight catches along your cheek and in the small gold sun at your ear. 

“Come here.” 

He does. 

There is room beside you on the fountain edge, though Rhae has spread the hem of her dress across most of it. Daeron remains standing. Close enough to see the faint line of soil along your smallest finger. 

Rhae opens her hands again. 

“Mine.” She says. A statement more than anything, but you nod and Daella murmurs an agreement regardless. 

“It fell,” You tell her. “You may keep that one.” 

She closes her hands around it, satisfied. 

“The gardener covered the beds last night,” You continue. You are looking at the flowers, though Daeron can feel the question beside the words. “He said someone had been asking whether the cold would harm them.” 

“Gardeners worry.” 

“Yes.” 

Your eyes touch his face briefly. 

He gives you nothing more, and you let him keep it. 

Egg reaches toward a green shoot near the edge of the bed. 

“Leave that.” You order. 

“It looks dead.” 

“It has just been planted.” 

Egg draws his hand back. 

Rhae has begun pulling at the loose strap of her slipper. You bend to fasten it without interrupting Daella, who is explaining something about the silk. The child puts one hand on your shoulder to steady herself and keeps the crushed yellow flower in the other. 

The garden has changed. Or perhaps it changed before Daeron noticed. 

Daella speaks to you as though continuing something begun that morning. Rhae folds herself against your side without asking to be gathered closer. Egg expects you to know which plants he may touch and which he may not. When Daella gives you the silk, you take it automatically while she frees both hands to examine the sleeve of your gown. 

You have learned them. 

You know when Egg has stopped listening, you know that Daella’s silence usually means she wants to be asked, and when Rhae’s head grows heavy against your arm, you shift her without looking down. 

They have learned you as well. 

No one explains why the silk is being held against your dress, no one asks whether you mind Rhae’s fingers closing around the chain at your throat. The afternoon began before Daeron arrived and does not stop to receive him. 

It is easier to look at that. 

At Daella smoothing the silk beneath her thumb, at Egg watching a beetle crawl between two stones, at Rhae pressing the fallen flower to her nose because she has seen you do it. 

His sisters are at ease with you. Summerhall is quieter than court. The garden is warm, and something from Dorne has taken root in it. The reasons come without effort. 

Daella holds the silk against your sleeve and studies it. 

“It is darker than I asked for.” 

You look down. “A little.” 

“I do not think it suits the gown.” 

“Then we can use it somewhere else.” 

Daella remains dissatisfied, but she folds the silk more carefully this time. 

Rhae lifts the flower toward you. 

“It’s pretty.” she says. 

“Yes.” 

She stretches a small hand clumsily holding the yellow flower, “For you.” 

You lower your head so she can push it awkwardly into your hair. Most of the stem has broken away. The flower catches above your ear for half a moment before slipping into your lap. 

Egg laughs. Rhae looks at him, wounded. 

“Leave her alone.” Daella says. 

“I did not say anything.” 

You pick up the flower and set it behind Rhae’s ear instead. She reaches up at once to feel for it. 

“There,” You say. “Keep your head still.” 

She does not, and the flower falls again. 

This time you laugh, and Daeron feels something inside him settle. 

There is no demand in it. No decision. He does not have to say anything. He does not have to leave. 

The fountain moves behind you. Egg turns the beetle gently with a twig. Rhae tries once more to keep the flower behind her ear. 

For once, nothing hurts. 

Daeron lets the thought pass before he can examine it. 

Daella takes your free hand. 

“Stand up. I want to see the silk against the whole dress.” 

You move Rhae from your side and set her carefully on her feet. When you rise, your heel catches in the hem of your gown. 

Daeron’s hand closes around your forearm. 

You steady yourself against him, and your other hand catches briefly at his wrist. 

There was a time when the touch would have stopped everything. You would have thanked him. He would have found something careless to say. Both of you would have looked elsewhere. 

Now your fingers remain around his wrist. 

Daella is still arranging the silk when you turn your face toward him. 

You look at him once, quietly. 

Then you kiss him. 

Your mouth rests against his for only a moment. Warm, familiar, without ceremony. When you turn back, Daella is still frowning at the cloth, Egg is watching the beetle once more, and Rhae has crouched to retrieve the flower again. 

No one reacts. 

Daeron’s hand moves to your back. He does not remember choosing to put it there. 

Your gown is warm beneath his palm. He can feel the slow movement of your breathing through the cloth. You do not step away. When Daella draws you closer to the flowerbed to see the silk in stronger light, you move within the loose hold of his arm, and he adjusts around you. 

This happens now. 

His body knows it before the rest of him does. 

Daella looks toward the unused ground beside the west wall. 

“Could more be planted there?” 

“Perhaps,” You answer. “If these live. The old roots would have to be cleared first.” 

“There is room.” Daeron states. 

The answer leaves him at once. 

You lean back slightly against his hand. Only for a breath, but the pressure remains long enough for him to feel it. 

Daella lowers the silk. Egg has begun asking whether the beetle will damage the roots. Rhae holds the fallen flower out to the nurse seated in the shade, then takes it back before the woman can touch it. 

The conversation moves elsewhere, but Daeron remains with the west wall. 

There is room. The ground will need turning. The gardener will find roots beneath it and ask how much of the old bed is to be cleared. 

He sees it for a moment. 

Your sleeve pushed back from your wrist. Daella choosing where the colors should go. Egg reaching for something he has been told not to touch. Rhae older by some small, unimaginable measure. Daeron standing close enough for you to ask him what he thinks. 

The thought comes without warning and without words. 

He has put himself there when the flowers need moving. 

For a little while, the thought does not frighten him. It remains warm and indistinct, no more dangerous than the shape of your back beneath his hand. The afternoon might happen again; not this same afternoon, but another with the fountain running and his siblings moving in and out of the light, with you near enough that touching you requires no decision. 

He wants it to continue. Nothing more complicated than that, nothing he would know how to ask for. Only a little longer. 

Daella gathers the silk over her arm. “Come inside with me. The other pieces arrived this morning.” 

You look down at Rhae, who has begun pulling at the petals of the fallen flower one by one. 

“Leave those on the ground.” You tell her gently. 

Rhae opens her hand. Two petals cling to her palm. You brush them away with your thumb, then look toward Egg. 

“Do not dig while I am gone.” 

He glances at the hollow his knee made earlier. “I will not.” 

Your body moves out from beneath Daeron’s hand, and his fingers close once after the warmth is gone. 

“I will come back,” You tell Rhae, though Daella is already leading you toward the arch. Then you look at Daeron. “Keep an eye on him.” 

Daeron inclines his head. 

You leave with Daella. Your voices remain audible for a little while, Daella talking about sleeves and you answering once, too softly for him to catch the words. 

The garden changes anyway. 

It is not grief. You have gone no farther than the rooms beyond the passage, and you have said you will return. The fountain continues moving, Egg remains beside the flowerbed, and Rhae sits near the nurse arranging fallen petals in an uneven line. 

Still, the place where you stood is empty, and Daeron’s body feels the absence before his mind can dismiss it. His palm remembers the warmth of your back. The air near him no longer carries your breath or the small movements of your gown. A moment ago, he had imagined another afternoon like this one, and now the first thing the future gives him is the knowledge that you need not always occupy the place where he has put you. 

The thought is too large for what has happened. He knows that. 

You have only gone inside. 

Yet the little future he allowed himself had depended upon your presence so completely that the sight of the empty space unsettles it. He had seen the west bed cleared, your sleeve turned back from your wrist, his sisters speaking around you. He had not imagined the possibility that the ground might still be cleared and you might not be there to see it. 

The kiss, your fingers around his wrist, the careless word we; he knows they happened. He knows where you have gone, and he can still hear Daella somewhere inside. Even so, for one breath the certainty has no weight. 

The feeling is familiar enough to tighten his stomach: a room first seen in sleep and later entered awake, a face that seems wrong because he has already watched it change somewhere else. His mind knows one thing while his body waits for another. 

This is not a dream. He knows that at once. 

He looks at his hand. Rosewater remains faintly on his skin, and the scent steadies something that should not have needed steadying. 

Egg speaks, but Daeron hears his name only after the second time. 

“Hm?” 

“When they move the flowers,” Egg says. “Can I help?” 

Daeron looks toward the west wall. The bed is still only a strip of neglected ground, but he has already seen you standing beside it. 

“You may carry the pots.” 

Egg considers the offer. “The large ones?” 

“No.” 

He looks disappointed, though he accepts the answer. 

Rhae has lost interest in the petals. She presses herself against the nurse’s skirts and asks to be carried, and the woman lifts her onto one hip. As they pass, Rhae reaches toward the gold fastening at Daeron’s sleeve, misses, and lets her hand fall against the nurse’s shoulder. 

Egg remains a little longer, speaking intermittently about the beetle and whether it might still be found tomorrow. Daeron answers when an answer is required. Once, Egg has to repeat himself. 

Eventually a servant comes to fetch him, and Daeron is left alone in the court. 

You will return. He knows that. He can picture the path you will take through the arch and the slight pause when you find the garden empty. 

The knowledge should make waiting simple, but the future he imagined has made waiting different. Before, an empty garden would have been only an empty garden. Now each moment in which you do not appear presses against the expectation that you will. 

He has begun, without permission or good sense, to expect your return. 

That is what frightens him. 

Not that you have gone inside, but that some quiet part of him has already arranged the afternoon around your coming back. It has accepted your presence as something that repeats, something he may reach for again tomorrow, and with that acceptance comes a second possibility he had not needed to fear before: one day, you might go and not return because you have chosen not to. 

Daeron leaves before you come back. 

He is not avoiding you. The garden has begun to cool, and he has been standing there too long. Those facts are true, even if they do not account for the haste that enters his steps when he reaches the passage. 

Inside, Summerhall carries you differently. 

A servant crosses ahead of him with folded linen over one arm and a small stoppered bottle resting on top. Daeron recognizes the rosewater and knows where it is going without needing to ask. 

Near the solar, a cushion has been moved from its usual chair to the bench beside the window because you prefer the light there when you write. A book lies facedown beside it, though you complain when anyone else leaves books that way. Farther on, something gold catches in a dish outside the bath chamber, one of the little suns from an earring or chain that someone will notice and bring back to you. 

Servants know which rooms are yours. His sisters leave things where you will find them, and a cup is placed before you arrive at breakfast. Your presence has entered the habits of the house so quietly that Daeron has stopped seeing those habits as changes. 

Now he sees what would have to change back. 

The thought begins with the rosewater. If you left, the scent would remain in the wood after the bottles were packed, perhaps for days, until open windows and ordinary soap replaced it. The little suns would disappear from dishes and tabletops. Linen would stop being carried toward your rooms. One morning no cup would be placed for you at breakfast, and the servant might not remember there had ever been another one. 

Daeron stops in the passage. 

A maid behind him murmurs an apology, although she has not touched him. 

You are somewhere ahead, looking at cloth and telling his sister that the colour can be repaired. You will return to the garden and find him gone; perhaps you will ask where he went. 

None of that prevents his mind from continuing. 

It is not your departure that it shows him. There are no trunks, no horses waiting in the yard, no final words chosen carefully enough to survive repetition. It shows him what follows: rooms corrected by degrees, servants learning different routes, the household gradually ceasing to expect you. 

The idea has grown from something small enough to fit inside his palm. Your back was there, and then it was not. You said you would return, and some part of him believed you strongly enough to discover that belief could be disappointed. 

That is when he understands where the thought has gone. Not your brief absence, but your leaving. 

There would have to be a reason, and for a moment that almost steadies him. Wives do not disappear because they leave a garden for half an hour. The life he has imagined would not vanish without cause. 

He would have to give you one. 

His mind supplies enough possibilities without arranging them neatly: a night lost to drink, a sentence he cannot take back, some failure in company that leaves you standing beside him while everyone else politely looks elsewhere. It might not take anything extraordinary. Perhaps one mistake would only make you look more closely at the husband you had been given and the life you had made around him. 

That thought holds. 

A door closes somewhere ahead, wood meeting stone before the iron catch settles into place. 

For one breath, the passage disappears. 

Candle smoke, wine thick on his tongue, a bed he does not cross toward. 

His own voice, rough and uneven. 

I will not touch you. 

The words remain after the passage returns. 

Daeron opens his eyes. He had closed them without noticing, as though a moment of darkness might clear the wine from his mouth, though there is no wine now and has not been for hours. 

The door ahead is only a door. A servant has passed through it carrying folded sheets and pulled it shut behind him. No candles gutter against the walls. No feast presses dully through the wood. The stone beneath Daeron’s feet is cool and solid. 

His own voice follows him from another room. 

What follows comes in pieces that will not settle into order. Gold at your throat. Your fingers closing around the fabric at your wrist and pulling it lower, then releasing it, then doing the same thing again. 

He cannot remember your face. 

There are whole stretches of the night he cannot recover: where he stood when the door closed, whether you spoke before he did, how long the silence lasted. He remembers your hand because it moved. 

There had been more. He knows that much. The words had not come cleanly; he had repeated himself, corrected something, tried to explain and perhaps made the promise sound worse. He remembers the certainty in his voice and almost none of what surrounded it. 

Your answer is gone. 

Perhaps you gave one. He remembers your hand becoming still at your wrist. He remembers you saying his name at some point during the night, but cannot place whether it came before his refusal or afterward. Everything else has worn away, leaving him with the fragment most easily turned against himself. 

The bed had still been untouched when morning came. 

That remains clear: pale light across the coverlet, the embroidered edge lying smooth where no body had disturbed it. His neck hurt from sleeping badly. His mouth tasted sour. You were already awake, though he cannot remember where you sat or whether you looked at him. 

Nothing had happened, and no one had asked. 

The household received the both of you that morning with lowered eyes and careful expressions, and neither of you corrected what everyone believed had taken place behind the closed door. 

Daeron had been grateful for the silence then. He had needed the night to disappear into assumption and become one more thing no one would make him describe. There had been vows before witnesses, a feast, a room prepared, a door closed. Whatever failed afterward seemed to belong only to the two people inside it. 

He had not thought of the silence as preserving anything.  An unconsummated marriage could be undone, regardless of assumptions made. 

The word comes without any of the heat of memory: annulment. 

Cold and formal, made for careful handwriting and men who had never stood in that room. It gives the fear a name without telling him how much truth the name contains. 

Daeron knows only pieces. Such marriages can be challenged. The Faith may ask questions, and families may ask more. Proof might matter, or confession, or merely the willingness of men with enough authority to make private truth useful. 

He does not know whether time changes anything. He does not know whether the household’s assumption protects the marriage or only makes the truth uglier when spoken. He does not know what weight would be given to his word, or yours, or to the fact that both of you allowed everyone to believe otherwise. 

He knows enough to fear it and too little to give the fear any boundary. 

There are people he could ask: a septon, if he could bear the man’s eyes; a maester who would pretend the question was scholarly until it reached another room; someone in his father’s household who understood what the Faith permitted and what powerful families could persuade it to permit. 

He imagines forming the question, and the possibility seems to sharpen merely because he has given it words. 

That is foolish. He knows it is foolish. Asking whether a door exists cannot build one. 

His mind has never cared much for that distinction. A thing named can begin to feel foretold; a fear described too clearly can acquire the weight of memory. If he asks, another person will know the marriage remains unconsummated, but worse than that, the possibility will have moved out of the locked room in his head. It will have entered the world, where someone might answer it, repeat it, or place it before you. 

He cannot bear the thought that his own fear might be what finally puts the door into your hand. 

Nor can he bear what the question would reveal. 

Anyone hearing it would understand that he was not merely curious about the law. They would hear what lay beneath: whether you could leave him, whether there was some hard rule that might promise you could not, whether he had become so dependent upon your presence that he needed a stranger to reassure him it could not be withdrawn. 

Daeron moves away from the closed door. 

Farther down, the corridor opens into a narrow stone recess overlooking the inner court. The evening air reaches him there. Below, the west wall catches the last of the light, and the strip of unused ground lies dark beneath it. 

You might know already. 

The thought settles without surprise. The surprise is that he has managed not to consider it properly until now. 

You miss very little. You read letters once for what they say and again for what the sender hoped to avoid saying. You have learned the moods of his siblings without instruction and hear the hesitation before servants ask for something. Excessive courtesy does not fool you merely because you are courteous in return. 

You are the eldest daughter of a Prince, a daughter of Dorne. Your father sent you into a marriage with a Targaryen prince whose reputation reached Dorne before the offer did. It is absurd to imagine that no one prepared you, that no one explained what could be demanded of you or what protections might remain if the marriage failed. 

Perhaps you know the mechanics better than Daeron does, or perhaps you know only that there are always ways to bring a daughter home. 

You could have spoken after the wedding. 

You did not. 

That ought to matter. 

Daeron tries to let it. You had known what happened and allowed the household to believe otherwise. You remained through the next morning, then the next week, through every strained meal and every room in which he expected judgment and found instead your measured attention. 

It ought to mean that you chose silence. Perhaps, by now, that you have chosen more than silence. 

His mind refuses the comfort before it can settle. 

You might have been protecting your father from scandal, you might have wanted time before admitting that the marriage had failed. Pride alone might have kept you from sending word south after one night. You were raised to make something livable out of whatever was placed before you; perhaps remaining seemed less humiliating than returning at once. 

There are too many explanations for your silence, and Daeron can make use of all of them except the one he wants. 

He cannot let it mean you chose him. 

Below, the garden has emptied. He can make out the faint red and yellow near the warm wall, and beyond them the neglected strip of earth you spoke about as though another afternoon already waited for you both. 

For a moment, the possibility of annulment comforts him. 

You are not trapped. 

Whatever else happened in that room, whatever ugliness the wine pulled from him, he did not take that final choice from you. He had seen enough through the drunkenness to know that you did not want him, or did not want what the chamber required of you. He could not turn your endurance into proof of a marriage. 

He would choose the same again. 

There is no pride in the certainty. He had done the only thing he could bear to remain responsible for. 

The bed remained untouched, and because it did, there may still be a way out. 

And just like that, the comfort turns. 

If you are free to remain, you are free to stop. Every kindness may continue tomorrow, or it may not. Every kiss, every hand left easily beneath his, every cup of tea placed at breakfast depends upon a choice that can be made again and, one day, made differently. 

That is what hope has given him: uncertainty with something inside it worth taking away. 

The thought comes before he can turn aside from it. 

If it were no longer possible… 

His hand closes around the edge of the stone recess. 

For an instant, relief moves through him. It is small, involuntary, horribly clean. No question to ask, no letter that could be sent, no private fact waiting to be carried beyond their rooms. You would remain because there would be nowhere else for the marriage to go. 

Then he understands what has comforted him. 

His fingers tighten until the stone presses painfully into the joints. 

He does not wish he had crossed the wedding chamber. Even now, frightened as he is, he cannot imagine going to the bed while you stood beside it, using your body to make the marriage harder to escape. He does not want the act. He wants only its consequence, separated from the body that would have paid for it. 

There is no version of that wish he can bear. 

Daeron releases the stone. Pale pressure marks cross his fingers and begin fading almost as soon as he looks at them. 

Perhaps you will need the door one day. 

The thought turns the knife as neatly as it always does. Perhaps a husband who can feel relief at the loss of your freedom is precisely the husband from whom that freedom must be preserved, perhaps the wedding night left you the means to escape a man who had not yet understood why you might need it. 

Below, the unused bed remains dark against the wall. 

It does not interrupt the thought, but it gives his eyes somewhere else to rest. The ground asks smaller questions, and those questions have answers. 

He cannot make the possibility harmless, and he cannot rid himself of it without wanting something ugly. 

The ground can be cleared. 

He steps away from the recess. 

A servant approaches carrying an empty tray. Daeron stops him and asks where the gardener has gone. The man looks briefly surprised, then tells him the gardener is still in the inner court, putting away his tools. 

Daeron returns by the passage he has just left. 

The court is cooler now. Most of the sunlight has withdrawn from the stone, though a narrow band remains along the west wall. The gardener kneels beside a basket, wiping soil from the edge of a small spade. 

He begins to rise when Daeron enters. 

“Please.” Daeron dismisses the attempt at deference with a gesture of his hand. 

The gardener settles again, one knee against the earth, and waits. 

Daeron looks toward the unused bed. In the dimmer light it seems narrower than it did before, hardly enough ground to have occupied his mind at all. 

“The earth by the wall.” He states. 

The gardener follows his gaze. “It has not been used in some years, my Prince.” 

“I want it cleared.” 

The gardener sets the cloth aside and looks more closely at the ground. “There will be old roots beneath it. We can pull them and turn the soil, though I would wait before planting until we know how cold the wall grows at night.” 

“Find out.” 

“Yes, my Prince.” 

The gardener stands and crosses toward the wall. Daeron follows after a moment, not close enough to appear interested in the work. 

The man presses his boot into the earth, crouches, and works his fingers beneath a dry tangle near the edge. A thin grey root lifts from the soil before snapping in his hand. 

“It will take a few days,” The man says. “Less if I have two of my boys help. We can have it ready for the Princess before the week is out.” 

The words land with more force than they should. 

Ready for you. Before the week is out. 

The future has acquired a date. 

Daeron looks at the bare ground and sees it cleared, the soil turned and smoothed beneath the wall. Then he sees it remaining empty because you changed your mind, or because you were no longer there to make one. 

The gardener waits. 

Daeron almost tells him there is no need. The words gather and stop behind his teeth. 

He can leave the court exactly as it stands and call the refusal prudence. 

You are still here. 

The fact moves through him with less force than the fear of your absence, but it remains true. You are somewhere within Summerhall, perhaps still with Daella, perhaps already returned to the garden and found him gone. You spoke of the west wall because you believed there would be time to see whether the flowers lived. 

Daeron cannot make your life here smaller merely because he has begun preparing for its end. 

“Have it done.” He orders. 

The gardener inclines his head. “What should be planted there?” 

Daeron looks toward the flowers already settled near the fountain. 

“Your Lady wife may wish to choose.” The gardener adds, as if sensing his own thoughts. 

“Then you shall ask her.” 

It is only sensible. You know the plants and he does not. You should decide whether anything is moved, what colours go against the wall, and how much room is left between them. 

The gardener accepts the answer without hearing anything beneath it. 

He retrieves two narrow stakes from beside his basket and carries them to the unused ground. The first goes into the soil near the wall. He places the second several paces away, then ties a length of cord between them and draws it taut. 

Within the line, nothing has changed. The old roots remain beneath the earth, and weeds lean against the stone. Tomorrow someone may begin pulling them out. 

Daeron stays while the gardener gathers his tools, though the instruction has been given and understood. He watches the man lift his basket, check the cord once, and leave through the servants’ arch without looking back. 

The court settles around the silence. 

When Daeron moves his hand, the faint scent of rosewater and jasmine rises from his skin or sleeve, he cannot tell which. It has nearly faded. 

He sees flowers there with you beside them, one hand holding your sleeve away from the soil. He sees the same flowers later, taller and thick against the wall, after you are gone. 

Nothing he has done makes you remain. The way out is still there, exactly where the untouched bed left it. 

The cord shifts slightly in the evening air. 

Daeron stands beside the space he has made and leaves it empty. 

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed! I would love to hear your thoughts.

By the time Daeron reaches the door, the cup in his hand is nearly empty. 

He has carried it further than he meant to. That seems to matter, though he cannot say way. The silver has warmed where his fingers close around it and gone cold everywhere else, and the last of the wine moves sluggishly at the bottom when he stops outside the chamber. He looks down at it. 

There is not enough left to help, there is enough left to prove that he tried. 

The corridor is quiet. 

Too quiet, perhaps. The castle has begun to settle into the small night-sounds of old stone and servants gone soft-footed with sleep. Somewhere below, a door closes. Somewhere farther still, water moves along a gutter, the faintest thread of it caught behind the walls. Daeron stands with one shoulder near the doorframe and listens as fi the sounds might arrange themselves into instruction. 

They do not. 

He should not be here like this. 

The thought has followed him up the stairs, through the cold galleries where the lamps had been lowered and his own shadow moved beside him like a beast. It had not stopped him. It stops him now, because the door is in front of him, and because doors require some little verdict from the hand. 

Enter. Leave. Knock. Turn away. 

Inside are his things, by now. A cloak left over the back of a chair. A comb he uses badly. The clothes set beside yours in the morning without anyone asking whether they ought to be. The household has accepted the room as shared in the practical way of households, by putting objects where bodies have begun to think they belong. 

Still, now he stands outside it. 

The cup presses its rim into his palm. 

There have been easier nights lately. Not good, exactly. Good is a word with teeth. But certainly easier. Nights where he has slept in pieces large enough to resemble rest. Nights when he woke before dawn with his body stiff and his mouth dry but no scream torn loose from him, no image lodged behind his eyes bright enough to survive the opening of them. Nights when you did not wake to him sitting upright in the bed, or gone rigid beside you, or leaving before the sky began to pale because the room had begun to close around his throat. 

He had begun to learn the shape of lying beside you without waiting for it to turn on him. That was his mistake, perhaps. 

Quiet has never come to him cleanly. It stands back, it lets him breathe, it lets him lower his guard. Then it returns, with its hands full. 

The dreams have been quiet. 

All day, that thought has moved under his skin. It was there in the morning when he woke with your back to his chest and no blood in his mouth, no ash behind his teeth, no remembered voice speaking from a place he could not reach. It was there at supper when he realized he was tired and wanted to retire to bed with his wife in the way better men are allowed to. It was there afterward, when the lamps blurred at the edges and sleep came nearer than he liked, deep and dark and patient. 

He went looking for wine. He knew the road. 

Shame came with it, but relief did too. He has never learned how to make one strong enough to kill the other. The hand reaches, the cup rises, the body remembers. 

Wine can keep him within himself. Sometimes. It can make sleep thin, or thought dull, or memory less sharp when the dream comes anyway and leaves its hooks in him. It can take the edge from the hour before sleep, when the mind begins its own treachery and makes doorways from every shadow. It can turn prophecy and fear and grief into one dark water, foul but drinkable. 

Sometimes. 

Not tonight. 

Tonight the wine has gone into him and left the depth beneath it untouched. He can feel sleep still waiting. Not the light, sour sleep that comes after too much drink and gives back little except a bad head and a worse mouth. Something lower, something that has been patient while he was foolish enough to mistake patience for mercy. 

He raises his hand. 

The first knock is so soft it might be nothing. 

Daeron waits. 

His pulse moves in his throat, his heart hammers in his ears. If you do not hear, he will go. He tells himself that, and for a breath he believes it. There are other rooms, other chairs. The chapel, perhaps, though Gods are not company he trusts at this hour. The yard. The cold. A stairwell with stone enough to keep him upright until morning. 

He lifts his hand again. 

The second knock is no louder. 

For a moment, the room on the other side remains still. Then he hears it, the movement of bedding. 

Daeron closes his eyes. 

The latch shifts. 

When the door opens, the light from within reaches him first. Low, yellow, nearly spent, but after the corridor it feels like exposure. You stand there, a shawl drawn around your shoulders, hair loosened from sleep, your expression neither startled nor rested. 

You had been awake. Th knowledge reaches him before you say anything and lodges under the shame. 

You look at him. 

At his face first, then at the cup. Not long, not pointedly, only enough. 

“Daeron,” His name sounds different in your voice at this hour. It has no title to lean on, no one else to hear it. It finds him without armor and stays there. He should answer, but he looks at the cup instead. You open the door wider, “Come inside.” 

The kindness of it almost makes him step back. A better man would. 

He steps forward instead. 

The room is warmer than the corridor, though not by much. The fire has sunk low, red under ash. One lamp remains lit beside the bed, turned down but not yet extinguished. The covers have been drawn back on your side where you left it, and there is an indentation where your body had been waiting in the sheets. 

“I thought you would be asleep.” He says after a moment. The words come out careful, too careful perhaps. He hears the wine in the spaces between them and hates that you must hear it too. 

“I wasn’t.” 

No accusation. That should make it easier. 

It does not. 

He stands too near the door when it closes. The cup is still in his hand. He should set it down. 

He should say something that explains the hour, the wine, the knocking, the way he has come to the room like a petitioner when everyone in the castle would call it his. There ought to be a sentence. Something serviceable. Something a man could place between himself and the truth until morning made the truth less visible. 

You draw the shawl closer around yourself. He hates knowing you are cold because of him, hates knowing he has no right to try to fix it now. 

“I…I should not have woken you.” He says. His eyes linger on the faint fabric covering your shoulders, providing warmth a better man could offer. A better husband would. 

“I was awake.” 

“Because I was not here.” 

The room holds the sentence after he speaks it. You do not look away from him, and he feels, with a dull kind of horror, that he has said something true enough, or perhaps hopeful enough, to be indecent. 

Your expression changes only a little. 

“You usually come up before now.” 

Usually. 

The word is small. Domestic. Nearly harmless. 

It opens something in him anyway. 

He looks toward the bed, then away. 

Sleeps lives there tonight. Not comfort, not you. Sleep. It waits in the dipped place of the mattress, in the turned back covers, in the dark fold where the pillow has kept the warmth of your head. He can see himself lying down, he can feel the body’s ruinous gratitude at the thought of it the surrender, the long pull under. 

A flash of red passes behind his eyes. 

Not blood, perhaps. Cloth. Sunset. A mouth opening around a word he cannot remember. 

Daeron shoves the thought away so hard his fingers tighten around the cup, and he feels his body sway slightly. 

The wine shifts. 

You see that too. 

He crosses the room before you can speak. Not to the bed. There is a chair by the hearth, but it seems too deliberate, too much like a man making a visit, claiming space. He cannot stand, and the floor gives him its answer by being there, hard and low and honest. 

He sits beside the bed with his back against the frame. The movement is not graceful. He lowers himself too quickly in the last inch, one hand braced against the boards, the cup held away from his knee as if saving the last mouthful were still a task worth performing. The floor is cold through the thin fabric of his trousers. It steadies him at once. 

You remain standing near the door for a moment, and then you come closer. 

“Come to bed.” You ask, familiar words in a familiar voice landing somewhere unfamiliar. 

Daeron shakes his head before he trusts his mouth. 

“No,” The refusal is too blunt. He hears it, tries to mend it, and only makes it worse, truer, “Not there.” 

You do not ask him why. That is a mercy large enough that he cannot look at it directly. 

You stand beside the bed now, close enough that he can see the hem of your nightdress beneath the shawl, close enough that he can smell sleep on the linen and the faint oil you use at your wrists. The familiar things of the room settle around him in pieces. The lamp, the bowl near the washstand, the carved foot of the bed pressing into his shoulder, your bare foot against the edge of the rug. 

His thumb moves over the cup. 

He has not put it down. 

The realization seems to come from far away. He looks at his own hand as if it belongs to some other man, one who has carried the last of his cowardice into his wife’s room and cannot decide whether to drink it or confess it. The cup is almost empty. 

He lifts it anyway. 

The sip is small. It tastes of metal now, and sourness, and himself. He swallows because the gesture is older than the desire for it. Because his hand knows the path. Because the mouth sometimes obeys before the mind returns to claim it. 

When he lowers the cup, your eyes are on it. 

You say nothing. 

Daeron laughs once, without air. It does not become sound. 

“It…keeps me near the surface,” He offers as an explanation you have not asked for. The cup rests against his knee. His fingers remain around it. “Sometimes.” 

The lamp makes a small noise beside the bed, a soft shift of flame. You sit down slowly on the edge of the mattress, above him but near enough that the covers brush your calf. The bed dips under your weight. 

“The wine?” You ask. 

The question is careful, and the care in it hurts. Not accusation, not indulgence, only the beginning of understanding, and the fear that comes with it. 

Daeron looks at the boards between his feet, and nods his head. 

After a breath, lower than a whisper, he admits, “I don’t want to sleep.” 

You are quiet. 

He wishes, suddenly and bitterly, that he had lied. A better lie would have been easy. Too much wine, a restless night, some foolishness with his brother, a headache, a jest about weather. He has spent half his life putting acceptable causes over unacceptable wounds. He should have had one ready. 

But the hour is late, and the wine has failed, and your bare foot is near his on the rug. 

“They have been quiet.” He admits after a while. 

He does not say dreams. A man can still turn from a word if he has not spoken it. 

You do not turn. 

“The dreams?” 

He closes his eyes.  

The dark behind them is worse. 

A corridor. Smoke low on the ground. The sound of wings inside a wall. A child crying, or laughing, or neither. Red-gold light, too bright, and something falling through it- 

His eyes open. 

The room returns, but not quickly enough. The cup, the lamp, the foot of the bed. Your foot on the rug. The small uneven breath you take when you see whatever his face has given away. 

“Yes,” He means to leave it there. He cannot. “They go quiet sometimes. It sounds like mercy when I say it, I know that. It…it should be mercy.” 

His voice is low enough that the room seems to lean toward it. 

“When I was younger, I thought perhaps that was the end of it. A quiet night, then another. I thought perhaps whatever was wrong in me had spent itself, or grown bored.” 

His mouth moves, almost a smile. It fails. 

“It does not grow bored,” The cup has begun to shake slightly in his hand. He sets it down beside his knee before you can see more of it than you already have. The sound of silver against wood is too loud. “It only…gives space. Then it comes back and fills it.” 

You sit very still. 

Daeron looks at the empty cup because it is easier than looking at you. The last stain of wine clings dark at the bottom, and the words rush past his lips again before he can think about stopping them. 

“They give me an inch,” He says, more softly, “and I spend it like a fool.” 

His hand rises to his face. He presses the heel of it against one eye until sparks bloom there. 

A shape tries to rise with them: a hand against a door, nails broken, someone saying a name from the wrong side. He pushes it down. He does not want the fragments. The fragments are worse in some ways, they come without meaning and leave terror behind as if meaning were unnecessary. 

“I do not always remember,” He says, “One would think that must be better but-…” 

His hand falls from his face. 

“Sometimes I wake and there is nothing. No image, no words. But my body remembers. My heart races, and my chest aches, and my hands-…” 

He stops. 

His hands are visible. One open on his thigh, one near the cup. 

He draws both closer to himself. 

You do not look at them, or if you do, you are kind enough to do it when his eyes are lowered. 

“I knew m from what you told me that they troubled you,” You say after a time.  

Your voice is careful, but not fragile. It does not step around him as if he might shatter from being spoken to.  

“I understood that they came true, at least sometimes.” You pause. The mattress shifts faintly as your fingers gather in the coverlet. “I did not understand what the quiet meant.” 

He cannot answer at once. 

Daeron turns the empty cup with two fingers. 

“I do not understand it either.” 

He has not meant to say it. Perhaps he has meant nothing since the second knock on your door. But once spoken, it lies between the two of you with a weight all its own. 

“I know what they’re supposed to be,” He continues, slower now. “Dragon dreams. They’re prophecy, a promise from fate or…or the Gods or whatever it is. But sometimes they feel only like an echo of the Doom we should have died in.” 

His mouth has gone dry. 

He wishes there were wine left, and hates the wishing while it moves through him. 

“Sometimes they are nothing,” He says, brows furrowed, gaze lost somewhere far. “A color. A taste. A door. Sometimes it is half a dream until the world catches up to it, and then it…it becomes whole. It becomes something, as if it had been waiting for the day to explain it, as if I was the last to understand what my own mind had done.” 

He hears his voice change, become faster, breathless, panicked, and stops. 

The room is too warm now. Or he is too cold. He cannot tell. The floor holds him where the bed would not. The boards are hard against the bones at the base of his spine. He lets that pain remain because it is simple and belongs only to the body. 

You sit above him on the edge of the bed, still wrapped in the shawl, eyes gone soft with tiredness and something else. The lamp behind you makes a dark line of your profile and leaves your face half in shadow. 

For a while, you say nothing. For a while, he listens to the familiar rhythm of your breathing. 

Your eyes go to the cup again. Not as they had at the door, quick enough to be polite, this time your gaze stays there, on the sivler beside his knee, on the dark stain at the bottom. Daeron watches you follow the shape of what he has said back to it. 

Wine. Surface. Sleep. 

“You said it keeps you near the surface,” You say, “The wine.” 

He almost smiles. It feels terrible on his face and never finishes. 

“Sometimes.” 

Your hand gathers once on the covers, “From the dreams?” 

“From going too far under.” 

That is too much truth, perhaps. It leaves his mouth before he can make it less ugly, less bare. 

“And tonight?” 

He looks at the cup. 

“No.” 

That single word leaves more in the room than he wants. 

You breathe in. Not sharply, but enough that he hears it. 

“Then why come here?” 

It is not cruelly asked. Hardly asked at all. You sound as if you are giving him the question because it already exists and may hurt less in the open. 

Daeron looks toward the door. 

He could still leave. The thought arrives by habit. He could stand, take the cup, make some poor apology, go down the corridor and find a chair with no one beside it and wait for deep sleep alone. He could spare you the rest. He could spare himself the sight of your face as you learned what sort of man you had been given. 

The idea has no strength. 

His body will not stand for it. 

“I thought if I sat here…” He starts. 

The sentence breaks there. 

You wait. 

He looks at your foot on the rug, at the place where the hem of your nightdress brushes your ankle. He cannot say because I wanted to see your face and cannot say because I wanted to hold your hand and cannot say because when you breathe I know the room is still the room. He cannot say because there are moments after waking when I do not know which side of the dream I am on and you make it easier to remember which one I want to return to. 

The cup sits empty by his knee. 

“I thought I might know where I was.” 

There is a silence after that. 

It is not the silence he expected. 

The lamp burns. The fire settles. You lower your hand to the edge of the mattress. 

“Then sit here.” You state. It is not grand enough to protect him from what it does. 

His eyes close for a moment. 

The words have no flourish. They give him no name better than the one he has earned and no answer to the dark under sleep. They only make a place of the floor beside your bed, and somehow that is more than his body knows how to receive tonight.

When he opens his eyes, you are still looking at him. 

The cup by his knee catches the lamplight. He turns it away with the side of his hand until the shine disappears. 

His fingers stay there after, touching the rim. It gives him somewhere to look, somewhere to put the small movement of his hand while the rest of him sits too still. His thumb follows the curve of the silver once, then again, though there is nothing in it to learn. 

His mouth pulls crookedly. 

It is not quite a smile, there is no humor strong enough left for that. Only the tired shape of one, the old habit of making something ugly easier to say by letting it pass near laughter first. 

When he looks up at you, his eyes are bright and defeated. 

“You must think me mad.” 

The sentence comes out low. Almost conversational. That is the worst of it. No weight left in him, no heat. Only the plain thing, set down where both of you can see. 

Your face does not change in the way he expects. 

“Should I?” 

He looks at you. 

He had half-expected you to soften the word at once, to take it from his mouth and make it smaller, but instead you sit with it. Your hand tightens once in the covers and stays there. You are tired. Frightened too, perhaps, though you do not give that away easily. 

The question remains between you, and Daeron has to meet it himself. 

Daeron’s throat works once, and against every rational thought he admits,

“I do.” 

You are quiet for long enough that he begins to regret every word he’s spoken tonight. 

Then you look down, not away from him exactly, but toward your own hands where they have tightened in the coverlet. When you speak, your voice is lower than before. 

“I do not know what to call it,” He almost laughs. Not because it is funny. Because the honesty hurts. You lift your eyes again. “I know I do not want you outside the door.” 

The lamp shifts in the draft of something he cannot feel. 

Daeron lowers his head until the back of it rests against the bedframe. The carved wood presses into his skull. His eyes sting, sudden and humiliating. He looks at the floor hard enough that the boards blur and settle and blur again. 

“I am drunk.” He states, because he has nothing better to say and he feels he must say it. 

“I know.” 

“I woke you.” 

“I was awake.” 

That is all you say. 

No forgiveness is offered because he has not quite asked for it, but no condemnation comes either. The cup remains where it is, empty and cold and as much a part of the room now as the lamp or the bed. He wants, absurdly, for you to take it from him. He wants you not to touch it. He wants the wishing itself removed from him. 

You do none of those things. 

Instead, you reach to the lamp and turn it a little higher. 

The flame lengthens inside the glass. 

Daeron’s head lifts before he means it to. The dark corners of the room retreat by a finger’s breadth. Nothing more. The bedposts remain shadowed. The door is still shut. The night is still pressed against the windows. But the lamp burns steadier now, warm across the rug, across your hand, across the empty cup by his knee. 

You do not comment on the movement. 

That is why he knows you saw. 

A tremor passes through him, too small to be called shaking. His body has been asking for sleep for hours. It asks again now, treacherous, with heaviness behind his eyes and a hollow ache in his limbs. The floor keeps him from answering too quickly. The lamp helps. Your breathing helps more than either. 

He hates that. 

He needs it. 

“You should sleep.” He says. A pitiful attempt to hear your voice again, but if you recognize it you do not challenge it. 

“So should you.” 

He looks at the bed. 

You follow his gaze and say nothing. 

For a time, the room keeps its shape around the quiet. Daeron sits with one knee drawn up, the other leg half-bent, his shoulder against the bedframe. You remain above him for a littlw hile, shawl slipping loose at once side, your hands gathered in your lap. 

Then, slowly, you lie down. 

You do not move far from the edge, only draw the covers over yourself, turning onto your side with your face angled toward him. The movement is tired and careful, not an invitation and not a dismissal. Only the body, at last, admitting the hour. 

The bed settles around you. Then, the sleeve of your nightdress falls back. Only a little, only enough to bare the inside of your wrist where your hand rests near the edge of the mattress, loose and warm in the lamplight. 

He looks at it., then looks away at once. 

Too late. 

A dream tries to rise there, because dreams are cruel enough to use tenderness when blood is not available. A wrist in water. Gold light on a hand. Fingers slack against stone. He does not know whose. He does not want to know. He forces his mind toward the lamp until the image goes. 

His breathing has changed, and you hear it. 

“Daeron?” 

“I am here.” 

The answer is too quick. 

You do not correct him. You only let your hand remain where it is, near the edge of the bed.. Nearer than before. Simply there, where the lamplight touches the fine bones beneath the skin. 

Daeron looks at it. 

Then he looks away. 

The cup remains by his knee. 

The wine is gone, but the habit is not. He can still taste it under his tongue, he can still feel the part of himself that reaches for dullness, for blur, for anything that might make the mind less exact when it turns against him. He knows that part will not vanish because you opened a door, because the lamp is lit, because your hand rests within reach. He knows better than to make one survivable night into a conversion. 

His fingers move against his own thigh. 

He stops them. 

The silence stretches. It does not break. Somewhere in the keep, a watchman’s step passes and fades. The sound might have belonged to any night. This one continues. 

“You do not have to speak,” You say. He looks up. Your voice has changed. It is quieter now, roughened by the hour. Not entirely steady. That comforts him more than steadiness would have. “Not if speaking makes it worse.” 

He had not known you understood that. 

Or perhaps you did not. Perhaps you only saw his face each time a fragment forced its way to the surface and he shoved it down. Perhaps that was enough. 

Daeron swallows. 

“I don’t know what makes it worse.” 

The words come with more weariness than fear. 

“No,” You say. “I suppose you wouldn’t.” 

That, too, is comfort, somehow. The simple refusal to make sense too quickly of something that has not had the courtesy to be sensible. 

His body slips, just slightly, toward sleep. 

He catches himself with a sharp breath and one hand against the floor. 

The lamp flares in his vision. Your hand tenses on the coverlet. 

He waits for the image that usually follows such a movement: fire, water, a face turned wrong, the too-bright color of blood under sunlight or dragonfire. Nothing comes. Only the room, the lamp, your hand. His own breath dragging through him like a man pulled out of a river. 

“I cannot.” The words leave him in a gasp, not meant for you nor for anything willing to hear. 

You do not ask what, and he does not explain. 

“I know.” You say anyway. 

You don’t, not really. Of course you do not. Not fully. But you know enough for the words to be an act of staying rather than a claim. 

Daeron laughs without sound. His mouth moves and fails at it. 

“You should not know any of this.” 

“Perhaps not. I prefer to know, either way.”

“You were owed someone easier.” 

Your face shifts then. A small tightening at the mouth, gone almost before he sees it. 

“I did not ask for easier.” 

The answer is plain, and tired, and perhaps not entirely true; and that is what makes it bearable. You draw the shawl closer with one hand.

He looks down. 

The boards have a crack running between them, dark with old dust. He follows it with his eyes until it disappears beneath the rug. 

“Do not be kind to me because I came here like this.” He says. In a steadier man, in a better man, it might have sounded like an order rather than a plea. 

“I am not kind to you because of the wine.” 

He does not look up. 

“Then why?” 

The question is too naked, but it leaves him before pride can reach it. 

Above him, you are quiet. 

When you answer, the words are not immediate. He hears you search for them, and the searching makes them harder to dismiss. 

“Because you came to the door,” You answer. “Because you knocked.” 

His eyes close. 

“And because I would rather have you here,” You add, softer, “than alone with whatever room you would have found instead.” 

He does not know what to do with that, there is no place in him made to receive it cleanly. 

His hand moves before he has decided. 

Not to the cup, toward the bed. 

He stops halfway. Your wrist rests near the edge of the mattress, turned slightly inward, lamplit and still. He can see the faint trace of a vein beneath the skin. He can see the place where your pulse must be, though he cannot yet feel it. 

The distance is small. 

It might as well be the length of the corridor, the depth under sleep, all the years in which he learned that wanting was safest when it could be mistaken for something else. 

He lifts two fingers and touches your wrist. 

Barely, light enough that you could pretend not to feel it. 

You do feel it. 

Your hand does not move. For a moment there is only the touch itself, small and almost formal, his fingertips resting against the warm inside of your wrist while your pulse continues beneath them. 

There. 

The word does not form in his mouth. 

There. 

The room gathers around that point. Lamp, floor, bed, cup, your body above him and the hard boards beneath. The dream remains somewhere below sleep, patient as ever. It has not been defeated. It has not been answered. It waits with all the other things that wait. 

Your pulse beats under his fingers.  Daeron lowers his head back against the bedframe. 

He does not know how long he sits like that. 

The night loses its edges by slow degrees. Sometimes he is awake with painful clarity, hearing the lamp’s faint hiss and the settling of ash in the hearth. Sometimes he loses pieces of time and returns with a start, his fingers still at your wrist or searching blindly for it before he knows what he is doing. Once, your hand shifts, and he follows the movement with a small, helpless pressure that would shame him if he had strength left for shame. 

You remain. 

Not always awake, perhaps. Your breathing changes. Once your hand shifts, and he follows the movement with a small, helpless pressure that would shame him if he had strength left for shame. At some point you draw the covers higher with your free hand. At some point the lamp burns lower, though you do not put it out. 

The cup stays by his knee, empty and cold. 

He does not reach for it again. 

When the dark begins to thin at the window, Daeron is still on the floor. His back aches. One leg has gone stiff. His mouth tastes of old wine and fear. Sleep has taken something from him, or failed to; he cannot tell. There is no clean border in him between waking and losing time, no triumph to hold up against the night. 

The dream is still somewhere under sleep. 

The floor is still hard beneath him. 

But your wrist rests near his hand, warm enough to find again before his eyes fully open, and the lamp, low and stubborn beside the bed, has burned itself almost to morning. 

The bird begins before the sun has properly entered the room. 

Daeron hears it first in the soft, irritating edge between sleep and waking: three thin notes, a pause just long enough to be noticed, and then the same three notes again, delivered with the small, tireless confidence of a creature too stupid to understand offense. It is not loud enough to be called a disturbance, even, and at least a disturbance would have a body to blame. A servant at the door, a shouted order in the yard, Egg losing an argument with someone twice his age and twice as tired. Something with a cause, at least, and therefore something that might be made to stop. 

This is only a bird, and the damn creature goes on. 

He frowns into the pillow and tries, for a few breaths, to sink back under sleep. The dream he has left behind does not return. There had been no blood in it, he thinks dimly, because there is no sharpness under his ribs, no old taste in his mouth, no waking heat behind his eyes. Only the heaviness of linen, the stale warmth of his own breath against the pillow, and that bright, repeated sound worrying at the room. 

Daeron shifts. 

The bed is warm beside him, but the warmth is not where he expects it. 

That wakes him more than the bird has. 

His hand moves before the rest of him does, sliding over the sheet with the blind certainty of habit. There was a time when he would have noticed the motion while making it, when every inch crossed in bed would have seemed like a request made too loudly. Now his fingers find the fold of your nightdress, then the solid curve of your hip beneath it, and his body settles around that knowledge before his mind has the chance to become severe about it. 

You are there. 

Farther than usual, but there. 

He opens his eyes. 

You are lying flat on your back, hands folded over your stomach, staring at the ceiling with an expression of such fixed disgust that for a moment he forgets to be tired. You look less like a woman woken too early than like a judge who has been forced to hear a very poor defense and is deciding how much contempt can be shown without speaking. 

The bird calls again. 

Your eyes close once, slowly. When they open, they remain on the ceiling. 

Daeron makes some rough sound into the pillow, not quite a word. 

“That bird,” You say, in a voice made low by sleep and sharpened by hatred, “has been doing this for half the morning.” 

He lifts his head a little. One side of his face is creased; he can feel it. His hair has fallen into his eyes, and his hand is still on your hip.  

“It is barely morning.” 

“I know. That is part of the crime.” 

The corner of his mouth moves before he means it to. He tries to press it back into sleep, but there is no sleep left now, only you staring at nothing with the grim patience of a woman at war. 

The bird repeats itself. 

You inhale through your nose. 

“It did it yesterday too,” You continue. “And the day before. I thought the first morning that perhaps it was ill, or lost, or being slowly killed. But no. It just…sings like that.” 

“Like what?” 

“Wrong.” 

Daeron turns his face toward you fully. 

You do not look at him. “Do not make that face. You know what I mean.” 

“I have made no face.” 

“You are about to.” 

He is. He can feel it happening, traitorous and warm at the edges of his mouth. “I only wondered whether the charge was musical or personal.” 

“It can be both.” 

“Against the bird?” 

“Against every bird here, if they insist on continuing like this,” Your hands remain folded over your stomach, the picture of composure except for the obvious desire to murder something winged and helpless. “The birds in Dorne know how to begin a morning. They do not stand outside a window and hammer the same three notes into a person’s skull until she begins to regret every choice and political arrangement that brought her within hearing distance.” 

That does it. 

The laugh comes before he has time to dress it into anything else. 

It starts as a breath, rough and startled, and then breaks out of him with no shape fine enough to hide behind. His shoulders move. He turns his face partly into the pillow, but that only muffles it; it does not stop. The sound shakes loose somewhere low in his chest, warm and surprised and entirely without strategy. He is laughing at the bird, at the solemnity of your indictment, at the idea of all Summerhall’s diplomacy undone by one shrill creature outside the window. He is laughing because your face is still so sincerely offended. He is laughing because his hand is on your hip and the sheet is twisted around his leg and nothing in the room is asking him to bleed for the privilege of being there. 

You go quiet. 

That should stop him. It does not. If anything, the stillness catches the laugh in him and turns it softer, deeper, harder to govern. He has laughed in rooms full of men who wanted him amusing. He has laughed into cups, through smoke, under his father’s stare, over the ugly edge of a joke he knew would leave a mark. He knows the sound a man can make when he means to escape before anyone sees where the blade has entered. 

This is not that. 

He does not know what this is until it has already happened. 

The bird sings again, persistent and absurdly proud of itself. 

You turn your head toward the window with such cold betrayal that he loses the last of his restraint. He laughs into the pillow, helpless now, one hand tightening once on your hip as if the pleasure needs somewhere to go. 

“If you encourage it,” You complain, and your voice has shifted oddly, though he is too far gone to understand how, “I will hold you responsible for the rest of its education.” 

He tries to answer. He cannot. The attempt only turns into another broken breath. 

“It is not funny, Daeron.” 

That is plainly untrue, and you must know it, because something in your mouth changes as you say it. Not a smile. Not yet. The beginning of one, perhaps, or the memory of why other people might be weaker than you in such circumstances. 

He manages, at last, to lift his face from the pillow. “I beg your pardon.” 

“You do not.” 

“No,” He admits, still breathless. “No, I do not.” 

For a moment the morning hangs there, foolish and pale and full of the bird’s ridiculous noise. 

His laughter begins to leave him by degrees. It loosens from his ribs first, then from his throat, until what remains is heat in his face and an ache along his cheeks, unfamiliar enough that he notices it. The smile stays behind. He feels it there with a sudden, exposed awareness, as if he has woken a second time and found himself in some less defended version of his own body. 

You are looking at him. 

Daeron’s first instinct is to make some dry remark, anything small and ugly enough to put a railing around the moment. Nothing comes. His mind, usually so quick to locate a door, offers him only the shape of your face against the pillow and the fact that your anger has thinned without entirely leaving you. You look almost puzzled by him. No, not puzzled. Caught. 

Your hand lifts from your stomach. 

He watches it come toward him and does not move away. 

Your fingers touch the side of his face. 

There is no ceremony in it. You do not take his chin or make him look at you; he is already looking. Your fingertips pass lightly along his cheek, over the pillow-crease there, then to the corner of his mouth, not quite touching it. As if you mean to find where the laugh had been and are uncertain, at the last second, whether such a thing can be touched without frightening it off. 

Daeron goes still. 

Your thumb brushes once beneath his eye. 

The bird is still singing, but for a few breaths he hears it from a distance, as though the room has thickened around the two of you. You do not say anything about his smile. That is worse and better than saying something. He could defend himself from words. He could step around praise, turn aside tenderness, make a jest of being admired if he had to. Your silence gives him nothing to push against. 

Your gaze drops to his mouth and returns to his eyes. 

The smile wavers. It does not disappear. 

Something in your expression goes softer then, very briefly, before you seem to remember yourself. Your fingers leave his face, though not quickly, and you turn your eyes back toward the window with the tired dignity of a woman resuming an interrupted grievance. 

“There,” You say after a moment. “Listen. It has started again.” 

He almost laughs again, but it comes out only as a breath. 

“I heard it. I was listening.” 

“You were not. You were laughing at me.” 

“I was laughing near you.” 

“You were laughing at me, and now you are trying to make it sound less treasonous because you know I am right.” 

He shifts closer on the pillow, propping himself on one elbow. “I know you believe you are right.” 

“That is usually what being right feels like.” 

That pulls another smile from him. Smaller this time, but still dangerous. He sees you notice it and immediately look away, as if the window has become urgent. 

The bird gives its three notes again. 

You make a small, aggrieved sound low in your throat. “It is the repetition, that is what I cannot forgive. If it sang badly once and moved on, I could be generous. But it chooses to return to the error. Again and again.” 

“Perhaps it is attempting consistency.” 

“It is succeeding at being unbearable.” 

“That is also a kind of consistency.” 

“You see? This is what I mean. You are taking its side.” 

“I am trying to understand the accused.” 

“The accused has no defense.” 

He presses his lips together, though the effort is poor. You see that too. 

“Do not laugh again,” You warn, but there is not much force left in it. “I am serious. I have been awake too long already, and I refuse to be turned into morning entertainment by a bird and my own husband.” 

The words settle warmly in him before he can decide whether to make anything of them. 

My own husband. 

It is hardly the first time you have said the word. It should not matter. It is a practical fact, legal and public and old enough now that servants arrange their mornings around it. Still, there are ways the word can land differently depending on the hour. In a hall, it can be title and obligation. In anger, accusation. In this bed, with your hair loose and your eyes narrowed toward the window, it feels almost warm. 

Warm enough to be believed. To be trusted to mean something. 

Daeron lowers his head back to the pillow and turns onto his side, facing you. His hand is still where it has been all this time, resting against your hip beneath the sheet. You have not moved it. You are warm under his palm. He lets his thumb move once, not quite a caress, not quite nothing. 

You stop glaring long enough to look down at his hand, then back up at him. There is no warning in your face. Only sleep, annoyance, and something quieter beneath both. 

“You are very pleased with yourself.” You say, something honest behind the playful accusation. 

“I am pleased with nothing. I am a loyal husband enduring a difficult morning.” 

“You are pleased because I said the birds are wrong and you think that is amusing.” 

“It is a little amusing.” 

“It is true.” 

“Those are not enemies.” 

“You would say that. You have no standards where birds are concerned.” 

“I did not know I was meant to have standards.” 

“You are a prince. Begin anywhere.” 

That almost undoes him again, but this time he manages to keep the laugh in his chest. It warms there, moving under his ribs without breaking loose. He looks at you and sees, to his own surprise, that you are not only annoyed now. You are watching him from the corner of your eye, badly pretending not to. 

He wants to make you do it again. 

Not laugh. Not exactly. He wants the look back. The one from a moment ago, when your hand had come to his face before either of you had decided what the morning was allowed to be. The want is clean, which makes it difficult to hold. There is no shame already attached to it, no dread standing ready behind it. Only the wish to be the cause of that look once more. 

The bird sings. 

You close your eyes with a slow, suffering patience. 

“Gods,” You mutter. “I cannot live like this.” 

“It has been perhaps five minutes.” 

“It has felt like several years.” 

“Should I call for a guard?” 

“Absolutely not. If you call for anyone, they will speak, and then there will be both bird and person. No.” 

“A raven, then. We might send to Dorne for better birds.” 

You open one eye. “Do not mock my homeland before breakfast.” 

It has been months since you’ve spoken of Dorne as home, and some starved part of him has made note of that with careless desperation. Dorne was home and now it is homeland, and it may not be intentional, it may not even be a reflection of anything, and there has been nowhere else that replaced Dorne as home for him to think it means anything. And yet, the thought lingers, yet another scrap saved away, yet another piece to hoard. 

“I would never.” 

You roll onto your side then, facing him more fully. The movement brings your knee against his leg beneath the sheet, your shoulder nearly to his chest. The distance that woke him narrows until it is only linen and breath. For a few moments you simply lie there, looking at him, and the irritation drains from your face by fractions. Sleep has made you softer around the eyes. The morning has left one side of your hair flattened and the other side in disarray across the pillow. 

He loves the sight before the thought has time to become itself. 

It comes as a bodily thing first: a pull in his chest, a warmth under the hand still resting at your hip, the faint, foolish urge to press his mouth to your temple and say nothing. He does not move. The impulse is too plain. Plainness still has the power to unnerve him, even here. 

You reach for his wrist. 

At first he thinks you mean to move his hand from your hip. He lets you have it at once, fingers loosening before you ask. You draw his hand upward, slow and practical, and set it near your temple. 

He understands that. Or thinks he does. 

His fingers begin to open gently, ready for whatever tenderness you are asking of him. There are nights when this has become its own language between you: pins loosened, braids undone, his hand learning the weight and patience of it. Even in the morning, half-awake, his body knows the beginning of the gesture. 

You make a dissatisfied sound and tug his wrist higher. 

He stops. 

You drag his hand over the side of your head and place his palm firmly over your ear. 

Then you settle your cheek against his chest. 

Daeron blinks down at you. 

You sigh as if, after long suffering, civilization has finally offered you one useful invention. 

“There.” You mumble into his nightshirt. 

His hand covers your ear. His fingers rest where you have put them, careful against your hair and the side of your head, but not for tenderness. Or not only for tenderness. He has been made into a wall. 

The bird sings again beyond the window. It is muffled for you now, perhaps. It is perfectly clear for him. 

He stares at the top of your head. “Is this what you wanted?” 

“Yes.” 

“My hand.” 

“Yes.” 

“Over your ear.” 

“You are not stupid, Daeron. Please do not start practicing now.” 

He presses his lips together. The laugh rises, but this time it stays mostly silent. You feel something of it anyway, because you shift against his chest with a faint, warning hum. 

“I was only clarifying my duties.” He says. 

“Your duties are very simple. Keep that there. Be warm. Do not speak unless the bird stops or the room catches fire.” 

He looks down at you. Your eyes are closed now. Your hand has curled loosely in the front of his nightshirt, holding him without effort. There is a crease between your brows still, but it is fading. The whole force of your outrage has reduced itself to the small firm pressure of your head against him and the insistence of his palm over your ear. 

After a moment, you add, softer and already nearer sleep, “And do not move.” 

So he does not. 

The morning continues without needing anything from him. Light gathers slowly over the ceiling. Somewhere outside the room, the household has begun to stir: a distant footstep, wood complaining in a corridor, the muted scrape of something carried carefully past a door. The bed keeps its warmth. Your breathing steadies by degrees against his chest. 

The bird sings, and Daeron listens to it because you have made him the one who must. 

It is still a dreadful sound. 

It is also, he thinks, not the worst thing to wake to. 

His palm remains over your ear. His arm lies around you, not holding tightly, only keeping the shape you have given him. Every so often your breath moves the linen over his chest. He can feel the place on his cheek where your fingers had touched him. The smile has left his mouth, but not entirely from the rest of him. It lingers strangely in his ribs, in the loose warmth of his face, in the hand kept carefully where you placed it. 

The bird gives its three notes again. 

You do not stir. 

Daeron closes his eyes. 

He does not sleep, not yet. He stays awake inside the small, ridiculous office of his body: warmth, his hand over your ear while morning makes its poor music at the window.

The first thing that comes between you and Daeron that night is the shutter. 

It begins after the lamps have been lowered, after the fire has been banked, after the room has taken on the bluish quiet of rain in the dark. At first it is only part of the weather: a loose tapping at the window, wood worrying lightly against old iron, the sound disappearing beneath the rush of water over the glass. Then it comes again. Then again. Always with just enough time between each tap for the room to begin forgetting it. 

Daeron lies awake and tells himself he is almost asleep. 

This is not true. It has not been true for some time, though the distinction matters less than it used to. There are nights when lying still with his eyes closed must be counted as its own kind of discipline. There are nights when his body can rest even if the rest of him does not follow. There are nights when the bed is only another place to keep watch from, and sleep waits at the edge of it with its hands full of things he has no wish to see.  

Tonight is easier than some. The rain has made the house quieter. The fire is low but living. You are warm beneath the covers beside him, not touching, not quite, but near enough that the space between your bodies has lost the old, measured cruelty of a border. 

There is a cup on the table near the hearth, but it is empty now. It had held watered wine earlier, more habit than remedy, and he had left the last of it because you had been speaking to him when he reached for it. He had not made a virtue of that. Virtues are dangerous things to name. Still, the cup sits there in the dark with nothing left in it, yet Daeron knows where it is without looking. 

The shutter taps again, and you shift in your sleep. 

Only a little. A small tightening under the covers, one shoulder drawing up against the draft that slips through the join of the window. Your breathing changes and then settles. 

Daeron opens his eyes. 

The ceiling above him is dark except where the banked fire moves faintly over it. The room smells of rain, ash, and the last warmth of the day caught in bedclothes. He waits. The sensible thing is to do nothing. The latch will hold or it will not, the draft is minor. You have not complained, you may not even be awake. 

The shutter taps, and now you draw the covers a little higher. 

Daeron gets up. 

He tries to do it carefully, which is often the beginning of humiliation. The bed gives beneath him. The sheet catches at his knee. For one long, graceless moment he is neither lying down nor standing, caught half-risen with one hand pressed into the mattress while the frame complains softly under his weight. 

Your eyes open. 

“Daeron?” The sleep in your voice is thick enough to make his name sound unfamiliar. It reaches him differently in the dark, without court, without witnesses, without any reason for either of you to be awake except an offending window and his own inability to leave small discomforts alone when they belong to you. "A dream?"

“The shutter.” He says. A pitiful attempt at an explanation, really. 

You blink toward the window. Rain threads silver down the glass. 

“It is only noise.” 

“It was waking you.” 

“I was almost asleep.” 

“I know.” 

That should end it. He should lie back down, let the house make its small complaints, let the night keep what warmth it has. 

The shutter taps again. 

Daeron frees himself from the sheet and crosses the room barefoot. 

“Leave it,” You murmur. The accent clings tighter to your voice, rougher consonants and an unfamiliar tilt to your words. A shiver runs down his spine. “Come back to bed.” 

“In a moment.” 

The floor is colder than he expects. By the time he reaches the window, the draft has found him properly, damp and thin, slipping into the open throat of his nightshirt and down the inside of his sleeves. He pushes the curtain aside. 

It wraps around his wrist. Daeron stops. 

Behind him, the bedclothes shift. You are fully awake now. He knows it. 

He frees his hand from the curtain and finds the latch. The iron is wet with cold. It sticks when he presses it, then lifts too easily, then catches again halfway down. The shutter moves under his hand and lets a narrow breath of rain into the room. 

“You’re getting wet.” You say. 

“I know.” 

“Daeron.” 

“Nearly done.” 

It is not nearly. The latch refuses him with the calm of an object that has never had to answer for itself. He presses the shutter inward with his forearm and tries again. The curtain drifts back against his shoulder. His sleeve catches on the frame. The shutter taps once, directly against his knuckles. 

Behind him, you laugh. 

It is small at first, the kind of laugh that comes half-smothered by a pillow and sleep, as if you have not fully chosen it. Then it catches and becomes real. The bed shifts with the movement of your shoulders. You try to press it down. He can hear the attempt fail. 

Daeron looks back. 

You are half-hidden beneath the covers, turned toward him now. One hand is still near your mouth, useless as a defense. Your eyes are bright from sleep and laughter, and the room is dark enough that there should be mercy in it, but there is none. He sees your face too clearly. Sees the laugh still moving through you. Sees that it has warmed you better than the fire managed. 

The old instinct comes first because it knows the road. 

He has made himself absurd. There is a way to survive that. There has always been a way. Make the joke obedient. Offer the wound before anyone thinks to take it. Give them the foolish thing with his own hands and no one can use it against him properly. 

But the laugh does not come toward him like that. 

It has no teeth in it, it leaves him without the familiar work of flinching. 

He turns back to the latch. The window, at least, is a problem with edges. He presses once more, harder this time. The latch gives suddenly beneath his hand, almost too easily, and the shutter settles into place with a soft, final click. 

“There.” He says. It is not clever. It is hardly anything. 

You laugh again anyway. 

Daeron keeps his hand on the latch a moment longer. The iron is cold under his palm. Rain moves against the glass beyond it. His sleeve is damp. His hair has fallen forward over his brow, and he can feel the ridiculousness of all of it settling around him in the dark. 

When he looks back, you are watching him. 

His mouth moves before he can prevent it. 

A smile, barely. Small enough that he might have denied it if he had been alone. He is not alone. He feels it happen, feels the lift of it and the warmth that comes with it, and for a breath the pleasure is simply there, unexamined and dangerous only because it is too late to stop. 

Then he sees that you have seen. 

The smile leaves at once. 

You are still smiling, softer now, caught between amusement and something he cannot safely name. Daeron turns to fix the curtain though it needs nothing from him, giving his hands somewhere to go until they can remember how to belong to him. 

“Thank you.” You whisper, barely louder than the wind outside. 

“It was a near thing.” 

“I saw.” 

That should allow him some answer. Usually there is one. A line sharp enough to make a clean surface of the moment. Something about princehood, perhaps, or the realm’s gratitude, or the heroic defeat of household fixtures. It does not come. The room has gone too intimate for that kind of escape. The bed is behind him. You are in it. You are happy, or near enough to happiness that his body cannot tell the difference, and he has had something to do with it. 

He leaves the curtain where it falls and crosses back. 

The floor feels colder on the return. His body has remembered the bed and resents every step that is not yet there. By the time he reaches it, the warmth he left has already thinned. He slips beneath the covers carefully, trying not to disturb you further, which is foolish after everything. The mattress dips. The sheets pull cool around his legs. You shift as he settles. 

Not away. 

He notices that, because he notices every mercy, even the small ones that may not be mercies at all. 

The shutter remains quiet. 

For a while, the rain fills the space where its tapping had been. It runs down the glass and along the roofline, steady enough to make the room feel sealed from the rest of the keep. Daeron lies on his back with one hand above the covers. His fingers are cold from the latch, but the chill moves slowly out of them and into the cloth. 

You are fully awake now. He knows it without looking. Your breathing has not returned to sleep. 

“I did wake you.” He states. 

“A little.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“You fixed it.” 

The answer is so simple that he has nothing ready for it. 

He looks toward the ceiling, where the firelight moves in a low, uneven wash. The room ought to settle. The shutter has been dealt with. You are no longer cold, or at least no colder than the hour allows. He has returned to bed without injury, except perhaps to the dignity he has never known how to preserve in private. 

There is nothing left to fix, and that should ease him. Instead, the absence of a task leaves the night open around him. 

Beside him, you shift onto your side. He feels the movement before he turns his head: the small draw of the covers, the change in the mattress, the nearness becoming slightly more deliberate. 

“You were very serious.” You say. 

He glances at you. 

You are not laughing yet, but your mouth has started to soften around the memory of it. 

“It was a serious matter. I was cold.” He argues. 

“I know.” 

“And you were colder.” 

There is a pause. 

Then you laugh. 

Quietly, because of the bed and the hour. Not at the words exactly. They are not funny enough for that. It seems to come from somewhere lower than the sentence, from the sight of him at the window, from the curtain around his wrist, from the wet sleeve and the stubborn set of his shoulders, from the day having finally loosened enough to let one foolish thing be only foolish. 

Daeron turns his head before he can stop himself. 

You are close enough now that the firelight does not need to be generous. He can see the damp shine at the corner of one eye where laughter has gathered. He can see the pillow creased beneath your cheek. He can see the way you look at him after the laugh has begun to fade, still carrying the shape of it, as if the room has given you something small and foolish and you mean to keep it. 

His own mouth answers. 

He feels it and cannot stop it. 

It is only a smile. Hardly even that. But there is no cup to hide behind, no other man in the room to carry the joke onward, no crowd to make his face less his own. The gladness rises plainly, too fast for shame, and for one breath he is only warmed by the fact that you are warmed. 

Then he sees you seeing it. 

His hand tightens in the covers. 

It happens without permission, the fingers closing around cloth as if there is something there to hold on to. The old habit arrives nearly with the grip. He can feel it gathering itself in his mouth, the little ugliness, the small surrender before the blow. He knows how to make himself cheap enough to survive being enjoyed. He knows how to turn warmth into entertainment and entertainment into an excuse to step back. 

“I did not mean to make m-…” 

You kiss him. 

Softly. Quickly. 

The sentence breaks against your mouth before it can finish becoming what it meant to be. One moment there is the dark, the rain, his hand clenched in the blanket; the next there is the warmth of your lips, the faint taste of tea and sleep, the last curve of laughter still caught in the pressure of the kiss. It is not careful enough to be solemn. It is not long enough for him to understand. It is simply there, sudden and close, and then it is gone. 

Daeron lies still. 

Too still, perhaps. He does not know what his face has done. He does not know whether his mouth has answered yours at all or only received the shock of it. His hand remains closed around the covers, and his breath has gone somewhere too high in his chest, useless as a trapped bird. 

The rain goes on. The shutter stays quiet. The room does not alter itself to accommodate what has happened. No lamp flares, no floor opens. The bed remains a bed, the fire a red breath under ash, your body a warm shape beside him and your face still near enough that he can feel the air move when you breathe. 

You do not move away. 

For a few moments, that is all there is. 

You do not move away. 

He understands it first in his body, not as thought, not as conclusion. Your nearness remains. The space between you has not widened again. The kiss is over, and still you are there, looking at him with your mouth softened and your eyes lowered briefly to his hand. 

Daeron follows your gaze. 

The covers are twisted in his grip. 

Slowly, he makes his fingers release them. One at a time. The cloth slips free and falls back over his chest. The hand feels strange afterward, open and empty, stripped of even that small defense. The ache in his knuckles is absurdly bright. 

Your gaze returns to his face. 

He has no idea what you find there. 

There must be something a man does now. He has kissed before. He has been kissed before, in rooms where no one expected tenderness and no one was foolish enough to look for it. He knows the body’s simpler answers. He knows the wine-warmed kind of wanting, quick enough to be regretted and dull enough to survive. None of that knowledge rises to meet this. It sits uselessly in him, belonging to another language entirely. 

This had come from laughter. From your mouth still soft with it. From some impossible place in the room where he had made you glad and been caught looking glad in return. 

The thought does not come cleanly. It comes as heat, as fear, as the ache under his ribs where the want for another kiss has already begun before he has survived the first. 

You are still there. 

That is what makes him lift his hand. 

The movement is small. It has to be; anything larger would be impossible. His hand rises from the covers and stops in the narrow space between you, fingers hovering near your cheek, near the line of your jaw where the firelight has thinned to amber. He can feel the warmth of you before he touches you. 

There is no hiding the hand once it is there. 

He cannot pretend he meant anything else by it. He cannot turn it toward the blanket or the pillow or some other harmless thing. It waits between you, unsteady and open, until the last inch becomes too much for him to cross without permission. 

He cannot quite cross the last inch. 

His voice, when it comes, is hardly sound. 

“May I?” 

Your eyes soften. 

Your hand comes to his wrist. Not to pull him. Not to make the choice for him. Only to hold him there, lightly, as if the question has weight and you will not let him carry it alone. 

“Yes.” 

The word is quiet. It reaches him plainly. 

Daeron touches your face. 

His fingertips meet your cheek first. Warm. Softer than he is prepared for, though he has touched skin before, though he knows what skin is. The knowledge does nothing. This is your face under his hand, your jaw beneath his fingers, your breath stopping for a moment and then returning. He feels that return all the way through his wrist, where your hand still holds him. 

You do not draw him in. You do not move away. Your thumb shifts once against the inside of his wrist, so slight a movement he might have missed it if every part of him were not gathered there. 

He kisses you carefully. 

Too carefully at first. His mouth finds yours as if the asking has not ended, as if he is still saying may I against your lips, again and again, without sound. The kiss is warm and slight and held at the edge of itself. He can feel the restraint in his own body, the rigid care of a man afraid that wanting will make him take more than he has been given. 

Then your hand tightens at his wrist. 

Only a little, but enough. 

You stay under his hand, your mouth stays beneath his. The kiss remains, waiting for him to believe it will not vanish the moment he leans into it. 

Something in his chest loosens with a hurt so sharp it is almost relief. 

He kisses you again before fear can dress itself as manners. Still careful, but no longer careful enough to hide inside. His hand steadies at your jaw. His breath leaves him against your mouth, and the kiss warms by degrees, not rushing, not yet becoming anything he has to name. There is only the press of your lips, the give of them, the small sound you make when he stops holding himself quite so far away. 

Daeron follows that sound because he cannot do otherwise. 

The dark gathers close around the bed. Rain moves over the glass. His fingers slip a little into your hair, then still there, startled by their own wanting. Your hand does not leave his wrist. It holds him where he has asked to be allowed, and the holding is gentle enough to undo him more thoroughly than force ever could. 

He forgets the sentence he had tried to finish. 

He forgets the shutter, the cold floor, the wet sleeve clinging to his arm. He forgets the old skill of becoming the joke before anyone else can make him one. Your mouth opens softly beneath his, and whatever breath he meant to take next becomes yours instead. 

The night keeps still around them. 

Daeron kisses you with the question still in him, with your yes still working its way through his blood. His hand remains at your face, careful even now, learning what it can bear to touch by touching it. The night holds around the bed, rain at the glass, your mouth beneath his, and for one moment more he is allowed to remain close enough to believe it. 

The corridor is empty for three breaths. 

Daeron takes them because they are offered and because no one is there to see him need them. 

Behind him, his father’s door remains closed; and ahead, Summerhall has begun to gather itself into ceremony. The sounds come first, distorted by stone: footsteps below, a servant calling for room to be made, the clatter of something carried too quickly and corrected too late. The horn has stopped but the echo of it seems to have gone into the walls, digging into old stone. 

His hands are covered. That, at least, is something. 

The leather fits smoothly over the fingers now, tight enough to make a better shape of them than nature has managed this morning. He flexes once and watches the movement become almost princely. Controlled, decent, proper. A courtier might see only gloves, a servant might see only preparation, and his father would see the lie immediately. 

Daeron lowers his hands. 

There is no wine in him. 

The thought comes without invitation, sharp and useless. The empty cup waits in his chamber as if patience were a virtue objects could possess, as if metal and glass can stalk and pounce the way a beast would in a hunt. He can see it too clearly: clean rim, untouched bottom, the decanted beside it with morning caught in the glass. Maekar’s words have made him want it more than thirst ever could. Not taste, not pleasure, just the blessed blurring of edges, the softening of father, wife, mother, dream, shape, all the knives and their little wounds. 

He does not turn back. There is nowhere to turn back to. 

So he walks. 

The first stretch of corridor lets him pretend he is alone. By the second, the house begins to find him. A pair of Kingsguard stand near the stair landing, white cloaks bright against the darker stone, their faces arranged into the useful blankness of men paid to notice everything and admit nothing. One of them lowers his eyes a fraction, not enough to be pity, not enough to be respect either, only acknowledgement. 

Daeron gives him the prince he is owed. Chin lifted, shoulders easy, mouth calm. He has always understood performance better when there are rules, after all. 

The stairwell opens below into more sound. Servants move with trays, folded cloth, fresh water, some las unnecessary correction to an already corrected welcome. Someone has set flowers near one of the lower arches; pale things, chosen for elegance rather than scent, and he has the absent thought of how they compare to the Water Garden’s. 

Beyond the doors, light waits. 

Too much of it. 

Daeron feels it before he reaches the last turn of the stair: the brightness of the courtyard, the open air, the movement of horses, the heat carried in by bodies that have been travelling beneath a different sun. the Martells are no longer merely approaching, they are here. 

Somewhere beyond the doors, Mors Martell is dismounting or laughing or putting a hand to his daughter’s shoulder. Somewhere beyond the doors, the woman promised to Daeron is still unseen and already nearer than any thought of you has ever deserved to be. 

His step catches. 

Not from fear, exactly. 

His body, stupidly, treacherously, wants to hurry. 

The realization is so sudden and unpleasant that he nearly laughs. Some stupid part of him wants to reach the courtyard faster, as if arrival might become easier if he is the one to move toward it. 

He continues walking because stopping would be worse. 

You are only a woman. 

He makes himself think it plainly, without metaphor, without all the private foolishness his mind has already made of you. Not light under a door, not warmth behind glass, not a hand remaining where it has not been asked to remain. A woman. Road-weary, probably. Irritated, perhaps. Loved by her father. Stolen from her sisters. Brought to Summerhall because men have decided that her life and his might be made useful together. 

A woman who deserves to be met by someone present. 

Daeron has managed present, at least. Barely. 

The lower hall narrows near the courtyard entrance, and the house becomes fully alive. More servants, more guards, a page boy nearly runs, remembers himself,  and slows with terror written plainly across his young face. 

Then the doors are opened wider. 

Outside, the courtyard flashes into shape: stone, horseflesh, banners moving in the air, the bright scatter of Dornish color against Summerhall’s paler order. Voices rise and overlap, a laugh carries through before he can see who owns it. 

Warmth enters the courtyard like an accusation. 

Daeron steps toward it. 

His smile is ready, his posture is ready, his hands, gloved and uselessly elegant, hang still at his sides. 

The gloves hide the tremor, but they do nothing for the rest. 

No one is beside him when he first steps into the courtyard, though glimpses of silver and red and black linger on the edges of his vision. 

For a few breaths, there is only light. 

It catches on pale stone, on buckles, on the white cloaks of the Kingsguard set along the stair and near the gate. Servants pass behind the line of nobles with lowered eyes and careful hands. Someone has swept the courtyard too clean, the dust from the road has already begun to undo the effort. 

Daeron takes his place, because there is a place left for him. 

Baelor stands at the front, and ceremony has arranged itself around him without needing to be told. His uncle’s face is turned toward the gate, composed and open, every inch of him gracious enough to make welcome look simple. Aemon is still beside him, quiet in that way of his that does not draw attention unless one knows to look for it. Aerion stands farther down, sharp-edged and bored, his mouth soft with the sort of amusement that usually means someone else will bleed from it. 

Near the edge of the household line, Egg rises briefly onto his toes, remembers himself, and sinks back down with miserable dignity. Daella is watching with the same eagerness, big brown eyes set on the doors as if she might see color before it arrives. Rhea has one hand caught in her governess’ skirts and the other being quietly reclaimed by Aemon whenever she forgets royal children are also furniture at events like this. 

Daeron almost smiles at the sight. 

Then Maekar steps into place beside him. 

Not one word, not one glance, only the familiar weight of his father’s body settling near his shoulder, and the courtyard alters around it. Space tightens, the line holds straighter. Daeron feels the study door behind him though it is nowhere near them now, he feels the gloves on his hands, the clean mouth, the empty cup left waiting upstairs with all its patient accusations. 

Maekar looks toward the gate. 

So does Daeron. 

Baelor glances at him once. 

It is a small thing. No warning in it, no command. His uncle’s mismatched eyes pass over his face with a gentleness careful enough not to call itself by name. Daeron gives him a tight-lipped smile fit for daylight and turns ahead before Baelor can decide whether to believe it. 

The first riders come through the gate in a brightness of cloth and harness and road dust. 

Dornish colors do not enter Summerhall quietly. They move in sun-warmed reds and deep yellows, in blue worked into sashes and saddlecloths, in gold catching light at throats and wrists and reins. The horses are lathered from travel but well-kept. Men dismount with the ease of those who know precisely where they belong and do not need to prove it by standing still. 

Mors Martell rides near the first carriage. 

Daeron knows him at once, though the man is older than the story Maekar carried in his mouth. Sun has darkened him, time has set itself at the corners of his face. There is stiffness somewhere in the way he comes down from the horse, not enough to weaken him, seemingly only enough to prove the body keeps record of war. He hands the reins of his horse to an attendant without looking and turns first, properly, to Baelor. 

“Your Grace.” 

His bow is exact. Not stiff, not servile. A man who knows the shape of court and chooses, for the moment, to honor it. 

Bailor receives him with both hands extended and the warmth of a host who has never needed to raise his voice to fill a courtyard. 

“Prince Mors. Summerhall is honored.” 

There are other words after that. Welcome, journey, gratitude, the polished things men say while everyone listens and no one is fooled into thinking speech is the only matter occurring. 

Mors answers them well enough. 

His attention, though, keeps moving toward the carriages. He keeps eyeing the attendants and their movements, the way they guide the horses and, by extension, his family, into the yard. 

Mors turns back to the awaiting Targaryens, to Maekar, as if remembering, at the last possible moment, that old war friends are also princes when the court is watching. 

“Prince Maekar.” 

“Mors.” 

The bow is returned. The titles land in the space between them. Then Mors reaches out and clasps Maekar’s arm. 

Maekar allows it. 

There is no grand softening, no smile that changes the weather. Only his father’s hand closing around another man’s forearm, firm and familiar, and the brief narrowing of Mors’ eyes as if some private inventory has been taken and found mostly intact. 

“You look better than you deserve.” Mors says, low enough that the line does not quite own it. 

Maekar’s mouth moves. Not a smile. Something older and meaner and almost fond. 

“You have always had a generous eye.” 

“And poor taste in company.” 

“A quality you and your Lady wife share.” 

A smile curves at Mors’ lips and deepens the lines on his face. 

“Indeed, my Prince.” 

“Mors.” The voice comes from the open carriage door. 

Not loud, but it seems it need not be. Mors turns as if the sound has found a place in him older than protocol. 

The woman waits at the top of the carriage steps, one hand braced lightly against the frame. An attendant has set the steps down and offered his hand. She has not taken it. She looks instead at her husband, brows lifted with patient expectation. 

Mors’ smile changes. 

“My love.” He says, and goes to her. 

Mors looks toward the carriage one final time, and whatever answer he might have made is taken from him by habit as he approaches his wife. 

She accepts her husband’s hand as if she has accepted it a thousand times and intends to continue correcting how he offers it for the rest of her life. Travel has not made her careless. Her gown is ordered, her veil pinned smoothly, her chin lifted against the cold with only the smallest pause in her breathing to betray that she feels it. One hand draws her outer wrap closer, the other remains in Mors’ until both her feet are on the stone. 

Mors says something Daeron cannot hear. 

His wife looks at him. That is all. Only a look, brief and dry and full of old jurisdiction. 

Mors’ shoulders shift as if he has been chastened before an army. 

Beside Daeron, Maekar exhales once through his nose. 

The second figure from the carriage is younger. A sister, Daeron thinks before anyone names her. She descends with less patience than her mother and more grace than she probably intends to show, turning back before both feet have settled as if the conversation inside has not ended merely because the door has opened and royals await. 

She says something into the carriage. 

Daeron cannot hear it over the horses, the servants, the small swelling murmur of the household. He sees the answer instead. 

A hand appears first against the carriage frame. Then the tilt of a head from within, the pause of someone gathering skirts and dignity after too many hours enclosed with family. Your sister’s mouth curves, and you must say something back, because your sister’s smile sharpens into triumph. 

Then Mors is there, offering his hand. 

You are already halfway down the stairs. 

Your father offers his hand anyway. You take it anyway. 

The cold finds you as you step into the courtyard stone. Daeron sees it in the small lift of your shoulders before you smooth it away. You look first at Summerhall. 

Not at Baelor. Not at Maekar. Not at him. 

At the stone, the height of it, the banners, the ordered windows, the arches opening dark behind the light. Your eyes move carefully, brightly, taking in the house that is meant to receive you. Or keep you. Or swallow you slowly enough that everyone can call it honor, or duty. 

Then you look back at your sister. 

The look you share is quick, almost nothing. It belongs to something he has no right to, to whatever argument had filled the carriage before the gates opened, whatever joke survived the road, whatever private language can pass between two girls who have shared their lives with one another. 

You smile. 

Honestly. 

Not with delight at Summerhall, but not with sorrow either. The smile is small and alive and gone almost before the court can claim it. 

You are still smiling when Mors releases your hand. 

Only briefly. Only toward your sister, as if the two of you have carried some private joy out of the carriage and into all this pale stone. It is gone by the time your mother turns to you, smoothing some crease on the fabric by your shoulder, but Daeron has already seen it. 

That is the cruel part. 

Not the dust at your hem, not the cold lifting of your shoulders before you master it. Your smile. 

It belongs to the carriage, to your sister, to the argument he could not hear and the home he has never seen. It is not meant for him. It reaches him anyway. Another of the Gods’ little ironies. 

Egg looks at him. The glance is quick and solemn and big-eyed, full of inquiry. Is that her? Is that the one? Is that what all those stolen scraps of knowledge were for? 

Daeron does not answer. His mouth would make something ugly out of it. 

Mors says something to you then, too low for the courtyard to keep. Your sister steps aside. Your mother’s hand leaves your shoulder. A small arrangement, barely anything. 

But enough. 

Baelor turns toward you with all the gracious attention of the house, and the line of Targaryens changes with him. Daeron feels it happen before he moves: the moment narrowing, the watching ending, the ceremony reaching for his name. 

Daeron has one last breath in which you are only someone he is looking at. 

Then Mors brings you forward. 

You step toward them with a ghost of a smile still on your lips, and Daeron remembers too late that his hands are covered and his face is not. 

Mors brings his family before the Targaryens.  

Baelor receives the first courtesy because rank demands it. He does it gracefully, with both hands extended and voice warm enough to soften the courtyard around him for a breath. Mors answers properly, his wife curtsies, his daughters follow. 

Mors’ eyes follow the point of contact between his wife’s hand and Baelor’s gloved hands, and his mouth shifts as if several possible comments have presented themselves and been denied out of respect for the hour. 

Daeron sees out of the corner of his eye that his father takes notice. 

He sees too much, that is the trouble with being sober in daylight. Every look, every pause, every old affection left uncovered because no one else knows to hide it. 

Then Mors turns to Maekar and his children. The old shape of their previous greeting returns, if only in the softening of the Dornish Prince’s features. 

His wife comes first, her hand resting again at his bended arm, the two of them moving with the practiced ease of a marriage that has spent making room for ceremony without surrendering to it. 

“Prince Maekar. Your welcome honors us.” 

Maekar inclines his head, “We receive you gladly, my Lady. You are more than guests here.” 

The words settle strangely. 

Daeron feels them in the space beside his father, in the line of Targaryens and servants and guards, in the bright courtyard where everyone is pretending this is only courtesy.  

Summerhall is but pale stone and old ghosts and his father’s silence made into walls, and now Maekar has opened it before the family whose daughter has been given to it. 

Mors turns lightly. 

“My eldest daughter.” 

Daughter. 

Not match, not arrangement, not the Dornish answer for whatever failure Maekar had found no local cure for. Mors says it as if the word has weight enough to stand on its own. 

You step forward. 

The courtyard remains itself around you: horses shifting near the gate, servants waiting with lowered eyes, banners moving lightly in the air. You only move from your father’s side into the line of public attention, and Daeron stands there while the fact of you is given a place among all those watching eyes. 

You curtsy to Baelor, then Maekar. 

The movement is correct despite the road, despite the cold, despite the weight of the courtyard. Your sister watches you with the solemnity of someone storing the moment for later mockery or comfort. Perhaps both. Your mother’s gaze stays near your shoulder for a breath, then leaves you to it. 

Maekar receives you with the same grace he gave your mother, though something in him seems to soften. He states a short greeting, and your answer is quiet, proper. 

Daeron hears it and loses another part of the person his mind had made in your place. 

He had not imagined your voice clearly. Some cowardice in him had refused the detail, the thought of tone, of accent. 

Your actual voice crosses the courtyard and ruins that little safety. It belongs to you. It has traveled in your throat from Dorne. It has spoken to your sister in the carriage, to your mother when the cold touched you, to your father before he gave you to the attention of strangers. 

It has never belong to him. 

Good, he thinks, a tad too harshly. 

Maekar’s voice comes beside him. 

“My son, Prince Daeron.”

No command in it, no warning. Daeron steps forward anyway. 

Daeron steps forward because his body remembers ceremony even when the rest of him would rather be taken apart stone by stone and left somewhere no one uses his name. 

Maekar says nothing else. Daeron feels his father beside him all the same. A pressure at the edge of sight, a piece of the study carried into sunlight. Aerion’s bored attention rests somewhere down the line. Aemon is still and careful. Egg watches with his whole anxious body and tries not to. 

The courtyard narrows to the distance between Daeron and you. 

You wait one breath, meet his gaze for half a heartbeat. 

Then you offer your hand. 

Not far, Daeron has to come the rest of the way. 

His right hand begins to move. 

Leather. 

The sight reaches him late: his own gloved hand lifting toward yours, dark and smooth and false. 

No. 

The refusal barely forms before his other hand catches the glove at the wrist and pulls. 

Fast. Too fast for grace, though not enough for anyone careless to call it clumsy. The leather gives, catches for the smallest instant at the knuckle, then comes free. Cool air strikes his bare fingers. The glove folds badly in his left hand. 

At the edge of his vision, Maekar’s attention sharpens toward him. Daeron does not look at him. 

Your eyes turn once to the movement, only once before they return to his face. 

Daeron takes your hand. 

The contact is small, courtly. His fingers close around yours with all the care he can force into them. Not loose, not tight. Correct. He tries to make the hand obey the shape of courtesy, and for a moment it almost does. The tremor is there beneath the stillness, thin and humiliating, more felt than seen. Perhaps you feel it, perhaps you don’t. perhaps your face gives nothing because you are well-trained, or kind, or simply tired after the road. 

He cannot tell. 

You look at him as if there is something to read and you have enough time to begin. 

Daeron bows. 

The back of your fingers comes close to his mouth. 

He has kissed hands before. He has kissed more than hands with less ceremony and more wine in him. This should be skin, form, breath. A gesture taught before anything else has any chance to make a ruin of it. 

His lips touch your hand. Briefly. Properly.  

Long enough for the courtyard, long enough for want to open beneath it. 

He lifts his head. 

Your hand remains in his. His bare hand. His stupid, disobedient, honest hand. 

“My betrothed.” He says. The words sour almost as soon as he gives them shape. 

Too near claim, too near the reminders of wife. Too near every shameful room where he has let the thought of you stay longer than it had any right to stay. Betrothed should be safer than wife, smaller, less final. Instead it sits between his teeth, already spoiled by the mouth that has spoken it. 

Then you answer. 

“My betrothed.” 

The same words, returned. 

The sound of them in your voice make something in him falter. For half a breath, the phrase is not only his offense. You place it back between you, and Daeron cannot make it mean only what he meant. 

His fingers almost tighten. 

Almost. 

He lets go instead. 

Correctly. He hopes correctly, anyhow. Not so quickly that it seems he cannot bear the contact, not so slowly that the holding confesses anything. His hand opens, your fingers leave his, and every part of the movement feels visible. 

The courtyard returns in pieces: horses, cloth, stone, the low murmur of people permitted to begin existing again. 

Daeron’s right hand hangs bare at his side. The glove remains in his left, folded wrong. 

He knows he should put it back on before anyone has time to wonder why he removed it in the first place. Before Maekar reads effort or danger in uncovered skin, before Baelor sees gentleness where there is only failure of control, before you look again and find the tremor with nothing between it and the light. 

His bare fingers close once, then open. He leaves them uncovered. 

The courtyard gathers sound around the place where Daeron has let go of your hand. 

A horse shifts near the gate. Someone murmurs too softly to be answered. Baelor says something gracious to your mother, and she answers with a warmth that has lost none of its shape to travel. Your sister leans closer to you, close enough that her sleeve brushes yours. Mors stands at your other side, broad and pleased and too alert to be entirely harmless. 

Daeron’s right hand hangs bare at his side, the glove remaining in his left, folded wrong. 

His thumb finds the opening without his permission. Leather gives beneath it, familiar and dark, ready to cover what he has been foolish enough to bare. He could put it back on. The motion would take only a few breaths. Wrist, fingers, tug at the knuckle. A small correction. A prince restoring himself to order. 

He does not move. The bare hand feels larger than the rest of him. 

Beside him, Maekar says nothing. His silence, as always, has edges. Daeron can feel the place where his father’s attention had sharpened when the glove came off, the brief turn of his head, the cutting focus, the old knowledge of hands and concealment. It remains near even now, unsaid and therefore harder to answer. 

Mors notices his wife draw her cloak closer. 

The movement is slight, done without complaint, but Mors’ head turns at once. Habit again, it seems. An old reflex of his body toward hers. It is there and gone before courtesy can pretend it has not seen. 

Maekar sees it too. 

“You still hover over the poor woman." His father comments around a scoff.

Mors smiles, “She knew what she was getting.” 

“And took you anyway. I have never understood Dornish courage.” 

Mors’ smile shows teeth. He takes a breath and speaks again,  

“May we get the courtesy done with before I tell a prince of the Realm to go fuck himself?” 

Your sister lowers her head with a hand to her mouth to hide a laugh. You do not laugh, but Daeron sees the corner of your mouth shift before you master it, sees your eyes drop for a breath toward the stone. Your sister’s shoulder presses against yours once, quickly, and a whole exchange passes between you without sound. 

Baelor’s face remains serene in the heroic manner of men choosing not to hear what would require response. Your mother closes her eyes for half a moment, then opens them again with the patience of a woman who has survived nine daughters and one husband and has chosen, repeatedly over the years, not to murder the least manageable of them. 

Maekar’s mouth moves. This time, it is nearly a smile. 

A heavy hand falls on Mors Martell’s shoulder. 

“Come inside,” He says, “You have had enough of the road.” 

There is no softness in the words. Somehow they make room anyway. 

The order of the courtyard begins to loosen. Servants move first, then guards, then the gathered line of family and household reshaping itself toward the open doors. Baelor offers his arm to your mother. Mors says something to Maekar that Daeron cannot hear, his expression still bright with the insult he has not yet delivered in full. Your sister says something close to your ear. You answer quietly. 

Daeron hears none of it clearly. 

Your voice has already done its damage. It remains somewhere under his skin, not as memory exactly, not yet, but as a place where the imagined thing has lost another wall. 

His thumb presses again at the glove. 

This time he almost draws it on. 

Then your gaze drops. 

Briefly. To his hand, or the glove, or only the movement of leather in his fingers. He cannot tell. By the time your eyes lift, there is nothing in your face he knows how to read safely. 

Daeron lets the glove hang. 

The household starts toward the gallery. 

He falls into step because everyone does. Maekar moves beside him for three paces, then ahead, caught by Mors and whatever old quarrel has already begun to revive between them. The space his father leaves behind is not empty. It keeps the shape of pressure for a moment after he is gone. 

You are ahead and to the side, close to your mother and sister. Mors turns once as he walks, checking the distance between you and the rest of the party with a father’s practiced eye. Your sister leans toward you again. Your shoulder lifts slightly against the cold before the shadow of the arch takes it from the light. 

Daeron looks away. 

Under the arch, he puts the glove back on. 

The leather drags over his fingers, stiff from being crushed in his fist. He keeps walking while he works it down, while the courtyard brightness falls behind them and the cooler dimness of Summerhall opens ahead. The glove catches once at the knuckle. 

By the time they reach the gallery, his hand is covered again. 

____ 

The gallery receives you all with smoke, beeswax, and the low scrape of servants making room. 

After the courtyard, the air feels heavier. Warmer, perhaps, though not enough to convince anyone who has come from Dorne. Tapestries hang between the high windows. Old hunts, old battles, old silver-haired men making claims over land and beasts and each other. The polished floor takes the movement of the party and returns it in broken pieces: skirts, boots, cloak hems, the flash of a cup lifted from a tray. 

Daeron keeps walking until the room no longer requires him to. 

The glove is back on. 

The hand beneath it has not forgotten. 

He stands near enough to the others to remain part of the welcome and far enough that no one can accuse him of seeking notice. It is a useful distance. One he has perfected across feasts, councils, family gatherings, any room where remaining visible has been demanded of him. Close enough to answer when spoken to, but far enough to vanish one step at a time. 

A servant comes toward him with a tray. 

Wine, of course. 

Dark red, bright at the rim where the gallery light touches it. The cups are clean. The smell reaches him before the servant does, familiar enough to make his mouth remember things the rest of him has spent three days refusing. 

Daeron takes one. 

His fingers settle around the stem. Correctly. Lightly. The glove helps. The cup gives his hand a purpose, and for one grateful, humiliating breath, that is almost enough. 

He does not drink. 

Across the gallery, Mors has already found Maekar again. Or Maekar has found Mors. Their voices do not carry clearly, only the weight of them: old familiarity, old irritation, a rhythm made before Daeron was old enough to understand why men came back from war with more silence than stories. Baelor stands with your mother, gracious and attentive. Your sister remains near you at first, then turns her head at something Daella says, curiosity brightening her face. Aemon watches the younger children with the resigned patience of a boy already practicing being older than he is. 

Daeron knows where you are. 

He does not look often enough to make it obvious. He does not need to. His body has begun keeping its own account, which is inconvenient and deeply untrustworthy. You are near one of the tapestries, your attention lifted toward a scene of riders and hounds worked in faded thread. 

You are reading the house. 

Not admiring it, exactly. Daeron doubts Summerhall has earned admiration from you yet. You look at the height of the windows, the old woven dragons, the dark stone polished by hands that had no choice but to keep polishing. You warm your fingers once against your other hand and then stop, as if even the cold must be given no more acknowledgment than courtesy requires. 

Daeron brings the cup near his mouth. 

He stops before the wine touches him. 

The smell is enough. More than enough. His throat works once, badly. He lowers the cup again, and the movement is smooth because he makes it smooth, because there are still people in the room, because his father has not stopped existing simply because he is no longer standing at his shoulder. 

He should set it down.

He does not. A cup in the hand is easier to explain than an empty hand with nowhere honest to be. 

He lets the rim hover again near his mouth and looks past it, toward the safer movement of the room. Mors has drawn Maekar nearer one of the windows. Baelor and your mother are enduring with patient eyes something Aerion is saying. Your sister has been caught by Daella, or has caught Daella; and their heads bend together over some bright embroidery on a sleeve. 

You are no longer beside the tapestry. 

Daeron finds this out too late. 

The space where you had stood is empty, and by the time he understands that his eye has gone looking for you, your voice comes from nearer that it has any right to be. 

“Is it so bad?” 

Daeron turns too quickly. 

The wine shifts in the cup. Not enough to spill. Enough for him to feel the threat of it climb the side and settle back. 

You are closer than you were, head tilted to the side as you look at him with that open curiosity again. 

He should have heard you approach. Perhaps he did. The gallery is full of feet, voices, cloth; he had sorted the sounds into harmlessness because none of them had yet required him to answer. Now you stand just beyond the reach of his arm, your sister no longer between you, your hands gathered lightly before you as if you have done nothing more alarming than ask a question. 

“The house?” He asks, confused. 

Your eyes move to the cup. Only briefly. 

“The wine.” 

Daeron looks down at it, as though the object has betrayed him by remaining in his hand. 

“Ah,” It is a poor answer. Unfortunately, it is the only one immediately available. Your gaze returns to his face. Patient, or simply waiting, he cannot tell the difference yet. He clears his throat and amends with, “It has an excellent reputation.” 

Your eyes narrow a fraction in response. 

“That was not my question.” 

“No,” His thumb shifts along the stem. “It was not.” 

The cup is too visible now. Before, it had been a thing to hold. Under your attention, it becomes a confession with a polished rim. 

He almost drinks to ruin the observation. 

The impulse is quick and mean and gone before his hand obeys it. His mouth remains clean. The wine remains where it is. 

“It depends,” Daeron says at last, eyes still on the dark red liquid, “on what one asks of it.” 

You look at him a moment longer. 

“And what do you ask of it?” 

Nothing, he thinks. 

Everything. 

To blur the edges. To quiet the dreams. To make his father’s voice less sharp in the memory of a room. To make the hand he had uncovered in the courtyard belong to someone else. To make this conversation possible and unnecessary at once. 

The cup rests steadily in his hand. A miracle of leather and terror. 

“At present?” He says, choosing against reason and self-preservation to answer with truth, “To make me look occupied.” 

Something shifts in your face. 

Not laughter. Not yet. Only the faintest softening around the attention you have fixed on him, as if the answer has not been what you expected and has therefore earned a second look. 

“It is doing very well.” You comment, a hint of something in your eyes. Daeron’s mouth nearly betrays him. 

He lowers the cup.  

“I would hate to overburden it.” 

That almost does it. He sees the edge of your smile before you tuck it away, sees the decision to remain composed pass across your face and settle. You glance aside, toward the nearest woven hunt, and the smile is gone by the time you look back. 

The loss of it irritates him. 

The wanting of it irritates him more. 

A servant passes close with another tray. Voices lift near the far end of the gallery; Baelor says something that draws a warmer answer from your mother. Mors’s laugh cuts through once, low and pleased, before Maekar says something too quiet for Daeron to hear. The room is moving around them, closing and opening in small, temporary arrangements. 

Daeron could step back now. 

He could make some remark about refreshment, about the journey, about the honor of receiving your family. He could return himself to the edge of the room and spend the rest of the afternoon being correct enough that no one could complain without seeming cruel. 

Instead he says, “There are better things in Summerhall than the wine.” 

Your eyes return to him. 

“Are there?” 

A fair question. Cruel only because it is fair. 

“A few.” He admits, choosing again truth despite what his better instincts ask of him. 

He looks toward the length of the gallery, toward the tapestries and the high windows and the carved screen beyond which a colder corridor turns toward the inner gardens. Not private, nothing so dangerous as private. Only quieter than the center of the room, with enough open space and enough watching eyes to satisfy propriety. 

“May I show you?” 

The question sounds almost courtly. 

His hand knows better. His mouth knows better. The cup knows better, untouched and accusing in his grip.

“Yes,” You answer. “You may.” 

Daeron inclines his head. 

He does not offer his arm. The impulse comes and is denied before it can reach the body. The hand he would use still remembers yours too clearly, and the other holds the wine he has not drunk. So he turns instead, slowly enough for you to fall into step beside him if you choose. 

You do. 

The gallery sound thins as you move away from the largest cluster of voices. Not gon, never gone. Only softened by distance, by tapestry, by the mercy of other people pretending not to watch. 

Daeron walks with the cup in his hand and the taste of nothing in his mouth. Beside him, you are quiet. 

Daeron stops before a tapestry because it is the nearest thing that can bear the weight of intention. 

That is the first failure of his offer. 

He had said there were better things in Summerhall than the wine, and you had believed him enough to come. Or not believed him, perhaps. Perhaps only accepted the movement, the courtesy, the excuse to step away from the center of the room. Either way, you are standing beside him now, and Daeron discovers, with humiliating clarity and entirely too late, that he had not meant better things in any honest or useful sense. 

He had meant, more than he’d like to admit, to say stay near enough that I can keep your attention a moment longer. He had meant, selfishly, do not go back to your sister or anyone else yet. 

None of that can be shown to you, and so, he has brought you to a hunting scene. 

Three men on horseback, six hounds, a boar with its head lowered in doomed and stubborn fury. The men have all been given the same noble face by some dead weaver with either no imagination or too much loyalty. The hounds look more alive than their masters. 

Daeron looks at it for one breath too long. 

“This,” he says, “is one of the better things?” 

The words escape him as a question before he can force them to sound like a statement. 

You turn your face toward the tapestry. Your shoulder is near his, though not close enough to touch. The cup remains in his hand, dark and patient, the wine held steady by the force of his attention. 

You study the hunting scene with more seriousness than it deserves. 

“The boar seems unconvinced.” 

“It may have been ambitious of me to say plural.” 

Your mouth curves. 

Only a little. Enough. 

Daeron feels the small movement before he knows what to do with it. It is not the smile from the courtyard, not the one that had belonged to your sister and the carriage and the private country of your family. This one happens here, in Summerhall, beside him, because he has done and said something foolish and you have chosen, for reasons not yet available to him, not to punish it. 

The cup turns slightly in his grip. 

He looks back at the tapestry. 

“The hounds are the best part.” You say, an attempt at drawing something from the dull scene woven before you that even you seem unconvinced of. 

“They usually are.” 

“Do you hunt?” 

“No,” The answer comes too quickly. Your gaze shifts to him. Daeron keeps his eyes on the wall. “I have been taken hunting. That is not the same thing.” 

“No?” 

“One requires enthusiasm.” 

“And the other?” 

“Fathers. Brothers.” 

This time your smile stays a moment longer. 

The room continues behind you. Voices, softened by distance. Mors’s laugh somewhere near the windows. Your sister answering Daella, or being answered by her. A servant moving past with a tray of cups. The whole warm shape of the gallery bends around the two of you without closing. Nothing improper, nothing private. Only a quieter edge of the same room. 

Daeron should let the conversation remain there. 

Hounds, boars, bad tapestries. Harmless things. 

Your attention is on him now, though, and there is no good place to put it. It does not feel like the attention of the courtyard. There is no rank in it, no public weight. You are only listening, and the simplicity of it unsettles him more than ceremony had. 

He lifts the cup, remembers, lowers it again. 

“You should not mistake me for a good guide.” 

The words come out controlled. Almost easy. 

You look back at the tapestry for a heartbeat, a furrow between your brows. “Around Summerhall?” 

“Generally,” A pause follows. Small enough for him to step over. He does not. “I know where the wine is kept, I know which doors are easiest to leave by. That is usually the extent of my usefulness in a house. I am…fond of making poor choices.” 

The cup feels heavier after that. 

There. Some ugly little truth placed between you. Useful, perhaps. Owed, perhaps. 

He is not sure what he wants it to do. He knows what it ought to do. There should be a clean satisfaction in warning you, in giving you some early proof of the thing his father had tried to dress in courtesy and marriage contracts. 

There is no satisfaction. 

You are quiet. 

Daeron lets the silence punish him because it is easier than looking to see what shape your face has made of his words. 

Then you say, “This seems like one.” 

He turns his head. 

“What does?” 

“Telling me.” 

Your voice is mild. Too mild for accusation, too observant for comfort. 

Daeron looks at you then. 

There is something stubborn in your attention now, a small resistance he does not know what to do with. He has the sudden, unpleasant sense that you have seen the outline of what he is doing and taken offense at the method. 

“Yes.” He says. The honesty costs less than pretending not to understand. 

He looks back at the tapestry. The boar is still dying. The hounds are still alive. The hunters still have their flat, heroic faces, unchanged by anything occurring beneath them. 

“One of the poorer ones,” He adds. “I thought you should have proof.” 

Your brows lift. Daeron hears himself continue and can do nothing to stop it, 

“I do try to be thorough.” 

You laugh. 

It is small at first, caught low in your throat, then clear enough to become itself. Not loud. Not careless. Alive. The sound slips past the tapestry and the polished floor and the low voices of the room, and reaches him with the force of a hand closing around his ribs. 

Daeron looks at you. 

He cannot help it. 

He knows this now. 

The thought arrives strangely, almost cold in its certainty. He now knows the sound of your laughter. Not as rumor, not as something carried by your sister, not as part of the warm country of your family where he has no place. Here. beside him. Because of him. 

At him, perhaps. With him, perhaps. The distinction does not matter and does nto save him. 

The laugh changes your face too quickly for court to make use of it. Your eyes brighten. Your mouth opens around the last of it. For one breath there is no carriage, no formal line, no father placing daughter beside son, no cup of wine being held like evidence. There is only the fact that you have laughed because of him. 

His mouth answers before he permits it, and at it curves a smile.

You see it, of course you do. 

The want comes so suddenly he has no time to make it decent. Again. Not as a word, not even as thought. Only the body’s immediate, humiliating reach toward repetition. To hear that sound again. To be the cause of it again. To keep it somewhere no dream can spoil and no cup can blur. 

His hand tightens around the stem. The wine moves. 

He does not look down. 

Your laughter fades, though not all at once. Some part of it remains at the corner of your mouth while you look at him, as if the sound has left a little warmth behind and neither of you has yet decided what to do with it. 

Daeron stays there one breath too long. 

The room finds him again by degrees: voices near the windows, the scrape of a tray, Mors speaking low enough for Maekar alone. Then the sense of being watched settles between his shoulders 

Across the gallery, Maekar is looking at you. 

His father’s face gives nothing away. His eyes move from your face, still caught around the last of your laughter, to Daeron’s. 

There is no command in it, no visible anger. Nothing so simple. 

Daeron lowers his eyes to the wine. His hand has tightened around the cup. The surface trembles once, then settles. 

It remains untouched. 

The button will not go through. 

Daeron stares at it for a moment, as if it had made a choice. A small pearl thing, smooth and harmless, caught against the slit of his cuff with all the stubbornness of a castle gate. His fingers hold it badly, that is the trouble. They hold everything badly this morning. 

He tries again. 

Misses. 

“Fuck.” He breathes. 

The word makes the room no less quiet. His chambers at Summerhall remain as they have been since dawn: curtains drawn back, basin water gone cold, coat laid readily across the chair, boots polished by someone with more faith in the day than Daeron has ever possessed. On the side table, where a better man might keep correspondence or flowers or some harmless token of civilized living, stands a decanter of wine and a clean cup beside it. 

The cup remains empty. 

That seems important in a way he dislikes. A full cup would accuse him of weakness, but an empty one accuses him of something far worse. 

Daeron looks away. 

Three days without wine have not made him better. They have only made him easier to find, to see. 

His hands know it, trembling and imprecise. His stomach knows it, tied in knots and threatening to turn on him. The thin skin around his eyes knows it, tender with the pressure of too little sleep. His mouth is dry enough that his tongue feels ill-fitted to it. Beneath his clean shirt, sweat gathers where there should be none. Every sound comes too sharply, every line of light too cleanly, as if the world has been scrubbed of mercy while he was not looking. 

He has done this before. That is the irritating part. If this were the first attempt, he might have been able to find some dignity in it. Men always liked beginnings, they make for good songs afterward. A first effort, a first step, a first brave march. 

This is not that. 

Daeron has counted hours before. He has counted mornings. He has counted how long his hands could be made to obey before the shaking gave him away. Once, he lasted long enough to become briefly, stupidly, proud, which had made the first cup afterward taste almost like punishment. 

He has failed enough times to know better than to name this anything. 

Still, the cup remains empty. 

He takes the cuff again, slower this time. Slowness does not help, it only makes the tremor easier to see. His fingers work the button, miss once more, then finally force it through. 

There. A victory fit for songs. 

Daeron flexes his hand and watches the tremor return as soon as the task is done. Small, not yet violent, not enough to excuse himself from anything. 

The Martells will arrive before long. 

His betrothed will arrive before long. 

The thought should be simple. A fact of the day, no more intimate than the weather. The eldest daughter of Prince Mors Martell is coming to Summerhall with her father, her mother, and at least one of eight sisters, though Daeron knows better than to admit how certain he is of that last detail. 

There is very little dignity in having sought to know the number of a woman’s sisters when she has not been the one to tell him. 

He did not ask his father. There are questions a man could only ask if he trusts the answer not to be used against him, and Daeron has never been quite that drunk in Maekar’s presence. He has learned in pieces instead. A servant speaking too freely. A visiting Dornishman correcting another man’s mistake within earshot. Daella, bright-eyed and pleased to know something her brother did not, repeating half a conversation she overheard from some lady who had no business speaking near children. Egg, with all the solemn importance of a boy entrusted with espionage, informing him that the Water Gardens have pools enough to make Summerhall look mean and dusty by comparison. 

Daeron did laugh at that. Too late, probably. He does that sometimes. Smiles too quickly, laughs too late, answers before he knows which face he meant to wear. Sobriety has left him badly timed, arriving had a breath before or after himself. 

Still, he listened. 

Your name. Your father’s name. Eldest daughter. Raised in the Water Gardens. A sister close enough in age to be brought north with you. A mother still living. A household warm enough, if rumor has any use, to send daughters into the world with more brightness around them than fear. 

Fragments. 

Enough to imagine, not enough to know. 

That is exactly the place shame has chosen to live in. 

Daeron turns from the mirror before he can meet his own eyes. He sees enough in passing: collar straight, skin pale, hair made nearly respectable, the hollowed look no water could wash out of his face. Wine does not make him less ruined, he is aware of that, but at least it gives the ruin somewhere to blur. Without it, every part of him sists too close to the surface. 

And he has already thought of you too often from below the surface of himself. 

Not properly, not cleanly. Not as a man ought to think of the woman being sent across half the realm to marry him. He had thought of you in rooms where no decent man would have brought a stranger, much less a future wife. In taverns, in borrowed beds, in the bruised hours after touch had become something done to him and then taken away. He has thought of you as light under a closed door, as warmth behind glass, as a hand he has no right to imagine reaching for him. 

Stay, some ruined part of him has thought, without deciding what the word means. 

Stay through the night, stay through the shaking, stay when the dreams come, stay after finding out what his father has given you. Stay, as if staying were something one could as of a stranger and not another kind of indecency. 

He has not asked. That matters, he has enough shame left to know it matters. 

But he has imagined it. 

That is perhaps the first of many wrongs he has done onto you, and you have not crossed the yard yet. 

His hand twitches toward the side table before has given it permission. 

Daeron stills. 

The decanter waits. Dark glass, darker wine. A simple arrangement: lift, pour, drink, and the morning will soften at the edges. His hands would become less visibly treacherous, his mouth would stop feeling like old linen, his eyes would lose some of that awful clarity. By the time his father sends for him, he might become almost convincing. 

Too easy. Too familiar. 

Too early to begin disappointing a stranger. 

That is all the explanation he can bear, so he keeps it. Courtesy, perhaps. Pride, if one wished to be generous. Spite, if one wished to be more accurate. His father has arranged the stage again, selected the witnesses, set the morning in motion, and Daeron has no doubt he is expected to arrive already guilty of something. 

He has altered only one thing. 

The stage will not see him enter drunk. 

A knock comes at the door. 

Daeron’s fingers curl once at his side before he opens them again. 

“Prince Daeron,” Comes the servant’s voice from the other side of the closed door, “Prince Maekar requests you in his study.” 

Of course he does. 

For a moment, Daeron looks back at the side table. The empty cup remains beside the decanter, clean and patient and horrible. He thinks, absurdly, that someone might see it after he leaves. That someone might understand what it means to leave it that way. 

The wanting of credit is so pathetic it nearly makes him laugh. 

He does not laugh. He crosses the room instead. 

His coat sits properly over his shoulders. His collar does not choke him, regardless of what his body believes. His hair was passable, if quite the wrong shade for his blood. His breath is clean. His hands are still his hands, unfortunately, but there is no helping that. 

When he opens the door, he knows the servants sees a pale prince dressed well enough for ceremony and smiling a little too quickly. 

Daeron gives him no answer, there is nothing to say that would not come out wrong. 

The cup remains empty behind him. 

By the time he reaches his father’s door, his hands are already clasped behind his back. 

It is not enough to still them. He knows that before he knocks. The tremor has a will of its own this morning, small and spiteful, running beneath the skin as if his body has learned to whisper against him. But behind his back the evidence becomes less immediate, less available. A private disgrace, if there is such a thing left in him. 

He knocks. Maekar bids him enter. 

His father looks up from the desk, and Daeron has the sour, childish thought that he should have drunk after all. Not because wine would have made the room kinder; wine does not make rooms kind, wine only teaches the walls to stand further away. 

But it might have made his father’s eyes less exact. 

Maekar sees the collar first, perhaps. The clean coat. The straight line of him. Then his gaze lowers, briefly, to the hands hidden behind Daeron’s back. 

There. 

Daeron clasps them harder. 

His spine straightens before he gives it permission. His mouth finds a smile too quickly, polished and thin and almost certainly wrong for the moment. He knows it is wrong because he feels it arrive before feeling anything worth smiling about. 

That happens now. Smiles too early, laughter too late, answers hald a breath before the thought that should have shaped them. 

“You sent for me.” 

Maekar’s eyes return to his face. 

Daeron cannot tell if his father knows. That might be the worst of it. 

If Maekar knows he has not drunk, then he has decided not to name it. If he does not know, then Daeron is simply this wretched in his natural state. Pale, shaking, sharp-mouthed, and arranged badly around an absence. 

Neither possibility improves the room. 

“The Martells are soon to arrive,” His father tells him instead, “You will meet them properly.” 

Daeron let one brow lift, “I had intended a bow, at least.” 

The scowl on his father’s brow only deepens. 

“A bow is the least of it. You will stand in the yard when they arrive. You will be in the gallery after. You will sit at supper, you will answer when spoken to, you will not make my brother lie to pretend your impertinence is charm.” 

A neat list. Daeron has always admired his father’s talent for making disaster sound administrable. 

“So, not merely a bow.” 

Something hardens in Maekar’s face. Not much. Maekar has never needed much. 

“No running. No hiding. No vanishing into whatever fucking inn has learned your name this month.” 

The words land line a strike, and for a breath he thinks he would have preferred one. 

He is here. that is the first answer, the stupid one, the child’s answer. He is standing in front of his father with clean breath and a dry mouth and his hands shaking behind his back because he has spent three days refusing the thing his body and the fire waiting behind close lids are still asking for. He is here, precisely where he has been told to be, waiting to meet the woman he has pitied and imagined and wronged before she has even crossed the yard. He is here, and he is scared of what this means, of what this will ask of him and he will fail to do or be. 

I am here, he nearly says. 

The words rise so plainly that he has to bury them under an insolent smile, and a quick retort of, 

“I generally wait until after the first course before making a run for it.” 

“This is precisely the kind of insolence I am warning you against.” 

“I thought you liked precision.” 

“I like sons who do not make sport of their own disgrace.” 

The words of through him more cleanly than they should. 

His hands tighten behind his back. Thumb into palm, nail into skin. A place to put the answer, a place to put the small, humiliating thing inside him that still wants to be recognized. 

I have not drunk. 

There. Smaller than a plea, worse thana. Plea. A fact so pathetic he can hardly bear that it matters to him. 

I have not drunk. 

I am trying. 

I am still here, under all of it. 

Daeron looks at his father and imagines saying it. He imagines the words in the room, naked and insufficient. He images Maekar’s face then: anger, perhaps, disbelief; worse, understanding. 

No. 

No, he will not offer his father that. He will not stand in Maekar’s study asking to be praised for arriving sober to the ruin arranged for him. 

So he gives the room something sharper. 

“A rare breed,” Daeron says, “You should have had more of them.” 

Maekar stills. Good, Daeron thinks, and knows at once there is nothing good in it. 

“Do not make a fucking joke of this.” 

“That was not my intention.” 

“No,” Maekar says, “Your intentions are usually worse.” 

There it is again, the old shape of the room. Maekar’s anger, Daeron’s mouth, the small bitter satisfaction of proving a man right before he can finish accusing him. 

It would be easier if his father were cruel. 

Daeron has had that thought before, and thinks it again now with no more justice than he did the first time. Cruelty would be simple, cruelty would allow for hatred cleanly given and cleanly kept. Maekar is not cruel. He is disappointed, impatient, proud, brutal, but he is not cruel. He is a father, trying in whatever hard-handed fashion he trusts, to keep his son from becoming worse than he already is. 

Daeron knows that. 

Daeron hates his father for making it impossible to hate him honestly. 

“That is fortunate,” He answers instead of anything more honest, “That no one troubled himself with my intentions.” 

“You were told of the match, boy.” 

Yes, he had been told. Daeron had been told of a match. A letter, a name, a House. A daughter of Dorne to be placed beside him in whatever shape the realm required. It had been possible, then, to make the thing abstract, to hold it at a distance, to think of seals and bloodlines and old debts of war instead of a woman with dust on the hem of her dress and a life still warm behind her. 

The distance is gone. 

Somewhere below, somewhere beyond the ordered stone of Summerhall, a Martell caravan is drawing nearer with every breath he wastes in his father’s study. It carries Mors Martell’s eldest daughter. A woman with eight sisters, if Daella’s bright little thefts and Egg’s solemn reports can be trusted. A woman raised at the Water Gardens, among pools and children and heat and the easy noise of a life Daeron has never known how to enter without ruining. 

You will miss it. The thought arrives with such certainty that it feels les like pity than indictment. 

You will miss the Water Gardens. You will miss your sisters. You will miss the sun that had known you first, the courtyards, the voices, the belonging. Summerhall will be too pale, too still, too full of ghosts that are not yours. You will hate it, perhaps. Or worse, you will be cou8rteous about hating it and endure it. 

And he will be there, the reason for all that loss, standing sober and shaking in a room where his father has the gall to speak as if warning had made anything about this merciful. 

Dorne’s sun, someone had called you once. Or one of its suns. Daeron does not remember the face of who spoke enough to remember the exact words. A courtier speaking too freely, perhaps. A Dornishman warmed by wine. Daella repeating something she had not understood with all the careless accuracy of a child. 

He remembers it now and resents his father for it. 

For giving him a sun and expecting him not to darken it. 

His smile sharpens. 

“I was told of a match. I was not aware I had become a problem that required Dornish assistance.” 

“Do not speak of her as if she were being sent here to scrape you clean.” 

“Is she not?” 

“If I thought a whore would serve you better,” Maekar barks, “I would not have troubled Dorne.” 

For one breath, Daeron’s wrist remembers a hand. 

It is not memory, not properly. Only pressure, sudden and vile in its precision, closing around bone. His fingers flex behind his back before he can stop them. The room remains Maekar’s study, the light remains morning. His father stands before him. No one touches him. 

Still, his body has never been a reliable historian. 

It has been used too many ways to keep an honest account. By others, by himself. As escape, as punishment, as proof that he could still be wanted in some shape if not any shape worth keeping. He has gone to strangers because thought became unbearable, he has let hands make decisions for him because wanting nothing was easier when someone else wanted enough for moth, he has woken afterward with disgust in his mouth and no clean place to put it. 

Whore. 

The word lands not as accusation, but as inventory. Daeron smiles because his ace has always been more obedient than the rest of him. 

There are words a man can survive by making them ridiculous. That is not one of them. Not today, not with his skin too close to the air and his mouth clean enough that shame has nothing to hide behind. 

Daeron’s smile remains. That is something, at least. 

“Touching of you,” He says, “To trouble an entire principality on my behalf.” 

“I troubled a man I trust, ” Trust. Daeron could laugh at that, if the timing of him were better. Trust is everywhere in this match, Placed on his father, your father, you most likely. All that trust, arranged around Daeron like scaffolding around a collapsing wall. None of it placed on him. Maekar continues, “A man who trusts me, enough to bestow his favorite daughter to you.” 

Favorite. The word sits badly in the room. 

Daeron knows, suddenly, that he did not know this. Not properly. He knows you are the eldest, he knows you have sisters, he knows you were raised in the Water Gardens because Daella repeats things too prettily to suspect how useful they are and Egg cannot keep secrets to himself when he thinks he has acquired them in service of a brother. He knows fragments gathered without dignity and kept without permission. 

But not this. 

Favorite daughter. 

Someone’s favorite daughter is crossing the realm to meet him. 

For one moment, absurdly, Daeron wonders what it is like to be named that by anyone. Favorite. The thought is so young and stupid that contempt rises at once to beat it bloody. 

“His favorite.” He repeats 

“Yes.” 

“Then his judgement is poorer than you remember.” 

His father’s hand tightens once at his side. 

Daeron sees it because he is watching for the hit, bracing for it. He is always watching for the hit, even when the blow is only a word and even when he has invited it. 

Maekar does not strike. That, too, is almost worse. 

“Her Grace, your grandmother, has written,” His father says instead, “She expects her kin to be received with honor befitting of her.” 

“Kin?” He asks. 

“Her Grace’s brother is Prince of Dorne. This girl is his granddaughter.” 

“So, kin.” 

“Not close enough to trouble a septon.” 

“Few things are, in this family.” 

Maekar glares at him, and Daeron inclines his head. Apology without repentance, a courtly form he learned quite young. 

“Myriah knows something of leaving Dorne for a Targaryen court, which is what your betrothed is doing.” His father continues. 

The insolence in him shifts, not gone but altered. 

“Summerhall is not King’s Landing.”  

“Fuck, no.” 

For one strange moment, they agree, they share something. 

Daeron dislikes it more than he expects to. Anger has rules. Agreement leaves too many doors open. There is a shared thing between them suddenly, small and unpleasantly alive: the knowledge of that city, of its polished rot, of its teeth under silk, of the way it turns women into history and men into witnesses. Summerhall has ghosts enough of its own, but it is not that. 

Maekar looks away first. 

“Her father is a good man.” 

“I know.” 

“No. You know his name, I know the man,” Daeron concedes with a gesture of his hands he hardly means. “I know what he was when men were dying around him, what was left when rank and pretty words had no use. He returned to Dorne with his honor intact.” 

“A rare habit.” 

“Yes,” His father agrees, “Rarer than it ought to be.” 

Daeron looks away first this time. 

“Mors left a daughter at home when he marched against the Blackfyre rebels, as I left you and your brother,” Maekar tells him, pushing on as always, “He swore he would get back to her if he had to crawl through every godsforsaken mile of the Reach to do it.” 

“And did he?” 

“He did.” 

Of course he did.  

Men in his father’s stories often do. They return form war, they keep honor intact, they crawl through godsforsaken miles for daughters who run to them. They make themselves into the kind of men other men can trust. 

“He got back. To himself, to them,” His father insists, with all the subtlety of a ramming rod. “And he stayed long enough for them, for her, to believe in him again.” 

Daeron’s eyes move before he can stop them. 

Not quite a flinch, not enough to name. Enough for Maekar to see, perhaps. Enough for Daeron to hate himself for offering it. 

Stayed. 

The word finds him too easily. 

Stay through the night. Stay when the dreams begin. Stay after discovering what has been given to you. Stay, as if staying were simply because men in stories made it home at the end. 

His father is still speaking of Mors Martell, he knows, but you have become brighter in Daeron’s mind with every word. Not more known, but certainly less mercifully imagined. A daughter with a father who returned, a household that expected return and received it. A woman loved loudly enough that the word favorite can be said of her in a study half a world away. 

Poor thing, Daeron thinks again, and this time the pity has teeth. 

“Your mother had no easy husband.” Maekar says, startling him. 

The room changes. 

Not visibly, nothing as generous as that. The desk remains where it is, the folded letter remains. His father remains before him, hard-eyed and living. But something in Daeron goes young so quickly it feels like falling. 

Dyanna. 

They do not speak of her. 

Not really, not Maekar, not Daeron. Others can say her name and have it mean something reverent, something missed, something free of jagged edges and things unsaid. Aemon can speak of her gently. Rhae has nothing to remember and nothing to miss. Daella can remember fragments and make them bright because children are allowed to keep the dead in color. Egg knows her more as absence than as mother. Aerion makes everything too sharp and brutal to be trusted with grief. 

But Maekar and Daeron do not speak of her. 

They had known her the longest, and perhaps that is part of the trouble. Between them there is too much mother, too much wife, too much woman once living enough to make breakfast matter and Summerhall alive. Too much of the night she died and the days before it and the dream Daeron understood too late. 

He had seen something before she died. He thinks he might have told his father, once. 

He didn’t see anything clearly. Nothing is ever given to him clearly enough to save anyone. That is the Gods’ little cruelty. Fire without translation, blood without date, a door closing somewhere inside sleep. He had woken afraid and useless for months, and only later, after his mother’s body had become still and the house had changed its breathing, he understood what the dream had meant. 

His father is still looking at him, something haunted in his gaze. 

“That did not excuse me from trying to be better than I was.” Maekar says. 

Daeron’s response comes lightly. Too lightly. 

“I’m sure she appreciated the effort.” 

He knows, the moment the words leave him, that they have gone where he meant them to go. He also knows that he means them. 

Not at Dyanna, never at her. The thought of his mother hearing him say something like this makes something in him recoil. No, the cruelty is for Maekar, because his father brought her into the room as proof, as lesson, as one more dead thing Daeron is meant to stand straighter beneath. 

Maekar’s face alters. Only slightly. His father, ever the soldier, pushes again regardless, 

“She deserved more than effort.” 

Yes, Daeron thinks. She did. 

They all do. 

He says nothing. 

There are answers too honest to survive the air. He could say that his mother deserved a son who had known what his dreams meant before the world made meaning of them for him. He could say she deserved sons who did not become drunkards or monsters or boys trying so desperately to become men before tenderness can find them. He could say his father deserved to have kept the one person who might have given him more than fire and blood, more than war. 

He says nothing because silence, unlike truth, can sometimes be mistaken for restraint. 

“So will your wife.”  

Daeron recoils. 

Not visibly, or he hopes not visibly at least. But something in him pulls back with the instinctual, animal certainty of a hand drawn away from flame before pain has made itself known. 

Wife. 

The word should not be able to touch him. You are not in the room, not yet in the yard even. You are still road dust and rumor, a name gathered from other people’s mouths, a woman carried closer by horses and duty and whatever trust Mors Martell has been foolish enough to place in Maekar’s household. 

But the word finds you anyway. 

It finds the shameful places where Daeron has already imagined you staying. It finds the rooms where he had no right to bring even the thought of you. It finds the small, ruined hope of a hand that does not leave, a body that remains beside his through the night, a voice that does not sour when the dreams make a coward of him. 

Wife makes that hope uglier. Wife gives it walls, witnesses, obligation.  

Wife makes staying sound less like mercy and more like something that might be done to you. 

“Not my wife yet.” 

The correction comes too quickly, too sharply. 

As if he can spare you by refusing the word, as if the distance between betrothed and wife is wide enough to hide you from him. 

“She will be,” His father sentences. A breath, and he adds, “You will not shame her.” 

Daeron’s smile returns before he can choose a wiser face. 

“There he is.” 

“Do not.”  

“I was beginning to worry we had wandered into sentiment.” 

“I said do not.”  

The words should frighten him more than they do. Perhaps they would, on another morning. Perhaps wine would give them more weight. Instead Daeron only feels the old tired shape of it: his father warning him against becoming the very thing everyone already sees. 

“She is not being sent here to watch you rot,” Maekar says, “She is not being dragged from Dorne so you can make a tragedy of yourself in front of an audience.” 

“No,” Daeron retorts, “I expect that would be discourteous.” 

“Seven Hells, Daeron.” 

His name in his father’s mouth is rough enough to make his hands tighten again. 

It would be easier if Maekar only hated him. 

It would be easier if Daeron did not know, somewhere under anger and under shame, that his father is trying to put a hand between him and the edge the way he would put his hand over the edge of a table during Egg’s first stumbling steps. 

A hard hand, a soldier’s hand, a hand that grips too tightly and calls the bruise rescue. 

Still a hand. 

That is what makes Daeron want to pull away until bone shows.  

“You think you are the first man to close his eyes and see fire?” Maekar asks, mouth turned into a snarl. 

Daeron goes very still. 

There are things his father has no right to touch. 

The thought comes hot, immediate, almost clean. No right. No right to make the dreams into war, into discipline, into something men survive because men are expected to survive all manner of useful horrors. No right to place his own ghosts over Daeron’s and call them the same shape. 

And yet. 

Maekar knows fire. Maekar knows men dying. Maekar knows what it is to wake with violence lodged beneath the skin. That is why the line wounds more deeply than ignorance would have. His father knows enough. 

No, Daeron wants to say. But I think I am the only man in this room who cannot tell whether the fire is memory, warning, punishment, or madness. 

He does not say it. 

To explain the dreams is to make them smaller and more monstrous at once. To speak them aloud is to invite the maester’s dry concern, Baelor’s pity, Maekar’s discipline, Aerion’s too-bright interest. To say, I see things, and sometimes they come true, is to become either liar, lunatic, or tragedy. 

Daeron has never decided which one would be worst. 

“Men live with it,” His father continues, and Daeron thinks of the men that died against Maekar’s shield wall in the Redgrass Field. “They stand. They do what is required of them.” 

Daeron’s smile returns slowly.  “A comforting philosophy.” 

“It is not mean to comfort you.” 

“Good,” He concedes with a tired attempt at a shrug, “Not much does.” 

That one comes too close to truth, he feels it as soon as it leaves him, that little exposed nerve of a sentence. Not enough to take back, but too much to look at. 

For a moment, neither of them speaks. 

Outside the study, Summerhall continues arranging itself around the arrival. Footsteps pass in the corridor, somewhere below a servant calls for someone to move with more care. The household is becoming ceremony. Daeron can feel it, the great machine of welcome turning its gears, and the center of it a woman he has not met is being carried closer by every moment he spends in the room. 

A woman whose name he knows. 

A woman whose sisters he has learned by theft and accident. 

A woman he has imagined most often when he least deserved to imagine anything good. 

His hands shake behind his back. 

“You can change,” Maekar states, solemn and so, so tired. 

Daeron looks at him. 

The amusement comes by habit, but it cannot quite make it to his mouth. 

There it is. Not the dig at his vices, not the warnings, not even his mother.  

This is worse, because some part of Daeron, the weakest and least dignified part, wants the words. 

You can change. 

He wants them as if they are absolution. As if his father has found whatever remains of him under the rot and named it something living. As if three days without wine, one empty cup, one clean breath, one morning spent buttoning cuffs with treacherous fingers might count as the beginning of a man and not merely the delay of a failure. 

He almost says it then. 

I have not drunk. 

Not proudly, not even defensively. More like a hand lifted from underwater. 

I have not drunk. 

I swear, I am trying. 

There is something still here. 

But Maekar’s face is hard with hope stricken into command, and Daeron knows what the words would become once spoken. Small, begging, insufficient. A son asking his father to notice that he has managed, for three days, not to pour himself into a cup nor lose himself to madness. 

He cannot bear it. 

So he says nothing. 

“You will change,” Maekar insists again, “Gods be damned.” 

There is no room in it for the thing Daeron has already done, no room for the shame of it, no room for the wanting of it. Only the future, sharpened into order and placed against his throat like a blade. 

Outside, a horn sounds from the yard. 

The Martells have arrived. 

Daeron turns his head toward the sound because it is easier than looking at his father. 

For one moment, the desire for wine comes so violently that it is nearly physical. Not taste, not pleasure, just…relief. The empty cup in his chambers returns to him with hideous clarity: clean, patient, waiting beside the decanter as if he has only postponed the inevitable. 

Then the horn sounds again. 

You are here. 

Terror replaces thirst so completely that he almost laughs. 

When he looks back at Maekar, the smile has found its proper place again. Bright, brittle, a little too sharp. 

“Then I suppose,” He says, “I should go and begin improving.”  

Maekar does not answer gently. Daeron never expected him to. 

“See that you do.” 

Daeron bows because ceremony has uses, it gives the body something to do while the rest of him decides whether to fall apart. 

He leaves the study. 

The door closes behind him, and for a moment the corridor is empty enough to be merciful. 

Then his hands come forward. 

They are worse now, or perhaps he only hates them more. The tremor moves visibly through the fingers, delicate as a secret and twice as damning. He looks at them for one breath, two, then reaches inside his coat. 

The glove are folded where he placed them earlier and pretended not to know why. 

Leather over the hands, courtesy over the shaking. A prince’s hands arranged neatly over whatever lives beneath him. 

He pulls the first glove on too hard. The leather catches at his knuckles. He tugs until the fit is smooth, until his fingers look steadier than they are. The second follows, tighter, better. 

By the time he starts toward the stairs, his hands are covered, his smile is ready, and every exposed thing in him has learned, for the moment, how to stand. 

His mother’s letter had arrived three days before the Martells. 

It sat on Maekar’s desk, opened and closed and then opened again, for three days. It sits there now, parchment gone soft after so many folds and refolds over the same creases. His mother’s hand remained neat despite her age, Dornish in its confidence, queenly in its restraint, and motherly in its infuriating ability to make a son feel thirteen again with a few lines of ink. 

She expects her kin to be received with warmth, with honor.  

That had been the shape of most of it. Courtesy. Or warning, if one had the sense to read a mother properly. Myriah Martell had become Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, gave her husband four sons, but she had never ceased being a daughter of Dorne. She had learned the ways of King’s Landing, endured its courtesies, its damp, its rot; but he knew even without her reminder that her heart belonged to Sunspear. 

The girl on her way to Summerhall is no granddaughter of Myriah’s blood, not close enough for a septon to trouble himself over, anyhow. Her Grace’s brother is Prince Maron of Dorne, and so the Prince’s granddaughter is kin in the way all Martells are kin when they are sent northward into halls built for dragons and men pretending fire can replace the sun. 

No one needs to tell Maekar what his mother means by honor, by warmth. 

Receive her properly. Do not let your house swallow her whole. 

Myriah wrote a few additional lines meant for Daeron. Maekar read them once, then again, then left the paper where it was, because what the fuck is he supposed to do with the softness laid in it? 

Be patient with her, my boy, the Queen wrote. Dorne is not easily replaced, and no woman raised beneath its sun leaves it and forgets it. She will miss what she has left. Let her. 

Then, beneath that, in a small hand: 

Do not despair of it either. A woman may come to love the life made for her and still hold dear the life she left. I pray, in time, that she may look upon the road that brought her to you and find nothing in it she would alter. 

His mother, apparently, believes there is still something in Daeron that could be trusted with another person’s homesickness. 

That is the part that sits poorly with him. Not because he wishes to disbelieve it, because the Gods know he doesn’t. Disbelief would certainly be easier, Maekar was good at it, was practiced at dressing it like discipline. It would have been easier to look at his eldest son, see the wine, the inns, the whores, the vanishing acts, the insolent mouth sharpened against every hand held toward him in an offer or a strike, and called the matter settled. 

Many days, he did. 

Then Daeron would look up too quickly at some sound no one else heard, or stand sober in the yard watching Egg with his hands hidden behind his back to hide the trembling, or smile in that bright, brittle way that told Maekar the blow he dealt had landed exactly where he had meant it to land and where he had not meant it to land at all. 

And then the matter would not stay settled. 

Maekar turns his eyes away from the letter. 

Beyond the window, Summerhall is readying itself. Horses in the yard, household servants running around with more purpose than usual, banners and carpets checked twice and then thrice because Baelor is present and his brother has a way of reminding everyone of the use of ceremony. The Martell convoy had been sighted before noon, which meant they would arrive before long. 

Prince Mors Martell will be with them, and the thought settles differently than the others. 

Maekar has not seen him in years, not properly, not outside letters and courtly reports and the occasional message that managed to sound like an old song even when it contained nothing but exchanges about weather, horses, and daughters. Once, he had known your father without silk, without rank, without a daughter to deliver to a prince’s household. He had known him in mud and smoke, with his mouth bloodied and temper intact, laughing at the clash of swords and shields and lances in a way Maekar had thought insane until he understood men find their own way of surviving seeing others dying, of enduring the killing and the fighting and the fearing. 

Mors had gone to war, to join the Dornish host of King Daeron, with one daughter at home and another child on the way. 

A daughter, he said the maesters had told him, and Maekar reminded him that maesters had been wrong before and would be wrong again with the same dry certainty they brought to all things. But the Martell had said he hoped they were right. He remembers, more clearly than he cares to, the way the man’s face had changed when he spoke of the child already born. Three years old, old enough to run to him when he returned, and young enough, Mors had said, that if he died you would remember him only through stories and lies told kindly by those who loved him. 

He had said it smiling. Then he had said, as easily as everything else, that he would return for you. 

If nothing else, for you. 

Maekar had said nothing of the children waiting for him. Daeron already old enough to ask questions in that unsettling way of his and half-lost to nightmares only his mother knew how to face, Aerion small enough to still look harmless when sleeping. He had thought of them then, though. Thought of Dyanna. Thought of the rooms that existed somewhere beyond the field, beyond the smoke, beyond the reality that the hours to come would require more killing of him if he meant to survive them. 

At the end, he had returned. 

And so did Mors Martell. 

Not whole, perhaps. Maekar has little patience for men who speak of war as nothing but glory and victory, who pretend war spits anyone out whole. But the shape and manner does not matter, all that matters is the return. A man can come back with blood under his nails and still stand in a nursery, still lay at his wife’s side, still let small hands take his fingers and pull him toward a life that had gone on while he was away. 

Dyanna knew that better than he had. It was her hand, he still recalls, that took his and brought it to the soft sand-colored hair of his sleeping son’s head, with a silent promise that he could learn to hold more than a mace again. 

She had no easy husband, she had married a prince and received a soldier with the temper of a drawn sword, a fourth son’s pride, and very little talent for gentleness. He came back from war with anger too near the surface and silence lodged beneath it, with grief and resentment and old violence making a fog of ordinary things. Some mornings, he felt made more of command than flesh, and some nights, he laid awake beside her and counted the dead by the shape of their last cries. 

And Dyanna had expected him at breakfast. 

That is what he remembers now, with the letter in his hand and the Martells drawing closer to Summerhall. Breakfast, the questions that assumed he would still know how to answer: whether Daeron had slept through the night, how they ought to handle Aerion’s refusal to anything but honey cake, whether he meant to sit there glowering at his own sons until they mistook it for conversation. 

She expected him to remain part of the life he had returned to, in whatever shape he had returned. 

He loved her for that. Loves her still. 

Badly, perhaps. Imperfectly, most likely. With more harshness than she deserved and less ease than he should have learned. But he loved her, and if there is any mercy in a household, any use in marriage beyond duty and bloodline, perhaps it is that: someone looking at the ruin war had brought home and simply talking to it about the children. 

That is where Maekar’s mind returns, though he has spent the better part of three months now telling himself the match was made because it was sensible. 

A good woman, from a good House. A father he trusted. A mother who raised daughters with spine enough to survive Dorne and whatever waited beyond it. A marriage with enough politics to satisfy men who cared for them and enough trust beneath it to satisfy Maekar. 

Maekar looks again toward the yard, though the Martells are still far. 

Daeron simply needs something to come back to. 

The thought irritated him the moment it formed, because it sounded too much like prayer and too little like strategy. Daeron has rooms, brothers, sisters, a name, duties. None of it has ever kept him from vanishing into inns, into cups, into beds, into whatever half-rotten corner would have him when the dreams or the wine or the shame drive him out of sight. 

A wife, Maekar knows, might not mend that. A wife is not a chain, no matter what some men make of marriage. Dyanna had not mended him, she just refused to let him disappear inside the worst parts of himself. 

That is, Gods be damned, all he tries to give Daeron. 

A door, a table, a reminder. 

The thought makes him angry as soon as he has it. It is too much to place on a girl who has not yet entered his house, too much to expect of Daeron. Too much hope altogether, and hope has always made Maekar less patient, not more. 

A knock comes at his door, leading him away from old thoughts and older angers. 

“Enter.” 

Daeron walks in, dressed properly enough to make the effort visible. 

That is the first thing Maekar notices, and because he notices it, anger rises again. 

It would have been easier if Daeron had come in drunk, easier if he had smelled of wine, if his collar sat badly, if there had been some obvious disgrace Maekar could put his hand around and name. Instead the boy stands there sober, pale, tired around the eyes, dressed like a prince, and the effort is an accusation. 

His hands are behind his back. Hidden. 

Maekar knows why they are hidden. He hates that he knows, hates that Daeron thought to hide them from his own father. Hates, above all, that some part of him wants to tell the boy to sit down before his knees decide the matter for him. 

His son smiles. It is a thin thing. Polite, insolent, already braced. 

“You sent for me.” 

“The Martells are soon to arrive,” He tells him. Maekar moves around the desk to come to stand before his son, and his voice is as severe as always as he orders, “You will meet them properly.” 

Daeron’s brows lift, “I had intended a bow, at least.” 

“A bow is the least of it. You will stand in the yard when they arrive. You will be in the gallery after. You will sit at supper, you will answer when spoken to, you will not make my brother lie to pretend your impertinence is charm.” 

A faint, familiar brightness comes into Daeron’s face, “So, not merely a bow.” 

There it was, the shape of his son before flight. Not flight yet, not even refusal, only the little turn of the shoulder by which Daeron found the nearest door in every duty set before him. 

Maekar has watched him do it too often. 

“No running. No hiding. No vanishing into whatever fucking inn has learned your name this month.” 

Daeron’s smile sharpens by a fraction, “I generally wait until after the first course before making a run for it.” 

“This is precisely the kind of insolence I am warning you against.” 

“I thought you liked precision.” 

Maekar advances, “I like sons who do not make sport of their own disgrace.” 

That blow lands. Maekar sees it in the fraction of stillness before Daeron’s smile corrects itself. 

“A rare breed,” He says, “You should have had more of them.” 

“Do not make a fucking joke of this.” 

“That was not my intention.” 

“No,” Maekar spits back, “Your intentions are usually worse.” 

Daeron’s expression does not change. Not enough. 

The trouble with Daeron is that he learned too young how to stand very still while bleeding in all the places a man could not see. Maekar has no patience for it, never did. He has even less patience for the knowledge that he taught him how to. 

Daeron’s gaze flickers to the window. Not long enough to be called longing, but long enough for Maekar to see it. 

“That is fortunate,” Daeron says, “That no one troubled himself with my intentions.” 

“You were told of the match, boy.” 

“I was told of a match. I was not aware I had become a problem that required Dornish assistance.” 

The words were mild, and that made them worse. 

Maekar felt his temper catch like dry grass touched by embers, “Do not speak of her as if she were being sent here to scrape you clean.” 

Daeron looks back at him then, and for half a breath there is no smile at all. Almost resentment, almost shame, almost grief. 

“Is she not?” 

There are better answers, Maekar knows that even as anger rises through him. No, I would not punish an innocent girl if I didn’t think she might find contentment in this. No, I am trying, Gods help me, to give you something to give yourself to. 

What comes out is rougher, 

“If I thought a whore would serve you better, I would not have troubled Dorne.” 

The smile remains on Daeron’s face. That is exactly how Maekar knows the blow landed. 

At Daeron’s back, one shoulder shifts. Barely. His thumb is digging into his palm, then. Maekar has seen men do stranger things to hold themselves steady, has done some of them himself. 

“Touching of you,” Daeron says, insolence practiced and afraid. “To trouble an entire principality on my behalf.” 

“I troubled a man I trust,” He corrects. “A man who trusts me in return, enough to bestow his favorite daughter to you.” 

Daeron’s expression changes. Only slightly, enough that a lesser man would have missed it and a kinder man would have pretended to. 

“His favorite.” Daeron repeats. There's a tragic kind of humor entering his voice. 

“Yes.” 

“Then his judgment is poorer than you remember.” 

Maekar’s hand tightens once at his side. There it is again, the practiced little mercy Daeron offers everyone, from prince to beggar, before they can offer it to him. The warning, the insult turned inward, the hopeless little arrangement by which no one can be disappointed if he has already named himself unworthy. 

It makes Maekar want to strike the words out of his mouth. It makes him want to shake from his mind the times his father put those words there. 

It makes him want, with equal force and far less use, to tell him to stop helping people leave him behind. 

He does neither. 

“Her Grace, your grandmother, has written,” He says instead, “She expects her kin to be received with honor befitting of her.” 

“Kin?” 

“This girl is granddaughter to the Prince of Dorne, Her Grace's brother.” 

“So, kin.” 

“Not close enough to trouble a septon.” 

“Few things are, in this family.” 

Maekar turned to look at him, and Daeron inclined his head despite the smile curving at his lips with dry humor, the picture of apology without repentance. 

“Myriah knows something of leaving Dorne for a Targaryen court, which is what your betrothed is doing.” 

Something in Daeron’s expression shifts then. It is not softness, he does not soften easily under his father’s eye, and Maekar would not trust it if he did. But the insolence changed shape for a breath, as if the blade had turned dull for a moment. 

“Summerhall is not King’s Landing.” His son quips. Maekar scoffs. 

“Fuck, no.” 

For one moment, they stand in agreement. It is not much, it has never been much, with them. Still, there it is: the same distaste for the capital passing between them, the same knowledge of that city with its stench and teeth and rot. Summerhall had its ghosts, every Targaryen seat did, but it was not King’s Landing. 

Maekar looks away first. He resents himself a little for that. 

“Her father is a good man.” 

“I know.” 

“No. You know his name, I know the man,” Maekar says. Daeron’s mouth closes. “I know what he was when men were dying around him, what was left when rank and pretty words had no use. He returned to Dorne with his honor intact.” 

“A rare habit.” 

“Yes,” Maekar agrees, “Rarer than it ought to be.” 

Daeron glances away first. 

“Mors left a daughter at home when he marched against the Blackfyre rebels, as I left you and your brother,” Maekar says, and sentimentality is kept hidden under a tightly closed fist, but Mors never had such refrain. It is easier to recall his old friend’s words than anything else, so he says, “He swore he would get back to her if he had to crawl through every godsforsaken mile of the Reach to do it.” 

Maekar remembers the letter that came months after the war was through, months after Daemon Blackfyre and his sons were slain. Mors’ hand blunt and uneven over the page, telling him that his daughter had hidden behind her mother’s skirts for half a morning before deciding he was still hers. Telling him she had followed him after that from room to room, suspicious of every door that closed between them. 

“He got back. To himself, to them,” Maekar continues, “And he stayed long enough for them, for her, to believe in him again.” 

Daeron’s eyes move briefly, not quite a flinch. He is listening despite himself. 

That, too, angers Maekar. Everything does, when he is afraid enough. 

“Your mother had no easy husband.” 

The silence after that is immediate. Too immediate. 

Daeron looks at him now, really looks. And Maekar feels the old grief press up under his ribs with the force of a hammer against breastplate, with a force that makes him want to turn brutal if only to get free of it. 

He had not meant to bring Dyanna into the room so abruptly. 

No, that is a lie. 

He meant to bring her into it because she belongs here, because every choice he has made for their children has been under the shadow of what she would have wanted and what he failed to give her while she lived. He meant to use her memory, cleanly, as lesson and proof and command. 

He didn’t mean to feel it. 

“That did not excuse me from trying to be better than I was.” Maekar continues. 

Daeron’s voice comes lightly, too lightly, as he responds, “I’m sure she appreciated the effort.” 

“She deserved more than effort.” 

Another silence. 

There are things a father ought to say here. Perhaps Baelor would have found them, he has a gift for placing gentleness where it would do the most good and the least damage. Maekar has always been better with commands, commands did not require a man to show a wound before speaking from it. 

“So will your wife.” He pronounces. 

Daeron’s expression trembles for a moment, a heartbeat. 

“Not my wife yet.” 

“She will be.” 

Daeron’s jaw tightens. His hands remain behind his back, and his back straightens. 

There it is, then. The place where the conversation always ends, whether they reach it by wine or duty or the gods-damned weather. Maekar can speak of honor and mean shelter, but Daeron will hear sentence. Maekar can speak of trust and mean hope, but Daeron will hear expectation sharpening its knife. 

Perhaps, Maekar thinks, he has earned that. Perhaps the boy learned the language exactly as Maekar taught it. 

The admission moves through him and becomes anger before it can become anything worse. 

Maekar steps closer. 

“You will not shame her.” 

Daeron smiles again, faint and immediate. A retreat, a familiar one. 

“There he is.” 

“Do not.” He warns, a frustrated sigh escaping him, but his son goes on anyway. 

“I was beginning to worry we had wandered into sentiment.” 

“I said do not,” Daeron’s smile thins but he holds it. Of course he holds it. The boy would go to his grave making a jest of the shovel. “She is not being sent here to watch you rot. She is not being dragged from Dorne so you can make a tragedy of yourself in front of an audience.” 

“No,” Daeron agrees, “I expect that would be discourteous.” 

“Seven Hells, Daeron.” 

The name comes out rougher than Maekar intended. Daeron hears it, he has always heard the wrong parts and the right ones with equal precision. 

Maekar thinks back to Mors Martell on that field, speaking of a little girl who would run to him with little arms stretched out to welcome him home. He thinks of Dyanna at a window with one of the boys in her arms. Thinks of Daeron as a child, solemn-eyed and strange, waking from dreams no governess could soothe and no maester could explain to Maekar’s satisfaction. He thinks of the man standing before him now, hollowed by wine and avoidance and whatever else finds him in the dark. 

And beneath it all, worse because it is not spoken, is the old excuse. 

Daeron has never given that excuse cleanly, and that would have been easier to answer. As boyhood left him behind entirely too soon, Daeron stopped saying I dream, stopped saying I am afraid. He stopped saying when I sleep I see things no man should see and wake with them burning behind my eyes. 

Instead, he drinks. He vanishes. He laughs. He makes himself foul enough that no one cares to ask what frightens him. 

Maekar knows fear when he sees it. That was the unforgivable wound. He knows it, and still some hard, furious thing in him rejects the use Daeron has made of it. 

Fear is not permission to rot. Fear is not permission to drag every gift down after him and call the fall inevitable. 

The anger comes because the fear is real. The roughness comes because Maekar has no gentler place to put it. 

“You think you are the first man to close his eyes and see fire?” Maekar asks. 

Daeron suddenly goes very still. 

Good, Maekar thinks, and knows at once there is nothing good in it. 

“Men live with it,” He continues. It feels not unlike a mace denting hit by hit a shield, it feels not unlike desperate strikes to try and break a shield wall. “They stand. They do what is required of them.” 

Daeron’s smile returns slowly, “A comforting philosophy.” 

“It is not meant to comfort you.” 

“Good,” His son replies. For a breath, the smile is a tad sadder but a tad more honest when he adds, “Not much does.” 

That strikes closer than Maekar likes. For a few breaths, neither of them speak. 

The household carries on beyond the door: footsteps in the passages, a servant’s voice lowered and answered, the distant snap of cloth from the yard where banners are being worried into perfection. The Martells are coming. Mors is bringing the daughter he survived a war for into Maekar’s house. Myriah’s letter sits open on the desk, full of instructions Maekar does not know how to obey except by ordering someone else not to fail them. 

He could stop here. The boy is sober, dressed, present. 

That might have been enough for one morning. But enough has never saved Daeron from himself, has never saved Maekar from saying one more thing badly because he cannot bear the thought of leaving it unsaid. 

“You can change,” Daeron looks almost amused, and the expression makes Maekar want to seize him by the shoulders and shake some sense into him the way one might shake breath back into a drowning man. “You will change, Gods be damned.” 

For the first time, Daeron’s amusement seems to fail him entirely. 

There he is, then. The boy under the waste of himself, the one Maekar kept seeing at the worst possible moments, always too late to know what to do with him. 

Outside, somewhere below, a horn sounds from the yard. 

The Martells have arrived. 

Daeron turns his head toward the sound, and when he looks back at his father, the smile is in place again, bright and brittle enough to cut. 

“Then I suppose I should go and begin improving.” He says. 

Maekar does not answer gently. He does not know how. 

“See that you do.” 

By the time the door closes behind you, Daeron has learned the shape of the evening too well to trust it. 

There had been supper. Voices, some familiar and some not. His father’s table set with its usual careful severity, candles guttering in their cups, wine moving from hand to hand with the ease of water. There had been talk of hunting, of tourneys, of namedays and dead men and dying men. 

Then, there had been talk of whispers from King’s Landing, talk that made everyone aware of the whispers that breathed fire to a rebellion once and yet no one spoke aloud of what it meant that they were rising again.  

Valarr, only lowered his eyes upon the weight of the conversation, two fingers resting against the stem, face composed in the careful way of a man forged by King’s Landing. Baelor’s son, Myriah’s grandson, a prince near enough to the Iron Throne that every whisper seemed to find him, and Dornish enough that the finding had teeth. 

No one said as much, of course. No one did, in rooms like that. They spoke of loyalty, of peace, of old wounds healed. They did not speak of how quickly old wound reopened when the wrong blood was seen too close to the crown. 

Valarr had sat through it, and Daeron had watched with the clarity of not enough wine and a dread he could not accredit to any dream. 

And you had sat through it with your back straight and your hands composed, answering when addressed, listening when it was wiser to listen, wearing the small gold son at the side of your hair and at the hollow of your throat as if every eye in the room had not, at some point, remembered it was there. 

A Martell sun. A Dornish thing. A wife’s ornament, fastened neatly and worn proudly. 

Daeron himself had looked at it more than once. 

He had looked away more often. 

Now the room is quiet, though not yet silent. No room is ever silent once a man has begun to need it. There is the settling of the fire, the small shift of your sleeve as you unfasten the clasp at your wrist, the faint scrape of a chair leg where he has moved it too little and too late to be of any use. Beyond the windows, the night presses itself against the glass. Inside, lamplight softens everything the day had made sharp. 

You sit before the mirror and begin to take yourself apart from the court. 

That is how it feels to him, though he knows better than to say it. The public version of you leaves piece by piece: the outer veil folded aside, the earring set into its little dish, the clasp at your throat undone after a moment’s resistance. Your shoulders lower by some measure to small for any courtier to notice and too large, somehow, for Daeron to survive without noticing. 

He has seen this before. 

That is the problem. 

He has seen you in the mornings, cross with the birds for singing wrong, whatever that means. He has seen you barefoot before the fire, unimpressed by cold stone and too proud to say so until your little jumps from one foot to the other give you away. He knows which blend of tea you choose when you are tired, which letter you reach for first when messages from Dorne arrive, where your mouth tightens when a pin pulls too hard on your hair at the end of a long day. 

He has begun to hoard these things. 

The word comes to him with a little shame clinging to it. Hoard. Like a miser, like a dog with a bone. There is no theft in it, perhaps, because you have given him these private scraps of yourself freely enough, but that makes the keeping of them worse. He cannot even accuse himself cleanly, he only knows that some part of him collects what no one else sees and curls around it in the dark. 

You catch his eye in the glass. 

Daeron realizes then that he was standing there idly, watching you go about your night as if it were something he had been permitted to steal. 

He looks at the fire, as if the fire has done something to earn the sudden attention. 

In the mirror, your eyes remain on him. 

“Daeron,” You say, and he looks back before he can pretend not to have heard. You have one hand lifted toward your hair, the other resting tiredly beside the little dish of pins. Your mouth softens, but only a little. “Come nearer, if you mean to stay.” 

That should be enough to move him. It is an invitation with the softness left in it. A month ago, he would have bruised himself on the gratitude for it. 

Tonight, he remains where he is. 

And not from reluctance, no. 

Worse. 

Because you lift your hand again and reach for the last few pins in your hair and the movement is small and irritated and human and yours. Your fingers find one, draw it free, set it down. Another follows. The loosened shape of the day begins to give way under your hands. 

The gold sun remains. 

It sits a little further back, half-hidden from the glass and awkward to reach. You try once, then angle your wrist and try again. The pin catches. Your mouth tightens. 

Daeron feels his own hand move before he has made any sensible argument for it. 

Then he stops. 

Your eyes return to him in the mirror. 

There is no surprise in them, not exactly. You have known he was watching. Of course you have, he is rarely as subtle as shame insists he ought to be. 

He should say something clever, something harmless, enough to empty the moment of itself. He should make himself ridiculous before wanting can do it for him. 

Instead, he hears himself ask, “May I?” 

The room, impossibly, seems to notice. 

Your hand falls from the pin. For a breath, you only look at him, then your expression alters in a way too slight for certainty and too clear for mercy. You are tired, you are still wearing the remains of the day, and he has asked for the smallest thing in the world but has made it enormous by the asking. 

“Please.” You say. 

It is worse than yes. Yes would have been permission, but please has want in it. 

Daeron crosse the few steps that separate you before he can decide against deserving to. The distance is short. He feels each step as if there is a court assembled to witness it, though there is only you in the mirror and the little gold sun caught where your own hand could not comfortably reach. 

He stands close enough to see the fine line where the pin disappears beneath the arrangement. Close enough to smell the day’s remnants on you: smoke from the hall, a trace of jasmine from your perfume. 

“Tell me if I pull.” He asks, because he is well aware of his propensity for failure, and he needs to know he won’t harm you with it. 

“I will.” 

He almost asks if you promise. The impulse is absurd and childish and gone before it becomes sound. 

His fingers find the edge of the ornament. 

It is warm. 

That should not undo him. Objects take warmth from the body, this is no mystery. A cup warms in the hand, rings warm on fingers, cloth warms at the throat. Still, the little sun in his hand has been worn near you all evening, and some treacherous part of him receives that as if he has been entrusted with a living thing. 

Careful, then. 

Too careful, perhaps. He loosens one side, then another, working more by patience than skill. The pin shifts but does not come free. 

You sit still beneath his hands, and that might be the worst of it. Not the trust itself, but the ease of your stillness, a s if you have decided his hands may belong there long enough to finish what they began. 

His throat works once. 

He tries again. 

This time the pin catches on something. He draws back too quickly. Your breath catches; not a cry, barely even a sound, but enough. 

Daeron removes his hands at once. 

“I’m sorry.” 

It comes out too sharply, too ready, as if the apology had been standing armed behind his teeth from the moment he touched you. 

Your eyes lift to him in the mirror. 

“It caught.” You say, as if it is simple, as if it is of no importance. 

“I pulled.” 

“Yes.” 

The agreement is not cruel, and somehow that makes it harder. 

“I should-…” 

“Try again.” 

The words are plain, quiet. No softnes layd over them to spare him the shape of what they are. 

Try again. 

Not stop. Not move away. Not give it here. Not you have done enough. 

Again. 

His hands hang useless for a moment at his sides. He cannot seem to lift them. The mistake has opened something under his ribs, quick and cold. It was only a tug, only a pin, only a tired breath drawn a little too fast. 

Yet the old verdict had come easily: there, see, this is why. 

This is why wanting must be kept out of the hands. 

You turn a little, enough to bring the caught pin nearer, and lift your own hand. Not to take it from him, to show him. 

“Here,” You explain. Your fingers touch the place just beneath the ornament. “Hold this still, then loosen that side first.” 

Daeron obeys. 

The relief of being given an order to follow is almost indecent. 

He hopes you do not read anything into the speed with which he follows the instruction, into the way his breath steadies when the task is given back to him, into the fact that being told where to put his hands feels more like reprieve than correction. 

He hopes it while reading too much into it all himself. 

His fingers return. Slower now. He holds where you showed him. His thumb brushes the skin just behind your ear. 

It is hardly a touch. 

It is also, instantly, the only thing in the room. 

You do not move away. 

Daeron keeps his eyes on the pin with the grimness of a man disarming a siege engine. If he looks at your face in the glass, he will lose whatever sense remains to him. The gold sun shifts beneath his fingers, one caught strand loosens. The pin slides free at last, and he lifts it away. 

For a moment, he only holds it. 

Small, gold, yours. 

The Martell sun rests between his fingers. Its little rays are slightly blunted by use, a fine scratch runs along one of the edges. He had not seen that from across a hall, of course. No one would. The flaw belongs to the private inventory of you, and some despicable, tender part of him takes it in at once. 

You look at it in his hand. You say nothing. 

It should be finished. 

He should set the ornament down. Move away. Return to admiring the hearth’s discipline, perhaps. Allow the usefulness to end before it can reveal what has been sheltering beneath it. 

But another pin remains lower, plain and dark, nearly lost against the loosened shape of your hair. You do not reach for it. 

Daeron sees it. 

You see him seeing it. 

He closes his fingers around the sun for a breath before setting it carefully in the dish with the others. 

“May I?” He asks again, quieter. 

Your gaze stays on him in the mirror. 

This time, your answer is softer. Not smaller. 

“Yes.” 

He understands, then, or thinks he does. The first permission could have been for the inconvenience. The caught pin. The tired angle of your wrist. This one has less excuse around it. 

Still, he reaches. 

The second pin is easier. His hands remember enough from the first failure to be less foolish now. He holds the arranged section steady, works the pin loose, waits when he feels resistance. Your head tilts a fraction, helping him. 

The little movement settles something in his chest. 

When the pin comes free, you make a low sound of satisfaction. 

“Better.” You say, a hint of a teasing smile curving at your lips. 

Daeron feels the word like warmth poured where it should not go. 

“I am relieved to have shown some improvement between disasters.” 

“You have sisters,” You say around a breathed chuckle that lodges somewhere under his ribs. “How are you so solemn about this?” 

“Rhae would sooner bite me than let me near her hair,” He points out, his own mouth curving into a smile at the acquiescing shrug of your mouth you answer with. “And Daella would have finished before I understood there was anything to help with.” 

Your smile widens. Not by much. Enough that he sees it and has to look down at the pins in his hand. 

The room breathes again. 

With the last pin gone, the shape of the day loosens completely. You reach for the narrow ribbon beside the comb, softer than the others, worn enough at the edges.  

Daeron has seen you use it before, though never from this close. It is not for court, it is not for anyone’s eyes, it is only to gather your hair for sleep, loose enough not to pull, firm enough to keep it from troubling you throughout the night. 

“I can do that.” He says before wisdom returns. 

Your hand pauses. 

Daeron hears himself too late. Too eager. Too close to the truth. 

But you only let the ribbon rest where it has fallen. 

“Then do.” 

The words are mild. The command in them is mostly practical. Mostly. 

He takes the ribbon. 

This should be nothing. He has tied knots before. Bandages. Laces. The occasional unfortunate purse string when he had still believed he could be trusted with coin and dignity in the same evening. A ribbon should not make a prince feel sixteen and doomed. 

Your hair, loosened now from the day’s shape, lies heavy over his knuckles while he gathers the ribbon where you have indicated. He does not arrange the hair itself beyond what you show him. He only holds what he is given, ties where you tell him, works with care. 

The knot comes out secure, but certainly not elegant. 

He sees that at once. You see it too. 

There is a small unevenness to the way the ribbon sits. The left side lies flatter than the right. He has tied it too carefully and somehow still incorrectly, which feels, privately, like a fair account of his whole character. 

“It is uneven.” He says, albeit uselessly but he has always found ti easier to point out flaws before anyone else can. 

“I know.” 

“I can fix it.” 

You turn from the mirror then, not fully, only enough to look at him without the glass between you. 

“No.” 

His hand stills near the ribbon. 

The old chill stirs. He has done something wrong after all. The task is complete, and now it will be taken from him. You will correct it yourself. You will smile, perhaps, kindly enough to make him feel worse, and the small evidence of his attempt will be made clean again. 

But you do not lift your hand to the ribbon. 

You look at it once, then back at him. 

“I like it.” 

Pleasure lands first. 

It is quick and bright and terrible, striking before he can defend himself. You like it. Not despite the unevenness being hidden, not because you have failed to see it. You have seen it and left it where his hands made it. 

Then guilt follows, faithful as a hound. 

He wanted you to like it. That is the shameful part. He had wanted the task to matter after the usefulness ended. He had wanted some proof that his hands could leave something behind and not have it immediately undone. 

You give him the proof, and he has no idea where to put it. 

“You have generous tastes.” He states, an attempt at a jest. 

It is weak as a shield, barely a shield at all. 

“Tonight, perhaps.” 

You rise then, gathering the loosened weight of the evening with you. The ribbon remains as he tied it. The little gold sun rests in the dish, catching the lamplight from its shallow place among the other pins. 

“I will not be long.” You say, and go into the bath chamber. The door closes softly behind you. 

Daeron remains standing for a moment with his hands empty at his sides. 

Then, because standing there feels too much like waiting to be judged, he sits. 

The room changes without you in it. Not much. Only enough for him to notice how completely the signs of you remain: the pins in their dish, the cup gone cool, the book turned face-down beside the lamp, the faint impression left in the cushion before the glass. He looks at the ribbon in his mind and thinks, absurdly, that you will fix it now. Of course you will. You will have the privacy to do it. You will return with the little error corrected, and he will be relieved, perhaps, or disappointed in some private corner of himself he has no intention of examining. 

The bath-chamber door opens again. 

You return in your nightdress, with a loose robe drawn over it against the cold. 

The ribbon is still uneven. 

Daeron looks at it before he can stop himself. You see him look, but you say nothing. 

For a moment, he thinks you will go to the bed and the night will take its next ordinary shape. You will lie down. He will follow after some delay he will pretend is not fear. The lamp will be lowered. The room will darken around them. 

Instead, you sit beside him. 

Close. 

Not accidentally, not as one sits beside a stranger because the chair happens to be there. Your shoulder nearly touches his sleeve, and the uneven ribbon lies visible over one side, kept with deliberate care. 

The ribbon remains as it was, the proof of his hands, kept when he was not there to see it kept. Daeron looks at it, then at his own hands. 

They rest open on his knees, empty now, but they do not feel useless, and that is new enough to hurt. 

You reach past him for the cup you had left on the table earlier, then seem to decide against it. Your hand lowers instead to the space between you. Not taking his. Only near enough that he knows you could. 

He does not move. 

For once, neither does he retreat. 

The fire settles. The chamber smells of cooling tea, lamp oil, and the faint warmth of whatever fragrance the day has left in your hair. On the table, the gold sun lies clean and whole. In the mirror, if he cared to look, he would see the two of you seated close enough to belong to the same private hour. 

He keeps his eyes on the ribbon. 

Then you say, “For a gathering in honor of your cousin, I don’t think I heard him speak more than once.” 

Daeron keeps his eyes on the hearth. 

“No,” He agrees, “He did not. They were watching him, Valarr knows better than to give away anything.” 

You are quiet for a breath. In the fire, a thin piece of wood shifts and breaks softly inward. Daeron watches the little fall of sparks as if there is something in it worth studying. 

When you speak again your voice is soft, quiet, 

“They were watching everyone.” 

He turns his head then, but you are not looking at him. Your eyes remain on the hearth, your face made still by the same knowledge that sat beside you at supper: the golden sun in your hair, his mother’s blood in him, the old rebellions no one had named and everyone had remembered. 

Daeron says nothing, for there is no useful answer to give you, no clean one.

Daeron says nothing, for there is no useful answer to give you, no clean one. 

The fire shifts. Somewhere in the wood, a small pocket of sap gives way with a soft crack. 

After a while, you add, “Lord Reyne spoke enough for the rest of them, anyway.” 

Daeron exhales through his nose. “He quite enjoys the sound of his own voice.” 

“I counted all the forts between Sunspear and Starfall in my head and he still wasn’t finished,” You complain, sinking further back in your seat as if the mere memory of the man has tired you more. “He told that story about his hound twice.” 

Daeron’s brow furrows in confusion, and he turns to you, “I thought there were two hounds.” 

Your next words stop shy of leaving your mouth, and your eyes flicker away as you consider what he said. 

“There might have been,” You concede. “I do not remember the names enough to know for certain.” 

“Arryk and Erryk.” 

“Gods.” You scoff. 

“He has the same gift for naming hounds that he has for telling stories, it seems.” 

This time, the sound you make is almost a laugh. Daeron feels it before he hears it, in the slight movement of your shoulder against his, the way your body loosens beside his. 

He almost follows. 

It comes out only as breath, but you hear it. Your side presses more firmly against his, and your head almost rests on his shoulder. 

The ribbon remains uneven. 

Daeron lets it. 

Thank you so much for reading!! I read and love each one of your comments, they literally sustain me. Thank you so much!

Was it intimidation, perhaps? Your family rolled their eyes whenever you ranted about women’s inequality, but it was true! It wouldn’t be the first time that a male classmate acted out because they couldn’t accept that you were smarter than them. It was a shame to think that Angus could be the same way, but you didn’t know the guy very well. Who was to say?

Both being English majors and juniors, Angus was a familiar face around campus. The university was on the smaller side, so you became closely acquainted with almost all of your classmates. You had even made your first best friend at school: Sally Wyman, who sat next to you in English 101, was most passionate about Medieval English literature, and whose favorite book was, mindbogglingly, Beowulf. It was nice to have a small cohort, but it had its downsides as well: people that you didn’t like were inescapable. Angus was in every class, every semester, and popped up at every get together and study session. The two of you brushed shoulders constantly, much to your chagrin. 

It was the Fall of ‘72 when he first caught your eye. He sat in front of you in the lecture hall of your American Literature course, and quickly became a sort of celebrity. Angus was outspoken, smart, witty, constantly raising his hand. Not all were fond of him, and occasionally an annoyingly heated debate about the writing of Kerouac would have everyone yelling at him to  shut up. But even this didn’t deter your crush on him; his passion in class was motivating and aspirational. You knew you were smart, but you rarely had the confidence to speak up like him. Knowledge seemed to get wedged and stuck in the corners of your mouth, but flow endlessly out of your pen. Maybe if you had an assignment or essay to turn in then your professors would recognize your talents, but most classes were just hours upon hours of lecturing. Angus’ constant participation proved that he was not only smart, but self-assured, unafraid. You wanted to be like him.

Okay. Maybe the crush was helped by the fact that he was extremely cute, too. During particularly boring lessons, you found yourself lost in the mess of dark hair that made up the back of his head. You wanted to trace the C-shaped curls on the nape of his neck, the small freckles that dotted the pale column of his throat. If you stretched your arms, you would be able to run your hands over the expanse of his broad shoulders, smooth the wrinkled shirt collar beneath his sweaters. Even his sideburns, which would have you rolling your eyes on anyone else, left you in awe. He was stylish; a grown, masculine departure of the boys of your high school.

There was a time where you truly believed that Angus Tully could be the man of your dreams. How foolish you had been.

It was later in that Fall of ‘72 that the illusion cracked, and you saw Angus for who he really was. You were both in Professor Hilbert’s class: Introduction to Creative Writing. The final was a workshop to share with your classmates and receive feedback in return. Everyone had to write a minimum of 10 pages, and have it printed and shared among the class a week before.

You worked anxiously on your story: a tale about a woman whose paranoia and fear of being stalked by her neighbors climaxes into a manic murder-suicide. It was meant to explore and comment on mental illness, motherhood and the perception of women’s hysteria. The idea had been rolling around in your mind for months before the assignment, and you were excited for the chance to finally execute it. You knew that you were by no means the most gifted writer in the class, but you were proud of the work, and expected for it to be positively received.

Angus Tully had completely shattered your dreams. His critique was cutting and brutal: the language was flowery but shallow, your metaphors were nonsensical, and the pacing was all over the place. 

“They say that good artists create, and great ones steal. I’m not sure if that was the framework you used when writing this, but all I could think was that you wanted to make an edgier version of Rosemary’s Baby. I mean, some of the dialogue was ripped right from the movie,” he said, leaned back in his chair with crossed arms.

You swallowed the lump in your throat, trying to remain calm. “I’ve never seen that film,” you admitted. “If there are parallels, it’s all just coincidence.”

The girl sitting next to Angus stifled a laugh, brushing her hair over her shoulder. Tracy Bellevue, if you remembered correctly. “To be honest, I have to agree with Angus on a lot of the critiques. Women’s liberation fiction is getting popular, and this just seems like a chance to cash in. It just felt a little uninspired.” He looked at her with a smirk, and she smiled back. You wanted to melt into a puddle.

By the time you took your seat, it felt like all the passion for writing had been vacuumed out of you, leaving a deflated silhouette of a person behind. Passion was reignited as soon as you had finished re-reading Angus’ piece, however. He had the audacity to call you a thief, when his was nothing more than a Catcher in the Rye rip-off? You refused to let him get away with this, and told him as much when it was time to give feedback. 

“Your admiration for J.D. Salinger is evident, Angus, but I think the story would have benefitted greatly from a protagonist that was more than a Holden Caulfield copycat.”

He narrowed his eyes at you. “Excuse me? This character was based on my own experiences, which lots of teenagers have gone through. Just because your story was creatively bankrupt doesn’t mean that you can get mad and say the same thing to me.”

“I’m sorry?” you huffed, ready to annihilate the man in front of you. You were being nice before, but if he wanted to stoop low, you would go there. Hilbert stepped in before you could however, reminding the two of you that only constructive criticism was allowed for the workshop. It was embarrassing to have your piece torn to shreds by Angus and Tracy of all people, but even more so to be scolded by the professor. The two of you left class an hour later silently nursing the wounds, and igniting a bitter rivalry. 

Maybe the two of you could have come back from that workshop with apologies and a clean slate, but it was Angus who had pushed it further. Just two weeks after the incident, Sally had skipped into class asking why you hadn’t come to Angus’ birthday party that previous weekend. You stared at her for a few seconds in disbelief, before sheepishly admitting that you hadn’t been invited, or even knew there was a party being thrown.

How the news had managed to evade you, you didn’t know. But Angus knew that you and Sally were close; and he still didn’t offer you even a pity invite? It stung, and felt isolating. What was up his ass, anyway? Did you do something to make him hate you? Why else would he have been so critical of your story in the first place? Most people in the class seemed to have enjoyed it. Even Professor Hilbert had given you written praise upon returning your story back.

Fuck that guy. You had worked your ass off to be at this school, and Angus Tully thought he was all that? He was just another rich kid who thought that being rude meant that he was smarter than everyone else. What struggle had he ever experienced, fancying himself to be a Holden Caulfield for the modern age? It made you sick. That stupid smirk, that obnoxious height, his full lips, warm brown eyes… You hated the fact that you still found him handsome. You wished that you could picture him with the physical manifestations of his hideous soul, but to no avail. 

Since that workshop, not a semester, class or study session could go by without the two of you at each other's throats, trying to one-up the other at every opportunity. And even now, he thought that he could walk into class 20 minutes late, after just having shamed you for being late last week, and you wouldn’t say anything. 

Angus gave you a glance as he passed by your seat, making his way to the back row, to which you raised your wrist and tapped your watch. Maybe you saw his look turned into a glare, but you were focused on the lesson. Trying to, at least.

The sound of laughter and conversation erupted immediately after class ended, with people standing up and stretching their legs after hours of being seated. You took your time gathering your things, not ready to brave the cutting winter air outside, or endure another two hours of lectures. Getting out of bed was agonizing this semester, nevermind actually going to class. 

Skipping was a nasty habit that you’d been fighting for years, but this semester was starting to grind you down. It was the first time since you came to school that you felt true defeat and disinterest in your education. The only reason you had come into today was knowing that you and Sally could pass notes about her most recent date, and she hadn’t even shown up. It was lonely on days without her, and you couldn’t help the pang of jealousy seeing your classmates making plans without you. Ignoring the chatter around you was easy, and your consciousness was beginning to tiredly degrade back into autopilot mode.

A shadow cut through the scruffed grain of your table. You looked up to see Angus, wrapped in a thick red scarf and backpack hung off a single shoulder, waiting for you to notice him. He was, notably, alone. Usually he didn’t go anywhere without his little group of friends trailing behind him, and you glanced curiously around the room to see where they were. You spotted them, your classmates Max, Brian and Tracy, all walking out of the door, and all staring your way as they did. Tracy’s look could have turned you to stone. It was very rare for them to leave Angus behind.

“Yes?” you asked uncertainly, standing to put your coat on, preparing to go on the defensive.

“A bunch of us are going to Squeaky Boot after Johnson’s class later. You should come with.”

A few seconds of silence passed, while you scrambled to think of a response. Hopefully your calm face didn’t reflect the sudden panic he had just instilled in you. An invitation to the bar? Of all the things he could have said to you, that was the least expected. You stood, mouth slightly agape and wishing to stop time. “But it’s Monday,” was all you could come up with.

He didn’t miss a beat. “So?”

That was difficult to argue with. Eye contact was suddenly painful, and you inspected the line of his jaw instead, dotted with stubble that you wanted to reach out and smooth your thumb over. Damn your racing heart. 

“Huh. Okay, sounds like fun.” To that, Angus simply nodded and turned to join the rest of the group. He didn’t look back at you as they walked out, but you couldn’t take your eyes off of his fleeting figure the entire time. 

You stood alone in the classroom, bag hanging limply from your hand, trying to think. What was that all about?

---

There were many moments where you almost jumped ship. On your walk to the bar, you stopped about every five minutes, wondering if you should turn around and run home. What was holding you back? A drink would do you some good; any distraction from the mess that the semester was becoming. Sally would probably be there, and you knew the others well enough that it wouldn’t be lonely. You reasoned back and forth with yourself desperately, but it did nothing to ease your anxieties. It actually seemed to be making it worse. By the time you got to the door of the bar, you were shaking from more than just the biting cold.

Fuck this. Nothing to be scared of. Just a casual drink with my peers. Invited by Angus Tully. Fuck. You wrangled the door open against the forceful wind, and slipped into the bar. 

The Squeaky Boot was a popular dive bar near your university, populated by drunken 19 year olds and tired townies. It engulfed you in a warm hug as soon as you stepped inside. Along the walls were framed memorabilia and neon Budweiser signs, slouchy leather booths and wooden tables worn smooth with use. There were multicolored Christmas lights tacked to the ceiling, blinking hazily through cigarette smoke. Your name was called from a far corner of the bar, and you melted in relief at the sight of Sally waving you over to a crowded corner.

“Hey!” you greeted, trying to mask your nerves. She was surrounded by your classmates, who were all talking cheerfully among eachother. Your eyes drifted around the room, looking for a tall, lanky figure. You spotted him a few tables away, back turned to you and clad in the same knit sweater he wore to class. “Where the hell were you earlier? I had to suffer through Shakespeare all by myself.”

She grinned brightly. “What can I say? The date went much better than I expected. Can you blame a girl for maybe sleeping over at his, and maybe getting breakfast with him the next morning?”

You gasped, slapping your hand on the table.“Oh my God, did you really? Did he pay for you, too?”

“Of course he did! It was just Ernie’s diner, but you can’t beat free waffles and coffee.”

You beamed at her, excited to hear more. “Okay, I need to hear all the details. Just let me grab a drink, first.”

Sally nodded, waving you away, and turned to busy herself in another conversation. You envied the way she effortlessly sewed herself into social fabric, sometimes. It wasn’t as easy for you to just step into a group and pick up where they were. It wasn’t like you were lonely, desperate for more friendship, but maybe life would be easier if you were a little more confident.

Your fingers were tapping against the bar counter, waiting for your beer, when someone stepped in beside you. 

“Here’s that PBR you ordered,” the bartender slid the can across the counter, scarcely looking at you before a familiar voice piped up.

“Can you make that two?”

You whipped your head towards the newcomer, face to face with Angus, who had only a lazy eyebrow to raise at you. The moment his velvety brown eyes met yours, your breath caught in your throat.

“Hey, I’m not paying for your beer,” you frowned.

“I wasn’t expecting you to,” he replied, grabbing his own can and handing a couple of bucks to the bartender. You counted the bills as he flipped through them and realized that Angus had just paid for you. Oh.

He had already pushed off the counter and began walking away when you turned around. Words of gratitude died on your tongue as you watched him return to his group, all standing around a tall bistro table. Them, patting his back and him immediately blending in effortlessly. You felt sick with nerves again. You spun back to the bar, fistful of cash on the counter for another two beers and a single shot of vodka. You threw the small glass back, and followed it quickly with your first beer, chugging it before the bartender could even finish handing the new ones over. Tonight, you resolved, you were going to do something.

The look of surprise on Angus’s face when you had tapped on his shoulder made you wish you could snap a photo. His brow, usually set in a firm line, was now raised as you thrust the beer into his chest. 

“Here. Since you left your money at the bar.”

Now the brow set back into its annoyed frown. “Is this what I get for being nice?”

“If you mean a free drink, then yes, that’s what you get.”

The beer was wet and cold against his shirt, and your fingers brushed as he took it into his hand. The feeling of his smooth fingertips against your knuckles sent a jolt of electricity up your spine. “I meant being bothered.” He turned around without another word, before Max laughed, smacked Angus’ arm.

“Hey, show some gratitude. How often is someone actually kind to you?” Max grinned, before turning to you. “Wasn’t expecting you to come out tonight.”

You frowned, trying not to feel offended. “Why not?”

“I dunno, thought maybe Tully over here would’ve scared you off. He’s pretty good at that.”

You snorted. “The last person in the world I’m scared of is him,” you said, pointing at the man beside you with your thumb. “He’s like, 80 pounds soaking wet. A toddler could take him out.”

That got howls of laughter from around the table, and you didn’t dare to look at Angus’s face. It felt good to be in on the joke for once, but the moment ended quickly, and conversation resumed around you like waves crashing from all sides. 

“So, Angus,” you looked up for the source of the voice, and saw Tracy with her elbow propped up on the table and her chin in her hand. “How’s your novel going?”

You turned to him in silent surprise, eyes wide.

He glanced at you, before bringing his attention back to Tracy. “It’s not a novel, really. It’s more like a novella. And it’s going well; Sandra from the school paper volunteered to edit the first draft, which is cool.”

“You’re writing a novella? I didn’t know that,” you said.

He turned back to you, looking annoyed just by the sound of your voice. “Why would you know that?”

You sucked in a breath, holding back a biting response. “What’s it about?”

He was avoiding your gaze now, looking back at Tracy. “I’m not gonna let you read it. Not like I need your feedback.”

Tracy didn’t bother to hide her amusement, looking at you with a pitying smirk. These fucking people.

“I didn’t say I wanted to read your shitty book, I was just trying to be polite,” you gritted, pushing off the table. “Don’t know why I bothered, though. It’s not like you deserve it.”

Sally was stationed next to the pool table, yelling tips on how to angle the cues to your fellow drunken students, who missed the ball with one wobbly hit after another. You sidled up to her, beer can crushing under the weight of your furious fist.

“Looks like you got that drink,” she said, watching you over the rim of her own glass. She was drinking something red, with a cherry floating among the ice.

“Need a fucking stronger one, Jesus Christ,” you muttered.

“Angus got you riled up again?”

You threw your arms up, reignited simply at the mention of him. “I mean, what am I supposed to do? I tried to be nice, so I bought him a drink.”

Sally nodded seriously. “I saw that.”

“I don’t know what he wants, or why he insists on being an asshole to me. Like he’s an asshole in general, but to me he’s a giant, toxic one.”

“Hairy too, if I had to guess.”

You choked on your own spit at that, head whipped towards her. Sally just burst out laughing at your reaction, hand slapping her side. “Sorry, just trying to agree with you. Nothing worse than hairy man ass. Let’s get you something else to drink. Maybe not in a glass though; we don’t want it shattering all over the place.”

Not only did you get a stronger drink, but Sally had convinced you to take shots with whoever else was at the bar, and the two of you threw back shots of Smirnoff with the other students and old motorcyclists standing next to you. Well, a few shots. After an hour, you had completely forgotten how mad Angus made you. In fact, all the anger had dissipated into warm fuzziness, and a growing ache between your legs.

Everytime the two of you locked eyes from across the room, you felt desire spike throughout your entire body. Why did he have to be so handsome? Or if that was some inevitable trait gifted to him by God, then couldn’t God make him nicer? It was infuriating. He was infuriating.

Brian wasn’t infuriating. Of all the people who orbited Angus, he was your favorite. You both worked together on a research essay last semester, and got to know each other decently well. He was funny, hardworking, and kind of cute. You liked his wire-rim glasses, and feathered hair. There weren’t any moles dotting his face, or thick curly hair to dig your fingers into, but for now that was okay. You were leaned so close to him that you could smell his cologne. It was spicy, like cedar and smoke. Nothing like Angus, who always smelled soft, like laundry and lavender aftershave. Brian’s hand was brushing against your collar, feigning that he needed to fix its crookedness. 

“How’s your semester been?” He asked.

“It’s been good,” you lied, “What about you?”

“I’ve been doing this internship since September, which is cool. Just copywriting for the local paper, but better than nothing.”

Jealousy and dread was beginning to brew in your stomach. You’d been doing nothing. You were going to graduate next Spring, and you still hadn’t managed to land an internship or build an especially good relationship with any professors. What would you do after school, when you hadn’t been pushing yourself hard enough? The thought of it was making you feel ill.

You hadn’t spoken for a few seconds, and tried to recover with “Oh, wow! That does sound cool.”

Brian gave you a small smile. He opened his mouth to speak, but you cut him off. “Sorry, I’ll be right back, just gonna use the washroom.”

He nodded, stepping back to let you walk away. Weaving through tables and patrons, you finally made it back to the corner where your jacket had been stashed away. You slipped into it quickly, and headed for the door.

It was much quieter outside. Music and laughter had been replaced with the sound of wind blowing against creaking wood, the noise of the bar muffled behind brick. You dug through your pockets, fingers searching through discarded wrappers, chapstick and loose coins before you finally found it. You pulled a tube and lighter from your jacket, cold hands trying to carefully slide a joint from the small tube. 

As soon as you took your first inhale of the joint, relief took over your body. It didn’t take long for your mind to become fuzzy with static, and your limbs relaxed into weightlessness. You stood with your back against the building, and watched the empty street in front of you. Snow swirled through the air, picked up by wind and dispersed like mist. Beams from the streetlights cast the sidewalk in glittering light, and you kicked at the thin layer of snow with the toe of your boot.

The door to the bar swung open, and you watched as Angus Tully walked through. He had his coat on again, the dark red scarf wrapped loosely around his neck. A cigarette hung loosely between his lips. As soon as he saw you, his face dropped into irritation. You weren’t feeling so pleased at the sight of him, either. 

“Jesus, what are you doing out here?” He muttered, leaning next to you against the wall.

You glowered at him. “Do you own the sidewalk, or something? What kind of stupid question is that.”

He fumbled through his jacket pockets. “You’re gonna talk to me about stupid questions? That’s rich.”

There was no dignifying him with a response, you just rolled your eyes and took another hit of your joint to the sound of him rummaging through his coat. After just a few seconds of silence, he sighed, and turned back to you. “Can I use your lighter?”

You kept your eyes on the street in front of you. “Don’t have one.”

“Seriously? You’re going to be like this right now?”

“God, do you ever shut the hell up?” You asked, holding out your lighter for him. It sat in your outstretched palm for a moment, before you felt him pluck it gently out of your hand. There was a flicker of light, and the sound of the Zippo flipping closed before he handed it back to you.

“What are you doing out here, anyway? Shouldn’t you be inside, being an annoying prick to everyone?” You sighed. 

“Y’know, that’s exactly what I asked you,” he said, blowing smoke upward.

Your fingers were starting to feel numb in the cold, and you suddenly wished you brought a pair of gloves with you. “Just needed a little alone time. Which I still haven’t found.”

“Funny, thought you were having fun. Throwing yourself at everyone and whatnot. Seems like your greatest strength.”

You whipped around to him. “I’m sorry, are you keeping tabs on me? How is it any business of yours, what I do or who I talk to? What makes you think you can say that to me?”

Angus was fully turned to you now, too. The cigarette was burning quickly between his fingers, abandoned by his mouth. “I just don’t want my friend to get hurt, that’s all.”

“You were watching Brian and I?” You asked, incredulous. 

His cheeks were turning bright red, and you sensed that it was from more than the biting weather. “So what if I was? I’ve seen how you are with guys.”

“‘How I am with guys?’ What the hell are you talking about? Where are you getting this from?”

“Come on, don’t act dumb. Every semester you get all cozy with some guy from our class, and then you ditch them. I just don’t want the same thing to happen with—I mean, to my friend. I’m not saying you’re easy or anything, just there’s a pattern.”

You were completely speechless. Maybe you did know a lot of guys from your class, but it didn’t mean that you were leading them all on, or that you had even been intimate with any of them. Brian was the one flirting with you tonight, and it didn’t mean you were a slut for indulging in it. But somehowm none of the words came out, no self-defense. You felt raw. 

“What did I do to you, Angus? I mean, really. What did I do to make you hate me so much?”

He let out a bitter laugh. “You don’t get it, right? That’s very unsurprising, considering how little seems to get through your head.”

The fuzzy, warm feeling that the pot gave you had turned ice cold, and yet your brain still felt mushy and soft. There was no room for weakness around Angus, but now you felt like an open wound, a deep cut that he was digging his nails into.

“No, I don’t get it,” you replied. The lump in your throat was beginning to swell, like you tried to swallow an apple whole. “Because everyone loves you. All anyone ever talks about is you. ‘Oh, Angus threw this great party. Angus said the funniest thing the other day’. You have everything in the entire world, and you still can’t leave me alone. Apparently, it’s some great crime for me to even make friends. You just want everything for yourself.”

He stared at you with the same wide-eyed expression as before. If you squinted and focused just a bit more, he might have even looked embarrassed.

“I’d love to know what’s so fucking great about you. I really wish I saw that. We could even be friends if you weren’t such a giant asshole,” you finished weakly. You tossed the dead joint to the ground, and brushed past him back to the bar, shoulder shoved into his arm.

“You’re welcome for the lighter, by the way.”

---

The rest of the week had broken you down into a shell of yourself. After getting disasterously drunk after your argument with Angus at the bar on Monday night, you awoke with a pounding headache the next morning. You dragged yourself out of bed and into class, only to realize that you had forgotten to do a reading. If you hadn’t gone out that night, you would have had time to do the assignment, and now you were falling even more behind than before. Your shift at the campus café on Wednesday afternoon was incredibly busy because your coworker had called off. Despite the fact that you were a below-average barista, your boss insisted that you juggle the cash register and making drinks. On Thursday you slept too late and missed another class, and on Friday you barely had the energy to get out of bed.

You spent the weekend trying desperately to study and catch up with homework, but it was like your brain had completely shut down. You read and reread lines from your textbook, failing to gain any meaning from the words, and your hand began to cramp after writing only a page of notes. Everything was falling apart, and there was no one to blame but yourself.

Angus was just the cherry on top. You saw him almost everyday, and when you came to class late that Tuesday, the sight of him was just a stabbing, awkward reminder of what happened. Having that power over you was unbearable, and you wanted to skip classes to avoid even seeing him. You refused to let him know he had that power over you, but it was getting harder everyday.

Monday, on your way to Johnson’s class, you felt more defeated than you ever had. It was the last class of the day, but the sky was already starting to darken, and the snow had accumulated so quickly the past few days that most pathways on campus hadn’t been shoveled yet, leaving you to step wonkily through the quad. You tired quickly from trying to step in the uneven ground, and decided, with much shame, to call it quits and walk back to your dorm. Fuck this. Fuck school, fuck Johnson, and fuck your life.

You turned around and followed your steps back through the quad, staring down at the monotonous ground at your feet, before hearing your name called. Looking up, you saw Angus, bundled up tightly, with a ridiculous trapper hat over his head, curls still managing to escape from underneath. No. No, no, no. This was the last person you wanted to see right now.

There was no avoiding him, however, as his long legs reached you in a few short paces. “What are you doing? Class starts in two  minutes.”

“Yeah,” avoiding his gaze, you attempted to move around him. “Better get a move on then.”

He stepped in front of you, blocking your path. “Where are you going? You know Lincoln Hall is the other way, right?”

“I know that, Angus,” you said, attempting to move around him again. However, the man just sidestepped you again, staying directly in front of you.

You looked at him, not bothering to hide the ire in your face. “Do you mind?”

“Are you skipping right now?” He asked, and you wished that he didn’t sound so earnestly concerned. You wished that he didn’t care at all.

“Yes, I am. Now move, please and thank you.”

He simply shook his head. “Don’t skip, okay? Come to class. We have a test on Wednesday and you’ll be screwed if you don’t go.”

You scoffed at him. “Oh please, don’t act like you care. If I fail, it’ll just give you an opportunity to rub in how much better than me you are.”

“It doesn’t matter, okay? We have to go. You’re not like this, you’re not… a skipper,” he insisted.

“How would you know what I’m like, Angus? I’m not going, and that’s it.” You pushed past him again, before suddenly being pulled by the wrist. You stared back at Angus in disbelief, and couldn’t help but think that this was the first time he had ever touched you.

“What the hell are you doing?” you yelled, giving your arm a light tug. 

Angus’ grip was firm, but not painful, as he tugged you back in the other direction. “You’re being ridiculous. Come on, we’re already late as it is.”

Panic began to rise in your throat, and you shook your head frantically, now pulling harder to free yourself from his grip. Angus was much stronger than he looked, and didn’t seem to budge from your flailing attempts to get free. “What the fuck?” He yelled, looking at you incredlously. 

“I can’t do it, Angus! Okay? I can’t explain it but I just can’t walk in there! Please, please, please don’t make me do this,” you begged, eyes screwed shut as you fought back tears.

He released you suddenly, and you fell back into the snow from your continued momentum.

“Oh, shit! I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that would happen, I was just trying to…” He stopped, and rushed to kneel by you, where you slowly sat up from the thick layer of snow you had landed in. Your ass was wet, and the chill was beginning to set in quickly. Everything was going so wrong, and you wished to curl into a ball and disappear.

“Are you alright? I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to push you. Well, I mean, I was, but I didn’t mean to push you too far.” He extended his hand, and you grabbed it in defeat, letting him pull you out of the snow.

You brushed your behind with bare hands, and tried to dry them on your coat. “How did my life become so fucked up?” You asked yourself quietly. Angus still stood in front of you, irritatingly concerned, and you suddenly felt very sorry for the both of you.

Angus stared at you with furrowed brows, a frown on his face that you’d never seen before, and you wondered if he was upset. You’d never seen him be upset. Annoyed, of course. Mad, plenty of times. Happy, even, laughing it up with his friends. But simply upset? That was an expression that was new to you, and you hated seeing it on him. He still looked handsome, warm brown eyes trying to melt your cold.

He sighed. “Look, if you’re struggling with school, I get it. And I’m not trying to sabotage you, okay? No tricks when I say this: come to my place after class today. We can work together, and I can fill you in on what you missed for Johnson’s. I figure you can’t go now when…” He gestured awkwardly to your lower half.

You didn’t say anything for a long moment, just letting the snow fall around you in silence. Angus would be ten minutes late if he left for class now. “Why are you being nice to me?” you asked.

He shook his head, and swung his backpack around to unzip it. He tore out a piece of paper, and pulled a pen from the bottom of his bag. One palm was used to hold the paper, and he quickly scribbled something onto the sheet. When he handed it to you, you could see that the writing was messy, and that the pen had torn a little hole in every other character.

“That’s my address. If you want to come over, then come over any time after 4, okay? I promise I won’t belittle you or make you feel bad, or anything. I promise,” he repeated. By the time you looked up from the crinkled page, you saw him jogging to class, backpack bouncing from the single shoulder it hung from, and red scarf trailing behind him.

---

You stood infront of a three-story apartment building on Main Street. The first floor was taken up by a bakery, which you had been to only once before, and the facade was all worn, red brick, and intricate stained glass above the bay windows. It was the kind of apartment you dreamed of living in; the view from the bay was probably so comfortable this time of year. Angus didn’t deserve to live here. You stepped to the front door, and searched for Angus’s name by the doorbells. Once you pressed the button, a surge of anxiety ran through you, and you suddenly wondered if you still looked okay, or if the wind had messed up your hair. You smoothed a hand over your long, wool skirt, and wanted to slap yourself for caring what Angus thought of you.

After a minute, you heard footsteps thumping from behind the door, which swung open to reveal Angus all dressed down. He wore flannel pants, and a grey hoodie with the name ‘Barton’ printed in all caps. 

“Hey, sorry, I didn’t know if you’d actually show up,” he said, stepping aside to let you in.

“No, that’s fine. It’s your house,” you replied, following him up the stairs to the second floor. 

His apartment was so beautiful that it was unfair. The bay window was even more beautiful from this side, gauzy curtains pulled aside, and a plush bench nestled in the space. The kitchen and living room were connected with a wide archway, and you could see from where you stood that the dining table was surrounded by three wooden chairs, his winter coat hanging off the back of one. 

The living room featured a plush corduroy couch, adorned by a single throw pillow and woven blanket tossed over the arm. The coffee table had board games stored underneath it, you could see an intricately designed chessboard poking out. A tall and narrow bookshelf stood next to the T.V set, and you wandered to look at it while Angus cleared the coffee table of mugs and loose paper. It appeared that he was most interested in the American classics, and you were impressed to see a copy of Gravity’s Rainbow on the shelf. You plucked it off carefully, and turned to Angus, holding the book to him with both hands. 

“Is this one any good? I haven’t had the chance to read it yet.”

He looked to you from his place in the kitchen, depositing dishes in the sink. “Oh, uh. I haven’t actually read it yet.”

You snorted, and placed it back on the shelf, next to a curiously worn copy of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

“Sorry, I can take this for you,” he said, sounding much closer than he was before. He was only inches from you now, with surprisingly light steps, and gestured to your coat. 

“Oh! Thank you…” you went to put your bag down on the ground, but Angus took it before you could. When you took your coat off, he took it with a single hand, leaving your bag on the couch before going to hang the coat off another chair in the kitchen.

It was awkward standing in Angus’ living room. Did he have a roommate? You wondered what the rest of the apartment looked like, and were itching to explore. You never imagined that you would be in his space, and it was almost too intimate to now be in it. You sat stiffly on the couch, busying yourself by rummaging through your bag.

“Hopefully you don’t mind being in the living room? My kitchen light has been flickering, so it’ll be a headache to sit in there,” Angus asked, setting down two steaming mugs onto the table.

“That’s fine. What’s this?”

“Oh, it’s Earl Grey. Nothing fancy, I don’t own a teapot or anything. Just in case you needed the caffeine,” he turned the handle of one mug towards you, before settling down on the couch.

You mumbled thanks to him, still feeling strange and out of place.

“...What have you been struggling with the most?”

It would have been nice if in that moment, an explosion engulfed the entire room in flames, and you and Tully could be put out of your own misery. The humiliation of having to turn to Angus, of all people, was almost too much for you. His sheepish willingness to help was not making it any easier. You could only groan, and rub at your face, trying to fight the incoming headache.

Angus just stared at you, brow furrowed in confusion and second-hand embarrassment.

“Hey, it’s okay. I’m telling you. It might be shocking to hear, but I used to struggle with school, too, and it took a lot of work to get my head back on straight. But I had good mentors, and it got better,” he tried to comfort.

You chuckled, moving your hands to organize your notebooks and assignments across the coffee table. “That doesn’t shock me, actually. You can be kind of dumb sometimes.”

“You’re calling me dumb? Who’s the one that missed three classes in a row for British Romantic Literature? You should value your education a little more; if you don’t show up to class, you’re basically lighting money on fire. That makes you the biggest idiot in the school,” he jeered.

“Three classes in a row? How do you even notice something like that? Are you stalking me or something?” You countered, reveling in the warmth growing in Angus’s cheeks. “Will you just help me, already? I’m behind on two reflections for British Romantic, and if they don’t get done soon, I’ll just about kill myself.”

“That would be a tragedy. How will the world go on without you?”

“Cut the sarcasm, you ass.”

The study session started off rocky, with you and Angus arguing back and forth about Don Juan, insulting the other’s interpretations, and each other’s intelligence. You wanted to quit, almost storming out at Angus’s sharp tongue, before realizing that it was the exact kind of content needed to complete the assignment. His opposing view made it easier to know what you were arguing for the reflections, and you began to write pages upon pages of examination for Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. It became productive to work alongside Angus; he did his work while you did yours, but it was motivating to study with someone as competitive as him. 

Even harder to admit, but you were even having fun. You enjoyed working to background noise, and he let you go through his records to find something you liked. 

You laughed loudly when you pulled out a copy of Shut Down Volume Two  by The Beach Boys. “Really? Angus Tully likes The Beach Boys? Do you dance along to Surfin’ U.S.A.?”

He rolled his eyes at your joke, unamused. “Whatever, it was a gift. I used to like them as a kid. It’s like, the opposite vibe of Massachusettes.”

You placed the vinyl carefully onto the record player. “It’s okay, I like them too. I used to listen to Pet Sounds on repeat; my parents were pissed about hearing God Only Knows ten times a day.” The needle was set to the edge of the record, and you let it begin to play.

“You’re from Massachusettes?” You asked.

He was sprawled lazily on the couch, legs wide, one hand holding a copy of Othello and the other marking it with a pen. He responded without looking at you. “Yeah, a city called New Bedford. It’s by the ocean.” 

Your eyes went wide as you took your spot next to him. “Wow, ocean town? That sounds amazing. You probably fished a lot, huh?”

He shrugged. “I wasn’t great at it. I usually just went because my dad liked to. We’d go and he’d fry it after, and my mom would complain about the smell in the house, although it always smelled kind of salty.” Angus trailed off, looking down at Othello, eyes glazed over in thought. You didn’t know anything about Angus’ life, but you could tell that the subject of his family wasn’t an easy one. Leaving the conversation off on a bitter point would only make things between the two of you tense again, and you changed topics.

“Is that where you went to school, in New Bedford?”

“No, I went to a boarding school closer to Boston. One of those small towns about an hour away.”

You shook your head. “I knew it.”

He shot you a look. “Knew what?”

“That you’re a rich kid. I mean, I knew that it was a private school you went to, I heard you tell Max once, but boarding school?” You shook your head again in pseudo-exasperation.

“Whatever. It sucked, and I hated going there,” he said. The two of you fell silent, the sound of Don’t Worry Baby filling the room.

“What were you like in high school? A total jerkoff?” You played with your pen, scribbling mindlessly in your notebook. When he didn’t respond immediately, you turned to check on him. Othello now sat useless in his lap, and he appeared deep in thought again.

“Honestly, yeah, I was.”

“Shocker,” you quipped.

“Yeah,” he laughed, “Basically everyone hated me. I mean, really hated me. My classmates, my teachers, the whole administration. I did stupid shit like pull pranks but it was something else that was wrong with me. Not just that I blew up a toilet with firecrackers or whatever, but I thought I was so much better than everyone else. And then I grew up a little and realized that I’m not. And I said stuff back then to people that should’ve gotten my ass kicked. Sometimes it did.”

You didn’t expect Angus to be so honest with you, and sat at a loss for words. “You blew up a toilet?”

He just chuckled. “Yeah, and I got caught, too.”

“Rookie mistake.”

“Exactly,” he sighed, running a hand through his messy curls. It was longer now than it had been at the beginning of the semester, and you wanted more than anything to smooth out the stray curl by his forehead. He looked so soft in his hoodie, warmed by lamp light, completely in his element. “This is the first time I’ve ever had real friends before. It’s the first time I’ve walked into a room and people didn’t groan at the sight of me.”

“Yeah, must be nice.” You looked down, fiddling with the hem of your sweater. “It’s hard to imagine how much worse you could’ve been back then, when you’re already pretty bad now. But it’s also hard to imagine you being lonely, when everyone loves you now. Everyone but me, I guess.” Your fingers tightened in the fabric, and you sighed. “You were right, before.”

Angus just sat, watching you. “Right about what?”

“What you said last week. That I don’t get it. There’s probably some obvious explanation for why you hate me, but I don’t understand what it is. I don’t know why you were so mean before, or why you’re being so nice to me now.” Angus seemed to be the shortcut to making you emotional, because as soon as the words came out, you had to fight the shaking in your hands, and the lump in your throat. “I mean, if it’s something that I did, just tell me, and I’ll apologize and we can just be normal classmates. Because I don’t have the energy to fight with you, lately,” you continued.

“It’s not you. You didn’t do anything, okay? I’m just an idiot, and you’re right: I’m a huge pain in the ass,” Angus said, shifting closer to you. 

“It must be me. You’re even nice to Tracy, and she’s the worst,” you warbled. “And you’re already one of the best writers in class; you’ll probably go far. You’re gonna write a novel.”

“It’s a novella. I’ll show you the first draft when it’s done.”

The words were meant to comfort, but it just made you break further, and a gentle tear rolled down your cheek. “I thought you didn’t want me to read it,” you whispered. 

Angus shook his head again. “I was just being an asshole when I said that. I was… scared. You’re a better writer than I am by miles. I didn’t want you to judge me if you read it and found out that it sucks so I… I don’t know. Everytime I’m around you I get scared and defensive and I become even more stupid than I already am.”

You let out a watery laugh, wiping the mist from your eyes. “You’re scared of me? How does that work?”

He sighed your name, a soft sound that you had never come out of his mouth before. Not in that way, as though he could cradle it gently between his smooth palms. When you didn’t look up in response, he placed a hand on your shoulder, moving you towards him. Your skin prickled at his touch; even between layers of clothes you felt electricity sparking and warming your arm. His eyes met yours with an intensity that was almost too much to bear, but you couldn’t bring yourself to look away. You were less than a foot apart now, the closest to each other that you had ever been. 

“I know that you don’t believe it right now, but you’re talented and a great writer. Everytime you speak up in class it’s something that I’ve never thought of, that probably half the idiots in there could never come up with on their own. And every time you look at me, you’re determined, like you know you could out-smart me any day of the week. You could, and you don’t realize it yet, which is terrifying,” he rambled. You could hardly breathe listening to him. “One day you’re gonna realize that nothing is holding you back, and you’ll leave us all in the dust. I’m a dumbass for being too insecure to admit that before, to you or myself.”

You didn’t know what to say; you had never expected Angus to tell you any of that. You thought that he’d say something about your writing workshop freshman year, or the time you switched his spot in the class presentations from last to first, so that when he came into class five minutes late (as you predicted) he was scolded by the professor. What was unexpected was him singing your praises, and telling you that you were a better writer than him.

“It’s big of you to admit that, Angus. Thank you for saying it,” you said.

“Don’t thank me, thank my shrink. It’s taken years of therapy to get here,” he replied.

You couldn’t hide your surprise at the mention of a shrink. “Well, since we’re being vulnerable, I’m sorry, too. For not being the bigger person, and ending this madness sooner. And for saying some pretty horrible stuff about you before. I guess we were both jealous of each other… I just wanted to be as good as you are,” you admitted. “I do have another question, though.”

Angus frowned, removing his hand from you. “Shit. What else did I do?”

“Why did you say that stuff to me about Brian last week? That was pretty horrible, accusing me of being easy, sleeping around with these guys from class. I wouldn’t hurt him, you know,” you said seriously. 

Angus groaned, dropping his head. “Oh, God. Alright that was messed up, and I was being a male chauvinist pig, but you can’t go out with Brian, alright? Serious, he’s a moronic charlatan and you have to turn him down.”

Now you remembered how rude Angus could be, and a fire was lit under you again. Just when things were going well, he had to go say and something

“And who are you to say who I can and can’t date?”

His head whipped up to you. “You guys are dating?”

“No, Angus. But even if we were, it wouldn’t be any business of yours. I can see whoever I want, and it doesn’t make me a slut or something,” you gritted.

The relief on his face was evident. “Oh, okay, good. That’s good.”

“‘That’s good?’ What are you talking about?” You asked in astonishment. Angus was giving you complete whiplash.

He stared at you, looking as if he had just been caught red-handed, before standing up abruptly. “I think you should go home now.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? What is going on with you right now, Angus?” You snapped, standing with arms crossed. “One minute you’re bearing your soul to me, and now you’re shutting down. What are you trying to communicate? Because I’m so confused.”

Angus’ hands were threatening to rip the hair out either side of his head. “I told you I was scared! Because I like you, okay? Because you’re intellectual and thoughtful and the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen, and you can’t date Brian, because it’ll destroy me.”

It was as if a gun had been shot inches away from you, the way your ears rang and the world around you narrowed into the tiny pinprick that was Angus Tully. Nothing else existed anymore, just the way he bit into his plush bottom lip, the anguished crease in his brow, the droop of his almond eyes, his silly Barton hoodie. All you could do was reach forward, grab his hoodie strings and press your lips against his.

He melted into the kiss immediately, palms coming to cup your cheeks. He leaned forward to ease the strained reach towards him, and your hands clenched at his chest. Your lips slotted together perfectly, his nose bumping into yours. Even the dots of stubble scratching against your chin, which you would usually bemoan on any other man, was exhilarating and made you press for more. When you pulled back for air, his mouth chased yours until you pushed gently against his chest.

“I like you, too. Is that too juvenile?” You asked timidly.

“No,” he said, caressing the corner of your mouth with the pad of his thumb. Your lips were swollen and warm from being pressed against his, and you loved the soothing feeling of his thumb brushing against you. “It’s perfect. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”

Huffing a laugh to yourself, you reached up to twirl a curl between your fingers. His hair was just as soft as you imagined, the perfect contrast against his scratchy cheeks. He laughed with you, and asked “Having fun up there?”

You smiled, leaning into him again, “Lots. I’ve always wanted to do this.”

“Oh yeah? For how long?” He grinned.

You faked an annoyed groan, resting your head on his chest. “Oh, I don’t know. On and off since freshman year? You sat in front of me in American Lit, and I thought you were the coolest guy in the world. On whenever you spoke, and off whenever you spoke to me.”

His deft fingers played with the hair at the nape of your neck, brushing against the locks. “I think I’ve got you beat.”

You raised a suspicious brow at him. “What do you mean?”

“Mine started during freshman orientation. We got the same tour group, remember? And when we went in a circle introducing ourselves or whatever, I couldn’t believe I was gonna be in class with someone as beautiful as you. And then you said you wanted to be a writer and journalist, writing stories about life like Joan Didion, and I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever heard,” Angus replied.

“Oh man, lots of wasted time then. We could have been doing this for three years instead of fighting every day,” you said.

He gave you that soft smile you loved, taking you all in. He felt like the luckiest man alive, and everyone else could suck it. “Better start making up for it now, then,” and he leaned in again, soft and warm and perfect.

He doesn’t touch cameras anymore, hasn’t held one since what happened. You’re the photographer and videographer in the family. Vacations, birthdays, cute moments of the little girl you both share — they’re all taken and filmed by you (Baby, come on. Just one more pic, pretty please? Look, sweetie, isn’t Daddy just sooo handsome with his birthday hat? Oh, yes he is!). 

He hates confusing spaces with repetitive elements — multi-level car parks, hotel corridors. They seem to induce some sort of frenzied fear in him —  cold sweat, clammy palms, dizzy spells, nausea, difficulty breathing — the whole works. 

He remembers one time — after finally finding his car, having gone through multiple disorienting rounds of panic — just being unable to move for a long while, slumped against the steering wheel in the driver’s seat, throat closed up, thoughts racing about a hundred miles per hour. Kat. That thing. That place. Always, always that fucking place. 

And just like that, he was Bobby again. Desperately begging them not to let go. Hands slick with his girlfriend’s blood. Heart hammering so violently in his chest that he’s sure it might just give out before he’s even made it halfway through running for his life. 

A small Daddy … are you okay? was the only thing that had managed to cut through the noise. 

It was supposed to be their special day out — their usual weekend thing, just the two of them. The plan was to catch some new Barbie movie, then get said Barbie at the toy store, and finish off with two scoops of ice-cream each afterwards. 

The plan was not to have a complete fucking meltdown in front of his daughter. 

He somehow pulled himself together, if only for her sake. Forced his voice into something gentle, steady — believable, like if he said it right enough he might even convince himself. 

“Yeah, I’m okay, sweetheart. Daddy’s just a little tired from looking for the car, that’s all.”

Managed a small, shaky smile, then leaned over to fasten her seatbelt and stroke her hair with unsteady fingers. Avoided meeting the wide, questioning eyes that always seemed so much like his own. Focused on the wedding band around his finger instead until the terror began to ebb.

He hadn’t even realised he’d been crying until he adjusted the rear view mirror and saw the mess. 

He was a mess. 

Still is, sometimes. 

But when you’re around, it doesn’t feel so bad. 

You seem to always know when he gets pulled into it all — a small squeeze of his hand and a soft All good, babe? Or a gentle You still here with us, hon? with your fingers in his hair. Sometimes, you reach for him before he even realises he’s drifting. Arms thrown carelessly around him, your body curled up close, forehead pressed against his cheek as his breathing slowly falls back into rhythm with yours.

He’s never told you about what happened exactly, but you seemed to have stitched together your own version of events through the little bits and pieces he’s let slip out over the years. You’ve never pressed for more. Never pried. You’ve only ever taken that which he’s been willing to give and chose to love him anyway. Somehow, you’ve always understood that if he could tell you, he would. 

And he’ll always love you for that.

It’s probably strange. Hating cameras. Hating certain places. Lugging around fears he can’t properly explain.

The thing he hates most of all, though? Pirates. Or Sultans. Whatever the fuck it was supposed to be. 

Some nights, he dreams of that thing. Dreams of the furniture store. Dreams of Kat.

He tries not to wake you when it happens — when he jolts awake with his heart lodged somewhere in his throat and his cheeks stained with tears. You always do anyway — curling into his side, nuzzling against him, softly reminding him to breathe.

Later, when the worst of it has passed, he holds you close beneath the covers and dwells on the way your fingers trace absent patterns along the long scar that cuts across his ribs — the one you’ve always known never to ask about, and for which he has never offered an explanation.

Other than the things that occasionally surface from the cracks, life is good.

Life is good when he pretends not to notice the men who follow him sometimes. When he pretends the box in the attic doesn't exist — the one containing Kat’s missing person poster and the tapes he kept from that place. When he pretends that he actually deserves the life he has now. 

Life is good when he pretends Bobby Franklin died a long time ago. 

He’s gotten very good at pretending. He does it for you. Does it for the little girl made from the best of you both. Does it for the family you’ve built together. 

It takes Daeron two nights to come back. 

Two nights is not long enough to be called absence, he thinks. Not properly, not in a house with so many halls and courtyards and rooms made for avoiding one another politely. He has not vanished, he has not given anyone cause to send. Men into inns or stables or the corners of Summerhall where servants know better than to look too closely. 

He has only been…elsewhere. 

Elsewhere, unfortunately, has a way of arranging itself around you lately. 

At supper, he remains longer than he means to because your voice carries from the other end of the table, low and even over an answer to one of Daella’s endless questions. In the gallery, he passes through twice in one afternoon because one of your ladies mentioned that you were there, and because passing through a gallery is not a crime anyone can accuse him of. In the yard, he stops to ask after a horse he has no interest in because he has seen the hem of your dress at the edge of the covered walk. 

None of it counts. 

That is what he tells himself on the third night, while he stands outside your door with a bent hairpin in his hand. 

There is wine in him, but not enough to count either. Not enough to give sleep any hope of mercy, not enough to make this wise, and certainly not enough to stop him knowing he should turn away before your door learns the shape of him. 

Enough, perhaps, to make shame worse. 

Enough to make his hands steadier than they would be sober, though not steady enough. His thumb worries at the bent silver of the hairpin until the purple stone at its end bites into his skin. All the wine in the world could not make his hands stop trembling sometimes. That seems unfair. Wine ought to be better at the few offices for which he still keeps it. 

The hairpin is almost certainly not yours. 

It is too pale, for one thing. Too delicate in the wrong way, with its little purple stone and its silver curve bent nearly out of usefulness. Rhae might have worn it, dropped it in a mad dash for the kitchens once she smelled honeycakes, or bent it trying to force Egg to let her put it in his hair. 

Daeron found it hours ago near the stairs and picked it up without thinking. 

And then he kept it.  

That had been the first mistake, really. Or the second. Or the latest in a long and humiliating tradition of mistakes, if one wanted to be honest, which Daeron does not. 

In his hand, alone, the thing had seemed almost like a reason. Poor, perhaps. Thin. But a reason all the same. Now, before your door, it becomes what it is once more: a bent hairpin, about to be offered to the wrong owner, proof that he holds no dignity at all. 

A fed stray comes back to the hand that fed it, that is the trouble of feeding anything that has learned the shape of hunger. It circles, it waits, it pretends the door means nothing to it but still returns to it. 

Daeron knocks before he can make himself leave. 

The sound is small, and for one awful breath nothing happens. Then there is movement inside, a faint scrape of a chair, and your voice through the door, 

“Yes?” 

He should say something useful. His name, perhaps. An apology. A lie. Any of the usual tools. 

“Um, it is…me.” He says instead, almost flinching at his own words. It is not an answer, it barely qualifies as a warning, much less a greeting. 

Another pause. His breath stops as he waits for your response. 

Then he hears the latch lift. For some reason, he takes a step back. 

You are not dressed for sleep, not yet anyhow. Your hair is still somewhat arranged, though less severely than it was at supper, and there is in on the side of one of your fingers. Behind you, near the hearth, a low table holds a cup of tea, a sheet of parchment, and a letter half-filled in a hand he does not yet know well enough. 

You look surprised. Not displeased, he thinks, and the thought is so dangerous he discards it almost as soon as it arrives, lest it takes root. 

“Daeron.” 

He has heard his name in many tones. Commanded, cursed, sighed, laughed over, sharpened into a warning. He knows what to do with most of them. 

He does not know what to do with this. 

His name sounds smaller in your room, spoken by you. Not diminished, not even softened, simply…nearer. In the corridor, a name can still be something called after a man, but in your room, with the fire behind you and ink on your finger, it has nowhere to echo, and it reaches him too cleanly. 

“I found this.” 

It is too abrupt, he knows it as soon as the words leave him. 

Still, he holds out the hairpin because he has come too far to do anything else with it. The thing lies across his palm, bent silver and purple stone, suddenly smaller than it had seemed in the corridor. Meaner, somehow. In his hand, before your door, it had almost possessed a purpose, but here, under your eyes, it becomes just an object again. 

You look down at it. Then at him. Then back at his hands. 

“A hairpin.” 

“Yes,” He replies. Promising start. He clears his throat and adds, “I thought it might be yours.” 

You look back at him then, not long, and not unkindly. That is almost more daunting than any worse alternative his mind conjured up. Then you take the pin from his palm with two fingers, careful of the bent place, and turn it once toward the light. 

His hand remains open after it is gone. 

He notices that. He notices, a breath too late, you noticing it. He closes his fingers too late, drops his hand back to his side. 

The purple stone catches briefly in the lamplight. Pale. Northern. Entirely wrong. 

“It is not mine.” You say. 

“No,” He agrees. He should have known that. He did know that, or something in him had known and chosen not to trouble the rest of him with the fact until now. “I suppose not.” 

There is nowhere for the sentence to go after that. Nowhere for him to go after that. 

The excuse to see you dies there, in the doorway to your room, without even the courtesy of putting up a fight. He has brought you a thing that is not yours and asked you to believe in it just long enough to let him stand where he wanted to stand. 

You look down at the hairpin again. 

Then your fingers close around it. 

“I can keep it.” 

Daeron looks up from your closed hand to your face. 

“It is bent.” He says, uselessly, because apparently he has chosen idiocy and intends to remain faithful to it. 

A smile curves slightly at your lips. 

“I see that.” 

“It…may not be of any use.” 

“Many things are not.” 

That should give him room to make a jest, it even waits politely for one. He finds no words worth sending out to die at this doorway. 

You step aside. 

“Come in. Close the door,” You say simply, “The room will go cold.” 

An order, then. Good. Orders are easier, when he wants to follow them. Orders have edges, orders require a body and a man present enough to wield it. 

Daeron comes in and closes the door behind him. 

For a moment, that is all he does. He has entered the room; the hairpin has been surrendered; the door is shut. He has no next step.  

You seem to realize it at the same moment he does, though there is no grand comprehension in your expression, no terrible softness that verges on pity. Only uncertainty, and something warmer beneath it. 

Your first step away from him is a step back, and some foolish part of him tries to find a meaning to cling to in the way you seem to linger a breath longer looking at him. 

Returning to the hearth a few paces away, you take a sit and state, 

“You may sit.” 

There is a chair near the hearth, angled away from yours. Far enough to be safe, near enough to count. 

Daeron sits. 

You return to your place with the letter. The hairpin is set on the table beside the ink, bent silver beside black, a strange little corpse with a purple eye. It looks absurd there. Yet it looks, somehow, less absurd than it did in his hand. 

He looks at the parchment because it is easier than looking at you. 

The quiet digs under his skin, a hunger for hearing your voice he has no right to feel churns at his stomach, and so he blurts out, 

“Are you writing to Dorne?” 

Your gaze follows his to look at the letter, and you correct, “To my sister. She has questions for me.” 

“The one who sends the tea?” 

“No,” You say, “A younger one, ten and three. There are…many of us.” 

Eight, he knows. He doesn’t think he learned that information through any means that might let him keep a bit of dignity, so he doesn’t admit to knowing it. 

“That sounds dangerous.” 

There, a small smile. Not quite laughter, but something alive at the corner of your mouth, something warm in your gaze when you look at him. Daeron feels an answering pull in his chest and mistrusts it immediately. 

You dip the quill and write another line. He watches your hand move across the page, the slight pause before a word, the way your mouth shapes some private correction before your fingers commit it to ink. There is nothing extraordinary in it, and that is precisely the problem. 

Daeron has wanted women before. He knows, more or less, what to do with wanting. It has rules, even when they are ugly ones. Wanting can be purchased, provoked, regretted, outrun; it has a beginning and an end and, often enough, a door one can leave by. It can be made into something brief and rough enough that no one -not even him, especially not him- has to ask what else it might have been. 

This is worse. 

Not cleaner, even. Certainly not purer. He is painfully aware of your hands moving with precision over the page, of your mouth and the brief little glimpse of your tongue as it darts out to wet your lower lip, of the line of your throat and the way the light of the fire creates a path to follow down it. He is entirely too aware of the small distance between your chair and his, between your knee and his, and how easily a man might ruin that distance by wanting too loudly. 

But the wanting does not move him toward any familiar end now. 

It only keeps him still. 

He wants to remain in the room while you finish a letter. He wants, absurdly, to be allowed to be there when you look up. 

It is a stupid want, and almost unbearable. 

“What does she ask?” He asks instead of letting those thoughts linger any longer. 

“Many things.” 

“Should I be concerned?” 

Your eyes lift from the page, a glint in your eye he feels his pulse racing at the sight of, “Only if you object to being described.” 

“I do, generally.” 

“I had guessed.” 

“Descriptions rarely favor me.” He explains. 

“Perhaps you have been poorly described.” 

A smile curves at his own lips, humorless and almost bitter but his, “Reality has been no great ally either.” 

That earns him another small look, and you seem to consider him for a moment, as if deciding whether the sentence he spoke is a door or a wall. 

Then you look back at the letter. 

“She asks whether I have seen King’s Landing,” You list out, “Whether Summerhall is as cold as she imagines. Whether all northmen look as though they are being punished by the weather.” 

“Northmen?” 

“All men north of the Prince’s Pass are northmen to her,” You explain. “She also asks if the Queen resembles our grandfather.” 

“Does she?” 

You think on it, and then answer, “In the brow, perhaps.” 

He does not know why that pleases him, some bridge of blood and memory drawn between Dorne and the woman who had written to his father, between your hand and Myriah’s, between the life you left and the House that has taken you in. it should not matter. It does. 

You write another line. 

“And,” You add, almost reluctantly, “She asks whether my husband is handsome.” 

Daeron goes still for one foolish moment. 

The question should amuse him. It does, distantly. Girls of ten and three in Dorne, apparently, possess the same merciless and direct interest as girls of ten and three everywhere. 

But it is your answer he thinks of. 

“What did you tell her?” 

The words are out before he can make them safer. Gods be damned, hunting hounds request praise more subtly. 

Your fingers still on the page. 

“I have not reached you yet.” 

He should be relived. More likely, he should be offended. There are several decent vanities available to him, and none arrives in time. 

You have not reached him yet. 

Not avoided nor omitted him. Reached. As if he belongs somewhere further down the page, after the weather and the cold and the shape of Summerhall’s halls. As if he is not an interruption to the life you are writing home about, but part of the order in which it might be told. 

“Oh.” He says. Terrible answer. 

You look up then. 

“I wanted to write of you only what I know.” 

“A short letter, then.” 

“Not so short.” 

He has no answer for that either. 

You return to the page, and he lets himself watch you because no one has told him not to. It is a poor defense, but it is the only one available. 

Your hand moves, the fire shifts, and somewhere beyond the walls Summerhall settles into itself, stone and timber taking the night’s cold and holding onto it. 

The cup of tea beside you gives off less steam as time goes on. He learns that you write slowly while you are thinking and faster when you are certain. Once, you frown and cross out half a line with more force than the paper deserves. Once, you smile at something before you write it, and Daeron wants, with embarrassing force, to know what it was. 

He does not ask. 

The edges of the room begin to soften, from exhaustion, from the hour, from the heat of the fire and the rhythm of your quill and the unbearable intimacy of being allowed in a room where someone else is at ease. 

He should leave, but he thinks it without moving. 

The fire gives a low but sharp crack, and Daeron’s gaze stays with it too long. 

Sleep is there before sleep comes. That is the part no one ever understands. It is not only the closing of the eyes, it is the approach, the dark gathering itself behind the face, waiting for the first loosened thread of sense. Men speak of rest as if the body simply lays itself down and is forgiven, but Daeron has never found it so generous. 

“Daeron?” He blinks. You have stopped writing. Your eyes are on him, and they do not stray as you comment, “You look tired.” 

He should have something for that, some clever answer, something light enough to make the concern retreat. 

“And here I had hoped that this was me looking my best.” 

The words come out rougher than intended, and your expression changes by very little. You lower the quill. 

“I did not say it looked badly on you.” 

Heat climbs traitorously at the back of his neck. For once, no answer comes quickly enough to save him. 

You seem to notice that, or perhaps you only take pity on the silence. Either way, you look back down at the letter and take up the quill again. 

The sound of it returns to the room by degrees: the scratch of the nib, the small shift of your sleeve over the table, the faint crackle of the fire settling lower in the grate. Daeron sits with his hands folded badly in his lap. 

You write another few lines. 

He watches less openly now, or at least he hopes he does. He watches the way your fingers pause before choosing a ward, the way your mouth tightens around some private correction, the way your gaze moves once toward the bent hairpin before returning to the page. 

Perhaps you write of him then. Perhaps not. 

The thought keeps him still longer than pride would like. 

By the time you set the quill down again, the room has changed around you. The tea has gone cool, the fire has sunk lower, the hour has thickened into night. 

You blot the page carefully, and set the letter aside. 

Daeron should stand before you do, he knows that. He is a prince, a husband, a man with several failing claims to courtesy. But his body has grown heavy in the chair, and the thought of rising has become entangled with the thought of leaving. 

You stand, and his body understands dismissal before his mind can argue. 

For one startled moment, Daeron thinks he has ruined it. That you are finished. That the night, the poor excuse, the strange little allowance of his presence here has reached its natural end. 

He does not stand, he only looks up at you. 

There are several things he might say now if he were a better man. He says none of them. 

“You will sleep poorly there.” You say. 

The words take a moment to find their shape. 

“In the chair?” 

“Yes.” 

A smile curves at his lip, “I have slept poorly in worse places.” 

“I remember.” 

That, stupidly, stops him. You do not soften the sentences after saying it, you do not apologize for remembering. You do not pretend the floor beside your bed, the morning, your hand withdrawn from his hair, his body folded at your feet like a thing that had come in from the rain, has vanished simply because he stayed away for two nights. 

Then you move again, offering an ink-stained hand. 

“Come to bed.” 

Daeron looks at your hand. 

The room does not move, the fire does not roar, no god marks the moment down in thunder. There is only the room, the bed, your hand outstretched between you. 

He looks at your hand for what he is certain is too long. 

If this is a kindness, it is a dangerous one, and if this is an order, it is worse. Greed tightens a hand around his throat and keeps any warning he could give you trapped in his chest. 

He takes your hand. 

Your fingers close around his just long enough that they don’t slip from his grasp when he moves to stand. His own hand is cold, he realizes. Yours is warm from the room, from the cup, from memories of the sun on salt-kissed stone. 

It is almost humiliating how easily a touch becomes a leash when said touch is bestowed upon him, but he does not much care to linger on thoughts of dignity. You are leading him to your bed, and he has lost his dignity for far worse rewards. 

Once you are standing by the bed, you let go. 

The loss almost undoes him more than the touch did, so he gives himself something to do. Something to focus on rather than the soft slide of the silk on your shoulders as you shrug off the robe. 

He undresses only enough for sleep, with his back turned where modesty and cowardice can share the labor between them. You do not watch him, or if you do, you are kind enough not to make him aware of it. 

When he lies down, he chooses the far edge of the side you do not occupy.  

On his back, hands above the covers. Too till, too aware of very fold of linen and every place his body does not touch yours. The space between you is narrow by any reasonable measure, yet it feels like a field. 

You put out the nearer lamp, then turn on your side, facing away from him. 

For a moment, Daeron eels the small, foolish loss of your face as if it were a blow. 

He stares at the ceiling until the shadows above it loosen. 

Sleep comes badly. It comes in pieces, thin and sharp-edged. Once, he wakes with his jaw clenched enough to ache. Once, with his fingers twisted in the sheet beneath him. Once, because somewhere in the house a board gives a soft complaint and his body readies itself for a danger that does not arrive. 

Each time, the room is dark. Each time, your breathing is breaking the quiet. Each time, he is still in the bed. 

The last time he wakes is near morning, when the fire has sunk low and the first pale color of dawn begins to find the curtains. Daeron opens his eyes again. 

The bent hairpin lies on the table beside your unfinished letter. 

It is not yours, it is of no use to you. 

It remains anyway. 

Just fyi, this man will be picking up trinkets all over the place and shamelessly using them as excuses to see her from now on.

• you and haymitch hadn’t even made it three steps through the door before sid was running over, wondering who you were.

“haymitch! who’s the girl?” sid asked, running over from the kitchen to where haymitch entered the small home.

“this is y/n, ma wanted to meet her,” the scruffy-blonde boy replied, ruffling sid's own mop of curls with one hand, leading you around with the other.

• willamae was only a tiny bit annoyed at the sight of you, only because it was another mouth to feed that wasn’t her two sons. however it quickly went away once she realised just how much haymitch adored you.

• haymitch did truly adore you, he adored how you offered to help his ma with dinner. although willamae took one look at her sons and knew that they would rather have you hang out with them.

“ma, is it okay if i borrow y/n? haymitch said she could teach me about the stars,” sid asked politely.

you glanced at willamae, who nodded once and soon, you were playing tag in the front garden with sid and haymitch.

• however before dinner, sid had tripped and fallen over some pebbles, causing a scrape on his knee.

• haymitch initally went to go get his ma but you paused, shaking your head and getting up off the ground.

“i have a plan, you stay here with your brother, okay?”

• haymitch gently wiped his brother’s tears as you grabbed a plantain leaf from among the weeds and some bark from a birch tree.

• you then gently grabbed a bowl and some water before crushing the leaf into it. making a paste. sid and haymitch were both sort of watching you in fascination as you gently applied the paste to the scrape.

“as long as you stay fed, your body will be able to patch the scrape by itself. however, my ma taught me that as a last resort, you can clean the wound with clean water, make this paste to act as a barrier to protect the skin and birch bark to act like a bandaid.” you explained the process. sid was quiet, watching you work as he wiped his nose on haymitch’s shirt.

“thanks, buddy,” haymitch sarcastically muttered, which caused the 10-year old to giggle.

• yeah its safe to say you became an abernathy that day.

• once haymitch came back after walking you home, sid immediately asked haymitch when he’d propose to you.

“sid you just met her?!” haymitch asked his brother.

“and i approve of her, ma said she did too. so when are you proposing?” he asked.

“you do?” haymitch pressed his mother.

the scent of peppermint sticks and honey-cakes clung to your dress, a fragrant cloud that felt absurdly out of place here, behind your father’s sweet shop. the air here smelled of damp brick, sour garbage and coal dust. specifically, the coal dust currently smudged on the cheek of haymitch abernathy, who had you pressed against the rough wall, his mouth hot and desperate on yours.

this was your secret. the district’s golden girl, the donner daughter from the town square shop with the pretty ribbons in her hair, and the sharp-tongued seam boy with violence in his eyes and a mocking smirk for everyone but you.

“you taste like sugar,” he muttered against your lips, his voice a low, rasping thing that sent a shiver straight through you. one of his hands was splayed on the brick beside your head, the other firm on your hip, his thumb tracing small, dizzying circles through the thin fabric of your dress.

“is that your way of saying you want more?” you retorted, tilting your head to give him better access to your neck, a thrill running through you at the daring of it. you were playing a part—the spoiled, pretty town girl slumming it—and you both knew it. but the way his breath hitched when you ran your fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck? that was real. “it’s my family’s trade. you’re tasting.. proprietary donner caramel, abernathy. a luxury.”

he snorted, a warm puff of air against your skin. “a luxury, huh?” his teeth grazed your pulse point, not hard, but enough to make you gasp. “feels more like a necessity.” he pulled back just enough to look at you. in the dim alley light, his blue eyes were dark, intense.this was the haymitch only you got to see. the one who looked at you like you were the only real thing in a world of plastic capitol props.

“you’re insufferable,” you whispered, but you were smiling, tracing the line of his jaw.

“and you’re a terrible liar, sweetheart,” he murmured, closing the distance again. this kiss was slower, deeper. his hand left your hip to cup your face, his calloused thumb stroking your cheekbone with a tenderness that made your chest ache. you melted into him, the spoiled-girl act forgotten, your fingers curling into the worn fabric of his shirt. this was the truth: the frantic, hidden meetings, the stolen moments that tasted of desperation, the way he made you feel alive.

“ahem.”

the sound was like a bucket of ice water.

you jerked apart. haymitch moved fast, shoving you behind him in one fluid motion, his body a solid, protective wall between you and the intruder.

maysilee donner stood at the mouth of the alley, her arms crossed over her pristine apron. her pretty face, so similar to yours, was a mask of utter, profound disgust. her nose was wrinkled as if she’d smelled something far worse than the alley’s usual offerings.

for a long, terrible second, no one spoke. the only sound was haymitch’s ragged breathing slowly steadying into something cold and controlled.

“well,” maysilee said finally, her voice dripping with a disdain so pure it could have crystallized sugar. her eyes raked over haymitch, from his scuffed boots to his disheveled hair. “i wondered where all the peppermint extract had gone. i should have known it was wafting down here to cover the stench.”

haymitch didn’t move from in front of you. you peered around his shoulder, your face burning.

“maysilee, it’s not—”

“don’t,” she cut you off, holding up a hand. she focused her withering gaze on haymitch. “i suppose i should have expected this. you always were a magpie, abernathy. drawn to anything shiny that doesn’t belong to you.”

haymitch’s shoulders tensed. you felt the anger radiating off him, but his voice, when it came, was deceptively flat. “got something to say, donner? or did you just come down here to work on your capitol-worthy sneer?”

maysilee’s eyes narrowed. she took a step forward, ignoring him to glare at you. “father is looking for you. mayor allister is placing a large order for her town hall party, and he needs you to mind the counter. though, given where your mind currently is…” she let the sentence hang, her gaze flicking back to haymitch with fresh revulsion.

then, she delivered the killing blow. she sniffed, her lip curling. “really, sister. itchy itchy haymitchy? of all the boys in the district? he probably still has lice from the seam.”

the old, childish taunt, so absurd and so perfectly, viciously maysilee, hung in the air.

a sound escaped you. a choked, horrified giggle that you instantly tried to swallow. it was the tension, the shock, the sheer absurdity of your perfect sister saying something so ridiculous in her iciest tone.

haymitch went very, very still. you felt the exact moment the protective fury morphed into something else. his head tilted slightly.

and then, from behind him, you heard it. a low, rusty sound you’d only heard a handful of times. a genuine, quiet chuckle.

“lice, huh?” haymitch said, the smirk audible in his voice. he finally shifted, turning just enough to glance at you. his blue eyes were alight with a wicked, shared amusement. “better check your fancy ribbons, sweetheart. might be contagious.”

you couldn’t help it. the giggles burst out of you, a helpless, unstoppable stream. you laughed at the insanity of it all—caught by maysilee, of all people, while being kissed senseless by the boy you weren’t supposed to want

maysilee looked from your laughing face to haymitch’s smirking one, her own expression shifting from disgust to something akin to furious bafflement. her perfect plan to shame you had backfired spectacularly.

“you’re both disgusting,” she spat, but the edge was gone, replaced by frustration. “and you,” she pointed a finger at you, “have caramel on your collar. and your hair is a mess. fix it. now.” with a final, flouncing turn, she stormed back towards the sweet shop, the sound of her heels clicking a furious retreat.

the alley was quiet again, save for your subsiding giggles. haymitch turned fully to face you, his hands coming up to frame your face. his thumbs gently wiped at the smudged caramel and coal dust on your cheek.

“itchy itchy haymitchy?” he repeated, one eyebrow arched, the ghost of that rare laugh still in his eyes.

“she’s an idiot,” you breathed, leaning into his touch.

“yeah,” he agreed softly, his gaze dropping to your lips. “but she’s your idiot. and she’s right about one thing.” he leaned in, his voice dropping to a whisper meant only for you, a secret within a secret. “you are a mess, donner.”

and then he kissed you again, right there in the alley where you’d just been caught. this kiss wasn’t desperate or hungry. it was slow, sweet it tasted like stolen caramel, coal dust, and the thrilling, secret truth that not even maysilee donner’s perfect disdain could ruin this. he adored you, spoiled bits and all. after all, you were his sweetheart.

♡ taglist: @pinkdoeweirdo @whimsywritez