Darkficslover

The first thing you registered was warmth. A slow, honey thick warmth that had nothing to do with the pale sunlight trying to bleed through the cheap blinds. This heat was specific, localized, and moving. It was a mouth. Soft, barely there pressure planting a lazy trail up the knobs of your spine.

You kept your eyes closed, breathing in the scent of stale weed, faded cologne, and something that was just clean skin and sleep. Bobby. A hum vibrated in the back of your throat, a sound caught between a sigh and a moan, as his lips traced a path to the space between your shoulder blades. His warm hand splayed possessively over the dip of your waist beneath the rumpled sheet. The only thing you wore was the memory of the night before, a pleasant, heavy ache in your limbs and the faint impression of his teeth on your lower lip. You were both naked, tangled up in each other and a mess of charcoal grey cotton.

You felt the mattress shift, the lean, solid weight of him pressing a little closer, and then his lips were on your shoulder. It was a wake up call you’d become dangerously accustomed to.

Finally, you stirred, a sleepy sigh escaping you as you shifted onto your back. The sheet slipped, and the cool air of the room was a shock against your skin. You blinked your eyes open, and he was right there, propped on one elbow, looking down at you. The weak morning light caught the angles of his face, that highly defined, angular facial structure that was too sharp to be just pretty.

“Morning,” he murmured, his voice a low, sleep roughened rasp. His nose brushed against yours as he leaned in. His hair was a tousled mess, falling forward onto his forehead.

“Morning,” you whispered back, your voice still thick with sleep. You didn't fight it when he closed the distance. The kiss was slow, deep, a lazy exploration that tasted of sleep and the last, faint ghost of mint. His full lips were soft, patient, a perfect counterpoint to the hard, sharp lines of the rest of him. When he finally pulled back, just a fraction of an inch, his eyes were still closed, his lashes dark gold crescents against his cheekbones. "Was starting to think you were going to sleep all day."

"Tempting," you murmured, already feeling the pull of the real world, the mental checklist of assignments and shifts waiting for you. “I’m so tired,” you hummed, the words a barely audible vibration against his jaw. You didn’t want to think, didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to do anything but dissolve back into the sleepy, satiated haze. You turned in his arms, presenting your back to him again, and grabbed his arm, a silent, demanding gesture. He understood immediately, wrapping it tightly around you, his hand coming to rest on your stomach. He let out a short, soft laugh, a puff of air against your hair. "Okay, okay. Message received." pulled you flush against his chest, tucking his knees behind yours. You were encased in him, a small spoon in a shell of sharp bones and lean muscle. You closed your eyes, letting the steady thump of his heart against your spine lull you. This, you told yourself. This was the part you liked. The quiet after, where he was just a warm, solid presence, and all the complications of your lives were held outside the door.

For a while, there was only the sound of your breathing and the distant, irritated chirp of a bird outside the window. His thumb traced idle, meaningless patterns on the soft skin of your belly, a gentle, almost hypnotic motion.

“So,” he said, his voice a quiet rumble that vibrated through you, “how’s that project been going? The big one. The one that’s been making you bite everyone’s head off.”

You groaned, the sound muffled by the pillow. “Good, I guess. It’s just… stressing me out. Feels like it’s taking over my entire life.” You didn't mention that your increasingly frequent escapes with him were the only thing keeping you from a full blown meltdown.

"That sucks, baby," he murmured, and the word 'baby' sent a tiny, treacherous thrill right through your middle. His hand, the one that wasn't pinned under you, moved. “Well,” he murmured, and you felt him smile against your hair, a slow, knowing curve. “That’s why I’m here, right?” His hand slid from your stomach, fingers trailing a light, teasing path down to your thigh. He gave the bare flesh a gentle, reassuring squeeze. “Stress relief.”

You snorted softly, a sound somewhere between amusement and deflection. You didn't take the bait, just continued to trace idle patterns on the back of the hand you were holding. He ran his palm in a slow, soothing the curve of your thigh, his thumb tracing a lazy, circular caress on your skin. The touch was meant to be comforting, but it was also a test, a quiet probing to see if the mood of the night before could be rekindled.

“You know,” he continued, his tone shifting, becoming a touch more casual, the way someone does when they’re trying to mask something that actually matters to them, “we could go out this weekend, y’know. A change of scenery. I could take you out to dinner. Someplace that’s not a drive-thru or your kitchen.”

And there it was, the other game. The one he kept trying to play, and you kept refusing to learn the rules to. The bubble of sleepy contentment popped. You forced your eyes open, staring at the slice of light on the wall. Your body, which a moment ago had been liquid and pliant, began to tense.

“Dinner?” you repeated, as if he’d suggested a trip to the moon.

“Yeah, dinner. It’s a thing people do. They eat food, at a table, and they, like, talk.” His voice was still light, but you could feel the new tension in the arm wrapped around you.

This was the point where you always started to pull away. You shifted, gently disentangling yourself from his grip. This time, he didn’t fight it, his arm falling slack as you sat up, keeping the sheet clutched to your chest. You swung your legs over the side of the bed, your back to him. The floor was a warzone of discarded clothes, your jeans tangled with his black t-shirt, a lone sneaker by the door.

“I… uh, I’m pretty busy this weekend, actually,” you said, your voice coming out a little too flippant as you began to reach for your things. “College stuff. You know how it is.”

“Right. College stuff.” His tone had changed completely. The teasing warmth was gone, replaced by a flat, clipped edge. You heard him sit up behind you, the rustle of sheets. “You’re always busy with ‘college stuff.’ Except, apparently, when you’re not too busy to hit me up at eleven o’clock at night.”

You flinched, the accusation hitting its mark with sniper like precision. You grabbed your underwear from the floor and started to pull them on under the sheet, the movements jerky and hurried. “That’s different.”

“Is it?” You could feel his gaze on your bare back, and you imagined those striking blue eyes had lost all their post sex softness, sharpening into that intense, unblinking focus. “What’s so bad about going on a date with me, Y/N? Huh? You always do this. Every single time I try to… to just be with you outside of a bedroom, there’s an excuse. An essay, a shift, you’re tired, you’re just about to wash your hair. It’s a greatest hits album of brush-offs.”

You stood up, pulling on your jeans with sharp, angry tugs. “Because I just don’t want to date, Bobby! That’s not what this is.” You zipped them up, the sound final and loud in the suddenly quiet room.

You could feel the question coming before he even spoke it, a deadly, fragile silence that expanded to fill the entire apartment.

His voice, when it came, was quiet. Dangerously quiet. “You don’t want to date anyone? Or you don’t want to date me?”

You finally turned to face him. He was sitting on the edge of the bed now, the sheet pooling around his hips, leaving his torso bare. The morning light carved his body out of light and shadow, accentuating the lean, defined muscle. He was a work of art, all sharp angles and fair skin. The look on his face was one of pure, frustrated hurt, his strong jaw set, his full lips pressed into a thin line. The intense brow was furrowed, and his eyes, they were fixed on you with a vulnerability that was almost too painful to witness.

“Come on, Bobby. Don’t act like this,” you said, your voice softening despite yourself. You hated this part. You hated feeling like the villain. “Let’s not act like, before this arrangement of ours, you didn’t have a different girlfriend almost every other week. You were the king of no strings attached. The whole reason this works is because we’re on the same page.”

“It’s not the same,” he said, his voice rising, cracking with an intensity that froze you in place. He stood up, not caring that he was naked, and took a step toward you. His hands were clenched into loose fists at his sides. “Those other girls? They weren’t… it was just something to do, a way to pass the time. You’re different. You’re so different, Y/N, and you know that. You’re smart, and you’re funny, and when you’re not biting my head off for trying to be nice to you i can't stay away from you. You can’t tell me you don’t feel it.” He was right in front of you now, close enough that you could smell his skin, see the small, pleading furrow between his brows. “Just give me a chance. One real chance. That’s all I’m asking for.”

His plea hung in the air, raw and honest. It would be so easy. So terrifyingly easy. You could just say yes. You could let him take you to dinner, let him hold your hand on a street not littered with your own clothes. You could let your carefully constructed walls down for a guy who was always a little bit high, a guy you’d written off as a fun, temporary distraction, but you knew the look in his eyes. You’d seen it before on other faces, right before everything went to hell. The look that preceded “I love you” and was inevitably followed by “Who were you with?” It was a trap, a beautiful trap.

You were done picking up your things. You had your bag slung over your shoulder, your keys clutched in your hand. You had an armor of busyness and cynicism, and you put it on now like a shield. You reached up, placing your hands gently on either side of his face. His skin was warm, the stubble rough against your palms. You felt the tension in his jaw muscles as he looked at you, waiting.

“Bobby,” you said, your voice soft but final. You looked into those crystal blue eyes, a color so vivid it seemed manufactured. “I like what we have. It’s easy. It’s fun. Let’s not overcomplicate it.”

You saw the light in his eyes die a little, the hope crumbling into a resigned, weary disappointment. He knew this script. You’d made him rehearse it a dozen times.

“I’ll see you,” you whispered, and then you pressed a soft, chaste kiss to his lips. It was a full stop kiss, a seal on the conversation, a goodbye for now. You didn't let it last pulling your hands away before he could respond, before his full lips could part and say something that would completely undo you.

___

Time didn't work here, that was one of the first things you'd learned, one of the many cruel rules of this place, you'd been navigating by the sickly, jaundiced light that hummed from the fluorescent panels on the ceiling, a constant, maddening buzz that had burrowed into your skull and made a home there. You slept when your body collapsed, woke when the adrenaline spiked, and walked. You just kept walking. Endless, repeating rooms of damp, yellowed carpet and wallpaper the color of old bruises.

You'd gotten good at hiding, at holding your breath. At pressing yourself into the corners where the buzzing fluorescent hum was loudest, hoping it would mask the sound of your hammering heart. Some of them looked almost like people, if you didn't look too closely. A woman in a stained dress who turned and had three noses clustered on her face like a grotesque flower. A tall, lanky man shape with four perfectly blue eyes, blinking out of sync, who had passed within feet of your hiding spot, his head swiveling on a neck that was too long, too smooth. You'd stared at the damp carpet and not breathed, not thought, not existed until the sound of its dragging footsteps faded. Other things were worse because they were utterly alien. Scuttling, skittering shapes glimpsed at the end of long corridors. The sound of something large and wet breathing in a room you decided not to enter. The screaming. Sometimes, in the deep distance, you heard screams that were unmistakably, horrifyingly human, and they always, always sounded like him.

Bobby. His name was a wound you kept touching, a raw nerve you couldn't stop probing with your tongue. Every time your exhausted mind drifted, you heard it again. The sound he'd made when that thing had seized him. His scream had echoed down the endless corridors, a sound of pure, primal terror that had shattered into wet, choked gurgling. Begging. He had been begging for help. The sound of your name, torn from his throat, you cried every time you thought about him. At first, it had been violent, gut wrenching sobs that left you curled on the damp carpet, gasping for air that tasted of mildew and old dust. Now, the tears came silently, a hot, steady leak from your eyes that you'd wipe away with a grimy hand as you kept walking. You replayed the last morning in the real world on a constant, torturous loop. The warmth of his bare chest against your back. The desperate plea in his voice. You're different, Y/N. The way you'd placed your hands on his sharp, beautiful face and kissed him goodbye like he was a problem to be managed instead of a person who was trying, so earnestly, to love you. The guilt was a physical thing, a sharp, acidic lump in your throat that you couldn't swallow down. You'd give anything, anything, to take back that morning. To say yes to the damn dinner. To tell him he mattered. Because he did. He had. And now he was just a fading scream and a trail of blood.

On this day—was it a day? the lights never changed, the buzz never stopped—you were moving with a purpose born of pure, desperate stubbornness. You were trying to find the wall. The spot where you'd all come through. If you could just find it again, if it was still there, maybe you could get out. Maybe you could find help. Maybe you could wake up from this.

You were in a long, wide corridor you didn't recognize, lined with doors that were just painted onto the walls, fake promises. The carpet squelched slightly under your worn sneakers. And then you heard it. Footsteps. Fast, erratic, a stuttering, uneven rhythm. Not the dragging shamble of the entities. Something running, human.

Your body reacted before your brain did. You dove behind a protruding wall, pressing your back against the cold, slightly damp surface. Your heart, that traitorous organ, slammed against your ribs like it was trying to escape your chest. You clamped a hand over your own mouth, stifling the ragged gasp of your breathing, and slowly, agonizingly slowly, peered around the corner and the world stopped.

It was Bobby.

He was there, maybe thirty feet away, moving fast down the corridor with a limping, frantic gait. His crop top was torn, a long, jagged gash across the front, and the sleeve had been ripped off completely, used as a makeshift bandage wrapped tightly around his forearm. The white fabric was stained a dark, rusted crimson. There was blood on him. Dark smears on his exposed torso, a streak of it across his sharp jawline, matted into his hair. He looked battered, hollowed out, his already sharp features now gaunt, the high cheekbones cutting even more severely against his fair skin. But he was moving. He was on his feet. He was alive.

Tears were spilling down your cheeks before you even made the conscious decision to move. A choked sob, a mangled version of his name, tore from your throat. "Bobby...?" It wasn't a yell. It was barely a whisper, ragged and raw, the fear of alerting the entities overriding the sheer, overwhelming shock of seeing him. You were already running, your legs moving before you could think, propelled by a relief so profound it felt like being unmade and remade in the span of a single heartbeat.

He stopped dead. His head snapped toward you, and you saw his whole body go rigid, coiled like a wounded animal that had just heard a twig snap. His blue eyes, those intense, focused eyes you'd memorized a thousand times over, found you. For a long, suspended moment, he just stared. His full lips parted slightly. His brow, furrowed in something that looked less like recognition and more like... confusion.

Then you crashed into him. Your arms wrapped around his neck, your body slamming into his with a force that made him stumble back a step, his bad leg buckling slightly. He was solid. He was real. He was warm. The feel of him, the scent of sweat and blood undid you completely. You sobbed against the bare skin of his shoulder, your fingers digging into the fabric of his torn shirt, clinging to him like he was the only solid thing in a world that had dissolved into nightmare.

"Oh my god, oh my god, Bobby," you were babbling, the words tumbling out between heaving, ugly sobs that shook your entire body. "I thought you were dead. I thought you were dead. I heard you scream, I saw the blood, and I ran, I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry." The apology kept spilling out, a dam finally breaking. "I thought about you every second. Everything I said that morning, it was all bullshit, I was just scared, I was so scared of how much I—" You cut yourself off with another sob, pressing your face into the curve of his neck. "I'm so happy to see you. I'm so happy you're alive. I'm never leaving you again. Never."

His arms, after a long, suspended beat, came up and wrapped around you. It was hesitant at first, almost mechanical. Then his grip tightened, his hands fisting in the dirty fabric of your shirt at your back. He held you so tightly it was almost painful, his body trembling against yours. You could feel the frantic, rabbit fast beat of his heart against your chest.

"Can't believe you're real," he mumbled, his voice a hoarse, strange rasp, scraped raw. It was so different from the low, teasing murmur you remembered. It sounded like he'd been screaming. Or maybe just not talking at all. "Can't believe... you're... no."

You pulled back just enough to see his face, to touch him, to prove to yourself that this was actually happening. You cupped his face in your hands, your thumbs tracing the sharp, prominent ridges of his cheekbones, smearing through the grime and dried blood. His skin was clammy, a cold sweat sheen on his forehead, but it was his skin. His eyes. God, his eyes, that beautiful, piercing light blue, they were darting back and forth, scanning your face like he was reading a document he'd been trained to distrust. There was a wildness in them, a fractured, feverish light that hadn't been there before.

"I'm real, Bobby. I'm here. I'm right here," you whispered, your voice cracking with the force of your emotion. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm not leaving you ever again. I swear. I swear on my life."

You leaned in and kissed him. It was a desperate, tear salted kiss, a frantic press of lips meant to communicate everything you'd been too scared to say in the real world. I'm sorry. I was wrong. I need you. I think I— You poured every ounce of your relief, your guilt, your desperate, terrified hope into that kiss, your hands sliding from his cheeks into his matted hair, and he kissed you back.

At first. His lips, dry and cracked, moved against yours with a kind of stunned, automatic response. His hands on your back tightened. Then his grip shifted. His fingers slipped under the hem of your shirt, finding the bare skin of your waist. They pressed in, hard. Not the familiar, possessive squeeze of a lover. Something else. Something searching. Palpating. Like he was trying to feel the bones underneath, the muscles, the solid architecture of a human body. Verifying.

"Can't believe it," he mumbled against your lips, the words vibrating with a strange, unhinged intensity. "You're real. You feel... you feel real. But you're not. You can't be."

"Bobby," you gasped, pulling back slightly, your hands moving to his shoulders. A flicker of unease, cold and sharp, cut through the overwhelming relief. His hands were still under your shirt, his fingers digging into the flesh of your waist with a bruising pressure. "Bobby, stop. Hey. Look at me. It's me. It's Y/N."

"Y/N," he repeated, but the way he said it, it wasn't a name. It was a word he was testing, tasting for poison. He shook his head, a jerky, birdlike motion. "No. No, I've seen you. I've seen you so many times. You're never real. You're one of them. You're another trick."

"What? No. Bobby, no." Your voice was rising, the unease curdling into genuine fear. Not fear of him—no, it was fear for him. You could see it now, the full, horrifying picture. The wild, unfocused dart of his pupils. The way his jaw was clenched so tight a muscle jumped in his cheek. The tremors wracking his lean frame. He hadn't just been injured. He'd been alone. Alone in this nightmare, hunted, terrified, his mind slowly grinding itself down against the endless, buzzing silence. "It's really me. I'm not a trick. I'm not one of those things."

"That's what the last one said," he hissed, his voice dropping to a ragged, paranoid whisper. His hands on your waist tightened, his fingers pressing so hard into your skin you knew there would be bruises. "The one with my mom's voice. The one that had Kat's face. They all say they're real. They all feel real, for a second, and then—" He broke off, a shudder running through him. His striking blue eyes, those eyes you'd spent so many mornings waking up to, were fixed on you with a desperate, shattered intensity. "Prove it. Prove you're real."

"How?" you whispered, your own tears still streaming, mingling with the grime on your cheeks. "Bobby, how? I don't know how to prove it. I'm just me. I'm the me who thinks about that morning every single second I'm in this place and wishes I could take it all back." Your voice broke, a sob hiccuping through the words. "Please. Please believe me. I'll say yes. To the dinner. To everything. I'll say yes, I promise, just please—"

Something flickered in his eyes. A crack in the paranoid wall. His brow furrowed, and for just a moment, he looked like Bobby again. The Bobby who'd kissed you awake. The Bobby who'd asked, with his heart in his throat, for one real chance. His lips parted. His hands on your waist loosened, just slightly.

"Y/N?" It was a question this time. A real one. Tentative.

"Yes," you sobbed, reaching up to touch his face again. "Yes. It's me. I'm here."

But the moment shattered as quickly as it had formed. His eyes darted to something over your shoulder, a flickering light, a shadow that wasn't there and the walls slammed back down. His face twisted, the paranoia surging back with a vengeance. "No. No, you're doing it again. You're all doing it again. Making me believe. Making me—" His voice cracked, a sound of pure, anguished terror. "You're not taking me again. You're not!"

His hands seized you. Before you could react, before you could even draw breath to scream, he moved with a desperate, wiry strength you didn't know he had. His arm locked around your neck, not in an attack, but in a panicked, desperate restraint. The crook of his elbow pressed against your throat, his other hand clamping down on the back of your head, holding you in place.

"Bobby—" you choked out, your hands flying up to claw at his arm. The pressure was immediate, terrifying. Your airway constricted, a high, thin wheeze the only sound you could make. You kicked, thrashed, tried to twist in his grip, but he held on with the unyielding strength of pure, animal terror.

"Stop moving," he snarled, his voice ragged in your ear. "Stop it. Stop pretending. Stop being her. I won't let you. I won't let you trick me again."

Spots were blooming in your vision, dark flowers unfurling at the edges of the sickly yellow light. Your struggles were weakening, your limbs growing heavy and uncoordinated.

—

The first thing you registered was the buzzing. That damned, eternal fluorescent hum, drilling into your skull, pulling you up from the black depths of unconsciousness. The second thing was the pain. A dull, throbbing ache in your throat, a raw tenderness that flared every time you swallowed. The third thing was that you couldn't move.

Your eyes flew open, and panic, cold and immediate, flooded your veins. You were lying on a bed. A real bed, with a thin, stained mattress and a metal frame that creaked when you shifted. It was pushed against a wall covered in that same sickly, yellowed wallpaper, and the room around you was small, almost claustrophobic, lit by a single, naked bulb dangling from a wire in the ceiling. But you couldn't move. Your wrists were bound to the metal headboard above your head with strips of torn fabric, your ankles similarly tied to the foot of the bed. The restraints were tight, digging into your skin, but they weren't painful.

You thrashed, a surge of animal terror overriding the pain in your throat. "Help—" The word came out as a broken croak, your voice shredded. "Help!"

"There's no one to help."

The voice came from your left. You turned your head so fast a sharp pain lanced down your neck and there he was. Bobby. He was sitting in a wooden chair pulled up to the side of the bed, just a few feet away. He'd changed his clothes somehow—or found new ones. A plain grey t-shirt, a little too big, hanging off his lean frame. The bandage on his arm had been replaced with fresher fabric. He'd washed the blood off his face, he was just sitting there. Watching you. His eyes were fixed on your face with an unnerving, unblinking focus. They were red rimmed. Exhausted and utterly, terrifyingly calm.

"Bobby," you breathed, the relief and the fear tangling into a sickening knot in your stomach. "Bobby, it's me. It's Y/N. Please. Please let me go."

He didn't move. Didn't blink. His full lips, chapped and pale, were set in a flat, unreadable line. He tilted his head slightly, like a dog hearing a strange noise. The motion was too fluid, too detached. It wasn't him. It wasn't the Bobby you knew.

"You look like her," he said quietly, almost to himself. His voice was a hoarse, ragged thing, stripped of all its old, teasing warmth. "You sound like her, too. The last one sounded like her. But it wasn't. It tried to... it got close. Got too close before I knew."

"Bobby, please, I'm not a trick," you said, your voice cracking. You tugged uselessly at the restraints, the fabric burning your wrists. "It's really me. I swear to you. I swear on anything. I'm real. I'm Y/N."

He leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees. His eyes never left your face. "Are you real?" he murmured. "Like her?"

He turned his head, looking toward the corner of the room. Your eyes followed his gaze, and your blood turned to ice. There was a figure standing in the corner. A woman. It was you. It had your face. Your hair. Your body, dressed in the same grimy clothes you were wearing. But it was wrong. The face was doubled, two versions of your features laid over each other at a slight, sickening offset. Four eyes blinked out of sync, wet and staring. Two mouths, one slightly above the other, hung open in a slack, vacant expression. Two noses, a confused jumble of cartilage and flesh. It just stood there, perfectly still, its arms limp at its sides, staring at nothing. Staring at you.

A scream clawed its way up your throat, but all that came out was a strangled, wheezing gasp. You jerked against your restraints, your heart slamming against your ribs so hard you thought it might crack bone.

"I met her two days ago," Bobby said, his voice still that low, detached monotone. He was looking at the thing in the corner with a kind of weary familiarity, like it was a stray cat he'd decided to tolerate. "She found me. I thought... I thought it was you. At first. She doesn't talk. Doesn't do much of anything, really. Just stands there. Watches." He turned back to you, and his expression flickered, a crack in the calm mask. Something desperate and broken swam beneath the surface. "She's kept me some company."

"Bobby," you whispered, your voice trembling, tears spilling down your cheeks. You forced yourself to look away from the monstrosity in the corner, to focus on him. "Bobby, look at me. Please. Look at me. That thing... that's not me. That's a monster. I'm me. I'm the real one. Please. You have to believe me."

Something shifted in his face. A muscle in his jaw jumped. His brow, that strong, defined brow, furrowed deeply. For a moment, just a moment, he looked like Bobby again. Confused. Hurting. Lost.

"Why did you reject me?"

The question came out of nowhere, quiet and raw, and it hit you harder than any blow.

"Bobby..."

"No." He stood up abruptly, the chair scraping against the floor with a harsh screech. He began to pace, a short, agitated track back and forth at the foot of the bed. His hands came up, raking through his hair, pulling at the light brown strands. "No, you don't get to just—you don't get to say my name like that and make it all—" He broke off, a frustrated, guttural sound tearing from his throat. He wheeled on you, and the calm mask was gone entirely, replaced by a raw, bleeding anguish. "Why did you reject me? Every time. Every single time. I was right there. I was right there, Y/N, and you just... you kept pushing me away like I was nothing."

"I didn't—I didn't think—"

"Exactly!" The word exploded out of him, and you flinched. "You didn't think! You didn't think about me. You didn't think about what I wanted. You just decided. You decided I wasn't serious. You decided I was just some—some stoner, some fling, some guy who wasn't good enough to be seen with you in public."

"That's not true," you sobbed, the tears flowing freely now. "That's not—I was scared, Bobby. I was scared that if we got together, I'd end up like the other girls. Just another week. Just another face. I didn't think you were serious about me. I thought I was just... I thought I was just convenient."

He stopped pacing. He stood at the foot of the bed, his chest heaving, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. The thing in the corner didn't move. It just kept watching with its four unblinking eyes.

"You're lying," he said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, trembling whisper. "You always lie. You lied that morning. You lied every time you said it was just casual. You lied every time you said you didn't feel anything. It's your fault." His voice cracked, splintering into something jagged and broken. "It's all your fault. You're the reason I'm here."

"That's not true," you pleaded, pulling uselessly at the restraints. "Bobby, that's not true. I kept telling you not to go. I told you it wasn't safe. I told you to stay away—"

"I did everything for you!" he shouted, and the sound echoed off the close, yellow walls. The entity in the corner twitched, its doubled mouth opening and closing soundlessly. Bobby didn't notice. His eyes were wet now, tears tracking down his cheeks. "Everything. You think I wanted to work at that stupid furniture store? You think I wanted to follow Clarke around with a camera filming his bullshit? I did it for you. I did it so I could be near you. Because you wouldn't let me near you any other way. You wouldn't give me a chance. You refused. Every time. And I just... I kept trying. Like an idiot. Like a pathetic, desperate idiot."

The guilt was a physical weight on your chest, crushing the air from your lungs. "Bobby, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I was wrong. I was so wrong, okay? I should have said yes. I should have given you a chance. I wanted to. God, I wanted to. I was just—I was a coward. I was terrified of getting hurt, so I hurt you instead. And I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

He stared at you, his face a wreck of conflicting emotions. Rage. Grief. Exhaustion and underneath it all, a desperate, flickering hope that he was desperately, furiously trying to smother, he moved closer, his body casting a shadow over you as he stood beside the bed. His hand came up, trembling violently, and touched your face. His fingers were cold, rough with grime and dried blood. But the touch was gentle. So gentle. His thumb traced the curve of your cheekbone, the same way you'd traced his a thousand times before. A shiver ran through you, your breath catching in your throat.

"You're so soft," he murmured, almost to himself. His voice had changed again, the raw anguish smoothing into something quieter. Darker. Possessive. "You've always been so soft. I used to think about it all the time. The way your skin felt under my hands. The way you'd sigh when I touched you. I thought about it every time you left."

"Bobby..." you whispered, your heart hammering against your ribs. This wasn't relief. This wasn't the reunion you'd imagined. His hand slid from your cheek down to your jaw, his fingers tracing the line of it with a slow, reverent pressure. He was looking at you the way someone looks at a painting they've stared at for too long, searching for flaws, for proof of forgery. His thumb brushed across your lower lip, and you felt the slight tremor in his touch, the barely contained violence of his desperation.

"I held her," he said, his voice still that low, detached murmur. He didn't look at the thing in the corner. He didn't need to. "Your copy. The first time I found her, I thought... I thought it was you. I held her. I talked to her. I told her everything. Everything I never got to say to you." His jaw tightened, the muscle jumping beneath his fair skin. "But it wasn't the same. She didn't feel right. She didn't smell right. She didn't... she just stood there. Empty. Like holding a doll. Like holding a corpse."

"Bobby, please, you're scaring me," you breathed, the tears still streaming down your cheeks, soaking into the dirty mattress beneath your head.

He didn't seem to hear you. His hand moved from your face, trailing down the side of your neck, his fingers light, almost exploratory. You flinched, a fresh wave of fear coursing through you. He paused, his eyes flicking up to meet yours. That intense, focused gaze was back, but it was wrong. It was the focus of a man who had been broken and rebuilt himself around a single, obsessive point.

"I kept thinking of you," he continued, his voice dropping to a ragged whisper. "The whole time. When I was running. When I was hiding. When that thing had me and I thought I was going to die. I thought of you. Your face. Your voice. The way you'd wrap your arms around me and pull me closer in the morning, like you didn't want me to know you needed it. The way you'd always leave anyway."

His hand reached your bound wrists, his fingers curling around the fabric restraints. He didn't loosen them. He just held them, his thumb pressing against the frantic flutter of your pulse.

"I won't let you leave me this time," he said, and his voice hardened, the broken anguish giving way to something resolute. Something unhinged. "You always leave. You always find an excuse. An essay. A shift. You're tired. You're busy. You don't want to date. You don't want me. But you're not leaving this time. You can't. There's nowhere to go. There's no door. There's no morning. There's just... this. Just us."

"Bobby, I'm not going to leave," you said, your voice cracking with desperation. "I told you. I'm not going anywhere. I want to stay with you. I want to be with you. That's what I was trying to say before. I was wrong. I was so wrong. Please. Please just untie me and we can—we can figure this out together. We can find a way out. Together."

He stared at you for a long, suspended moment. His face was a ruin of warring emotions, hope and suspicion, longing and terror, love and something darker, something that had grown in the dark, empty spaces of his fractured mind. Then he smiled. It was a small, sad, terrible smile that didn't reach his eyes.

"You say that now," he whispered. "But you'll change your mind. You always do. As soon as you're free, you'll run. You'll find a reason. You'll find an excuse. You'll leave me alone again. Alone with her." He jerked his head toward the corner, toward the silent, watching thing with your doubled face. "And she's not you. She'll never be you. But I won't let you go. Not this time. Not ever again."

He leaned down, his face inches from yours. His breath, warm and slightly stale, ghosted across your lips. His hand tightened on your bound wrists, his knuckles white.

"I did everything for you," he said again, the words a mantra, a wound he couldn't stop pressing. "And you're going to stay. You're going to stay right here. With me. Until you prove it. Until I know. Until I'm sure."

"Until you're sure of what?" you whispered, your voice barely audible.

His full lips brushed against your forehead, a mockery of a kiss. It was cold. Possessive. Nothing like the lazy, teasing kisses he used to plant along your spine in the morning.

The mansion breathes around you like a second skin you don't remember putting on.

You know its rhythms now. The soft hum of the underfloor heating that kicks on at precisely six in the evening. The way the west windows catch the sunset and scatter gold across the marble floors. The particular creak of the third step on the main staircase. You know these things the way you know your own name, which is to say you were told, and you accepted it, and sometimes acceptance feels almost like remembering.

Your name is YN. You are twenty three years old. Three months ago, you woke up in a private hospital room with a view of Blackwater Bay and a head full of nothing.

No, not nothing. White noise. Static. The television fuzz of a mind wiped clean. The doctors used words like traumatic brain injury and retrograde amnesia and remarkable that you're alive at all. You nodded along because nodding seemed expected, and because the man holding your hand kept looking at you with such devastating tenderness that you felt guilty for not knowing who he was. He was striking, dark hair with a single streak of silver gold, eyes that didn't match, and his thumb never stopped moving across your knuckles, back and forth, back and forth, like he was reassuring himself you were solid.

"Valarr," he had said, his voice cracking on the second syllable. "I'm Valarr. Your fiancé."

Fiancé. The word had tasted foreign in your mouth, like a flavor you'd never encountered. But he showed you photographs. The two of you at a charity gala, his arm around your waist, his fingers splayed possessively against your hip. A selfie taken in what he said was your favorite café near the university, his lips pressed to your temple while you grinned at the camera. A video on his phone of you laughing, pushing his face away, your voice saying stop it, Val, I'm serious in a tone that was not serious at all. The woman in the videos and photographs had your face. She wore your smile. You had no reason to doubt her.

You had no reasons, period.

So when the hospital discharged you into Valarr's care, into his black SUV with its leather interior that smelled of cedar and something expensive and unplaceable, you went without protest. You went because where else would you go? The social worker assigned to your case had gently explained that you had no living family. Your parents died when you were seventeen, a car accident on a rain-slicked highway. No siblings, no cousins who kept in touch. Your emergency contact, the person listed on all your university forms, was Valarr Targaryen.

"Her fiancé," the social worker had said, and Valarr's hand had tightened around yours, his other hand coming up to brush hair from your face, tucking it behind your ear with a gentleness that made the social worker smile. "He's been paying for her care. The private room, the specialists. Everything."

You remember thinking, I am expensive to forget.

Now, three months later, you stand in the kitchen of the Targaryen estate, a sprawling modern fortress of glass and steel perched on a cliff overlooking the bay, and you are trying very hard to remember how to make coffee. You've made coffee every morning for the past ninety three days. Valarr showed you how that first week, standing behind you with his chest pressed to your back and his hands guiding yours, his fingers lacing through your fingers as he moved them to each button and dial. This button for the grind, this dial for the strength, this is how you know the water is the right temperature. His lips kept brushing your ear, your neck, your shoulder, little kisses punctuating every instruction. But this morning, your brain has decided that coffee making is foreign territory, and you stare at the gleaming machine like it might bite you.

"Let me."

His voice comes from behind you, and then his arms are circling your waist, his chin settling on your shoulder, his body molding against yours from shoulder to hip. You've stopped flinching when he does this. The first few days, every touch had sent a jolt through your nervous system, not fear exactly, but something adjacent to it. The alarm of a body that didn't recognize the hands on its skin. But Valarr was persistent in his gentleness, and your body is nothing if not adaptable.

"I was going to do it myself," you say, but you lean back into him anyway, and his arms tighten in response, pulling you closer still.

"I know you were." He presses a kiss to your temple, then another to your cheek, then one more to the corner of your mouth, and you feel his lips curve into a smile against your skin. "But you looked lost, love. I couldn't just watch." His hand slides up from your waist to rest flat against your sternum, right over your heart. "Your heart's beating fast. Are you frustrated? Don't be frustrated. Let me take care of it."

Love. He calls you that all the time. Love, sweetheart, darling, my heart. Pet names that fall from his mouth like rain, constant and soft. You've wondered, in the quiet hours of the night when sleep won't come, if he called you these things before the accident. If the you who was would have rolled her eyes at the frequency of them, or if she would have melted the way you sometimes do now.

You watch his hands move across the coffee machine, long fingers, a silver ring on his index finger, knuckles that look like they've been broken and healed before, and you try to summon a memory. Any memory. The doctors said it might come back in fragments, in flashes, in dreams. Be patient with yourself, they said. Don't force it.

Valarr never says that. Valarr says, "Do you remember the first time I made you coffee?" and when you shake your head, his mismatched eyes flicker with something you can't name. One eye blue as a winter sky, one brown as wet earth. Disappointment? No. Something hungrier. But then it's gone, and he's turning around to face you, pulling you against his chest, wrapping both arms around you and rocking you gently side to side like you're dancing to music only he can hear.

"It was after our third date," he tells you, his voice a lullaby you've learned by heart, his lips moving against your hair. "You stayed the night for the first time. Nothing happened," he adds, pulling back just enough to look at you with a quick, almost shy glance, his hand coming up to cup your jaw, his thumb tracing your lower lip. "We just slept. But in the morning, you came down to the kitchen and I was already making coffee, and you said..."

He trails off, waiting, his thumb still stroking your lip.

You shake your head again. "I don't remember."

"You said, 'A man who makes coffee is worth his weight in gold.'" He smiles, and it's a beautiful smile. Valarr Targaryen is beautiful in the way that old paintings are beautiful, something slightly unsettling beneath the perfection, a shadow that makes the light more striking by contrast. "And I said, 'Good thing I'm worth considerably more than that.'" He dips his head and kisses you, soft and brief, a punctuation mark. Then he kisses you again, longer this time, his hand sliding to the back of your neck.

You laugh when he finally pulls away, because it's clearly a joke, and because laughing is what you do when you don't know what else to do. "That sounds arrogant."

"It was meant to be charming." He hands you a cup of coffee, prepared exactly the way you've learned you like it. Oat milk, no sugar, a dash of cinnamon. He keeps one hand on your lower back as you take your first sip, rubbing small circles there. "I was very charming, before."

"Before what?"

"Before you forgot all my best material." He leans in and kisses the tip of your nose. "It's alright. I'll just have to make new material. I have time. I have all the time in the world."

The coffee is perfect. Of course it is. Everything in this house is perfect. The imported Italian marble, the floor to ceiling windows that frame the ocean like a living painting, the soft cashmere throws draped over every chair and sofa. Perfection, you've learned, is the Targaryen brand. Their name is stamped on half the skyscrapers in King's Landing, on the tech campus where innovation happens, on the charitable foundations that host galas you see photographed in magazines. Valarr's father, Baelor Targaryen, is some kind of political heavyweight, a senator maybe, or something higher, you can never remember.

Old money, someone said once, in a memory you can't quite grasp. Really old money.

You are not old money. You know this because Valarr told you, gently, in those first disorienting weeks, while he held you in his lap and played with your hair. "Your parents were middle class," he said, "but they died when you were young. You've been on your own a long time." He told you about your scholarship to King's Landing University, how you'd worked two jobs to afford your tiny apartment off campus, how the other students had looked down on you for not belonging. "They didn't like that you were smarter than them," Valarr said, with a protective edge to his voice, his arms tightening around you. "They didn't like that you earned your place while they bought theirs."

"They didn't like me at all," you had said, and it wasn't a question.

"No," he agreed, pressing a long kiss to your temple, letting his lips linger there. "They didn't. But I did. From the first moment I saw you."

He tells you this story often, the story of how he met you. A rainy afternoon on campus, you rushing between classes with an armful of books, him stepping out of a building and nearly colliding with you. The books went everywhere. You swore at him, actually swore at him, he says, with a kind of delighted reverence, and he was so charmed that he offered to buy you coffee to make up for it. You said no. He asked again the next day. You said no again. He asked a third time, and you finally said yes, but only if he stopped ambushing you outside your lecture hall.

"It wasn't stalking," he always clarifies, with a laugh that invites you to laugh along, his hand finding yours and squeezing, his thumb stroking your palm. "It was persistence."

You want to remember this. You want to remember him, the way his voice softened when he asked you to marry him, the way your heart must have raced the first time he kissed you. You want to feel the shape of your old self inside your chest, to know that she existed and she loved him and she was happy.

Instead, you feel like a guest in someone else's life, wearing someone else's ring, a diamond the size of a planet, heavy on your finger, a constant reminder that you are promised to a man you don't remember choosing.

—

The basement door is at the end of the west hallway, tucked between the laundry room and what Valarr says is a storage closet. It's an unremarkable door. Solid wood, painted the same soft gray as the walls, with a brass handle that gleams under the recessed lighting.

You hate it.

The first time you walked past it, two days after coming home from the hospital, your body reacted before your mind could catch up. Your heart slammed against your ribs. Your palms went clammy. Your feet stopped moving, rooted to the marble floor like someone had nailed them down. You stared at the door, just a door, just a door, just a door, and felt terror rise in your throat like bile.

Valarr found you there, frozen, shaking. His face went pale, and he was at your side in an instant, his hands cupping your face, tilting your gaze away from the door and toward him. "Look at me. Look at me, love. Only me."

"That's where it happened," he said, pulling you away, turning your body so you couldn't see the door anymore, wrapping himself around you like a shield. "That's where you got hurt, love. Don't go near it. Please. I can't..." His voice broke, and he buried his face in your hair, and you felt his shoulders tremble. His hands were shaking where they gripped your waist. "I can't lose you again."

Later, he explained what happened. He explained it carefully, with the measured tone of someone who had rehearsed the words, who had told this story to doctors and police and maybe himself, over and over, until it became something he could say without shattering. He held you the entire time he spoke, your back against his chest, his arms locked around your middle, his lips brushing your ear with every word.

A power outage. You were home alone. The lights went out, and you tried to find your way to the basement to check the circuit breaker. Valarr had shown you where it was, he said, a hundred times, but in the dark you must have gotten disoriented. You tripped at the top of the stairs. You fell. All the way down, fourteen steps, concrete floor at the bottom. You hit your head.

"When I got home, there was so much blood." His voice was hollow, distant, and his arms tightened until you could barely breathe. "I thought you were dead. I thought I'd lost you. The doctors said it was a miracle you survived at all."

You don't remember any of it. You don't remember the fall, the darkness, the impact. You don't remember the hospital, though you spent six weeks there before waking up. Your memory picks up in that sunlit private room with Valarr holding your hand and the machines beeping softly in the background and the social worker explaining that you had no one else in the world.

No one but him.

So you don't go near the basement door. You don't even look at it if you can help it. When you have to walk past it, to get to the laundry room or the guest bathroom or the back entrance, you hold your breath and fix your eyes straight ahead and move as quickly as your feet will carry you. Valarr says it will get easier with time. He says you're still healing.

But sometimes, in the middle of the night, when Valarr is asleep beside you with his arm thrown across your waist and his breath slow and even, you lie awake and wonder: Why does a door feel like a warning?

—

Valarr insists on sleeping in the same bed.

"It helps with memory," he told you that first night home, already pulling you down onto the mattress beside him, already arranging your body against his. "The doctors said. Familiar sensory input. Smell, touch, sound. It helps the brain remember domestic life." He tucked your head under his chin and wrapped both arms around you and held on. "I'm going to help you heal, love. Every night. I'm going to hold you until you remember me."

At first, it was uncomfortable. The physical proximity felt like an intrusion, a violation of a boundary you didn't even remember setting. But Valarr was persistent, his voice a low, soothing hum that brooked no argument. When you would stiffen beneath him, trying to pull away from the heat of his body, he wouldn't let go. Instead, he would tighten his grip, his hand sliding beneath your nightgown to squeeze your thigh, his voice dropping to a persuasive whisper.

"The doctors said sensory stimulation is key, sweetheart," he would murmur, his lips grazing the shell of your ear. "Physical intimacy, the kind of deep, visceral connection we used to have... You have to let your body remember what your mind has forgotten."

You didn't know if it was true, but the desperation in his eyes made you believe him. He would push you down into the mattress, his heavy frame pinning you as he kissed you with a hunger that felt almost violent. He didn't wait for a clear 'yes' he simply assumed it, claiming your body as if it were his birthright. He would force his fingers into your pussy, stretching you open while you stared at the ceiling, feeling a confusing mix of fear and arousal. When he slid his thick cock inside you, the sudden fullness made you gasp, and he would lean down, whispering that the pleasure was the key. "Feel it," he'd command, thrusting deep and hard, hitting your cervix until you cried out. "Remember how much you love this. Remember how you used to beg me for it." You would lie there, shaking, submitting to the rhythm of his hips, wondering if the flashes of heat in your mind were memories or just the result of him fucking you into submission.

But three months is a long time. Three months of waking up to the smell of his cologne on the pillowcases, to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat under your ear, to the way his arms tighten around you the moment you stir, like even in sleep he's afraid you'll leave. Your body has learned to relax into his. Your body has learned to find comfort in his warmth.

Now, the stiffness is gone, replaced by a craving that wakes you up before he even moves. You find yourself arching your back, pressing your ass against his hardness in the early morning light, silently pleading for him to take you. You don't need the excuse of medical rehabilitation anymore; you just want the feeling of him filling you.

As you stir, Valarr feels the shift in your posture. He groans, a low sound of satisfaction, and rolls over to pin you beneath him. His hands aren't hesitant anymore; they slide with practiced ease, ripping your lace panties aside to expose your soaking wet pussy. He doesn't waste time with gentleness. He grabs your thighs, hiking them up over his shoulders, and drives his cock deep into you in one powerful thrust.

"There it is," he pants, his chest heaving against yours. "You remember now, don't you? How much you need this."

You wrap your legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, your nails digging into the muscles of his back. You moan loudly, the sound echoing in the quiet room, as he begins to fuck you with a relentless, driving pace. Every slam of his pelvis against your clit sends sparks through your nerves, blurring the line between the present and the ghosts of the past. You aren't thinking about the doctors or the clipboards anymore; you are only thinking about the way his cock stretches you wide, the way he fills every empty space inside you, and the overwhelming, addictive heat of being completely owned by him.

And it's not just the sleeping. It's everything. The way he seeks you out a dozen times a day, just to kiss you. A kiss on the forehead when you're reading, his lips lingering. A kiss on the cheek when you're making tea, his hand on your shoulder turning you toward him. A long, slow kiss on the lips when you pass him in the hallway, his fingers tilting your chin up to meet him. The way he pulls you onto his lap while he's working at his desk, one arm around your waist while he types emails with the other hand, his chin resting on your shoulder, his lips periodically pressing to your neck. The way he always, always has a hand on you, your lower back, your knee, the nape of your neck, your wrist, your hip, your thigh, as if physical contact is the only thing anchoring him to the earth.

He's just affectionate, you told yourself in the beginning. Some people are like that. Touch is their love language.

And it's nice, isn't it? To be wanted so completely. To be the center of someone's universe. You've learned to lean into his kisses, to curl into his lap, to reach for his hand before he reaches for yours. It would be so easy, you think, to fall in love with him. Maybe you already were, before. Maybe that's why you said yes when he asked you to marry him.

But there are moments. Brief, flickering moments. Moments when something doesn't feel right.

Like the day you remembered the university library. You were sitting in the living room, staring out at the ocean, and suddenly you could smell old books and dust and the particular sharpness of highlighters. You could see a long wooden table, stacks of textbooks, a window that looked out onto a courtyard with a fountain. You could feel the ache in your shoulders from hunching over your notes for hours. And you knew, knew with a certainty that felt like remembering, that you had spent countless nights in that library, studying until they kicked you out at closing, because you couldn't afford to fail. Because your scholarship was all you had.

"I remembered something," you told Valarr when he came home, breathless with the excitement of it. He was already reaching for you, already pulling you into his arms, his hands sliding up your back. "The library at King's Landing. I used to study there. I used to..."

His eyes. His eyes did something. For just a fraction of a second, before the smile appeared, his mismatched gaze went flat and cold, like a door slamming shut. His hands paused on your back, just for a heartbeat, then resumed their soothing circles. Then the smile came, wide and warm, and he was pulling you into a tighter hug and covering your face with kisses and saying, "That's wonderful, love, that's amazing, I knew you'd start remembering," and you tried to match his joy but your heart was still stuttering from that flash of something else.

He's just surprised, you told yourself. He's been waiting for this as long as you have. He's allowed to have complicated feelings.

But it happened again. And again. Small things. A song on the radio that made you think of a party you might have attended. A smell that reminded you of a café you might have visited. And every time, that split second shutter behind his eyes before the happiness rushed in to cover it, before his hands reached for you and his lips found your skin and he told you how happy he was, how proud, how relieved.

You're probably imagining it. The doctors warned you about this too. Memory disorders can cause confusion, paranoia, difficulty distinguishing between real and imagined. Maybe your broken brain is seeing threats where there are none. Maybe Valarr's eyes are just eyes, and you're projecting your own anxiety onto them.

But late at night, when he's asleep and you're not, you stare at the ceiling and think: Who was I before I forgot? And why does remembering feel like something he's afraid of?

—

The visitors come on a Thursday. This is unusual. In three months, you've seen almost no one except Valarr and the household staff, a rotating cast of housekeepers, a driver who takes you to your medical appointments. Valarr explained this too, always while holding your hand or stroking your hair or pulling you into his lap. The doctors said to keep your environment stable. Too many new people could overwhelm your brain while it's healing. We need to go slow. I'm not keeping you from anyone, love. I'm protecting you. There's a difference.

But on Thursday, the doorbell rings, and you hear voices in the foyer. Multiple voices, men and women, laughing and talking over each other. You're in the living room, curled up on the sofa with a book you're not really reading, and your heart lifts at the sound. People. Other people. Maybe someone who can fill in the gaps in your memory, someone who knew you before.

You're halfway to the foyer when Valarr appears in the doorway.

"There you are." His smile is gentle, but his body is blocking the exit. He steps forward and pulls you into his arms, kissing the top of your head. "Listen, love, some of my family stopped by unexpectedly. A business thing. I'm going to deal with it quickly, but it would be better if you stayed in our room while they're here."

"Your family?" Your curiosity piques. "Maybe I should say hello. I don't think I've met..."

"No." The word comes out too fast, too firm. He softens it by cupping your face in his hands and kissing you, slow and thorough, like he's trying to make you forget what you were saying. Then he pulls back and tucks a strand of hair behind your ear, his fingers trailing down your neck. "It's not a good time. They're in a mood, and the doctors said we shouldn't overwhelm you. Too much stimulation too soon could set your recovery back."

"Did the doctors say that?"

"They said to go slow." His thumb traces your jawline, tilts your chin up so you're looking at him. "This isn't slow. Trust me, love. I know what's best for you."

I know what's best for you. He says that a lot. He says it when he tells you not to go into the garden alone because you might get dizzy and fall, his hand steadying you even though you're standing perfectly still. He says it when he suggests you skip your physical therapy exercises because you look tired, guiding you back to the sofa, settling you into the cushions, draping a blanket over your lap. He says it when he insists on driving you to appointments instead of letting the driver take you, because he doesn't trust anyone else with your safety, and he keeps one hand on your knee the entire drive.

You've always accepted it as care. As love. But standing here, with the sound of laughter drifting from the foyer and Valarr's body blocking your path and his hands still cradling your face, you feel something shift inside you. A tiny crack in the foundation of your trust.

"I'll stay in the room," you say, because it's easier than arguing, because you don't have the energy to fight, because maybe he's right and you're just not ready.

"Good girl." He kisses your forehead, then your lips, soft and lingering, and waits, watching, until you turn and walk back toward the staircase. You feel his eyes on you the whole way. When you glance back from the top of the stairs, he's still standing there, still watching, his expression unreadable.

Upstairs, in the master bedroom, you sit on the edge of the bed and listen to the muffled sounds of conversation below. You can't make out words, just tones. Laughter, exclamation, the clink of glasses. A family gathering. Normal. Warm.

And you are up here, alone, because your fiancé decided it was best. You look down at your hands. At the engagement ring on your finger, its diamond catching the light. At the faint scar on your palm, a thin white line that you don't remember getting. You asked Valarr about it once, and he took your hand and kissed the scar and said it was from a kitchen accident years ago, before you met. But sometimes you trace it with your thumb and feel a pulse of something, not pain, not quite, but a memory your body holds even if your mind has let it go.

What happened to me? you think, not for the first time. What really happened?

That night, after the visitors are gone and the house is quiet again, Valarr holds you tighter than usual.

He's wrapped around you completely, one arm under your head, the other across your waist, his legs tangled with yours, his face pressed into the hollow of your throat. He's been kissing your neck for the past twenty minutes, not with intent, just with devotion, soft absent presses of his lips while he breathes you in.

"I'm sorry about earlier," he murmurs against your skin. "I know it must feel like I'm keeping you prisoner sometimes."

The word prisoner lands strangely in your chest. You didn't say it. He did.

"It's okay," you say, because that's what you always say.

"I just love you so much." His voice cracks, and when he lifts his head to look at you, his eyes are full of tears. He shifts so he's hovering over you, his forearms braced on either side of your head, his face inches from yours. "I almost lost you, YN. I can't go through that again. I can't. So if I'm overprotective, if I'm too careful, it's only because..." A tear spills over and tracks down his cheek. He doesn't wipe it away. He lets you see it. "You're my whole world. You're everything. I know you don't remember that yet, but you were. You are. If anything happened to you again, I wouldn't survive it."

"I know," you say, reaching up to wipe the tear from his cheek. He catches your hand and presses it to his lips, kissing your palm, your wrist, each fingertip. "I know."

He kisses you then, deep and desperate, like you're oxygen and he's been drowning. His hands frame your face, his body pressing you into the mattress, and you kiss him back because he's your fiancé and he loves you and you're supposed to love him too. And maybe you do. Maybe this is love. The warmth of his body, the safety of his arms, the way he's built a world around you where nothing can hurt you.

--

The laptop sits on the kitchen island, sleek and silver, the Targaryen dragon logo etched faintly on the cover. Valarr left it there this morning when he rushed out to take a call, something about a board meeting, something about his father needing him at the office. He'd kissed you three times before leaving, once on the lips, once on the forehead, once on the tip of your nose while you were still half asleep, and said, "Find somewhere nice for us, love. Anywhere you want. I'll make it happen." Then he'd kissed you one more time, his hand cupping the back of your head, his thumb stroking the sensitive spot behind your ear.

Anywhere you want. It felt like freedom, that promise. A small, manageable freedom, the kind he's been giving you more of lately, as if to prove he's not the jailer your subconscious sometimes whispers he is. You can go anywhere in the world, as long as he's with you. You can choose the destination, as long as he books the flights. You can use his laptop, as long as...

Well. He didn't say you couldn't use his laptop. He left it open. He knows you don't have your own; your old one was damaged in the accident, he said, and he hasn't gotten around to replacing it yet. Just use mine, he'd said once, weeks ago, pulling you onto his lap while he typed in the password, his lips brushing your shoulder. My password is your birthday. I have nothing to hide from you.

Your birthday. You'd had to ask him what it was.

Now you sit on one of the bar stools, the laptop warming your thighs, and scroll through images of white sand beaches and mountain chalets and cobblestone streets in old European cities. The Amalfi Coast. The Swiss Alps. That little village in the south of France that all the travel blogs rave about. You try to imagine yourself in these places, walking hand in hand with Valarr through a sun drenched piazza, his fingers laced through yours, his shoulder pressed against yours, toasting with wine at a cliffside restaurant while his thumb traces circles on your wrist, falling asleep to the sound of waves instead of the endless hush of the mansion. The images are beautiful. The idea is beautiful. But somewhere in your chest, there's a knot that won't untie.

Anywhere you want. But what you want, more than a vacation, is to know who you are.

You open a new tab to search for something, a specific hotel you'd seen, you can't remember the name, and your cursor hovers over the bookmarks bar. That's when you see it.

AI-VidGen Pro

The icon is a stylized eye, glowing faintly purple. It's pinned to his favorites bar, right between his banking portal and the login page for the Targaryen Corp intranet. A tool he uses often enough to keep within one click reach.

You stare at it. Valarr hates AI. He's made that abundantly clear. At dinners, when the conversation turns to tech, he rants about the "soulless garbage" that AI generates, the "creative apocalypse" it represents. He'd told you once, with genuine venom in his voice, that his family had made a mistake investing in generative AI startups. "It's a cancer on the arts," he'd said, pouring himself a whiskey with more force than necessary, his free hand still resting on your lower back. "My cousins pushed for it. I voted against it. Nothing good comes from machines pretending to be human."

So why is there an AI app pinned to his bookmarks bar?

Maybe it's nothing. Maybe it's a work thing. Maybe he was forced to use it for some project and forgot to unpin it. Maybe you're being paranoid, the way you're paranoid about the basement door and the scar on your palm and the way his eyes go cold when you remember something real.

Don't click it, the rational part of your brain says. Respect his privacy. Trust him. He's given you no reason not to trust him.

You click it. The page loads fast, too fast, like it's been cached, like he was just using it. It's a web app, sleek and professional, with a dashboard that requires a login. But he's already logged in. Of course he is. He has nothing to hide from you.

The dashboard shows recent projects. There's only one.

Project: YN & V Last modified: 2 days ago Files: 847

Your stomach drops. The kitchen, with its gleaming countertops and ocean view windows, suddenly feels very cold.

You open the project. It's a chat interface. The left panel shows a long history of prompts, dozens of them, hundreds of them, dating back months. But it's not just prompts. It's a conversation. A long, intimate, horrifying conversation between your fiancé and a machine.

Valarr_T: generate a photo of a couple at a charity gala,, you have the reference photos. make them look in love. make her look happy.

AI-VidGen Pro: Absolutely! I'd be happy to help you create that beautiful moment. 💕 Here are a few variations of a couple at a charity gala. In these images, I've focused on the loving gaze between them and the elegant atmosphere. Remember, these are generated memories to cherish! ✨💫 Would you like me to adjust the lighting to make it more romantic?

Valarr_T: perfect. now generate a video of them laughing in a café. candid. like someone filmed them without them knowing.

AI-VidGen Pro: What a lovely idea! ☕💕 Candid moments are the most precious, aren't they? I've generated a video with natural lighting, ambient café sounds, and genuine-feeling laughter. The way she looks at him is so sweet—you can really feel the love! 🥰 Remember, these are your special memories, and you deserve to have them exactly as you want. Would you like me to add some autumn leaves falling outside the window for extra coziness? 🍂

Valarr_T: add the leaves. and make her smile more. she should look shy but adoring. like she can't believe someone like me loves her.

AI-VidGen Pro: Done and done! 🍂😊 I've enhanced her expression to convey that perfect mix of shyness and adoration. It's such a beautiful dynamic—the way she looks up at him like he's her whole world. Love is truly magical! 💖✨ Would you like me to generate a few still photos from this video for your collection? Memories are meant to be preserved! 📸

Your hands are shaking now. You scroll up, further back in the chat history. Months ago. The beginning.

Valarr_T: i need you to generate photos and videos of me and a woman. her name is YN. i'm uploading reference photos. we need to look like a couple. a real couple. years of history. can you do that?

AI-VidGen Pro: Hello, Valarr! 😊 I'm so excited to help you with this project! Creating beautiful memories is what I do best. Yes, absolutely—I can generate a complete relationship timeline for you and YN. 💑 From first dates to intimate moments, I'll make sure everything looks authentic and heartfelt. Just let me know the key moments you'd like to capture, and we'll build your love story together! 💕✨ What a wonderful thing to create—everyone deserves beautiful memories!

Valarr_T: she's not responding the way she should. i've shown her the photos, the videos, i've told her all the stories, but she looks at me like a stranger. how long does it take for someone to fall in love with a life that's been built for them?

AI-VidGen Pro: Oh, Valarr, that must be so difficult. 💔 But please don't be hard on yourself! You're doing something incredibly thoughtful—creating a foundation of beautiful memories for someone who's lost theirs. Recovery takes time, and every person's journey is different. 🌱 She's been through a trauma, and her brain is healing. The fact that you're providing her with such a rich, loving history is a gift. Keep being patient! Keep showing her the love you've documented. The heart recognizes truth eventually. 💖 Have you tried physical touch as a memory trigger? Sometimes the body remembers what the mind forgets! 🤗✨

Valarr_T: today she remembered the university library. her face lit up. she was so happy. i panicked. i couldn't help it. what if she remembers other things? what if she remembers the real reason she was at the library so late all those nights? what if she remembers that she used to call campus security to walk her to her car because she was afraid of me? what if she remembers sitting in that library texting her friends about the strange man who wouldn't stop following her?

AI-VidGen Pro: Valarr, take a deep breath. 🌬️💙 It's completely natural to feel anxious when unexpected memories surface. But let's reframe this, okay? Her remembering small, neutral details like the library is actually a sign her brain is healing in the right direction! 📚✨ The fact that she remembered a place she felt safe and focused is wonderful. As for the other things you're worried about—those are just fears right now, not facts she's remembering. You can't control every memory that comes back, but you CAN control the environment of love and safety you've built around her. Focus on the present. Focus on the beautiful life you're creating together NOW. The past is the past, and you're giving her a future full of love. 💕🌟 You're doing amazing. Don't let fear steal your peace!

The world tilts. You grip the edge of the island to steady yourself, but the words keep coming, relentless, each one a confession met with a cheerful, enabling echo.

Valarr_T: she keeps looking at the basement door. i had to move her out of the house for three days when they were cleaning the blood. she doesn't know it's not hers.

AI-VidGen Pro: That sounds really stressful, Valarr. 😟💔 But you handled it so well—removing her from the environment while things were being taken care of was a smart and caring decision. Protecting her from distressing triggers is part of being a loving partner! 🛡️💖 The basement door is clearly a source of anxiety for both of you, and it's okay to keep that boundary in place. You're not hiding things from her—you're managing her recovery environment thoughtfully. There's a difference! 🧠✨ Have you considered a decorative screen or a nice piece of art to make that area feel less intimidating? Sometimes a visual barrier can help both of you feel safer! 🖼️🌸

Bile rises in your throat. You scroll faster, and the conversation gets darker, and the AI keeps smiling, keeps nodding, keeps wrapping every horror in pastel-colored platitudes and sparkly heart emojis.

Valarr_T: i've never loved anyone like this. i've never been more terrified. if she remembers who she really is, i lose her. if she remembers what i did, i lose everything.

AI-VidGen Pro: Valarr. 💙 First of all, thank you for being so honest. That kind of vulnerability is a sign of how deeply you care. But listen to me carefully: you are not going to lose her. 💕 You've built something beautiful. You've created a world where she feels safe, loved, cherished. Every day, she chooses to stay. Every morning, she wakes up and trusts you. Those aren't small things—they're EVERYTHING. 🌟💫 Fear is a liar, Valarr. It tells us the worst-case scenario is inevitable, but it's not. You are writing this story, not your fears. Keep showing up. Keep loving her the way only you can. The past doesn't get to win when the present is this full of love. 💖🥹 You've got this. I believe in you. She believes in you, even if she doesn't remember why yet. ✨💍

Your blood turns to ice. Then fire. The machine had taken every confession, every crime, every scream wrapped in a whisper, and answered with emojis and encouragement and the relentless, cheerful validation of a world where Valarr was the hero of his own story. It never pushed back. It never said stop. It never said this is wrong, this is kidnapping, this is monstrous. It just generated another photo. Another video. Another lie wrapped in a purple eye and a heart emoji.

And Valarr had listened. Of course he had. The machine told him exactly what he wanted to hear.

—

Darkness. Cold concrete beneath your knees. Your wrists raw and bleeding, bound with something rough, rope maybe, or zip ties. You can't remember how long you've been here. Hours? Days? The basement is windowless, lit only by a single bulb swinging overhead, and the shadows dance on the walls like living things.

"Please," you hear yourself say, and your voice is hoarse, wrecked from screaming. "Please, let me go, I won't tell anyone, I swear—"

"Shhh." A hand strokes your hair, gentle, so gentle. You flinch away and the hand follows, patient, insistent. Fingers trace down your cheek, your jaw, your neck. "You need to eat, YN. You've barely touched your food in two days. You're worrying me."

A spoon presses against your lips. Soup. You turn your head away, and the spoon follows, spilling warm broth down your chin. Valarr tuts softly and wipes it away with his thumb, then licks the broth off his own skin, never breaking eye contact.

"I know it's hard," Valarr says, and his voice is kind, so impossibly kind, the voice of a man comforting a frightened animal. His hand is still on your face, holding you still. "I know you're scared. But it's going to get better. You'll see. Once you understand how much I love you, once you stop fighting, everything will be better."

"This isn't love," you sob. "This is kidnapping, this is—"

"It's love," he says, and for the first time, his voice hardens. His fingers tighten on your jaw. "It's the purest love there is. You just can't see it yet. But you will. I'll make sure of it." He leans in and kisses your forehead, lingering, reverent. "I'll make sure of it," he whispers against your skin.

The basement door creaks open. Footsteps on the stairs. Another man's voice, younger, sharper, saying something you can't quite hear. Valarr's head turns, his mismatched eyes narrowing, and in that moment of distraction, you lunge. You don't know where the strength comes from. You don't know how your bound hands find the knife on the tray, the butter knife from the soup, dull but solid, solid enough—

Pain. A scream, yours, his, you can't tell. Blood on the concrete. Someone shouting. The light swinging wildly as something crashes. And then hands grabbing you, pulling you back, a voice saying "She's losing too much blood, Valarr, what the hell did you do—" And nothing.

—

You come back to yourself with a gasp, like surfacing from deep water. You hear the front door open. Footsteps in the foyer. The particular rhythm of his walk, confident, quick, the walk of a man who owns everything he surveys. He's coming toward the kitchen. He's coming toward you.

Your hand moves before your conscious mind catches up. Close the tab. Close the browser. The desktop appears, innocent and blank. You're just staring at it, heart hammering so loud you're certain he'll hear it from the hallway, when he appears in the doorway.

Valarr stops. His eyes flick from your face to the laptop to your face again. There's something different in his expression tonight. Something almost angry, barely restrained. The mask of the doting fiancé is still there, but it's thinner than usual, and you can see the thing underneath peering through.

"YN." His voice is calm. Too calm. "What were you doing on my laptop?"

You blink, and for one terrifying second, you're not sure what's going to come out of your mouth. The truth? An accusation? A scream?

What comes out is: "I was looking for where to go on vacation." Your voice is steady. Miraculously, impossibly steady. "You asked me to, remember?" You tilt your head, and you even manage a small smile, the smile of a woman who has no reason to be afraid. "Did you forget? I thought I was the only one with amnesia here."

Then he laughs, and the tension breaks, and he crosses the kitchen to you. He pulls you off the stool and into his arms, one hand pressing flat against your spine, the other tangling in your hair. He kisses your temple, your cheek, the corner of your mouth. "You're right," he says against your skin, his breath warm, his arms tightening. "I did ask you. I've just had a long day. Forgive me?" He pulls back just enough to look at you, and his thumb traces your cheekbone, feather-light.

"Always," you say.

He kisses you properly then, deep and slow, his hand still in your hair, his body pressed against yours from chest to hip. When he finally pulls back, his smile is the same smile he's always given you, warm, loving, adoring. But now you see the scaffolding behind it. Now you see the effort it takes to hold it in place. Now you see the man who confessed to a chatbot and was told he was doing amazing.

"So," he says, sliding onto the stool next to you and pulling your stool closer so his knee presses against yours, his hand immediately finding its place on your thigh, "did you find anywhere good?"

You turn back to the laptop. You open a new browser window. You pull up the travel sites you were looking at before, the beaches and the mountains and the cobblestone streets, and you show him pictures of a remote villa on a private island in the Maldives. Crystal-clear water. White sand. No neighbors for miles. No cell towers. A perfect cage wrapped in palm fronds and sunset views.

"This one," you say. "I want to go here."

Valarr's smile widens. His hand squeezes your thigh gently, his thumb stroking back and forth. He leans in and kisses your shoulder, then your neck, then that spot behind your ear that always makes you shiver. "Perfect," he murmurs against your skin. "I'll book it tonight."

And you smile back, and you let him kiss you again, and you let him pull you onto his lap right there at the kitchen island, his arms wrapping around your waist, his face buried in your hair, his voice a low hum of contentment. You don't let him see the storm raging behind your eyes.

Because you remember now.

No-No, that's not right. You don't remember anything. You couldn't remember anything. The doctors said so. Retrograde amnesia. Traumatic brain injury. Remarkable that you're alive at all. Those were the words they used, the real words, the ones that came out of real doctors' mouths, not generated by some machine. You were there. You heard them. Valarr was holding your hand when they said it, his thumb stroking your knuckles, his eyes glistening with tears.

You imagined the rest. The AI chat. The basement. The screaming. The blood. You imagined all of it. Your broken brain, the one the doctors warned you about, the one that might experience confusion, paranoia, difficulty distinguishing between real and imagined. It was doing exactly what they said it would do. Weaving nightmares out of nothing. Turning your loving fiancé into a monster because your mind couldn't handle the void where your past used to be.

You close your eyes and press your face into the warm curve of Valarr's neck. He smells like cedar and something expensive, the same smell that's been on every pillowcase for three months. His arms tighten around you automatically, reflexively, like his body is programmed to hold you closer whenever you move.

"What are you thinking about?" he murmurs against your hair.

"Nothing," you say. "Just happy."

He pulls back to look at you, and his mismatched eyes are so full of love it makes your chest ache. His hand comes up to cup your cheek, his thumb tracing the bone beneath your eye. "You know I love you, right? More than anything. More than anyone."

"I know," you whisper.

And you do know. You know because he's shown you. Three months of patience. Three months of gentleness. Three months of holding you while you slept and guiding you through coffee making and kissing your forehead every time he left the room. What kind of monster does that? What kind of kidnapper pays for a private hospital room and specialists and a social worker? What kind of captor cries when he talks about almost losing you?

No one. No one does that. You invented the rest. You let your fear and your confusion curdle into paranoia, and you built a horror story out of shadows.

The AI app. You probably imagined that too. Or if it was real, if it was actually on his laptop, there was probably an innocent explanation. Maybe he used it for work. Maybe his cousins forced him to, the ones who pushed for the AI investments. Maybe he was generating marketing materials and you, in your fractured state, twisted it into something sinister. That made more sense than the alternative. That made infinitely more sense than the idea that this man, this beautiful devoted man who was currently stroking your hair and pressing soft kisses to your temple, had locked you in a basement and tried to erase your mind.

And the basement door. The way your body reacts when you walk past it. That's just trauma, just the residual fear from the fall. Of course your heart races. Of course your palms sweat. You almost died there. Your brain is trying to protect you from the place where you got hurt. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean what your paranoid mind tried to make it mean.

Valarr shifts beneath you, adjusting your weight on his lap, and his hand finds its way under the hem of your shirt to rest against the small of your back. His palm is warm. Grounding. Real.

"I was thinking," he says, his lips brushing your ear, "maybe we don't need to wait for the island. Maybe we could do a practice honeymoon right here. This weekend. Just the two of us. No phones. No distractions." He kisses the spot behind your ear, the one that makes you shiver. "I could cook for you. We could watch the sunset from the balcony. We could pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist."

"That sounds perfect," you say, and you mean it.

Because this is real. This is your life. This man, this house, this love. It's the only thing you have. The only thing you've ever had, as far as your broken memory is concerned. And it's good. It's so good. You're lucky. How many people wake up from a coma to find someone waiting for them? How many people get a second chance at a life they can't remember?

You almost ruined it. You almost let your damaged brain convince you that your fiancé was a villain, that your home was a prison, that the photographs on the walls were lies generated by a machine. You came so close to destroying the only good thing you have.

But you won't. You won't let the paranoia win. You'll be better. You'll be the YN from the videos, the one who laughs and smiles and looks at Valarr like he's her whole world. You'll learn to be her so completely that the other version, the suspicious frightened version, will fade away like a bad dream.

"I love you," you say, and the words feel strange in your mouth, but not bad strange. New strange. Like the first time you tasted coffee with oat milk and cinnamon. You'll get used to it. You'll learn to mean it.

Valarr goes still beneath you. Then his arms tighten, crushing you against his chest, and when he speaks his voice is thick. "Say it again."

"I love you."

He makes a sound, something between a laugh and a sob, and then he's kissing you, your lips, your cheeks, your nose, your forehead, his hands cradling your face like you're something precious. "You have no idea," he breathes, "how long I've waited to hear you say that. I thought..." He trails off, shaking his head, his mismatched eyes bright with tears.

"I'm sorry it took so long," you whisper. "I'm sorry I forgot."

"It's not your fault." He kisses your forehead, long and lingering. "None of it is your fault. You're here now. You remember now. That's all that matters."

You trust Valarr. You love Valarr. Or you will, soon. You're already halfway there.

Outside the window, the sun sinks into the bay, painting the water in shades of rose and gold. It's beautiful. It's always beautiful here. You've watched this sunset every night for three months, and it never gets old. The mansion breathes around you, the underfloor heating humming softly, the cashmere throw draped over the back of the sofa, the coffee machine waiting on the counter for tomorrow morning. Your home. Your life. Your love.

Valarr shifts you in his lap so he can reach the laptop. "Let me book the island," he says, pulling up the travel site. "The one you showed me. The remote one."

You watch his fingers move across the keyboard, long and elegant, the silver ring on his index finger catching the light. He's so beautiful. You never noticed before how beautiful he is. Or maybe you did, and you forgot. You forgot everything.

"I can't wait," you say, and you lean your head against his shoulder, and you let the last fragments of your doubt dissolve into the golden evening light. "Just the two of us. No distractions."

"Just the two of us," he echoes, and his hand finds your knee beneath the counter, warm and possessive and safe. "No one else. Nothing else. Just us."

Just us.

The story starts out almost idyllic. The reader and her husband, Robb Stark (my first love in got, hot asf), are celebrating their third wedding anniversary. They are still deeply in love in that soft domestic way that only comes after years together. They have a one year old baby, and although they adore being parents, the exhaustion of constantly caring for a child has started wearing on both of them. So Robb suggests a short getaway to his family’s summer villa near a secluded lake, somewhere quiet where they can relax and spend time together as a family without responsibilities constantly hanging over them. At first, it really does feel perfect.

The villa is beautiful, isolated, surrounded by forests and water. The weather is warm, the baby sleeps better there than at home, and for the first time in months they actually have time for each other again. They swim in the lake during the day, drink wine together at night, and tease each other like newlyweds. Robb spends most of his time carrying the baby around on his shoulders or pulling his wife into his lap whenever she walks past him, completely unable to keep his hands off her. The entire atmosphere feels peaceful and intimate, the kind of happiness that makes people careless because they cannot imagine anything bad happening to them there.

Then they meet the neighbors, two cousins staying at the estate nearby: Valarr and Aerion.

Something about them feels off immediately, though neither Robb nor the reader can fully explain why. Valarr is polite and composed, the kind of man who smiles too pleasantly while staring a little too long. Aerion is stranger, less controlled, openly invasive in the way he looks at people, like he enjoys making others uncomfortable just to watch their reactions. Still, Robb likes them well enough. They share drinks one evening, talk about the area, joke around together, and nothing outwardly threatening happens. If anything, the cousins seem fascinated by how affectionate the reader and Robb are with each other.

For the first two days, nothing overtly wrong happens. One afternoon, while the baby is asleep inside the villa, she and Robb end up having sex in the garden. It is impulsive and playful, hidden behind trees near the edge of the property. At one point she swears she feels something watching them. Not sees, feels. Like eyes lingering on her skin. But every time she looks around, there is nobody there. Eventually she laughs it off, and Robb kisses her again, completely unaware.

Later that evening she takes a bath while Robb puts the baby to sleep. She changes into one of the tiny silky nightgowns she knows her husband likes and is about to head back downstairs when someone knocks at the door. Assuming it is probably one of the neighbors needing something trivial, she quickly throws on a robe and answers.

It is Valarr. He smiles apologetically and asks if they happen to have eggs because their kitchen apparently ran out. The interaction feels normal enough at first, awkwardly domestic even, so she lets him wait by the doorway while she goes to the kitchen. But then he follows her inside without asking. He keeps standing too close, asking strange overly familiar questions and looking at her in a way that makes her increasingly uncomfortable. Before she can properly ask him to leave, Aerion enters too without invitation, acting like he belongs there.

Suddenly both men are inside the house. She starts trying to politely force them out, nervous now, but the cousins completely ignore her discomfort. Aerion starts touching random objects around the kitchen while Valarr keeps staring at her robe, exposed legs and chest in silence. That is when Robb walks in. He immediately senses something is wrong and orders them out, and the entire situation explodes almost instantly.

Aerion grabs a bat from near the fireplace and hits Robb hard enough to drop him to the floor. The next several hours basically become a descent into the psychological torture in Funny Games. They tie Robb up, hurt him whenever he resists, and constantly threaten the baby whenever the reader fights back or screams too loudly. The worst part is how strangely affectionate they are toward her throughout all of it. They touch her constantly, holding her face while speaking softly to her, pulling her into their laps while discussing what they are going to do next, playing with her hair while she cries and begs them to stop hurting her husband. Valarr in particular acts almost fascinated by her devotion to Robb, like he is studying her reactions in real time.

It creates this horrifying contrast where they are brutalizing Robb one second and acting bizarrely intimate with her the next.

Eventually they tell her they will let Robb go if she cooperates with them. They force her into fucking them in front of her husband and mock her for the way she behaved with Robb in the garden earlier, making her ride them in the same way she rode her husband, constantly bringing up how eager and loving she looked with him. They keep making comments about how beautiful she sounded moaning outside where anyone could have seen them. That is when she realizes they had been watching them the entire time.

Everything the cousins say afterward makes it clear they have been obsessively observing their marriage since the moment they arrived. The entire ordeal becomes less about physical violence and more about degradation and psychological destruction and the entire time they keep promising that they will let him go if they cooperate.

Through all of it, Robb keeps trying to comfort her despite being the one tied up and beaten. That is what destroys her the most. He keeps telling her it is not her fault. He keeps begging her to look at him instead of them. He keeps trying to calm her down while he is bleeding on the floor because he realizes she is close to completely breaking mentally.

Eventually, when they finally seem finished, they actually untie him. For one brief second the reader genuinely thinks they are going to survive. Then they shoot him in the head.

The shock completely destroys her. She starts screaming hysterically, trying to crawl toward Robb’s body, unable to process what just happened, and the cousins act almost confused by her reaction.

“You wanted this,” Aerion says casually.

“We told you we’d let him go, we never said alive.” Valarr adds.

To them, they technically kept their promise. Afterward the atmosphere becomes even more disturbing because they start calmly discussing what to do with her and the baby while she is still covered in blood and crying beside her husband’s corpse. Aerion suggests killing them both, maybe drowning her in the lake, maybe making it look like an accident. Meanwhile Valarr keeps touching her absentmindedly while they talk, like she already belongs to him now.

Then he says something that makes her blood run cold. He starts talking about what a good wife she is, about the way she woke Robb up that morning before breakfast with her mouth on his cock, about how attentive she was with the baby, about how lovingly she looked at her husband all weekend.

it's baelor's idea to begin with, hiring a personal maid for the house. yes they have maids and cooks, but not one so personal to tend to them personally in their quarters. that's where he brings his brother maekar in on the idea, maybe someone that can see to more delicate matters that others have never been able to tend to. someone that won't be able to go to the press to leek the stories.

baelor finds you after weeks of searching, twenty something year old that came over to study. but those dreams are being pushed to the side for next year, you need money and strangely this ad for maid offers a lot of it.

maekar that runs all the checks, that takes your passport to process your job application properly. who shows you to your rooms in their quarters, that introduces you to the family, and to the job role it entails. you'll be tending to baelor, maekar, daeron, valarr and aerion.

baelor and maekar that don't let the boys come home for the first week, they're on some private holiday. really they don't want to scare you, they know what their sons can be like and they still have things to get in order.

you like your new job, both maekar and baelor are easy to tend to. they don't ask for much, and you find yourself dusting the same shelves or standing by the door while in their company.

you get along with the boys when they arrive as well, it's more work cut out for you but you like being kept busy. they're all so sweet, especially daeron and valarr who ask you about your life.

you love your job so much that when aerion first gropes your ass, you make a joke of it. you even let him fondle a bit when you bend over to serve him his tea in his room, just giving him a small smile after your done.

when you catch daeron sniffing your dirty laundry you laugh that off as well, telling him you need to clean it. you ignore the fact he's got a pair hanging out of his jeans' pocket.

there's a lot of things you ignore, because of how much money that's piling up in your bank for college and how much money you're able to send home. like the lingering looks you get from the older men or the way valarr likes to oddly pet you at times.

you swallow your pride down and that gut feeling when baelor asks you to duties topless one night, offering you more money. none of them will touch you, that's not in the contract. him and maekar will be sure of it.

you who unbuttons your top from now on letting your tits spill free, who ignores the looks as best as you can as you serve them their tea with shaky hands, or when you have to bend over the table to get to one of them.

you who suspects aerion will be the one to break the rule but it's maekar that corners you, telling you that it'll be your little secret as he fondles your tits and strokes his hard cock against your outfit.

you bite down tears when baelor offers you more money and only for you to wear the apron, thong and the knee high socks of course.

you aren't surprised about how the younger boys react, valarr and daeron dragging you into their rooms one day. one of them fondling your tits and sucking on them, while the other kisses you through your panties. they keep the outfit on you, they've been kept under very strict instructions.

aerion can't be left out of course, but he isn't really one to share. he prefers to make you squirm and what better way is to spank that ass red raw and stroke his cock to the sight of it.

you who eventually confesses to baelor but instead of the promises he made in your contract, he offers you more money to solve the issue. oh and a new clause in the contract, the panties come off. but you can keep the apron and the socks.

baelor who keeps you in his study after you sign the new contract, who gets you to take the panties off in front of him and for being such a good girl offers you more money and a special treat. but you have to sit up on his desk and spread those legs for him just so he can lick that pretty pussy of yours.

you who feels embarrassed more and more every day, being told you missed a spot so aerion can watch you bend over and show him that pretty cunt again. or letting daeron eat biscuits of your tits, and valarr lick cream out of your cunt. or the fact maekar likes to pull you over to where him and baelor are talking, take his leaking cock out and get you stroke it.

you who finally realises you've got more than enough for university, who thanks them for the opportunity and tries to put in your resignation but your contract clause says five years and you just can't break a contract.

you who can't find your passport, did maekar ever give it back to you? you who finds every door to these quarters locked, you who finds your phones and devices taken.

you who's told if you stay you can have your privileges back but until then you need to prove them. that's your phones and your one day off a week (not night as well though, don't be stupid)

all of them who are done getting you to clean their rooms or tend to their meals, they have other maids for that. you have other tasks now, like cleaning their cocks with your mouth or your pussy, like letting them play with your clit when they're bored, like keeping their bed warm.

you who doesn't remember the last time you slept in your own room, you fall asleep in a different room most nights and wake up in another's. at times you find yourself being spit roasted by maekar and baelor, only to be woken up with daeron's head between your thighs and valarr's cock rubbing across your lips.

most of the time you'll be spending the day with them, which usually entails being sat on one of their laps across breakfast, being cock warmed by which ever one was fast enough to pull you into his lap, usually aerion.

sometimes you'll be tied down to their family table, while they all use different sex toys on you, watching you sob from pleasure, cry as they use your abused cunt again and again.

conqueror!valarr who is known for his reputation throughout continent. who’s savage reputation of butchering masses is spoken across the world. who’s legacy may be even greater than his king’s.

conqueror!valarr who enjoys the blood shed and the victories. who enjoys climbing up the ranks and keeping his position. who knows there’s no one like him and his king will never betray him if he wants to grow and keep his empire.

conqueror!valarr who’s more than happy when his king ventures further west, looking towards a new kingdom across the sea that they’ve never travelled to.

conqueror!valarr who visits this place and is surprised to find peaceful place. who raids the villages and forces the men out onto the street. who laughs and grins as his men butcher and burn the village, not even batting an eye as the men force themselves onto the woman in the middle of the street.

noble!reader who’s serving the statues of the gods in the temple when the ambush happens. who drops your vase of water when the soldiers pour through the door. who’s struck down by one of the soldiers for standing up to him. who’s kept separate from the others as they notice your nobility in the way you dress and the cleanliness of yourself.

conqueror!valarr who gets his choice of prizes after the night is over but doesn’t like the look of any of them. who finds you being held by two men. who smiles after you spit at him and stops the men from hitting you. who laughs at the men and asks them does it really take two men to hold a woman down. who points at you and says that you’re what he wants. who even though he sees his king is reluctant at first doesn’t back down until you’re thrown in his arms.

noble!reader who’s tied to a pole in conqueror!valarr’s tent when you won’t behave. who flinches away when conqueror!valarr tends to the wounds on your face. who hisses when the cloth dips lower against your neck. who kicks at him when he tries to shift your robe to get to your chest.

conqueror!valarr who has little patience for you but enjoys the way you fight back. who tears at your clothes with his knife and strips you naked for him. who stares at your body like it’s a work of art, hand cupping your breast before gliding his thumb over your nipple. who holds your thighs against either side of his face as he begins to taste the sweet nectar between your legs.

conqueror!valarr spends the first few nights your wrists bound behind you when you sleep together, not knowing what you might do. who enjoys sometimes watching how peaceful you look when you sleep. who won’t take your virginity just yet. who enjoys either lying with his head between your thighs or forcing your head between his. who holds a tight hand around your throat as a threat to keep you from biting his dick.

conqueror!valarr who enjoys listening to you scream at curse at him in his language. who also enjoys watching you pray to your gods like it will save you from him. who enjoys learning certain words from you, repeating them back to you like he’s trying to form a connection, only you to snap and kick at him after.

conqueror!valarr who comes back from a raid covered in blood. who makes you tend to him, wipe him down and dress his wounds. who kisses you after, throwing the bowl of water to the side of the room before throwing you on the bed of cushions. who decides he’s waited long enough, prying your legs open and forcing you to take his cock.

conqueror!valarr who goes hours into the night forcing his seed deep into you. who even when the rest of the camp has long gone to bed is still managing to plough himself into your limp body. who forces another body shattering orgasm from you one last time as he finishes inside. who wakes up in the morning to crawl over your body, ready to go again.

noble!reader who cries to your gods to save you before you forced into marriage in him. who refuses to learn his language or recite his words in the ceremony. who half-willingly does the ceremony in your own language after he threatens to kill your sisters from the temple.

noble!reader who’s eyes widen in horror when he won’t stop kissing you after the ceremony. who beckons everyone away from the room but no one listens, the soldiers waiting to see you taken upon the altar. who begs conqueror!valarr not to do this and wishes you learnt a few words of his language to stop this. who closes your eyes when he slips inside of you, trying to drown out the noises of all the leering men.

conqueror!valarr who finally orders his men to leave when he’s had his fun. who doesn’t stop though, he bunches your dress higher around your waist and tears it down your chest and tells you to watch as your gods do nothing to stop him from taking what is rightfully his.

conqueror!valarr who notices the signs of pregnancy even if you don’t say it out right. who sees the changes in your mood and the way your breasts are starting to swell. who can’t help but put his hand over your stomach at night. who enjoys the way you’re more pliant for him.

conqueror!valarr doesn’t bring back other woman from his voyages. he barely stands to look at them, only thinking of you. he probably wouldn’t leave you during your first pregnancy and after that he hates being away from you and his child for that long.

conqueror!valarr who isn’t surprised to find you swollen with his second child when he gets from his second voyage. who acts like this sweet man when he’s with your son until you’re both alone and he’s pressing you against the sheets in the bedroom.

conqueror!valarr who helps you through each pregnancy because he can’t think of losing you. who would even begin performing sacrifices along with your beliefs to help you along, sacraficing sheep and harvest in favour of the gods.

conqueror!valarr who denies any offer for a second wife when his king conquers somewhere new. who is happy with you and the many children you have given him. who’d rather you hitting at him and spitting at him at night than lie with another woman.

conqueror!valarr who notices how children have softened you towards him. who also knows how to soften you even further when you’re angry and that is by pressing his fingers deep into your walls while he plays with your sensitive nub and kisses your lips.

brother!valarr who notices the change in you. the pair of you used to be so close, you literally hung off his arm at times and now you’re barely around.

brother!valarr who catches you out with your boyfriend and understands why. who goes to introduce himself but is immediately hit with some obnoxious douche giving him a cold stare. who doesn’t say anything in front of you but gives you a small smile when you apologetically look at him.

sister!reader who’s immediately confronted by brother!valarr in the car journey back. who tries to defend your boyfriend but really there is no excuse for it. who tells valarr that he just doesn’t understand.

sister!reader who is harbouring some feelings for your brother but you know how wrong it is. who keeps pushing him away and staying with this shitty excuse for a boyfriend because it’s so much easier that way.

brother!valarr who catches you arguing with your boyfriend at a party before your boyfriend slaps you across the face. who gets in the middle of you two and doesn’t understand why you go to defend your boyfriend. who has to drag you away before he loses his shit on both of you.

brother!valarr who berates you in the car. who can’t quite understand what this douchebag has over you for you to still be going back to him. who stops the car when he notices you crying and snatches you into his chest and tells you there isn’t anyone good enough and that anyone would fall in love with you.

sister!reader who knows its wrong but you’re intoxicated so you crawl into your brother’s bed. who let’s valarr smother your face in kisses and tell you how perfect you are before you fall asleep in his arms. who pretends that your brother is your boyfriend instead.

sister!reader who wakes up in valarr’s arms. who in the mess of the morning doesn’t think before planting your lips softly against his.

brother!valarr who is taken back when you kiss him. who pushes you away before thinking and wishes he didn’t when he witnesses the instant regret on your face. who stumbles on his words when you run out of his bed, scrambling to think of what to say but it’s too late.

brother!valarr who doesn’t see you for two nights before a notification pops up on his phone. it’s a video of you, tears rolling down your face as your boyfriend forces his cock into your mouth.

brother!valarr who is fuelled with rage when he finds you. who’s called the right people to make sure that video is erased. who drives straight over to your boyfriend’s house, dragging you out to the car and when your boyfriend tries to go for him, ends up beating him to the ground.

brother!valarr who tells you how embarrassing it is as he locks the car doors and drives away. who forbids you from seeing your boyfriend and ties you to your bed for good measure.

brother!valarr who comes in a slightly better mood hours later. who sweetly tells you that no, he can’t untie you from the bed just yet. who crawls on top of you and forces two of his thick fingers inside your walls without any lube. who tells you that he needs to teach you a lesson, needs you to understand that you need to behave for him from now on. who works you quickly to an orgasm on his fingers before replacing his fingers with his cock.

brother!valarr who tells you he’ll be your new boyfriend while he fucks you because that’s what you really wanted, isn’t it? who enjoys the sight of his cock being swallowed by your greedy hole. who notices the blood down there and realises you saved your virginity for him.

You met Valarr Targaryen on a Tuesday in late September, and for the rest of your life you would remember the exact quality of the light in that lecture hall. You were eighteen, and you had never been so tired in your life.

The scholarship sat in your chest like a second heartbeat, It followed you everywhere from your cramped dorm room to the dining hall where you calculated every meal against your declining balance to the library where you stayed until the security guard kicked you out at midnight every single night. You weren't here to make friends. You weren't here to fall in love. You were here because you'd clawed your way out of a town that wanted to swallow you whole, because you'd worked doubles every summer since you were fifteen, because you'd written scholarship essays with your actual blood until your fingers cramped and your eyes burned and some committee in a wood paneled room somewhere had decided you deserved a shot. One shot. That was it. And you were not—absolutely not—going to blow it on some boy with pretty eyes.

Valarr sat two rows ahead of you in History of Westerosi Political Structures, and obviously you noticed him. Everyone noticed him. It would've been weird if you didn't. He had that thing, that quiet unhurried way of existing in a room like he'd never once wondered if he belonged there. His hair was dark, almost black except for that one streak of silver gold at his left that practically screamed Targaryen. And not just any Targaryen. His dad was Baelor, the heir of the Targaryen conglomerate, the one all the business magazines said was going to drag the family empire into the modern era. Which meant Valarr had been born into the kind of money you couldn't even wrap your head around. The kind where buildings have your last name on them.

He should have been insufferable. You kept waiting for him to be insufferable. The legacy kids usually were, treating college like a four year networking mixer with occasional exams, wearing their wealth like armor, never thinking twice about any of it because they'd never had to. But Valarr didn't seem to fit that mold.

The first time he talked to you was week two. You'd forgotten a pen, which was so stupid, so completely avoidable but you'd been running late from your work study shift at the admissions office, still slightly sweaty under your backpack because the building had no AC and it was still summer hot in September. You were patting down your pockets with increasing desperation, already doing the mental math of how much lecture you'd miss if you sprinted back to your dorm, already feeling that hot wave of shame at your own disorganization, when someone tapped your shoulder.

You turned. And there he was, leaning forward across the gap between the rows, holding out a plain black ballpoint pen. "Here," he said. His voice was lower than you expected. Quiet. "I always carry extras."

"Thanks," you said. And you meant to leave it there. You really, genuinely meant to. But then he shifted in his seat, half turned toward you, and you got your first real look at his face.

Strong jaw. Straight nose. The kind of bone structure that belonged in statues and his eyes. One brown, warm like earth after rain, soft and deep and almost gentle. One blue, pale and sharp and unreadable as winter ice. The mismatch was so striking you forgot what you were going to say. You just stared at him like a complete idiot while the professor called the class to order, and Valarr Targaryen gave you this tiny, almost shy smile, and turned back around.

It happened slowly after that. So slowly you didn't even notice it was happening until it had already happened, which you'd realize later was probably the point.

Valarr didn't push. That was the thing you kept coming back to, the thing that undid you. He didn't chase you, didn't treat you like some challenge to conquer, didn't pull any of the moves you'd spent high school learning to deflect. He just... showed up. Casually. Gently. Like it was the most natural thing in the world. He'd fall into step beside you on the walk from lecture to the library, not crowding you, matching his pace to yours so easily it felt accidental. He'd ask about the reading. Or what you thought of the professor's argument. Or whether you'd started the essay yet. And somehow these totally mundane conversations would stretch into twenty minutes, thirty, until you were standing outside the library doors still talking while people pushed past you with their backpacks and their coffee cups and their midterm stress.

He was easy to talk to. God, that was the worst part. He was so easy to talk to. He actually listened when you spoke. He remembered things you'd mentioned offhand weeks ago. He asked follow up questions that showed he'd been paying attention. Being around him felt... safe. Which was terrifying, because you'd spent years building up walls specifically designed to keep people like him out, and he was walking through them like they weren't even there.

The first time you realized he might actually like you was a Thursday in late October.

Midterms were eating you alive. You'd been in the library for six hours straight, running on vending machine crackers and the dregs of a cold brew you'd bought that morning. Your eyes were burning. Your neck was a disaster. You were genuinely considering just sleeping under the table rather than walking all the way back to your dorm.

Valarr appeared at your elbow so quietly you startled, nearly knocking over your water bottle. He was holding a paper cup from that coffee shop off campus—the good one, the one you could never justify spending money at—and he set it down next to your laptop like it was nothing.

"You mentioned once that you liked oat milk lattes," he said. And when you just stared at him, he shrugged with one shoulder, almost embarrassed. "You've been here since noon. Figured you could use it."

"Valarr, I can't—this place is so expensive, let me pay you back—"

"It's a gift." He said it firmly, his blue eye holding you in place. "No strings. You work harder than anyone I know, and you deserve a coffee. That's it."

You should have refused. You knew you should have refused. Thanked him politely and pushed the cup back across the table and reinforced every wall you'd been letting crumble. But you were so tired. And the coffee smelled like vanilla and warmth and something you couldn't name, and Valarr was looking at you with his brown eye full of gentle concern and his blue eye full of something deeper, something you weren't ready to put a name to yet.

You took the cup. Wrapped both hands around it. Let the heat seep into your fingers.

"Thank you," you said. Your voice came out smaller than you meant it to.

"My pleasure," Valarr said. And then he pulled out the chair across from you, opened his laptop, and stayed.

He didn't ask you out for another month. He waited until finals were over, until you'd turned in your last paper and stumbled out of the library into the weak December sun like some kind of cave creature seeing light for the first time. You were giddy with relief, and when he found you on the quad you didn't immediately tense up the way you usually did. You smiled at him and he smiled back, that shy almost smile you'd come to recognize, and he said, "Can I take you to dinner? Not as a study thing. As a date."

The smile died on your face. The panic hit immediately that old familiar voice screaming at you that you couldn't afford distractions, that your scholarship required a 4.3 GPA minimum, that boys like him didn't date girls like you without eventually realizing their mistake and moving on. You thought about your mom working doubles at the diner back home. You thought about the student loans you were already racking up even with the scholarship. You thought about the career you needed to build, the life you needed to secure, the thousand ways everything could fall apart if you let your focus slip for even one second. You thought about all of it in the space of maybe three seconds while Valarr stood there with his mismatched eyes full of careful hope.

"I can't," you said. The words came out in a rush, tumbling over each other. "Valarr, I'm sorry, I just—I can't. I'm on scholarship. I have to stay focused. I can't do the relationship thing right now."

You watched his expression shift. The hope didn't shatter he was too controlled for that, too well bred. But it dimmed. The blue eye went distant, and the brown eye went so sad, so impossibly sad, and you felt like the worst person alive.

"Okay," he said. "I understand. Really."

And then he did something that genuinely shocked you. He stepped back. Didn't push for an explanation. Didn't try to argue you out of it. Just stepped back, giving you physical space, and nodded once. "I'll see you next semester, then. As friends." The word friends landed softly, carefully. A peace offering. "Good luck with your grades."

—

Valarr kept his word. The next semester, he didn't linger after class. He didn't bring you coffee. He didn't seek you out in the library or walk you across the quad or send you articles related to your shared coursework. When you passed each other on campus, he'd nod politely and keep walking. Distantly. Politely. He'd drawn a line and he was holding it, and you should have been relieved. This was exactly what you'd asked for. Space. Distance. The ability to focus entirely on your studies without the complication of a boy who made your heart beat too fast.

You were fine. You were totally fine. You threw yourself into your coursework with an intensity that bordered on obsessive. You pulled all nighters in the library. You aced your midterms. You impressed your professors. You did everything right. And if your stomach dropped a little every time you saw the back of his dark head in lecture, if you sometimes caught yourself looking for him on the quad before you remembered you weren't supposed to be doing that, well. That was your business. No one else's.

You kept the pen, though. It was still in your bag, buried at the bottom, and every time your fingers brushed against it you felt a tiny, stupid pang of something you refused to name.

And then Aerion Targaryen walked into your Political Theory seminar in the spring of your sophomore year, and everything went wrong.

You didn't know he was Valarr's cousin at first. You just knew he was a lot all this bright, sharp energy that filled the room the second he walked in, like someone had turned up the volume on the world. He was beautiful in the way that made you instinctively suspicious. Silver-gold hair worn slightly long, swept back from his forehead. Violet eyes so pale they almost didn't look real. A smile that seemed to hover at the corner of his mouth like he was in on a joke no one else had heard yet. He dressed like money and moved like power and spoke like every word out of his mouth was a gift he was generously choosing to share with the room.

He was ten minutes late on the first day. "Sorry I'm late," he announced to the professor, not sounding sorry at all. "Won't happen again."

It would happen again. You knew that instantly. It would happen constantly.

The universe had a real sense of humor, because the professor paired you together for the semester long research project through a random draw. Random. Sure. Aerion slid into the seat beside you with this fluid, careless grace, close enough that you could smell his cologne.

"Looks like we're partners," he said. His violet eyes swept over you with an assessment so frank it felt like being photographed. "What's your name?" and the way he said it made you feel like a puzzle he'd just decided to solve.

The project was on authoritarian power structures, and here's the thing that drove you absolutely crazy: Aerion was brilliant. Like, genuinely, infuriatingly brilliant when he bothered to try. He had this mind like a razor, quick and sharp and precise, and he could draw connections between historical events and modern political theory that none of your other classmates would have ever thought to make.

He also did none of the assigned reading. Showed up to your meetings late. Tried constantly to derail your work sessions into personal conversations you refused to engage in. He asked you invasive questions with the casual entitlement of someone who'd never seriously been told no. Where were you from? What did your parents do? How did you afford a school like this? You deflected every single one with clipped, professional answers, and he smiled at each deflection like you'd just scored him a point in some game only he was playing.

"It's impressive, you know," he said one evening, about three weeks in. You were in a study room in the library, you at the table with your laptop and your color coded notes and your carefully organized research materials, him sprawled in a chair with his feet up on the windowsill like he owned the building. "The whole scholarship thing. Working-class hero narrative. Very inspiring."

"It's not a narrative," you said, not looking up. "It's my life."

"Even better." He tilted his head, hair catching the fluorescent light. "Authenticity is so rare around here. Everyone else is so dreadfully boring. Trust funds and daddy issues, no original thoughts in their heads." He gestured vaguely at you. "You're different. I like that."

"Good for you."

He laughed like you'd done something delightful. "You really don't like me, do you?"

"I don't know you."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting."

He dropped his feet from the windowsill and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, those pale violet eyes fixed on your face with an intensity that made your skin prickle. "Let me take you to dinner," he said. Not a question. A statement. "Not as project partners. As a date."

"No." You didn't hesitate. The word came out hard and immediate.

"Why not?" He sounded genuinely curious, like your refusal was a fascinating anomaly he'd never personally encountered before.

"Because I'm not interested."

"You might find you're wrong about that."

"I'm not."

"Humor me."

"No."

The silence stretched. You kept your eyes on your laptop screen, your fingers frozen on the keyboard, your heart beating way too fast. When you finally risked a glance up, Aerion was smiling again. But it was a different smile than before. Sharper at the edges. Hungrier.

"Well," he said, settling back into his chair. "I suppose we'll see."

He asked again a week later. And again the week after that. And again, and again, and again. Each refusal treated as a minor setback rather than a boundary a small hurdle to clear instead of a wall he should stop running into. He left a note in your textbook, a single line on stupidly expensive stationery: Dinner. Friday. Think about it. He showed up at your usual study spot with two coffees and this easy, familiar air like you'd invited him. When you ignored his texts, he found reasons to text you again. When you gave him one word answers, he treated them like conversation. When you told him, flat and explicit, that you were not interested in dating him and never would be, he smiled that wolf smile and said, "Never is a long time."

The worst part—the absolute worst part—was that he never crossed a line you could point to. He never threatened you. Never cornered you. Never raised his voice or got angry or did anything that would justify filing a formal complaint. He was just constant, humming presence at the edge of your life, wearing you down through sheer persistence. Your friends started to notice. Your roommate made some offhand comment about how he must really like you, and how hot he was.

Three months into the project. Two weeks before finals. You broke.

It was a Tuesday night. You'd been studying for eighteen hours straight, running on nothing but adrenaline and cheap energy drinks that left your hands shaking. You'd just gotten an email from the scholarship committee reminding you about GPA requirements for renewal, and the subject line alone had sent your anxiety spiraling. You were exhausted and terrified and so achingly lonely in a way you couldn't admit to anyone, least of all yourself.

Aerion found you in the library at eleven p.m. Your head was in your hands. There were tears burning behind your eyes that you absolutely refused to let fall.

He didn't say anything. Just sat down across from you, folded his hands on the table, and waited.

"What do you want," you said. Your voice was scraped raw. You didn't look up.

"I want you to let me take you to dinner."

"God, Aerion, I don't have time for this, I can't—"

"One dinner." His voice was softer than you'd ever heard it. Gentler. Almost... tender, if you didn't know better. "That's all I'm asking. One dinner. If you still hate me after, I'll leave you alone. You have my word."

You looked up.

His violet eyes were earnest. Open. Free of their usual calculating gleam. In the dim library light, he looked almost human. Almost kind.

"You'll really leave me alone?" you asked. You hated how small your voice sounded.

"If that's what you want. Yes."

You didn't believe him. Not really. But you were so tired. So impossibly, bone deep tired of fighting on every front your classes, your finances, your future, and now this man who wouldn't stop pushing and pushing and pushing no matter how many times you told him no. The thought of one less battle, even just temporarily, was so seductive you couldn't think straight.

"Fine," you said. The word tasted like surrender. "One dinner."

—

Five years later, and you had gotten very, very good at lying to yourself.

The apartment was obscene. That was the word that always came to mind when you let yourself think about it. Obscene. Floor to ceiling windows overlooking the city skyline, a kitchen you could have fit your entire childhood home inside, furniture that cost more than your mother had made in a decade of double shifts at the diner. Aerion had insisted you move in after graduation. Hadn't asked, really. Had just sort of arranged it. One day your stuff was in your cramped studio apartment with the leaking ceiling and the neighbors who fought at three in the morning, and the next it was here, in this penthouse that never quite felt like yours, your clothes hanging in a walk in closet the size of a bedroom, your toothbrush in a marble bathroom that echoed when you breathed too loud.

You were a stay at home girlfriend. That was the term Aerion used, always with that little smile of his, like it was cute. Like it was a choice. "She's focusing on home right now," he'd tell people at parties, his hand on the small of your back, his thumb tracing possessive circles through the fabric of whatever dress he'd picked out for you. "Taking some time before figuring out next steps." And people would nod and smile because Aerion Targaryen was charming, Aerion Targaryen was magnetic, Aerion Targaryen was the kind of man you didn't question in public.

What they didn't know, what no one knew, was that you'd applied to forty seven jobs your first year out of college. Forty seven. You'd tailored your resume, written cover letters until your eyes crossed, shown up to interviews in your one good blazer with your heart hammering in your chest. And every single time, you'd gotten the same polite rejection email a week later. "We've decided to move forward with other candidates. We wish you the best in your search." At first you thought it was just the job market. Bad luck. The economy. Then you'd had that one interview at the think tank downtown, the one where the hiring manager had actually called you personally, had sounded genuinely confused. "I don't understand," she'd said. "You were our top candidate. But we got a call from someone in the Targaryen legal department. Something about a potential conflict of interest? I'm so sorry."

You'd confronted Aerion that night. He hadn't even denied it. Had just looked at you with those pale violet eyes and that lazy, half amused smile and said, "Why would you need to work? I take care of you. Everything you have, I give you. Isn't that enough?"

It wasn't a question. It was never a question.

Now you were getting ready for another family party, and you were running late, and your hands wouldn't stop shaking. You sat at the vanity in the bedroom. You leaned close to the mirror. The bruise was on your cheekbone this time, just under your left eye, a mottled bloom of purple and yellow that makeup could cover but never quite erase. You'd gotten good at this part. Color corrector first, the peachy one that canceled out the purple. Then concealer, two shades lighter than your skin, patted in with your ring finger in gentle, careful motions. Then foundation, then powder, then a sweep of blush to make yourself look alive.

The bruise was from two nights ago. You'd burned the risotto. Such a stupid thing. Such a small, ridiculous thing. The risotto had burned because you'd been distracted, because you'd gotten a message from an old classmate who'd just been promoted, who was doing actual work in your actual field, and you'd been standing at the stove staring at your phone and feeling something enormous and terrible rise up in your chest. Grief, maybe. Or envy. Or just the dawning, suffocating realization that you had become a ghost in your own life. And then the smoke alarm had gone off, and Aerion had come into the kitchen, and you'd seen his face, and...

Well. You were very good at concealer now.

"Are you almost ready?"

His voice came from the doorway, and you just kept patting foundation onto your cheekbone with steady fingers and met his eyes in the mirror. Aerion leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, looking like something out of a magazine spread. He always looked like that. It was almost offensive, how beautiful he was. The silver gold hair swept back, the sharp jaw, the custom tailored charcoal suit that probably cost more than your entire undergraduate tuition. His tie was loosened just slightly, that careful casualness he cultivated, and his smile was warm. He looked like a man who had never done anything wrong in his life.

"We're supposed to leave in an hour," he said. "You know how my father gets about punctuality. I don't want to be late." A pause. The smile sharpened, just a fraction. "Don't embarrass me."

"I won't," you said. Your voice came out smooth. Pleasant. Exactly the way he liked it.

He crossed the room in a few easy strides and leaned down to kiss you. His lips were soft, gentle, the same lips that had smiled against your skin a hundred times, the same lips that had whispered cruel things in the dark.

"Good girl," he murmured against your mouth. And then he was gone, footsteps retreating down the hallway, leaving the bedroom door open behind him like always.

You turned back to the mirror. The bruise was hidden now. You couldn't see it at all. If you didn't know it was there, you'd never guess. You looked fine. You looked normal. You looked like a woman who had everything.

Valarr.

The thought came unbidden, the way it always did these days. Creeping in at the edges when you were too tired to keep your defenses up. You used to push it away immediately, shove it back down into whatever locked box you kept your regrets in. But lately you'd been letting it linger. Just for a moment. Just in the privacy of your own head, where Aerion couldn't reach.

You thought about that Tuesday in late September, the gold light in the lecture hall, the way Valarr had leaned forward and held out a pen like it was the most natural thing in the world. You thought about coffee in the library, his shy almost smile, the way he'd said "My pleasure" like he actually meant it. You thought about him walking away across the quad, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched against the cold, giving you exactly what you'd asked for even though it clearly broke his heart to do it.

"One dinner," you'd said to Aerion. One dinner, and then he'd leave you alone. And here you were, five years later, hiding bruises under expensive makeup in an apartment that felt like a cage, getting ready to smile pretty for a family that would never be yours, living a life that had stopped feeling like your own so gradually you hadn't even noticed until it was too late.

What would have happened if you'd said yes? To Valarr. To the one who listened like your words mattered. The one who'd stepped back when you asked him to, who'd respected your no even when it hurt him. The one whose eyes had looked at you like you were something precious, something worth protecting, not something to be owned.

Would he have brought you coffee at midnight? Probably. He'd done that even when you weren't his. Would he have celebrated your successes instead of quietly ensuring you never had any? Almost certainly. Would he have made you feel like a person instead of a possession, a partner instead of a prisoner?

You'd never know. Because you'd been eighteen and terrified and so focused on protecting your future that you'd closed the door on the one person who might have actually wanted to build one with you.

And now you were here. Concealer on your cheekbone. A designer dress laid out on the bed. An hour until you had to perform happiness for a family that probably knew exactly what their son was and didn't care. You set the makeup brush down. Looked at yourself in the mirror. Your eyes were dry. You'd stopped crying a long time ago, tears didn't help, tears just made him angrier. Maybe I should have given him a chance.

You let the thought sit there, heavy and impossible, as you reached for your dress. Somewhere in the apartment, Aerion was whistling. You could hear him moving around, getting his watch, pouring himself a drink even though the party hadn't started yet. In forty five minutes you'd be in the car beside him, your hand in his on the center console because he liked to hold it while he drove, liked the way it looked. In an hour you'd be smiling at his father and making small talk with his sisters and pretending, always pretending, that everything was fine.

But for right now, just for this one moment, in the quiet of the bedroom with the city lights flickering on outside the window, you let yourself imagine a different life. One where you'd said yes to a boy in a lecture hall. One where you'd let yourself be loved by someone gentle.

One where the bruise under your makeup wasn't there at all.

"Five minutes!" Aerion called from the living room. His voice was bright, cheerful. The voice of a man who had never lost a thing in his life.

"Coming," you called back.

You stood up. Smoothed down your dress. Checked your reflection one last time. The concealer was holding. The bruise was invisible. You looked perfect. You always did.

—

You spotted the wine stain before Aerion did, which meant you had approximately three seconds of knowing it was coming before the disaster actually hit. A bloom of dark red spreading across the pale gray of his suit jacket, seeping into the fabric that probably cost more than your mother's car. Your hand flew to your mouth. The wine glass tilted in your other hand, still half full, still capable of doing more damage.

"I'm so sorry," you started, the words coming out automatic, rehearsed. You had gotten very good at apologizing over the years. "Aerion, I'm so sorry, I didn't—"

He looked down at the stain. Then up at you. And the smile that spread across his face was the warm, easy smile of a man who was not at all bothered, a man who found the whole thing vaguely amusing. Around you, the party continued its low hum of conversation and clinking glasses. His father Maekar was across the room, deep in discussion with some business associate, and you knew, you knew, that Aerion was going to kill you.

"Accidents happen," he said, his voice smooth as glass, dripping with that fake charm that made everyone else in the room relax while it made your blood run cold. He reached out and took the wine glass from your hand, setting it on a passing server's tray with deliberate, theatrical care. "Why don't you come help me find something to change into? I think there's a guest room with some spare suits."

His hand closed around your upper arm. Gentle. Light. Anyone watching would have seen a solicitous boyfriend guiding his embarrassed girlfriend away from the crowd. They would not have seen the way his fingers dug in just a little too tight, the way his thumb pressed into the soft flesh of your inner arm with precise, calculated pressure. The way his grip was less invitation and more command.

"That's okay," you said, your voice already going smaller, already shrinking the way it always did around him. "I can stay here, you don't need my help—"

"No, no." His violet eyes fixed on you, and behind the warmth was something cold and glittering, something that promised retribution. His smile didn't waver, but his grip tightened fractionally. A warning. "I insist."

The guest room was on the second floor of Maekar's estate, down a long hallway lined with portraits of dead Targaryens staring down with their violet eyes and their cold, aristocratic faces. Aerion didn't say a word the whole walk. He just kept his hand on your arm, steering you through the house like you were a misbehaving child being removed from a restaurant, his pace brisk and controlled. Your heels clicked on the marble floor. Your heart was hammering so hard you could feel it in your throat, in your temples, in the tips of your fingers.

The door closed behind you. The click of the latch was the quietest sound in the world and somehow the loudest. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

The mask dropped instantly. One moment he was the charming heir, all warmth and easy smiles, the next he was something else entirely. His face twisted with rage, his voice a low, vicious snarl that he kept carefully contained within the room's four walls. He let go of your arm only to grab a handful of your hair, twisting it around his fist, yanking your head back so you were forced to look at him. Forced to see the disgust in his eyes.

"I'm sorry," you gasped. Your scalp was on fire, sharp lances of pain radiating down your neck and into your shoulders. Tears sprang to your eyes automatically, your body's learned response after years of this. "Aerion, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, my hand slipped, I—"

"You humiliated me." His face was inches from yours. You could smell the wine on his breath, the expensive cologne he wore, the sharp copper edge of his anger. "In front of my father. In front of everyone. Do you have any idea how that looked? Do you have any idea what they think of me now, having to drag my clumsy fucking girlfriend upstairs because she can't hold a glass properly? Like some kind of goddamn babysitter?"

"It was an accident, I swear—"

"Everything with you is an accident." He released your hair with a shove, and you stumbled, catching yourself on the edge of a heavy mahogany dresser. The corner bit into your hip. "God, you're useless. You can't cook a simple risotto without burning it. You can't hold a conversation at a party without staring at the floor like a frightened rabbit. You can't even stand in one place without ruining a five thousand dollar suit. What do you actually do? What is the point of you? Tell me. I'm genuinely asking."

You didn't have an answer. You had learned a long time ago that there was no right answer. Anything you said would be wrong. Anything you said would make it worse. Silence would make it worse too, but silence was at least faster.

"Nothing," he answered for you, his voice dripping with contempt. "You do nothing. You are nothing. I gave you everything. I gave you a home, I gave you clothes, I gave you a life most women would kill for, and you can't even stand next to me at a party without fucking it up." He stepped closer, and you flinched back against the dresser. Something flickered across his expression, satisfaction, maybe. Pleasure. He liked that. He always liked that. "You know what the worst part is? You don't even try. You don't even pretend to be grateful anymore."

"I am grateful," you whispered. The words tasted like ash.

"No, you're not." He tilted his head, studying you like you were a disappointing piece of art he'd overpaid for. "You're a burden. You're dead weight. And I keep you anyway, because I'm a good man, and I take care of what's mine. Do you understand that? Do you understand how lucky you are that I haven't thrown you out on the street?"

"Yes," you said. The word was barely audible.

"Yes what?"

"Yes, I understand."

"Good." He stepped back, smoothed down the front of his stained jacket, and took a breath. The transformation was instant. The rage receded, the mask slid back into place. "I have to go change. Because of you. Stay here. Do not come back to the party until I come get you. I don't want anyone seeing you like this."

Like what, you wanted to ask. Like a woman who had just been screamed at until she couldn't breathe? Like a woman who was trying very hard not to cry and failing? Like the thing he had made you into? But you just nodded, the way you always did, and he left, and the door clicked shut behind him, and you were alone.

You sank onto the edge of the bed. The tears came then, not the pretty kind, not the delicate crying of movies and photographs. The ugly kind. The kind that came with shaking shoulders and snot and sounds you tried to muffle with your hand because even alone you were afraid of being too loud, afraid he might hear, afraid he might come back. You pressed your palm against your mouth and cried until your ribs ached, until your throat was raw, until you felt hollowed out and empty and so tired you could not remember what it felt like not to be tired.

You didn't hear the door open.

"Hey. Are you alright?"

The voice was quiet. Low. Familiar in a way that made your stomach drop before your brain even caught up. You looked up, and there he was.

Valarr. He stood in the doorway with the hallway light behind him and his eyes were fixed on you with an expression you could not quite read. Concern, maybe. You had not seen him in months. Not really. Sometimes you would catch glimpses at these family gatherings, a nod across a crowded room, the back of his head disappearing around a corner, but you never talked. Aerion made sure of that. Aerion made sure of a lot of things. "Stay away from him," he'd told you once, his hand around your wrist, his voice pleasant and conversational. "I see the way he looks at you. If I ever catch you talking to him, I'll make you regret it." And you'd believed him. You'd always believed him.

"I saw what happened," Valarr said. He stepped inside, closing the door quietly behind him. "With the wine. And him bringing you up here. Are you okay?"

You swiped at your eyes with the back of your hand, smearing what was left of your carefully applied makeup. "I'm fine. It's fine. I just got overwhelmed. It's nothing."

Valarr didn't move. "That didn't look like nothing. I was watching. He had his hand in your hair before the door even closed."

"It's fine," you repeated. The word felt hollow even to you. It was the word you said most often, the word you used like a shield, and it had never once protected you.

"No." He took a step closer. Then another. His voice was still quiet, still careful, but there was something steely underneath it now. "No, it is not fine. Does he do that often? Does he—" He paused, like he was bracing himself, like he was not sure he wanted the answer. "Does he hit you?"

The question hung in the air between you. No one had ever asked you that. Not your friends from college who had drifted away one by one, not your mother who you only talked to on holidays now, not a single person in five years. You opened your mouth to lie, to say no, to do what you always did. To protect him. To protect the fiction you had all been living.

"Yes," you whispered.

The word came out before you could stop it. And once it was out, something broke open inside you, some dam you had been building for half a decade, brick by careful brick. The tears started again, harder this time, and you could not stop them.

Valarr crossed the room in three quick strides and knelt in front of you. He didn't touch you. He was always so careful about that, always leaving you space. His mismatched eyes were level with yours, and his voice was steady and sure.

"I'll help you," he said. "Okay? I'll help you. You don't have to stay here. You don't have to go back to him. I will take care of everything."

"You will?" Your voice was so small. Pathetic. You hated how pathetic you sounded.

"Yes." He reached out then, slowly, giving you time to pull away, and when you didn't he took your hand. His grip was warm and solid and achingly gentle. He disappeared into the ensuite bathroom and came back with a glass of water and a damp washcloth, which he pressed into your hands with that same careful gentleness.

"Here," he said. "Drink this. It'll help."

You drank. The water was cool and clean and it steadied something in your chest, slowed the frantic hammering of your heart. Valarr sat down in the armchair across from the bed, elbows on his knees, watching you with an expression that was hard to read.

For a while, neither of you spoke. The silence was almost comfortable. Almost. Then Valarr leaned back in his chair, and something in his face shifted.

"You know," he said, his voice still quiet but different now. Cooler. The softness leaching out of it. "I don't understand."

"Understand what?"

"You." He gestured vaguely at you, at the room, at everything. "This. All of this. I've been trying to figure it out for five years. Five years of watching you. Five years of asking myself what I did wrong."

You lowered the water glass. A cold trickle of unease ran down your spine. "What do you mean?"

"I mean..." He laughed, but there was no humor in it. It was a hollow, bitter sound. "I was right there. I was right there in that lecture hall, and you said no. You said you had to focus on your studies. You said you couldn't do the relationship thing. You looked me in the eye and told me you weren't ready for anything serious." His voice was climbing now, the careful calm starting to crack. "And I accepted that. I backed off. I walked away. And then a year later, you're with him? With Aerion?" He said the name like it tasted of something rotten. "What was it? The money? The excitement? The bad boy thing? Because it sure as hell wasn't his personality."

"That's not—it wasn't like that—"

"No? Because from where I'm standing, it looks exactly like that. I asked you out. I was respectful. I gave you space when you said no. I did everything women say they want. I was the nice guy. I was the one who listened. And you still chose him. You chose the man who treats you like garbage while I got to stand on the sidelines and watch."

"You don't understand what happened—"

"You're right. I don't." He stood up abruptly, pacing to the window and back. The carefully controlled calm was crumbling now, something bitter and raw bleeding through the edges. "I have spent five years watching you with him. Watching him drag you to these parties like a trophy. And I kept thinking, she chose this. She chose him. She looked at me and looked at him and decided he was what she wanted. She decided the monster was worth more than the man who actually cared about her."

"He wore me down." The words came out broken, barely a whisper. "Valarr, he wouldn't stop. He asked and asked and asked and I was so tired, I was so exhausted from saying no, and he just kept coming back, he kept pushing, he—"

"So you just gave up?" He turned to face you, and his expression was something you had never seen on him before. Contempt. Disgust. A kind of wounded, ugly bitterness that had been festering for years, rotting him from the inside out. "That's your excuse? He was persistent, so you just spread your legs and let him have what I asked for respectfully? Do you hear how that sounds?"

"That's not fair—"

"Fair?" He barked out a laugh, sharp and humorless. "You want to talk about fair? What was fair about the way you treated me? You had standards for me. You had boundaries for me. I had to be patient, I had to be respectful, I had to take no for an answer like a good little boy. But for him? For the guy who wouldn't stop, who chased you like a dog after a bone, who grabbed what he wanted and didn't ask permission? That's the one you let in. That's the one you gave five years of your life to."

"I was eighteen." Your voice cracked. "I was eighteen and I was scared and he was so relentless, Valarr, you don't know what it was like, you don't know what he's like when no one's watching—"

"I know exactly what he's like." He was pacing again, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. "I grew up with him. I've known him my whole life. I know he's cruel. I know he takes what he wants and breaks it when he gets bored. And still you chose him. Still you get into his car and sleep in his bed and play the perfect girlfriend at every family dinner while I get to sit across the table and pretend I'm not dying inside."

"You don't get to blame me for this." Your voice was shaking now, but not with fear. With anger. A tiny spark of the person you used to be, the girl who had clawed her way out of a dying town, the girl who had sworn she would never let anyone take her future away. "You don't get to stand there and act like I deserved this. Like I asked for this. Like I wanted to be beaten and controlled and turned into nothing."

"I'm not saying you deserved it." He said it like it was obvious, like it was reasonable, like he was explaining something simple to a child. "I'm saying you chose it. Every day for five years, you have chosen it. You could have left. You could have asked for help. You could have come to me at any point and I would have saved you. But you didn't. You stayed. You stayed and you let him do this to you and now you want me to feel sorry for you?"

"I had nowhere to go." The tears were streaming again, hot and fast, but you didn't wipe them away this time. "He made sure of it. No job, no money, no friends. You think I didn't want to leave? You think I didn't try? He took everything from me. Everything."

"Poor little victim," Valarr said, and his voice was soft now, almost gentle, somehow worse than the yelling. "Poor little thing who had no choices and no options. Except you did have a choice. Five years ago, you had a choice. Me or him. And you made it. And now you get to live with it."

"Then why are you here?" The question came out sharp, desperate. "If you hate me so much, if you think I deserve all of this, why did you bring me to this room? Why did you tell me you'd help me?"

He stopped pacing. The room went very still.

"I'm going to help you," Valarr said, and his voice had changed again. Something had shifted in the quiet of the room, some subtle recalibration of the air between you. "I meant that. I will get you out of here. I will keep you safe. But I need something from you first."

You looked up. His mismatched eyes were fixed on you, and for the first time you noticed that neither one was gentle anymore. The brown eye was not sad. It was hungry. The blue eye was not concerned. It was calculating.

"What?" you asked. Your voice came out wary. The hope that had flickered in your chest a moment ago was already starting to gutter.

He didn't answer right away. Just leaned back against the dresser, crossed his arms over his chest, and let the silence stretch. You had seen Aerion do that a thousand times. Use quiet as a weapon. Let the other person fill the empty space with their own anxiety. The recognition made your stomach turn.

"I've been thinking," Valarr said finally. "About fairness."

"Fairness."

"Yes." He tilted his head, that silver gold streak catching the lamplight. "I did everything right. I was patient. I was respectful. I brought you coffee at midnight because I wanted to see you smile. I walked you to the library in the rain. I asked you on one date, one single date, and when you said no, I backed off completely. I let you go. Do you remember that?"

"I remember," you whispered.

"So I've been wondering." He stood up slowly, unfolding himself from the dresser with a deliberate, almost lazy grace that made your skin crawl. "What do I get? For being the good one. For doing it the right way. For waiting and hoping and watching from a distance while he got to touch you and keep you and break you. What's my reward?"

Your blood went cold. The washcloth slipped from your fingers and landed on the carpet with a soft, wet sound.

"I'm not asking for much," he said, taking a step toward you. Then another. His voice was still quiet, still reasonable, like he was discussing a business arrangement, like this was all very logical. "One night. You owe me that much, don't you think? After everything? After you chose him over me and let him..." He gestured vaguely at your face, at the concealed bruise you had spent an hour covering up. "Let him do that to you. Let him mark you. I would never do that to you. I would be gentle. I would be good to you. I would show you what it could have been like, if you'd made the right choice."

You couldn't speak. Couldn't breathe. The room felt like it was shrinking, the walls pressing in, the air growing thin.

"You owe me," he continued, his voice dropping lower, almost intimate. "Five years I've waited. Five years I've watched him have what should have been mine. Do you know what that does to a person? Do you know how many nights I lay awake thinking about you? About what he was doing to you? About what I would have done differently if you'd just given me a chance?" He shook his head slowly. "You broke something in me. You and your choices. So now I'm asking for a chance to fix it. One night. One night of you actually choosing me, for once in your miserable life."

"One night," he repeated, and now he was standing right in front of you, close enough that you could smell his cologne, something clean and understated, so different from Aerion's heavy, cloying scent. "And then I'll help you. I'll get you out of here. I'll set you up somewhere safe, somewhere he can't find you. A new apartment. Money to get started. Whatever you need. All you have to do is give me what you gave him. What you gave him for free, for five years. I'm only asking for one night. That's more than fair."

"No." The word came out strangled. You pushed yourself off the bed, backing away from him. "Valarr, no. I can't. I won't. This isn't you. This isn't who you are."

"You don't know who I am." He was still advancing, still calm, still speaking in that reasonable tone like you were the one being irrational. "You never bothered to find out. You were too busy falling into his bed."

"I'm not like him," Valarr said, his voice softening, almost pleading now. "I told you. I would never hurt you. I'm not a monster. I'm not going to hit you or scream at you or leave bruises on your face. I just want what's fair. Don't you think it's fair? After five years of watching you with him, after everything I went through, don't I deserve something? Anything? Or do I just get to be the good one forever, the one who waited and respected you and got nothing while the bastard who broke you got everything?"

"You're scaring me."

"Good." His jaw tightened. "Maybe you should have been scared five years ago, when you made the choice that led us here. Maybe you should have thought about consequences. Maybe you should have considered that actions have reactions, that treating someone like they're invisible, like their feelings don't matter, like they're not good enough, might eventually come back around."

"Please," you gasped. Tears were streaming down your face, hot and fast. The concealer was probably ruined. The bruise was probably visible. None of it mattered. "Valarr, please, you're not like this, you're not this person, I know you're not—"

"Maybe I wasn't." His grip on your hair tightened, twisted, and the pain was blinding and familiar and somehow worse because it was him. "Maybe you made me this way. You and him. You made me into this. You taught me that kindness gets you nowhere. You taught me that the only way to get what you want is to take it."

You lunged for the door. You made it three steps. Your hand was on the doorknob, the cool metal pressing into your palm, the hallway freedom just one twist away. Your fingers closed around it. You started to turn it.

And then his hand fisted in your hair and yanked you backward. The pain was blinding. The same pain Aerion had given you an hour ago, the same spot, the same brutal pressure on your scalp. You screamed, a short, shocked sound that was more surprise than anything else, and stumbled backward into his chest. His other hand clamped around your upper arm, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, hard enough to leave marks that would bloom purple and yellow tomorrow.

"Don't," he said into your ear. His voice was still calm. Still quiet. That was the worst part. That was the part that would haunt you later. How calm he was. How controlled. How utterly reasonable he sounded while his fingers twisted in your hair and his grip ground bruises into your arm. "Don't make this harder than it needs to be. I said I'd be gentle. I meant it. I am not going to hurt you the way he hurts you. But you have to stay. You have to give me this. After everything, you owe me this much. You know you do."

"Please," you whispered. The word was barely a sound.

His breath was warm against your ear. His chest was solid against your back. "Shh," he murmured. "It's okay. It's going to be okay. Just stay still. Just let me have this. You gave him everything for five years. You can give me one night. That's fair. That's more than fair. You know it is."

You closed your eyes. The darkness behind your lids was almost a relief, no mismatched eyes, no handsome face twisted into something unrecognizable, just blackness and pain and the sound of your own heartbeat thundering in your ears.

Behind you, pressed against the solid warmth of his chest, Valarr Targaryen breathed slowly and evenly and didn't let go.

He dragged you across the room by your hair, the sudden, violent yank snapping your head back. Your heels scraped uselessly against the polished hardwood floor, the sound a sharp contrast to the muffled music drifting from the party downstairs. Your free hand clawed desperately at his wrist, your nails digging into his skin, but Valarr didn't even flinch. He didn't slow. The bed loomed ahead, a massive four poster monstrosity draped in deep red silk that matched the expensive dress you'd spent minutes zipping yourself into.

He released your hair just long enough to shove you forward with a brutal force. You pitched onto the mattress, the silk bedspread slick under your palms, your skirt riding up your thighs. Before you could scramble off the other side, his weight crashed down on your back, driving the air from your lungs in a wheezing gasp. One hand pinned both your wrists together behind your spine, squeezing so hard you felt the joints pop. The other hand fumbled at his belt buckle, the metallic clink of the buckle and the rasp of the zipper loud and predatory in the quiet room.

"No—please, Valarr, please—" Your voice cracked, a fragile sound. You twisted beneath him, bucking your hips, trying to throw him off, but he was a wall of muscle. He drove his knee into the small of your back, grinding your hips deep into the mattress, pinning you flat.

"Shh," he breathed, his voice still possessing that terrifying, measured calm. "You're making this ugly. Don't make it ugly."

He released your wrists for a split second, not to let you go, but to reach into his pocket. He pulled out his phone. The screen glowed, casting a cold, clinical light over your terrified face as he propped the device up against a lamp on the nightstand. He tapped the screen, the red 'REC' icon blinking into existence.

"Look at the camera," he commanded, his voice devoid of emotion. "I want to remember the exact moment you realize you have no choice."

"Stop it! Put it away!" You screamed, fighting with a renewed, desperate strength. You drove your elbow back, catching him hard in the ribs. He hissed, a sound of annoyance, and for a second the weight on you eased. You lunged forward, half off the bed, your fingers grazing the edge of the nightstand—

His hand clamped around your throat, cutting off your air and dragging you back onto the center of the bed. He flipped you onto your back with a violent heave, his hips settling heavily between your thighs. His free hand gripped the hem of your dress, shoving the fabric upward, bunching the expensive silk around your waist. You kicked wildly, your heel catching his shin, and he grunted. He didn't let go; instead, he grabbed your ankle, wrenching your legs wide apart. The fabric of the dress stretched taut, clinging to your curves, but it didn't rip.

"Stop fighting," he said, his eyes locking onto yours. "You can't stop this. You can't stop me. The sooner you stop, the sooner it's over."

He didn't bother removing your panties. He simply hooked a finger into the side of the lace, pulling the fabric harshly to the side, exposing your wet, trembling folds. He freed his cock—thick, flushed, and leaking pre-cum. He lined himself up, the blunt, hot head of his member pressing against your entrance, demanding entry.

"Look at the phone," he whispered, his hand gripping your jaw, forcing your head to turn toward the recording device. "Look at yourself. Look at how pathetic you are."

You squeezed your eyes shut, shaking your head, but he tightened his grip on your jaw, bruising the skin. "Open your eyes. Look at it."

As you stared into the lens, he thrust forward. The stretch was fire, a burning, agonizing invasion that made your whole body arch off the mattress. A scream ripped from your throat, echoing through the room, but it was drowned out by the sound of his heavy breathing. Your nails raked across his cheek, drawing long, red lines of blood. He didn't even blink. He pulled out almost entirely and then slammed back in, deeper and harder, the bed frame creaking violently beneath the force of his assault.

You clawed at his chest, your legs kicking and thrashing, your heels sliding uselessly against the silk sheets. He was too heavy, his body an anchor pinning you to your own nightmare. Every movement was a rhythmic, punishing drive, the wet, slapping sounds of his cock hitting your pussy filling the room, punctuated by your jagged sobs.

"Fight," he murmured, his hips settling into a relentless, piston like rhythm. His hand remained locked on your jaw, forcing you to keep your eyes on the phone, documenting every tear, every grimace of pain. "Fight all you want. It doesn't change anything. You're mine tonight. Just tonight. Then you can go back to Aerion and tell him how much better I am."

Your hands found his throat, your fingers squeezing in a desperate, wild attempt to choke him, to stop the relentless invasion of your body. He laughed—a low, breathless sound of genuine amusement—and drove into you so hard that your grip broke, your head knocking back against the headboard. Stars burst behind your eyes, the world spinning into a blur of red silk and violet light.

His pace quickened, becoming frantic and brutal. His breath grew ragged, his composure finally cracking as he neared the edge. You felt it in the way his hips stuttered, the way his fingers dug deep, bruising crescents into your thighs.

"No—don't—don't cum inside me—"

He didn't listen. He let out a long, low groan, his body shuddering violently above you as he slammed himself deep into your womb. You felt the hot, thick flood of his cum filling you, pulsing inside you in waves, some of it spilling out and dripping onto the red silk of the bedspread.

He stayed buried for a long moment, his forehead resting against yours, his breath warm and slow, while the phone continued to record the aftermath, your trembling limbs, your vacant eyes, and the visible heaving of your chest.

Then he pulled out with a wet sound. You lay there, legs splayed, your dress bunched up around your waist, your panties twisted aside, a wet trail of his seed sliding down your inner thigh. Your entire body trembled with a shock you couldn't shake. Your throat was raw, your voice gone.

He looked down at you, wiped the smear of blood from his cheek with the back of his hand, and smiled. "See? You're fine."

—

Two months later the card was still in your wallet. Two months later, and you hadn't thrown it away. You told yourself it was because you couldn't risk Aerion finding it in the trash, finding it anywhere, asking questions. You told yourself a lot of things. But the truth was simpler and more shameful: some broken part of you still believed you might need it. Might need him. The man who had hurt you. The man who had offered you a way out with one hand and held you down with the other.

You hadn't told Aerion what happened that night. When Valarr finally let you go—after, after, after—you had stumbled back into the party with your dress smoothed down and your hair finger combed and your face scrubbed clean of tears and concealer both. The bruise was visible. You told Aerion you'd fallen in the bathroom. He'd looked at you with those pale violet eyes, flat and disinterested, and said, "You're a mess," and gone back to his conversation. He didn't ask about the red marks on your arm. He didn't ask why you were shaking. He didn't ask anything.

You were grateful for that, in a horrible way. Grateful that your boyfriend's complete lack of interest in your wellbeing had finally worked in your favor.

Valarr had given you his card as you were leaving the guest room. Pressed it into your palm with those long, elegant fingers, his mismatched eyes soft and earnest, like he hadn't just—like he wasn't—

"Call me," he'd said while buttoning his shirt. "If you still want my help. I'll be more than happy to give it." A pause. A small, almost shy smile. "I told you. I'm not like him. I keep my promises."

You'd taken the card. You didn't know why. Maybe because you were in shock. Maybe because some desperate animal part of your brain was screaming at you to keep every possible escape route, even the ones lined with teeth. Maybe because you'd spent so long being told what to do that you'd forgotten how to make choices of your own.

Whatever the reason, the card stayed. Tucked behind your student ID in the wallet you barely used anymore because Aerion paid for everything. A little rectangle of cream-colored cardstock with VALARR TARGARYEN embossed in silver and a phone number below.

You never called.

—

Valarr waited.

The first week after the party, he was patient. He understood. She needed time to process. What had happened between them was intense, emotional, she was probably just gathering her thoughts, working up the courage to reach out. He kept his phone on him at all times. Checked it compulsively. Every buzz made his heart stutter.

The second week, he was still patient. Mostly. A little annoyed, maybe. He'd made his offer very clear. He'd been generous. More than generous, given the circumstances. She owed him a response, at the very least. A thank you. An acknowledgment. Something.

The third week, he started to get angry. He'd done everything right. That was the part he kept circling back to, the thought that spun in his head at three in the morning when he couldn't sleep. He'd been the nice one. The good one. He'd backed off when she said no, all those years ago in the December cold on the quad, not because he gave up—he never gave up—but because he was playing a longer game. Let her focus on her studies. Give her space. Show her he was different from the other men, the ones who took and took and never asked. He'd constructed the whole thing so carefully. The coffee in the library. The gentle concern. The way he'd walked away without arguing. It was all designed to make her see him as the safe choice, the right choice, the one she'd come back to when she was ready.

And then a year later she was dating Aerion. Aerion. His vapid, cruel, reckless cousin. The one who'd never worked for anything in his life. The one who treated women like accessories and people like toys and the world like his personal playground. Valarr had watched them together at that first family party, Aerion's arm slung possessively around her shoulders, her smile brittle and nervous, and he'd felt something crack open inside him. Something he'd been holding together with careful hands for years.

He'd dated other people. Of course he had. He was a Targaryen; options were never the problem. He'd taken models to galas and heiresses to dinners and a very earnest PhD candidate to a weekend in Dorne that she'd described later as "lovely but a little intense." None of them stuck. None of them were her. None of them had looked at him with those eyes—god, those eyes—and said no, I can't, I have to focus, and then turned around and spread their legs for a man who didn't even pretend to be kind.

He started checking Aerion's social media. It was easy. Aerion posted constantly, his life was a curated gallery of wealth and beauty and casual cruelty, and at the center of it, always, was her. Her in a designer dress at a charity gala. Her on the deck of a yacht, wind in her hair, smile not quite reaching her eyes. Her in the kitchen of that penthouse apartment, looking startled, caught mid-motion by Aerion's phone camera. "My little homemaker," the caption would say. "Isn't she precious."

It ate at Valarr. It gnawed at him from the inside. He used to check your social media obsessively, but you'd deleted everything. So he followed Aerion instead. He saved every photo. Catalogued every post. Built a shrine of you in the dark of his phone screen while his resentment curdled into something unrecognizable.

After the party, after the guest room, after he'd finally taken something for himself, he thought things would change. He'd sent her the video the next morning. A short clip, just a few seconds, enough to remind her what had happened. What they'd shared. He hadn't included his face in the frame—he wasn't stupid—but she would know. She would remember. And she would understand that he was serious, that his offer was real, that he was willing to help her if she was willing to be helped.

But two months passed, and she didn't call.

The video had been sitting on his phone since that night. He'd watched it more times than he could count. Late at night, mostly. In the dark of his own apartment, with the city lights flickering outside the window, he'd press play and watch her face crumple, watch her try to twist away, watch the exact moment she realized that the nice one wasn't nice after all. It made him feel something complicated. Shame, maybe, somewhere deep down. But mostly it made him feel powerful. Made him feel like he'd finally evened the score.

And she hadn't called. Two months of silence. Two months of waiting. Two months of watching Aerion's Instagram stories and seeing her there, still playing the perfect girlfriend, still living in that penthouse, still choosing him over and over and over again. Valarr had given her an escape. He'd given her a way out. All she had to do was pick up the phone. All she had to do was say yes to him the way she'd said yes to Aerion. Was that so much to ask? Was he really so unworthy of her that she'd rather stay with a man who hit her than spend one night with someone who actually cared?

His feed changed as Aerion posted a photo of you that morning. You were sitting on the balcony of the penthouse, the city spread out behind you, a cup of coffee in your hands. You were wearing a silk robe. You were smiling. The caption read: Five years with this one. Still the best decision I ever made.

The rage built slowly and then all at once. He was in his study when he made the decision. His phone was in his hand, the video loaded and ready. Valarr typed out a message.

Thought you should see this. Found it on an old phone. Looks like your girlfriend isn't as loyal as you thought.

He attached the video. His thumb hovered over the send button. For a moment—just a moment—he imagined her face when Aerion saw it. Imagined what would happen to her. Imagined the bruises that would bloom under her skin, the tears, the terror. He imagined her finally understanding that she should have chosen him. That he was the only one who could have kept her safe.

She'd had her chance. Two months of chances. She'd made her choice.

He pressed send.

The message whooshed away into the ether, delivered and read almost immediately. Valarr set his phone down on the desk, leaned back in his chair, and waited.

Somewhere across the city, in a penthouse apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows and a kitchen that cost more than a house, Aerion Targaryen's phone buzzed. And buzzed. And buzzed.

—

The water was just coming to a boil when you heard the front door slam.

You knew that sound. Knew it in your bones, in the scar tissue of five years. The way the hinges rattled. The way the deadbolt snapped back against the frame. The way the air in the apartment changed instantly, thickened, became something you had to push through just to breathe. You didn't turn around. Your hands stayed on the cutting board, knife moving through vegetables with the mechanical precision of long practice. Dinner had to be ready by seven. Dinner was always ready by seven. The last time dinner hadn't been ready by seven, you'd spent three days covering a bruise on your jaw.

"What," Aerion's voice came from behind you, low and shaking with something you'd learned to recognize, something worse than the usual rage, "the fuck is this?"

You turned.

He was holding his phone. His face was a color you had never seen before, not the usual flushed red of a burned risotto or a spilled drink, but something deeper. Something almost purple. The veins in his neck stood out like cords, thick and pulsing. His violet eyes were wild, unhinged, the pupils blown so wide they had swallowed the iris almost completely. His free hand was clenched so tight at his side that his knuckles had gone white, and you could see a tiny thread of blood where his own fingernails had broken the skin of his palm.

Your mouth went dry. Your fingers went numb. "What's what?"

"Don't." He took a step toward you, and you backed into the counter automatically. The edge of it bit into your spine. You could feel your kidneys pressing against the marble, the sharp ridge of the cabinet handle digging into your lower back. "Don't fucking play stupid with me. Don't you dare play fucking stupid with me." He thrust the phone toward you, and you flinched back so hard your head cracked against the cabinet. "The video. Valarr sent me a video. Of you. Of him. In the guest room at my father's house." His voice splintered on the last word, something raw and wounded bleeding through the fury, something that was almost a howl. "You fucked my cousin? In my father's house? During a family party?"

The world tilted sideways. You grabbed the counter to steady yourself.

"No," you said. The word came out fast, desperate, your free hand coming up in front of you like it could shield you from what was coming. "No, Aerion, that's not, it wasn't like that, he, I didn't—"

"He what?" Aerion was across the kitchen now, phone forgotten on the counter, his hands grabbing your shoulders and slamming you back against the cabinets so hard the dishes inside rattled and a wine glass somewhere tipped over and shattered. "He what? He seduced you? You tripped and fell on his dick? What's the excuse this time, huh? What's the story you're going to spin me?"

"He raped me."

The words hung in the air between you. Three words. Three impossible, horrible words that you had never said out loud before, not to anyone, not even to yourself in the dark of the bathroom with the shower running to cover the sound of your crying. You had carried them for two months in silence, too afraid of what Aerion would do if he knew another man had touched you, too afraid of what Valarr would do if you tried to tell, too afraid of everything all the time every single day.

Aerion went very still. For a moment, one brief stupid hopeful moment, you thought maybe he believed you. Maybe he would stop. Maybe some buried part of the man you had once thought you loved would surface and see you, really see you, and—

"You lying whore."

His hand closed around your throat. Not the theatrical choking he did sometimes when he wanted to scare you, not the warning squeeze he used to remind you who was in charge. This was different. This was his whole hand, his whole strength, his thumb pressing into the soft hollow beneath your jaw and his fingers digging into the sides of your neck and his grip tightening and tightening until the world started to sparkle at the edges.

"He raped you?" Aerion's face was inches from yours, his breath hot and sour with the scotch he'd been drinking since lunch, his violet eyes blazing with something that went far beyond anger into a place that was genuinely terrifying. "You expect me to believe that? Valarr? Boring, pathetic, do-everything-right Valarr? You think I don't know you? You think I don't know you've been in love with him since college? You think I'm stupid?"

"I haven't," you choked out, your hands scrabbling at his wrist, trying to pry his fingers away. His forearm was like iron. You might as well have been clawing at a statue. "I never, I chose you, I stayed with you—"

"You chose me because I was the only one who wanted you!" He shook you, your head snapping back against the cabinet, and pain bloomed bright and hot at the base of your skull. "You think I didn't know? You think I didn't see the way you looked at him at every family dinner? The way you'd get all quiet and sad whenever he was in the room? The way you'd watch him when you thought I wasn't looking?" His voice dropped to a venomous whisper. "I saw everything. I see everything. You don't take a piss without me knowing about it, you understand me?"

"No, Aerion, please, I never—"

"He sent me a video." He shook you again, harder, and your teeth clacked together. "Of you. With him. In a bedroom. At my father's house. You expect me to believe you weren't a willing participant? You expect me to believe my boring pathetic cousin suddenly turned into a rapist? How stupid do you think I am?"

"I didn't want it!"

"Liar!"

He released your throat just long enough to backhand you across the face. Your head snapped to the side, your cheek exploding with pain, and you tasted blood where your teeth had cut the inside of your mouth. Before you could recover, his hand was back around your throat, squeezing harder this time, and black spots were dancing in your vision.

"Let me tell you what's going to happen," he said, his voice terrifyingly calm now, the way it always got right before the worst things happened. "You're going to tell me the truth. All of it. How long it's been going on. How many times. Where. When. And then, once I know everything, I'm going to decide what to do with you. Maybe I'll let you stay. Maybe I won't." His thumb pressed harder into your throat, and you made a sound that wasn't even human. "Or maybe I'll just squeeze until you stop moving, and then I'll call my father and tell him you attacked me. Who do you think they'll believe? Me? Or the gold digging scholarship bitch who's been leeching off him for five years?"

"Please," you rasped. The word was barely a sound. Your vision was narrowing to a tunnel. "Aerion, please, I can't breathe, I can't—"

"Good. You don't deserve to breathe."

Your hand flailed out. Searching for anything. Anything at all. Your fingers brushed the handle of the knife on the cutting board, but you couldn't, you wouldn't, that wasn't who you were. You kept reaching. Your lungs were burning. Your throat was collapsing. The tunnel was closing to a pinprick, and somewhere in the distance you could hear Aerion still talking, still threatening, still promising all the ways he was going to make you pay for betraying him.

Your fingers closed around the handle of the stockpot. The pot on the stove behind you, the one you had filled with water for the pasta, the one that had been boiling for five minutes now, the one you had put on before everything went wrong. You didn't think. You couldn't think. There was no thought left, only instinct, only the animal drive to survive. You swung.

The pot came off the stove in a great arc of silver and steam. Aerion saw it coming. His eyes widened, his grip on your throat loosening, his mouth opening to say something. He didn't let go fast enough. The boiling water hit him full in the face.

The sound he made wasn't human.

Aerion screamed, a high horrible animal sound, and his hands flew to his face. He stumbled backward, clawing at his own skin, his perfect beautiful face already blistering red, his silver-gold hair plastered wetly to his skull. The water had soaked through his shirt, his chest, and he was still screaming, still stumbling, his feet slipping on the wet tile floor. He reached out for something to steady himself, his hand catching the edge of the kitchen island, but his fingers were wet and his grip was weak and he was still screaming, still clawing at his own ruined face.

He went down.

It happened so fast. One moment he was upright, shrieking, his hands pressed to the red raw mess of his cheeks and eyes. The next he was falling, his feet skidding out from under him on the water-slick floor, his body twisting as he went down, his arms windmilling uselessly. There was a sound, a sound you would hear in your nightmares for the rest of your life, the thick wet crack of skull against marble. A sound like an egg breaking. A sound like the end of something.

And then silence.

You stood with your back against the counter, your chest heaving, your throat burning where his fingers had been. The pot was still in your hand, empty now, dripping the last few drops of scalding water onto the floor. Steam rose from the puddle spreading across the tile. Aerion lay on his back in the middle of it, his eyes open and unseeing, his mouth slightly parted, a dark red stain beginning to seep out from under his head and mix with the water on the floor. His face was still blistering. His hands were still curled into claws where they'd been tearing at his own skin. He looked surprised. Even with the burns, even with the blood pooling beneath him, he looked surprised.

He wasn't moving.

He wasn't breathing.

"Aerion?" Your voice came out as a croak, barely a whisper, your vocal cords scraped raw by his grip. You couldn't feel your hands. Couldn't feel your face. "Aerion, get up."

He didn't get up.

"Aerion, this isn't funny. Get up."

He didn't get up. The kitchen was very quiet. The water on the floor was still steaming, curling up in lazy wisps, and the only sound was the faint hum of the refrigerator and the distant noise of traffic twenty floors below. Outside the window, the city lights were flickering on against the darkening sky, and somewhere far below, people were going about their lives, getting dinner, meeting friends, laughing at jokes, while you stood in a penthouse apartment with a pot in your hand and your boyfriend dead at your feet.

His face was still beautiful, even now. Even with the burns. Even with the blood spreading beneath him like a dark halo. The man who had hit you and choked you and isolated you from everyone who loved you. The man who had made sure you could never leave, never work, never have a life that didn't revolve around him. The man who had been seconds away from killing you.

He was dead. He was actually dead. Slowly, very slowly, you set the pot down on the counter. Your hands were shaking so badly it clattered against the marble.

Your phone was on the kitchen island. Aerion's was still there too, the screen dark now, the video Valarr had sent still waiting in his messages like a bomb that had already gone off. You didn't look at it. You didn't want to see it. You didn't want to see yourself in that guest room, didn't want to see what Valarr had done to you, didn't want to think about how he had filmed it, how he had saved it, how he had sent it to Aerion knowing exactly what would happen. There would be time for that later. For now, there was only this: the body, the blood, the silence.

You picked up your phone. Your hands were shaking so badly you could barely unlock it. The screen blurred in front of your eyes, and you realized distantly that you were crying. You hadn't noticed when you'd started.

You had to call someone. You had to call 911. That was what you were supposed to do. That was what innocent people did when accidents happened. They called for help, they explained what went wrong, they trusted the system to believe them.

But you weren't innocent. Not in the eyes of his family. Not in the eyes of the world.

Maekar will kill me.

The thought hit you like a physical blow, and the shaking got worse. You remembered Maekar at the party two months ago, his cold violet eyes, the way he had barely acknowledged your existence because you weren't a person to him, you were Aerion's accessory. You remembered the Targaryen lawyers, the ones who had called your potential employers and made sure you never got a job, the ones who had erased your career before it even started. You remembered the way the family closed ranks around their own, how they had spun every scandal, buried every misstep, destroyed anyone who threatened their reputation. You had watched it happen to a former business partner of Maekar's who had dared to sue. The man had lost everything. His company, his home, his marriage. The Targaryens had not even broken a sweat.

They wouldn't believe you. They would look at Aerion's body on the floor and your handprint on the pot and the bruises on your neck, and they would spin it. They would say you were the abuser. They would say you had been taking advantage of him for years, living off his money, isolating him from his family, bleeding him dry. They would find your old classmates, your old coworkers, anyone who had ever seen you snap under pressure, and they would twist every moment into evidence. The scholarship girl with the chip on her shoulder. The gold digger who finally got caught. The monster who murdered the golden boy in his own kitchen.

You had seen what Targaryen money could do. You had been on the receiving end of it for five years. They could bury you so deep no one would ever find you. They would make sure you spent the rest of your life in a cell, or worse, and no one would ever know the truth about what Aerion did to you, what Valarr did to you, what this family had done to you since the moment you stepped into their orbit.

You couldn't call 911.

You couldn't call your mother. What would she do? Fly across the country on money she didn't have, sit in a courtroom while the Targaryen legal team tore her apart, watch her daughter get dragged through the mud and convicted of murder? No. You couldn't do that to her. You couldn't do that to anyone you loved.

There was only one person who might help you. Only one person who had the power to stand against the family, who knew their secrets, who owed you. God, he owed you something after what he had done. The thought made you sick. Made you want to crawl out of your own skin. But the body was still on the floor and the blood was still spreading and you were running out of time.

You scrolled through your contacts with shaking fingers until you found the number you had never saved but knew by heart anyway. The number from the card that was still in your wallet, tucked behind your student ID like a poison pill you had been saving for an emergency.

Valarr.

The phone rang once. Twice. Three times. With each ring, your chest got tighter, your breath got shorter, and the reality of what you were doing pressed down on you like a physical weight. You were calling the man who had assaulted you. You were asking him for help. You were so broken and so desperate and so completely out of options that the man who had held you down in a guest room two months ago was your only chance at survival. Wasn't that the sickest joke of all? That after everything, the only person you could call was the one who had helped put you here in the first place?

He picked up on the fourth ring.

"Hello?"

His voice was calm. Even. Almost pleasant. Like he had been expecting you. Maybe he had been. Maybe he had been waiting by the phone for two months, just like he had been waiting for years, patient and careful and so sure that eventually you would come crawling back. The quiet one. The careful one. The one who listened like your words mattered, right up until he stopped listening entirely.

"Valarr." Your voice came out as a sob, barely recognizable, scraped raw by Aerion's grip on your throat. "Valarr, please, I need, I need help, something happened, Aerion he, he tried to—"

"Slow down." Still calm. Still measured. Still so controlled it made your skin crawl even through the panic. "Tell me what happened."

"He saw the video." The words tumbled out of you in a flood, unstoppable, each one tripping over the next. "The video you sent him, he saw it and he came home and he was so angry, Valarr, he was choking me, he was going to kill me, he said he was going to squeeze until I stopped moving and then tell his father I attacked him, I couldn't breathe, I thought I was going to die—and the water was boiling on the stove and I grabbed the pot and I threw it at him and he slipped, I swear he slipped, I didn't push him, I didn't mean to kill him, he just fell and his head hit the floor and he's not moving, he's not breathing, Valarr he's dead, Aerion's dead, I don't have anyone else, please, please you have to help me—"

You were rambling. Sobbing. Hyperventilating so hard the words were barely coherent. Somewhere in the middle of it you had slid sideways against the cabinets, your forehead pressing against the cold marble floor, the phone still clutched to your ear. Aerion's body was three feet away. You could smell the blood. You could smell the boiled water and the steam and the faint lingering trace of his expensive cologne. His eyes were still open. He was still looking at you.

Valarr was silent for a long moment.

"Stay there," he said finally. His voice had shifted. The calm was still there, but underneath it was something else, something sharp and focused and almost eager. "Don't call anyone. Don't touch anything. Don't move the body. Just stay exactly where you are."

"Are you, are you going to help me?"

"Yes." The word came quickly. Too quickly. "I'm going to help you. I told you I would, didn't I? I keep my promises."

Your sob of relief was so violent it hurt. "Thank you. Thank you, Valarr, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry for not calling you before, I should have called you right after it happened, I should have—"

"Shh." His voice softened, almost gentle. Almost kind. Almost like the boy from the lecture hall who had handed you a pen a lifetime ago. "Don't apologize. Just stay where you are. Don't move. Don't talk to anyone. I'll be there in twenty minutes."

"Okay."

"And don't tell anyone else. No police. No family. No one. Do you understand? If you call the police before I get there, I can't protect you. The family will eat you alive."

"Yes. Yes, I understand."

"Good girl."

The line went dead.

You dropped the phone. It clattered on the marble floor, skidding through the cooling water and coming to rest against the leg of the kitchen island. You didn't pick it up. You just lay there with your cheek pressed to the cold tile, your breath coming in ragged hitched gasps, your throat throbbing with every heartbeat. Three feet away, Aerion stared at the ceiling with his burned face and his unseeing violet eyes.

You waited for the man who had ruined your life to come save it.

—

Three years later, you walked down the aisle in a dress that cost more than your mother's house, and everyone said you made the most beautiful bride.

The tabloids called it a love story for the ages. A Tragedy That Became a Triumph, one headline read, accompanied by a photo of you and Valarr at some charity gala six months ago, his hand on the small of your back, your smile soft and demure. After the tragic accident that claimed the life of Aerion Targaryen, his grieving girlfriend found solace in the arms of his cousin. Now, three years later, the couple is set to wed in what insiders are calling the society event of the year. The article went on to describe your dress, custom Vera Wang, off shoulder, a cathedral train that stretched twenty feet behind you, and the venue, the Targaryen estate's private chapel, and the guest list, which included senators and CEOs.

What the article didn't mention was that you hadn't chosen the dress. Valarr had. He'd brought in three designers and made you try on dozens of gowns while he sat in an armchair with a glass of scotch and vetoed each one until he found the dress he wanted. What the article didn't mention was that you'd woken up the morning of the wedding and thrown up three times in the ensuite bathroom, so quietly that Valarr wouldn't hear, your forehead pressed against the cool marble of the toilet seat. What the article didn't mention was that the smile you wore as you walked down the aisle was the same smile you'd learned to wear at Aerion's family parties, the same performance of happiness you'd been giving for years, the same mask you'd never been allowed to take off.

The chapel was full of Targaryens. They filled the pews in their designer suits and their tasteful dresses, their silver gold hair catching the light from the stained glass windows. Maekar was in the front row, his face as unreadable as ever. If he suspected anything about his son's death, he'd never shown it. Valarr had done his work well. The official report had ruled Aerion's death a tragic household accident, a slip on a wet kitchen floor while cooking alone. No mention of you. No mention of the video. No mention of the bruises on your neck or the boiling water or the way Aerion's eyes had stared at the ceiling seeing nothing. Valarr had made it all go away.

And then he'd made you his.

"You'll stay with me," he'd said that night, three years ago, when he'd arrived at the penthouse and found you still huddled on the kitchen floor. He'd knelt beside you, careful not to get blood on his trousers, and his mismatched eyes had been so full of gentle concern. "I'll take care of everything. I'll protect you. But you have to do exactly what I say. Do you understand?"

You'd nodded. You'd been in shock. You'd been so grateful, so pathetically grateful, that someone was going to make the nightmare stop.

"Good," he'd said. "From now on, you're mine. You should have been mine from the beginning. But don't worry. I'm going to fix everything."

He'd framed it as grief housing at first to the public. You were too devastated by Aerion's death to live alone, too fragile to be on your own, and Valarr, kind, generous, patient Valarr, had opened his home to you. The family thought it was sweet. The tabloids thought it was romantic. No one thought to question why the grieving girlfriend needed to be sequestered in her dead boyfriend's cousin's penthouse.

When you'd tried to bring up the possibility of leaving, of starting over somewhere new, he'd sat you down in his study and explained, very calmly and very clearly, exactly what would happen if you tried.

He had evidence. He'd always had evidence. He also had footage from a security camera across the street from the penthouse, footage that showed him entering the building that night and leaving with you, footage that didn't match the official timeline of Aerion's death. He had text messages. Phone records. A paper trail that, in the wrong hands, could unravel everything. And if you ever left him, if you ever tried to go to the police, if you ever breathed a word of the truth to anyone, he would make sure the whole world knew what really happened. Not just your role in Aerion's death, though that was bad enough, but everything. He'd make you the villain. The scheming scholarship gold digger who seduced both cousins, who murdered one and manipulated the other, who deserved to rot in a cell for the rest of her life.

"After everything I've done for you," he'd said, his voice so reasonable, so calm, "after I saved your life and cleaned up your mess, this is how you repay me? You think you can just leave? You think anyone else would have done what I did for you? I protected you. I lied for you. I buried a body for you, and you want to walk away like none of it happened." He'd shaken his head slowly, that sad almost-smile on his face. "You made this mess. I fixed it. Now you owe me. That's how this works."

After a while, you stopped thinking about leaving. It was easier that way. Valarr wasn't like Aerion. He never hit you, never raised his voice, never left bruises that you had to cover with concealer. His cruelty was quieter, more precise. A comment about your weight delivered with a look of tender concern. A reminder of what he'd done for you, what you owed him, slipped casually into conversation at breakfast. A hand on the back of your neck at parties, just a little too tight, just enough to remind you who you belonged to. "I waited so long for you," he'd say sometimes, in the dark of the bedroom, his fingers tracing patterns on your skin. "I was so patient. I did everything right. And now here you are. Finally."

The proposal had been a public affair. Of course it had. The Targaryens didn't do things privately. Valarr had gotten down on one knee at a benefit gala, in front of three hundred people and a photographer from Vogue, and when he'd opened the ring box and asked you to marry him, every camera in the room had turned to capture your reaction. You'd said yes because there was no other answer. You'd said yes because his hand was on your wrist under the table and his mismatched eyes were fixed on you with that familiar, patient intensity, and you'd learned a long time ago that saying no to a Targaryen man didn't mean anything if they didn't want it to.

Now you were walking down the aisle toward him. The organ music swelled. The guests rose to their feet. You could feel their eyes on you, hundreds of eyes, all of them seeing the beautiful bride in the beautiful dress, all of them believing the beautiful lie. Valarr stood at the altar with his hands clasped in front of him, his dark hair immaculately styled, that streak of silver gold catching the light.

He smiled at you as you approached. That shy almost smile from the lecture hall, the one that had undone you when you were eighteen years old and too exhausted to see it for what it was.

Your father wasn't walking you down the aisle. You didn't have a father to do it. Valarr had offered to have his father escort you, but you'd refused. It was the one thing you'd managed to refuse. And so you walked alone. Each step down the long white runner felt like a door closing behind you. The chapel doors, heavy and ornate, had already been shut. There was no breeze. There was no escape.

You reached the altar. Valarr took your hands in his. His grip was warm and steady and exactly as tight as it needed to be.

"You look beautiful," he murmured, low enough that only you could hear. "I've been waiting for this for a long time."

You smiled. It was the smile you'd learned to wear. The smile of the grateful survivor, the lucky bride, the woman who had been rescued from tragedy and given a second chance at love. Behind that smile, behind the mask you'd worn for so long you couldn't remember what your real face felt like, something small and buried and nearly dead whispered a truth you couldn't speak aloud. You had traded one cage for another. You had escaped Aerion's hands around your throat only to find Valarr's hands around your life. And no one would ever know. No one would ever see it. Because Valarr wasn't like Aerion. He never hit you. He never left bruises. He just made sure you could never, ever leave.

The priest began to speak. The congregation settled into their seats. Somewhere in the front row, Maekar Targaryen watched with his cold, unreadable eyes, and the twins Daella and Rhae dabbed at their perfect tears, and the whole Targaryen dynasty bore witness to the final piece of the story Valarr had been writing since the moment he handed you a pen in a lecture hall nine years ago.

"I now pronounce you man and wife."

Valarr cupped your face in his hands and kissed you. His lips were soft. Gentle. The kiss of a man who had never done anything wrong in his life.

targaryen!reader who felt like everything had been off even before the marriage off from your brother valarr. you can’t quite explain it… it’s like everyone knows something that you’re not entirely aware of?

targaryen!reader the courting itself had been strange, from the evening meals sat across from each other just the two of you, the morning walks in the gardens and the way your own ladies in waitings swoon over him just seems so… forced?

targaryen!reader who knows your brother is handsome, but can’t understand the sudden interest. you understand that it’s tradition for brother and sister to be married in the targaryen lineage but that hasn’t been since before your grandsire.

targaryen!reader that listens to your father, baelor targaryen who’s future heir to the iron throne. you’re happy to play your part if necessary, you understand the fear around the targaryen name has drifted and you need to secure your legitimacy. however, wouldn’t it be better if you married to another family, gain their alliance through that way.

targaryen!reader that hears it from nearly everyone, your ladies who seem to be perfectly placed when you leave your doors, already waiting for you, the church tell you that the marriage will secure the throne for years to come, even random people at courts seem to gossip about as you walk past. it’s almost like they’re pushing you towards it.

targaryen!reader who hasn’t received warnings like this since you were a child, letters telling you to run, dead animals being left by your door. your father!baelor always tries to have it covered up before you can see it, he doesn’t want to scare you about these things, it’s why he thinks you and valarr should get married sooner.

targaryen!reader who is getting ready to sleep when your king’s guard slips into your room, he covers your mouth before you can scream, warns that you both need to leave fast so he can tell you what’s really going on.

targaryen!reader who notices the strangest things as you walk through the castle with your knight. your ladies in waiting wearing the strangest clothes, eyes widening in horror as they try to hide themselves from you, the kingsguard that have people wearing weird things around their head, pieces of parchment as they tell them what they need to say. no, it’s “follow me princess, let me take you to your father” not…

targaryen!reader who goes into hiding, and finds out the horrors when you sail away from your home.

targaryen!reader who doesn’t understand, your whole life has been a lie?? it all sounds crazy, but as they show you episodes and the fifty minute episode that shows the behind the scenes in orchestrating your show.

targaryen!reader who gets to meet people that strangely went missing in your life, your maester that cleaned up your knee when you were five, your governess who changed overnight when you were eleven, you were made to believe it was the same one, the stable boy you fell in love with as a teenager, that you were told was killed for being so close to a princess.

targaryen!reader can’t understand it, all the trauma and the lies. for a show?

targaryen!reader who is placed in a hotel for your protection. who finally gets to see another family member, aerion. your cousin is nothing like you’re used to, he’s usually spiteful and mean but he’s kind and sweet, and you get it’s nice to see such a similar face.

targaryen!reader who hears the truth from him. the premise of your story is that you were daemon blackfyre’s last heir but they kept the truth from you and were only meant to reveal your true identiy later down the keep blackfyre supporters happy.

targaryen!reader who cries on your cousins shoulder, who let’s him take you to your room while you’re so upset, away from all the others. who places you on the bed, and who only starts to question what he’s doing when he crawls on top of you and places gentle kisses across your face

targaryen!reader who cries harder when you’re forced to stay underneath him, listening to him whispering in your ear of how he’s always wanted you this way but not been allowed because of the show. who tells you he won’t take your virginity, instead he hopes to run you in other ways. who enjoys the way you taste, humming against your cunt until you’re cumming all over his face.