Little (Smutty) Fanfic Corner

Same smoky lilt. Hoarse from fucking you twice already. But there’s iron underneath it now, the iron that wasn’t there in year one, that he didn’t know was in him until you put it there.

“Nowhere,” you murmur in response.

“Come back.”

Valarr pulls you down by the jaw.

His mouth opens for yours and you can feel him still trembling under you, can feel his thighs shaking against the backs of your own where you’re straddling him, can feel his heart hammering against your sternum, but the hand at your jaw is immovable. The hand at your jaw is certain. Valarr kisses you slowly and filthily, his tongue sliding into your mouth like he’s trying to taste every last thing in there, like he’s looking for himself, like he needs to find the proof of his own come on your tongue before he’ll let you up.

He finds it. He hums against your mouth, low and pleased.

“My love,” he breathes into you. “I could eat you whole.”

His other hand slides into your hair. Cradling, this time. Almost tender. Valarr kisses you again—softer this time, but no less thorough, and his thumb strokes once down the line of your jaw in that absent appreciative way he has, the way he touches things he’s worshipping.

“Stay still for me,” he murmurs. “Need you here, sweet girl. Let me kiss you, let me.”

You stay still.

You stay still and you let him kiss you through the last of his come down. The slow descent, the heart-rate slowing against yours, and the small twitches of his body losing their grip on him one by one. He keeps his cock inside you the entire time. He doesn’t soften his mouth, keeping you pinned at the jaw and tasted and held. Valarr’s tongue is lazy and curious against yours, the way only other Valarr gets. His mouth is devoted against yours, and you can feel him going from spent and shaking to something else, something steadier, something almost luxurious, like a man settling deeper into a hot bath he intends to stay in for a while.

“You taste like me,” he says against your lips. Pleased. A little wondering.

“I taste like you,” you agree softly, your nose bumping his.

“Good.”

Valarr’s thumb presses, briefly, into the corner of your mouth. He drags it across your bottom lip unhurriedly, watching it. Then Valarr leans up and licks the same path his thumb just traced, mouth open, leisurely, and you feel that drag all the way down your spine and into where he’s still seated inside you and you have to bite back a hungry sound.

His eyes flick up to yours. The corner of his mouth tugs. Not a smile. That silky, corner shape of one.

“You can’t be working up to going again,” he says, amused, delighted, a faint note of disbelief threading through it. “My love. My greedy, beautiful love.”

You don’t answer. You don’t have to. He can feel the answer where you’re sitting on him, in the way you flutter around him and Valarr groans low in his throat.

He kisses you again. Deeper this time. The hand at your jaw shifts down to your throat—not gripping, only resting, the way he likes to rest it there, the way that lets him feel your pulse and the swallow and the small catches of your breath—and his other hand slides down from your hair to the small of your back, palm flat, fingers spreading wide.

“Give me a minute,” he says against your mouth. “Give me one minute, my love. I’ll give it to you. I’ll give you anything you want.”

His mouth on yours. Again. Then again after a small gasp of breath. His tongue glides slowly against yours. His cock still inside you, softening after his release but already starting, with the slow inevitability of him, to think about hardening again.

“Stay here,” he tells you between kisses, urgent, almost dazed. “Stay right here. Don’t move.”

You don’t move.

I believe it the way I believe the numbers in a deal I've read three times. Five years doesn't evaporate. Whatever's happened in the fourteen months since the kitchen — and something has happened, I can feel the shape of it through the silence — it did not reach back and unmake five years. It can't. That's not how you're built.

You love a very short list of people and you love them like the north loves winter. Permanently. I'm on that list, and you don't get to take a person off it just because you walked out of his kitchen still loving him.

So I'm not driving up to win you back. I want the distinction preserved.

I'm driving up because for five years I was the man who received you. Who waited. Who was patient. Who let you originate everything, because I thought receiving was how you keep a wolf. That a wolf can't be pursued, only permitted. And it cost me you.

So I'm done receiving. For once in my life I'm going to be the one who moves first. The one who crosses the room. I'm going to show up uninvited at the worst possible moment and stand in a cold church and be the one chest in the world that knows the difference between the heir and the girl — and I'm going to do it not because it's strategy but because I love you, and you're hurting, and I have never once, in five years, gotten to be the one who comes for you.

You set me down a year ago.

I'm going to pick myself up and walk toward you.

That's new. Write it down, future me. That's new.

Begin again.

#98 — The church.

You didn't see me come in.

I stood at the back, in dark grey, the way northerners stand at funerals (and they do it well, your people, they grieve like they're bracing against a blizzard, grim but undefeated) and I watched you in the front pew with your father's hand over yours.

I watched you not cry, because you don't, because you've only cried in front of one person in your life and he was standing at the back of the church in a coat you bought him a Christmas you no longer remember fondly.

You held your jaw the way you hold it when you don't want to be seen as weak. I've catalogued that jaw across five years and a notebook and I knew, from forty feet, in bad light, that underneath it the girl was standing in a dark room with one less person in it who'd known her since before she was the heir.

I didn't approach you in the church. You don't approach the wolf in front of the pack.

You wait until she's as alone as a woman gets at her grandmother's funeral.

And then you do the thing you came four hundred miles to do, which is move first.

#99 — The receiving line.

You spotted me in the line and your face folded.

I want it on record exactly which fold, because there are several and I know them all.

It wasn't the heir's face. The one that assesses a threat and files it. It wasn't the wolf's, either, the cool comprehensive one you give men who put a hand on the back of your chair. It was the one from Dragonstone, the one over Matarys's shoulder. The one you make when you've been disarmed against your will: the crease at the eyes, the reluctant give at the mouth, the half-second of oh before the wall comes up.

The wall didn't come up.

You looked at me in a line of mourners, fourteen months after you walked out of my kitchen, and the wall stayed down. Your eyes went bright and wet at the edges in the specific way they only do for me, and your father — who told me in his sickbed I'd take care of you, who called the dragon in me good, that edge — looked at me for a long moment and did a thing I'll keep: he nodded. Once. The way a man nods at someone he'd written off and finds, against expectation, he's glad is standing there.

You said my name.

And then you stepped out of the line.

#100 — The girl, in my chest.

I'm going to write this slowly, every part of it, because I drove four hundred miles to originate one thing and instead you originated this. I'm going to keep it exactly as it happened for the rest of my life.

You stepped out of the line and you crossed the three feet between us and you put your arms around me. You put your face in my neck, the hollow under the jaw, the storm-in-Myr place, the place the girl goes, and you held on.

Not a funeral embrace. I'd had eleven of those already that hour: the brief clasp, the back-pat, the social grief. This was not that.

You held on the way you held on in the storm, your whole weight tipping into me, your fists closing in the back of my coat — both of them, gripping the fabric like the floor had gone out from under you — and then I felt the thing I have felt exactly twice in five years. I felt you stop being able to hold yourself up.

And something in me came up off the floor like a struck animal.

I don't have a civilised word for it, so I'll write down the uncivilised one: it was rage on your behalf, and underneath the rage, love, and underneath that, the oldest thing, the furnace thing, the thing you found in me the first night with your hand at my throat.

Except this time it didn't point at me, it pointed outward. At the whole cold church, at every stranger in it, at the world, at death itself: a flat, total, killing certainty that the girl, my girl, is hurting and she is in my arms and nothing — nothing — is going to touch her while she's here.

I felt my arms close around you without my permission. I felt my whole body turn into a wall. I have spent fourteen months being a house with no one in it. But the second you needed shelter I became, instantly, without a thought, the only thing I have ever truly been good at being, which is yours, and in the way of anything that would hurt you.

You shook. Once, hard. A sob, caught and held behind your clenched teeth and pressed into my throat instead. I felt the place just under your jaw where the crying lives go soft and dangerous, and I bent my head down over yours and I closed the last of the space. I made the rest of the room cease to exist by sheer will. I have never in my life held anything the way I held you in that church. Not carefully. Not like glass. Like salvage. Like a man hauling the only living thing out of a wreck, desperate to keep it safe.

And you said it. Raw. Wrecked. Against my skin, in a voice I have heard a handful of times in five years and never once in public. The rasp it gets when the wolf is all the way down and there is nothing left holding the words up:

Val.

Just my name. Torn open. Low. The thank you register stripped past gratitude, past tenderness, down to the bare floorless bottom of you.

And then, barely: I forgot what this felt like. A breath I felt move through your whole back. Being held by someone who actually knows me. God, Val, I forgot.

I want it on record that I did not soften. The opposite.

Everything in me went molten and certain at once — every protective instinct I own, the whole dark furnace of them, lit in a single breath — and I had to physically lock my arms to keep from lifting you off the church floor and carrying you out of there, out of the pack, out of the cold, away from all of them. The way you carry a wounded thing out of a clearing where the other animals can see it bleed. Mine. Hurting. Mine to hold the world off. Still mine.

Whatever else has changed in fourteen months (and everything has) this hasn't: there is no one else on this earth who gets the girl, who gets the rasp, who gets the weight when your knees give. That is mine. That has always been mine. And I would have torn that church down to its cold stone foundations before I let it be anyone else's.

I turned my mouth to your temple and I breathed you in. Cedar, the north of somewhere, the smell I can't fall asleep without on the nights you aren't here. Fourteen months of such nights, and I said the only thing I had that was bigger than the rasp:

I've got you. I've got you. I'll always know you, and I'll always come. There's no version of you needing me that I don't answer. You hear me? None.

You pulled back before you wanted to. I felt the exact moment your spine remembered the room, the people in it, the cost, and made you straighten. I let you go the instant you decided to go, because the one thing I will never do again is hold you a half-second past your choosing.

But your hand stayed on my chest a beat after the rest of you had stepped back.

Flat. Over my heart.

You didn't notice you'd done it.

I noticed. I notice everything. You made sure of that.

#101 — Back at the house.

They held the wake at your grandmother's house. Her house, her lavender, her iron table on the terrace where I once found you barefoot with books and a sundress you told me smells like childhood and linen closets. The whole beautiful place full of her, with her people moving through it carrying plates.

I drove up the lane behind the cars in the gilded three-o'clock light, and I let myself have one clean minute of the thing I'd written out of my own life a year ago (the unguarded thing, the hope) because you'd forgotten what being known felt like and remembered it in my arms. Because you said Val in the rasp, because your hand stayed on my heart a beat too long.

There was a truck in the lane I didn't recognise. Work truck. Dust on it. Out of place among the gleaming cars the way a wolf is out of place in a kennel.

I didn't think anything of it.

That's how full I was. I looked at a stranger's truck at your dead grandmother's wake and thought grounds. Thought nothing at all. Because I was a man who'd just held the girl and been told he was the only one who knows her, and a man that full doesn't read the room.

You taught me to read the room.

It's the one lesson I forgot on the one afternoon it mattered most. I forgot it because you'd made me happy in the church, and happiness, as it turns out, is the only thing that's ever made me stupid.

#102 — The terrace.

There was a man on your grandmother's terrace.

I've been trying to write this for two hours. I need time.

It's been another twenty minutes. Okay.

I'm going to write this slowly. The speed is doing something to me.

He was at the iron table. Work clothes, dust on him, sun in his face, a beer from your father's fridge in a hand that had no business holding it, sitting in the specific way a man sits when he is not a guest. Not the careful perch of a visitor at a wake, but the loose, rooted, territorial sprawl of an animal in its own range.

He didn't stand when I came up the steps. He looked at me.

And I knew the jaw.

I knew it because I have seen it in oil, in the long gallery at Dragonstone. On generation of the branch my mother called the ones who didn't make it. The failed line, the cautionary tale. I knew the colouring. The true colouring. Silver and violet. Recognised it in some visceral way I still can't explain fully.

I want to be honest in here, because the notebook gets the truth and this is the ugliest true thing I have:

I have spent my whole life being told I look like a Targaryen.

I have one blue eye, a white streak at my temple, the name and four thousand suit. I've stood in that gallery since I was a boy looking up at those silver-and-violet faces thinking that's me, that's my blood, that's what I come from — and it was never quite true. I'm the watered down version. The line that kept the money and lost the look.

I'm a Targaryen the way a photograph is a place.

He doesn't look like a Targaryen.

The man on the terrace looks like the thing the paintings are of.

He got, for free, on the failed branch, in a trailer, with nothing, the face I would buy if a face could be bought. And he was sitting at your dead grandmother's table in work boots like he owned the air I was breathing.

Then you came out with a tray, and you saw me see him, and your face went rigid, and you said (too fast, too flat, the voice you use when you've lost a room) Valarr.

And he stood up.

Slowly. He came to your side and put his hand at the small of your back.

And you leaned into it.

Without thinking. I saw it. Five years and a notebook learning to read the half-second tells you don't know you have, and I watched your body answer his hand before your mind caught up, watched you settle back into his palm the way you settle into my hugs once.

In five years you never once leaned into me without first deciding to.

I always had to be chosen.

He just had to put his hand out.

#103 — What I read, in four seconds.

Fourteen months too late, on the one afternoon it mattered, I read the situation.

I read the synchronicity. Your weight already shifted toward his, the matched stance, the attunement that takes most people years and that you two wore like it had been issued to you at birth.

I read his thumb, moving once at the small of your back. Not for my benefit; he wasn't performing it at me. It was habit — and habit was the worst thing I could have seen, because it meant his hand had been there so many times it had stopped being a gesture and become a fact.

I read your face going soft toward him for half a second before it remembered me.

I read his face, which didn't go soft at all, which watched me with the flat territorial calm.

And I read the thing underneath all of it, the thing that turned my whole inner life over like a table:

You burn for him.

Not the way you love me. I know how you love me. I had five years of it and I had it again an hour ago in a church. Deep and slow and built and real, and your hand was on my heart, and your voice broke on my name. That is not in question. After this morning it never will be again.

But this thing on the terrace (the hand, the lean) this isn't the built thing.

This is fire.

You left me and then you ran — from how much you still loved me, from a five-year house that had started loving you to death — and you ran straight into the hottest fire you could find. A man with my family's true face and no walls at all, and you burned. Fast. Total. The way I have never once made you burn, because I am not a fire. I'm a house. And a year ago you needed to not be in a house.

I read all of that in four seconds, in the golden afternoon light, and not one muscle in my face moved.

#104 — Isn't this interesting.

Well, I said. Isn't this interesting.

Level. Perfect. The voice I open negotiations with. I crossed the terrace and picked up the bottle of your uncle's Macallan from the sideboard where someone had left it for the wake, and I poured myself a glass without asking. Because I wanted you both to watch me be a man who doesn't ask, and I turned and looked at my cousin with his hand on the small of your back, and I smiled.

I did not feel beaten.

That's the thing I drove up braced for and didn't feel. A weaker position would have ended me — if you'd been over me, if the girl had stayed buried behind the wolf, if you'd pulled away in the church — that would have finished it and I'd have driven home and let the flowers be the last of it.

But you didn't pull away in the church. You held on past decency and broke on my name and left your hand over my heart.

So I don't stand on this terrace as a man who lost. I stand on it as a man who holds the one claim that can't be bought with a face: she has loved me, deeply, for five years, and she still does, and above all of it — under all of it — for five years she chose me. Every day. Every time. There was always a half-second where she decided yes, and she always decided yes.

Aerion Targaryen has the violet eyes and the fire.

He doesn't have five years of being chosen.

#105 — What he worked out.

I put my hand out.

I said his name. The first name, the trailer name, the name your mouth makes differently than it ever made mine.

I shook his hand. I held it a half-second too long. I looked into my own family's true face, the face I've spent thirty years failing to be, and I said, quiet enough you'd have to strain:

You're the cousin from up north. The branch we were told didn't make it. A beat. Funny, you got the whole family's face and none of its luck.

I want it on record that this was cruel, that I meant for it to be, and that I was talking as much about myself as him. Because I'm the one with the luck and none of the face, and we both heard it.

For one bright second I thought Aerion will give me the volatile thing: the punch, the snarl, the scene at a wake that hands me the whole war on a plate.

He didn't. The violet eyes went cold instead of hot. Which is the more dangerous direction, the one I didn't think this branch had in it. And I watched him work something out. Watched it move across his face in real time, watched the cold go colder. He looked at me. He looked at the glass in my hand. He looked at you, and I realised the two of you were having an entire silent conversation that I was the subject of.

Then Aerion laughed. Once. A raspy, mean laugh.

Peonies, he said.

I went still.

She told me once. Months back. Said her ex used to get her peonies. Not roses, peonies, like it mattered, like it was a whole thing. He tilted his head, the cold settling into something almost amused. Didn't say a name. Just "my ex." And I never thought twice, because why would I? A beat. And then a friend of hers puts up a photo a while ago — some woman, in some fancy ass apartment, flowers on the table behind her — and she goes quiet looking at it. Real quiet. And I ask what's wrong and she says, "that's his place. He still keeps peonies." And then nothing. Ten minutes, nothing.

The cold went all the way through. And now here's the rich cousin nobody talks about, drives up to a funeral in a hundred-thousand-car, pours himself a drink in a dead woman's house like he owns the floor. Peonies guy. The ex. He looked at me like he was finally seeing the whole shape of me. That's you. You're the peonies.

I didn't confirm it. I didn't have to. My face confirmed it — the one time in my life my face has ever betrayed me — and Aerion watched it happen, and something went hard and final behind the violet eyes.

Because he's prickly now. Not cold-prickly. Wounded-prickly. The dangerous kind. He looked at you, and you wouldn't meet his eyes, and that told him everything: that you'd carried a small, soft fact about me into his bed and set it down there without thinking. And he looked back at me and said, low, the heat finally coming up under the cold:

She talks about you like a thing she survived. Past tense. Done. He stepped in, my own blood close enough that I could smell the work and the dust and the cheap soap on him. So whatever this is — the flowers, the funeral, the drive — you should know she doesn't live in your house anymore. She lives with me. And I don't lose. Not this. Not to a man who had her five years and couldn't make her stay.

And then he let go of my hand.

#106 — Can I talk to you? Alone.

And then you spoke.

You'd been silent through all of it — still, watching two cousins measure each other over your grandmother's good scotch — and then you set the tray down on the iron table, deliberately, and you said, to me, not to him:

Can I talk to you? Alone.

I want it on record what Aerion's face did.

His lip peeled back. Not a word (he's not a fool, not at a wake, with a house full of people) but the lip peeled back off the teeth. The animal showing for half a second before the man caught it, and the violet eyes went to me with a message in them older than language: mine. And then he turned to you, and you gave him a look. I know that look, I've been on the receiving end of that look, the flat northern warning that means don't, and he did it anyway.

Aerion kissed your temple.

Slowly. Pointedly. His mouth lingering, his eyes on me the entire time, a dog pissing a perimeter, and you went rigid under it and shot him the glare and he ignored the glare completely. Because the kiss wasn't for you, the kiss was for me, the kiss was she lets me put my mouth on her in front of you and there's nothing you can do about it, and then he straightened, looked at me one more beat, and walked back into the house.

I'll give him this much. It worked spectacularly. It landed exactly where he aimed it.

And it didn't matter at all, because you'd asked to be alone with me.

#107 — The terrace, alone.

I'm going to write this one in full and I'm going to write it carefully. Because it's the most important conversation I've had since the kitchen, and I will want, when I'm old, to have every word of it here.

We stood at the iron table in the golden light. The lavender. You looked at me for a long time, and the wolf was not in your stare. The heir was not in it. It was the girl, tired, in mourning, looking at the man who used to know her, and you said, quietly:

I'm sorry. About that. He's— you stopped. That wasn't fair to you.

I said: I've had worse done to me by men who loved you less.

You almost smiled. Almost. And then you really looked at me, the way you used to look at me across a dinner table when you were reading the whole of me at once, and your face changed, and you said, softer, with something catching in it:

Val, you look exhausted. You've lost weight.

I had a perfect deflection loaded and did not use it. The notebook gets the truth. I said: I haven't been sleeping well. It's a busy year.

And you stared at me, and you knew it was a lie, and you didn't call it one. Because you're kind even now, and you said, low: It's good to see you. I didn't know it would be. But it is. Your eyes went bright again. I missed you. I'm allowed to say that today, I think. She'd have wanted — she always liked you. She thought I was an idiot for— and you stopped again, because the end of that sentence was a door neither of us was going to open at your grandmother's wake.

I said: I missed you too.

And then, because I'm done folding, because I drove four hundred miles to move first: I want to be clear about something, so you don't have to wonder. I came today for you. Not to make a thing of it. Not to ask you for anything. I came because the woman who knew you before the heir is dead, and there are a hundred people in that house who know the heir and none who know the girl you are, and I couldn't stand the thought of you grieving unheld. I let that sit. That's all. That's the whole reason. I'm not here to complicate your life.

You were quiet. Your jaw did the thing it does when you're holding a feeling at the door, fighting it.

I went on, because something in me was awake now and it doesn't wait to be permitted: I'll tell you one true thing and then I'll let it go. For five years I waited for you to come to me. I made myself easy to come to — patient, steady, always there, always open — and I called it love. And it was, but it was the kind that waits. I don't wait anymore. If you ever need me — for anything, at any hour, in any year — you don't have to wonder whether it's allowed, or whether too much time has passed, whether I've moved on. I haven't. I won't. I'm not going to make that your problem today. But I'm not going to let you not know it, either.

Your voice did the thing, the catch, the rasp at the bottom of it: Val—

I said: I'm not asking you for anything. I mean that. Today isn't mine to make about me.

This was the hardest sentence I've ever said out loud. Because every cell in me wanted to say the other thing, the whole thing, I love you, I never stopped, come home, leave the fire, come home to me — and I didn't, because I'm not a house anymore, and I know the difference between coming for what's his and taking from a grieving woman at her grandmother's wake. There is a time. This was not it. Loving you means knowing that, too.

We stood in it. The gold going longer across the terrace.

And then you stepped in and you hugged me goodbye — gentler than the church, slower, both of us knowing it for what it was — and you put your face against my throat one more time. I wrapped you up and I breathed you in like a man going under, like a man storing it, like a dying man taking the last clean lungful of air he's going to get. Because I didn't know when I would have it again and I was not going to waste a second of it being dignified.

And against my collarbone, so quiet, so careful, like you were afraid of the answer, you asked:

Val… still?

You couldn't see my face. You'd never know what it did.

I want it on record what it did. It broke. The whole arrangement of it came apart at once — five years and fourteen months and a standing order and a ring in a drawer, all of it, behind a face you couldn't see — and I smiled.

I smiled into your hair, helpless, wrecked, still, and I held you tighter. Both arms, the salvage grip, the church grip, and I didn't say the word because the word would have made it about me on a day that wasn't mine.

But I held you the way that answered your question.

You felt it. I know you felt it, because you went still (the deer-still, the old tell) and your breath caught, and your own arms tightened around me, just for a second, just once, before you remembered yourself.

I pulled back. I let you go the instant you decided. I put one hand at the side of your face, the way I used to, my thumb at the cheekbone, and I said, level now, dragon-steady, giving you the only thing I'd let myself give:

Anytime. Anything. You call and I come. That's not going to change. It's the one thing in your life you never have to manage.

You nodded. You couldn't speak. The girl was right there at the surface and the wolf was nowhere to be found.

And then he came back out onto the terrace, because of course he did, because a man like Aerion can feel the temperature drop from inside the house. I stepped back, and let the distance open. I left you in the golden light with the fire at your side, and I drove away from your grandmother's house carrying the only two words that have mattered to me in fourteen months.

Val… still?

You asked.

You asked because you needed to know.

You don't need to know the answer to a thing that's over.

#108 — Golden.

I have to write this in its own entry because it's perhaps the most important thing I'll ever write.

On the drive home — somewhere south of your grandmother's grave, with the gold gone out of the sky and Val, still? on a loop in my chest — I finally understood my mistake. Not the tactical one. The deep one. The five-year one.

I built you a house.

That's what I did. Patiently, lovingly, with infinite care. I built the most beautiful house a woman ever lived in. The penthouse, the standing order, the man who waits up, the man who handles your father's logistics, the man who is sufficient, one who keeps everything exactly where you left it. I thought that was love. I thought love was a structure you build around a person so well that she never has to feel the cold again.

But you're a wolf.

And here's the thing about wolves that I, in all my polish, in all my homework, in all my five years of cataloguing your every tell, somehow never let myself learn:

A wolf doesn't want a house.

A wolf doesn't want to be kept warm, or kept safe, or kept at all.

A wolf doesn't lie down gratefully inside the walls you build for her and call it a life. A wolf wants storms. Wants teeth. Wants something out there in the dark big enough and dangerous enough to run with, all night, never tiring, never breaking, never once flinching at how much she is.

A wolf wants a mate, an equal.

And there's only one thing in the whole bestiary that can match a wolf and not be devoured. Only one thing with fire enough to run beside a creature like you and match her stride for stride and never be kept. Your father named it, in his sickbed, with those tired knowing eyes. I can see the dragon in him, deep beneath that shine. He saw it before I'd let myself. That edge, he said. You're a wolf, pup. A weak man won't survive beside you. You'd eat the bastard alive.

I am not a weak man.

You knew it once, too. You called me it (in bed, in the dark, in year three, your hand in the white streak of my hair, half-asleep and unguarded) you called me your beautiful, golden dragon, and I filed it under endearment and moved on. The way I filed need under tenderness. The way I have spent my whole life filing the true words in the wrong drawers.

I'm taking it out of the drawer now.

I don't have the face, I'll never have the face. Aerion can keep the face. But the face was never the dragon. The dragon is the fire, and the fire is the thing you found the first night with your hand at my throat. The thing that woke and said oh, there you are, the thing I spent five years politely keeping folded because I thought a dragon who builds houses is a tame and useful and chooseable thing.

I stopped being a dragon and became a house, and you left the house to go find a fire, and the cruellest joke of my life is that I had the fire the whole time. I am the fire. I just put it in a drawer because I thought wanting out loud was beneath a man of my pedigree.

He's not more of a dragon than me. He's just louder about it. He never learned to fold his, so it shows. That's the only edge he has. Aerion had nothing to lose and no one to perform for, so his fire's always been out in the open, while mine got buried under five years of being sufficient.

But I held you in a church today like salvage. I broke into a smile you couldn't see when you asked still. I drove four hundred miles to be the one embrace that knows the girl, and I stood on a terrace and refused to take from you what I wanted most. Because loving you meant not taking it today.

A man who can hold that much fire that still, that controlled, that aimed, is not a house, and is not a tame thing, and is not the cousin's lesser.

A wolf doesn't want a house. I'm not going to be a house anymore.

A wolf wants a mate. I'm going to be the only thing alive that can match you.

I should have been it from the first night you put your hand at my throat.

That was my mistake. I'll never make it again.

#109 — Matarys.

I called Matarys with the dragon hot in my chest and Val, still? still going around in it like a struck bell.

I told him. The church, the girl, the rasp, I forgot what this felt like. The terrace, the violet eyes, the peonies, I don't lose. The temple kiss. And then the part that mattered: can I talk to you, alone — the conversation, I missed you, it's good to see you, you look tired — and Val… still?

Matarys was quiet for a while.

Then he said: Val. I'm going to ask you something and I need you to actually answer it, not the version of answering you do.

I said: ask.

He said: the girl was in your arms this morning. She broke on your name in front of her father. She pulled you aside at her own grandmother's wake, in front of the man she lives with, and asked you "still." So I believe you that she loves you. I always have. I never once doubted it. But Val — does she love you, or does she love being known by you? Because those aren't the same, and I think you've spent five years refusing to learn the difference. I think she found the difference in a trailer park, and I think the reason you're driving home talking about dragons is that you can't survive the difference being real.

I didn't answer for a mile.

Then I said: she leaned into his hand without deciding to.

He said: I know. You told me.

I said: she never did that with me. Five years. There was always a half-second where she chose to let me. With him there's no half-second.

Matarys, gently: yeah, brother. That's the difference. That's the thing you can't build and can't wait out and can't be sufficient enough to earn. She chose you. She doesn't choose him. She just is with him. And I think you know which one of those a person leaves.

I said: Mat, she asked me "still." At her grandmother's wake. With him fifteen feet away. She put her face in my neck and she asked me if I still love her. You don't do that — you do not do that — about a man you're done with. You don't risk that. You don't ask a question you don't need the answer to. She needed the answer. She needed it.

He said, so kindly it was worse than if he'd been cruel: or she needed to hear you say no so she could finally let it go, and you didn't say anything. So she still doesn't have it, and you've left her exactly where she was. Val. People are tender at funerals. They miss the ones who knew the old them. She gave you the girl this morning because it's over. Because over is the only thing safe enough to be that soft about. You keep reading the softness as a door. What if the softness is the goodbye?

I said: no.

He said: Val—

I said: no, Matarys. You weren't there. You didn't feel her stop being able to hold herself up. You didn't hear the rasp. You didn't have her ask you "still" into your collarbone like the answer was the only thing holding the day together. She didn't leave me because she stopped loving me. She said it herself, fourteen months ago, in the kitchen, "I love you, I'm sorry," and she meant it then and she means it now, and the only thing that was ever wrong is that I built her a house when she wanted an equal. I waited. I received. I was a dragon who folded himself into a docile creature, and she went and found a dragon who never folded. I can unfold, Mat. I'm unfolding right now. That isn't a goodbye in that church. It's the first time in five years I came for her instead of waiting, and she fell into my arms and asked me "still." I'm not done. I'm finally starting.

He said: and the fire? Aerion? The hand she leans into without deciding?

I said: wildfire burns out. I'm going to be standing there, lit, when it does.

He said — and this is the last thing he said, and it's the truest, and it's why I did what I did next — he said: brother. I love you. So hear me. Please. She didn't run to the fire to get warm for a season. She ran because being loved by you was too much house. Too built. Too safe. A shelter so total she could never feel the wind. You think you can fix it by becoming a dragon. But Val... a dragon she'd have to fear, even a little. A dragon takes. And the truest thing I know about you, the thing I've watched for thirty years, is that you would sooner die than frighten her. Sooner die than take one thing she didn't hand you first. You proved it on that terrace today. You wanted to say it and you didn't, because she was grieving. That restraint is the best thing in you. And it's exactly why you'll never be the fire. The fire frightens her a little, and that's half of why she burns. You couldn't frighten her if your life depended on it. It's the kindest thing in you and it's the disqualifying thing.

I hung up on my brother.

I have never once, in thirty years, hung up on my little brother.

I hung up because he was right about everything except the conclusion. Because there's exactly one room left in my life where I get to decide what's true, and it's this one. This notebook, this drawer, and I was not going to let him put his version of the truth in my ear on a highway and make me drive the rest of the way home inside it.

He's wrong about the conclusion.

She asked me still. You don't ask that about a thing that's over. You don't put your face in a man's throat at your grandmother's grave and ask him still unless some part of you is still living in the answer.

A dragon doesn't need to frighten a wolf. Matarys has it backwards. Aerion frightens you because frightening is the only fire he has. I'm the other kind. I'm the fire that doesn't burn down and doesn't burn her, the one she never has to be afraid will destroy. A wolf, when the wildfire's gone to ash and she's standing cold in the dark, doesn't lie down with the thing that scared her.

She lies down with the thing that lasted.

She asked me still.

I'm her answer. She just doesn't know yet that she already asked the question.

#110 — The last entry. (For now. His hand.)

I'm home.

The flowers are on the table. Two days fresh; I'll change them Thursday; I haven't cancelled the order and I'm not going to, and now there's a wolf four hundred miles north who knows about them and a woman who went quiet over them in a photograph she was never meant to find.

I'm keeping them, partly out of spite, which is a new and ungolden reason, and the notebook gets that too.

Here's the truth, then. All of it. In pairs, the way it always arrives with you, each half a knife:

You still love me, and you leaned into his hand without deciding to.

You broke on my name in the church, and you let him kiss your temple.

You asked me still into my throat like it mattered, and I held you like the answer and didn't say the word.

You forgot what being known felt like, and you found a man who doesn't need to know you to make you burn.

I had the fire the whole time, and I buried it so well that you had to leave to find one.

Matarys thinks I'd sooner die than frighten you, and he's right, but he thinks that disqualifies me, and he's wrong.

Because you were never looking to be frightened. You were looking to be met.

Here is what I've decided, in the only room where I get to decide things:

I'm done being the house she walked out of to feel alive.

I spent five years being chosen and never once choosing first. I received you like a gift, and a gift is passive, and you don't burn for a thing that sits there being beautifully grateful to have you. I folded my fire into a drawer and called it dignity and built walls around you and called it love, and you suffocated in the most comfortable room ever made and ran into the open air to breathe.

I'm not folding anymore. Not on this. Not when it comes to showing you I love you. I'm a dragon. You named me one, once, half-asleep, with your hand in my hair, and I filed it wrong, and I'm taking it out of the drawer again.

I'm going to come for you the way a dragon comes. Not soon. I'm not a fool. Grief is not opportunity and I'll never again hold you a half-second past your choosing or take one word from you that you're not ready to give. But I'm going to come. Openly. With fire. Crossing the room first, every time, the way I crossed four hundred miles to a church today.

Until you feel what it is to be wanted by me instead of merely kept by me. Until the question you asked into my throat gets the answer I wouldn't put on a grieving woman at a wake.

Aerion said she's home now, so you can stop.

I'm not going to stop.

Not because I think you're coming home tomorrow. Because stopping would mean folding, and I'm done folding. I'm going to be your dragon.

The light's on.

It's not a summon. It's not even just on, the way I told you a year ago.

It's a furnace. Banked low right now, patient, four hundred miles south, the way a dragon sleeps on a hoard. But it's the same fire that woke under your hand five years ago, and it never went out, it only went quiet, and quiet is not the same as gone.

You asked me still, my love.

The answer is the kind that doesn't burn down.

I'm yours. I'm still yours.

And the camera catches it at exactly the right angle. Because the camera is behind him. The camera catches your face.

Mat says, distractedly, what’s this one, and Val says, nothing, it’s just the bay, and skips it forward and shows him a different clip and Mat is satisfied, runs off to do something else, and Val sits there with the cursor hovering over the timeline and his pulse going wild.

He goes back to it that night.

Alone. In his room. Laptop on his chest. Headphones in even though there is no real audio.

He plays it. He sees it the first time and his entire body goes hot all over.

In a bad way. The way that means his nervous system has just been ambushed by something it was not prepared for. He sits up against the headboard. He plays it again.

Your face.

He had not… he had not understood. For fifteen months he’s been carrying around the memory of this moment as a thing that happened to him. The peck. The thumb on his lip. The hm. He’s organised the entire moment around his own response to it. The not-breathing, the not-sleeping, the week of touching his own lip in private. He has, in his head, been the one acted upon. He’s been the one who received.

He had not, even once, considered what you looked like doing it. And now he sees it and the memory reorganises in real time.

Because your face, it’s all in your face. The way you turn toward him. The way your eyes go down to his mouth and then back up to his eyes, then back down to his mouth in this small, precise movement that takes maybe a second and a half. Which Val will later be able to count frame by frame. The way your jaw sets, the decided set, the I have just resolved a question clench. The way your shoulders drop, ever so slightly, the way the shoulders of a predator drop when the prey has just walked into range.

The narrowing of your eyes. The half-second between deciding and moving.

Val pauses the video. Goes back five seconds. Watches it again. Pauses. Watches it again.

You’re not nervous. Not testing a hypothesis in the way you presented it after, the cool hm that lived in his nervous system for a week. That was a performance. The hm was a performance. The casualness was a performance. The footage tells him this. The footage tells him what your face actually did in the second before you kissed him and your face did not do casual. Your face did I have made a decision and I’m about to act on it and the boy in front of me doesn’t know what’s about to happen.

A wolf closing in for a kill.

Val watches it the third time and his hand, of its own accord, has gone flat against his stomach over the t-shirt. He notices this. He notes it. He does not move his hand.

He watches it the fourth time.

The next twelve hours are a kind of small private crisis.

Because Val has been operating, since he was fifteen, on the understanding that the kiss on the deck was a thing you did to him casually and that he responded to disproportionately. That’s been the reality. That’s been the shape of the wanting. The asymmetry of it. The I’m suffering and she’s fine of it. The whole reason he’s spent fifteen months touching his own lip in the dark is that he believed, on some level, that he was alone in the gravity of what happened.

The footage tells him he was not alone.

The footage tells him you decided. The footage tells him you closed in. The footage tells him that the casualness afterwards (the thumb, the hm) was a thing you did deliberately, a thing you put on top of the actual moment, a thing you used to disguise the fact that you had hunted him down and taken what you wanted.

Which means (and this is the part that takes Val approximately forty-eight hours to fully digest) you wanted him.

Not in some cheap, horny teenagers way. You wanted him enough that your face did that. You wanted him enough that you closed in for a kill and then dressed the kill up so that neither of you had to deal with what had actually happened.

This is the thing Val has been waiting for, in some sense, his entire life. The wanting is mutual and it sets his brain on fire.

And he has had it for fifteen months without knowing it. The camera had it. And Val just happened to find it on a Tuesday in October sorting through a kid’s summer footage in the den of his parents’ house.

He saves the clip.

He extracts the twelve seconds (enter frame, turn, look, kiss, pull back, thumb, hm, end) and he saves them. Separately. In a folder buried six layers deep on his laptop with a password he changes monthly even now, years later. He converts it, after the next phone upgrade, into a format that won’t degrade. He has it backed up. Twice. On an external drive in his desk drawer and on a private encrypted cloud account that exists for no other purpose.

He has, in other words, preserved the evidence.

And he watches it.

He watches it the way other men watch porn. Which is to say—sometimes, late, when he’s alone and the wanting is bad and he needs something. He watches it the way other men watch porn except more. Other men’s pornography is in service of the body. Val’s is in service of the case. He watches it for the look. He watches it for the second-and-a-half of calculation. He watches it for the jaw, the shoulders, the narrowed eyes.

He touches himself to it. He’s seventeen and then nineteen and then twenty-three and the wanting is bad. The look on your face is the only piece of incontrovertible evidence he has ever been given that you wanted him back, and he uses it. He uses it carefully.

(There’s a specific way he uses it that I want to be clear about, because I think it matters. He does not (he does not) fantasise about an alternate version of the moment in which it goes further. He doesn’t edit the footage in his head. Or imagine the kiss extending, escalating, becoming something else. The fantasy is not more. The fantasy is the look. He replays the look, frame by frame, and the look is enough, the look is more than enough, the look does to him what no body or mouth has ever done. It is, in the most simple sense, the look that does it. The narrowed eyes. The decided set of your jaw. He gets off to the wanting being mutual. He gets off to being the prey. He gets off to the fact that he was, for one and a half seconds in late August when he was fifteen, picked. Devoured, hunted down and claimed.)

He never tells you. Ever. He will go to his grave never having told you that he has the footage, that he watched it, that he watches it still. The not-telling is the same as the not-discussing the kiss in the first place. Some things, in the Val-and-you ecosystem, exist precisely because they are not spoken.

And then the search begins.

Because Val now has a reference point. He has, in his head, a standard for what wanting him looks like, and the standard is your face on a sunset in late August, and he carries that standard with him like a measuring tool, and he applies it to every woman he’s ever with.

He searches for the look.

He looks for it in his first girlfriend at sixteen and does not find it. He looks for it in the girl who calls him Val and doesn’t find it. He looks for it in the college girlfriend in the spring of his sophomore year and it’s nit there. He looks for it in the girl he sleeps with for the first time and nothing. He looks for it in the woman who is on top of him in a hotel room when he’s twenty-two. He looks for it in the woman he dates for eight months at twenty-four.

None of them have it.

None of them ever have it.

Some of them want him. He can see them wanting him. Some of them want him a lot. He’s had women look at him with a hunger that other men would kill for. But none of them have the look. None of them have the small, decisive I’m closing in that you had on a deck in late August when you were sixteen. None of them have the wolf. And Val, who’s watched the footage hundreds of times by now, has trained himself to recognise the absence with a kind of clinical, almost cellular precision.

The absence is what makes him step back.

This is the pattern. Every girlfriend, every encounter, every almost. He’s in the moment, he’s participating, doing his careful version of being present. And then somewhere, in the middle of the relationship, he checks the face of the woman he’s with for the look. And the look is not there. The look is never there. And the wanting in him, which has been operating at half-strength at best because his nervous system has known all along that this is not it, just… contracts. Goes inward.

And he steps back.

Sometimes literally. He stops mid-kiss, looks at the woman, smiles the faint composed apologetic smile, and says, I’m sorry, I just — let’s slow down. Sometimes he finishes what he started but he’s not really there for it. Some women take it personally and leave. Some women feel the absence and stay and try to bridge it and Val lets them try and it goes nowhere because the bridge has nothing to attach to on his side.

He can’t want anyone who doesn’t look at him the way you did on that deck. That’s the operating rule. The parameter. He didn’t consent to this parameter (it installed itself when he was seventeen years old in front of a laptop in his bedroom) but it’s the rule, and it’s non-negotiable, and organised the entire sexual and romantic landscape of his adult life.

He is, in a very specific way, ruined for other women. By the kiss, by the footage. By the look you didn’t know you’d given him.

he tries, briefly and disastrously, to stop saying it. lasts a week. matarys's whole verbal world has love in the foundations; pulling it out collapses the building. he goes back to it and just resolves to suffer through the blushing. so it becomes a tell. every love now comes with a faint pink flush, a tiny flicker of the eyes, a barely-there beat before the word lands. love. (meant.) love. (meant.)

and valarr.

valarr is seventeen. valarr is already the man he's going to be: patient, polished, watching the long game. valarr loves his brother. valarr has loved his brother since the day he was born. matarys is the one warm thing in the cold, elegant museum of their mother's house, and valarr is protective of him, fond of him, would set himself on fire for him. and valarr knows (knows, the way valarr knows everything) that matarys is in love with you within about six minutes of it happening.

and valarr does nothing.

because valarr knows it's a crush. valarr knows matarys is fourteen and and matarys will outgrow it the way you outgrow milk teeth. and valarr is seventeen and he has already understood, with the cold clarity of his particular soul, that you are his. that this is not a question. that there is no version of the future where he's not the one to marry you. it is, to him, a settled fact, as obvious as gravity. so matarys can have his crush. matarys can blush at you and save you armchairs, learn to make your tea. let him.

valarr is gracious about it. he's kind about it.

he watches matarys hover at your elbow at family dinners and he lets him. he watches matarys make you laugh and his eyes go warm and proud, because that's his brother making the girl he loves laugh, what a good thing that is. when matarys, at fifteen, comes to him red-faced and miserable and says, "val, i think i'm in love with her," valarr (sprawled in an armchair, reading, his entire body language indolent) looks up and says, gently, fondly, "i know, mat."

matarys panics. "don't tell her—"

"i won't."

"don't tell mother—"

"i won't."

"are you—are you angry?"

and valarr smiles. and it's the warmest smile in the world. and he says, "no, mat. why would i be?"

because valarr is not threatened by his fifteen-year-old brother. valarr is not threatened by anyone. valarr has the calm of a man who knows the ending of the book. matarys's crush is, to valarr, adorable. it's a thing to be protected, the way you protect a child's drawing on the fridge. let him have it. let him have his feelings. valarr will be the one walking you down an aisle in fifteen years. matarys can have a crush.

and here is where it gets sick, because the thing about valarr is that he likes it a little.

he likes that his brother sees what he sees.

he likes that matarys gets it. that matarys understands, in his small adoring teenage way, that you're the most extraordinary girl in any room, that you're worth saving the better armchair for, that you're worth a stolen recipe and a flushed face.

matarys confirms him. matarys is the only other person in the world who is looking at you the way valarr looks at you, and even though matarys's version is sweet and silly and harmless, it reflects valarr back to himself. it tells valarr he's right. it tells valarr he isn't insane for the way his entire interior life has rearranged itself around you.

look, even mat sees it.

it makes him fonder of his brother, somehow. it makes him pull matarys into his side at family dinners and ruffle his hair. good taste, little brother.

you, of course, notice everything.

you've always noticed everything. you are a stark, and starks watch. you notice that matarys turns pink when you compliment his sweater. you notice that valarr's hand finds the small of your back the second matarys leans in too close over the cyvasse board. you notice that matarys learned to make your tea and that valarr noticed that and looked, for one unguarded second, proud of him. you notice all of it.

you simply don't name it. that's the difference. naming things makes them bigger; you've understood that since you were small. so you let it sit, unnamed, in your chest (this warm, low, proprietary thing) and you carry on.

because they're yours. that's all it is.

matarys is yours in the warm, easy way of a thing that disarms you despite yourself. he's good, mat, in a way you don't entirely trust in other people, in a way you trust in him because you've known him since he was small enough to cry over a scraped knee and let you press your sleeve to it.

when he flushes you don't think oh, he likes me; you think, mine, my mat, my warm one, and you save him the seat next to you at dinner without thinking. when other girls flirt with him at events you feel a flat distaste you don't examine. they don't get him. they don't know him. i know him.

and valarr is... well. valarr is your golden valarr.

that's all there is to it. that's the whole of it.

you wouldn't even know how to begin to phrase it, because there is no phrase. he's your golden valarr the way the north is the north, the way winterfell is winterfell. he's the shape of your whole life and you don't need to name it because naming it would make it smaller.

you let him put his hand at the small of your back. you let him walk you places and hug you and fuss over you. you let him remember everything you've ever said, and you remember everything he's ever said back, and neither of you remarks on it, ever, because to remark on it would be to admit it, and admission is for people who aren't sure.

you are sure. he is sure. matarys, in his own sweet boyish way, is sure. there is nothing to admit.

so you're softly possessive. quietly. you don't stake a claim because you have never needed to stake a claim. a stark doesn't announce what's hers, a stark simply has it. matarys is yours, and valarr is yours, and the two of them belong to each other in a way that is also, somehow, yours, because you're the third point of the triangle that makes them make sense to themselves. you're aware of this. you've always been aware of this. you carry it like you carry your name.

and valarr knows you know.

valarr is not a man who's ever underestimated you, not even when you were a child. he sees, when matarys flushes, that your eyes flick to him with noticing, and that you don't look away, and that something in you settles. (mine, says your stillness. my mat. let him have his crush. i'll keep him safe in it.) and valarr (seventeen, eighteen, yours already) feels his heart do the small swoop it does only ever for you.

because you see it. you see his brother loving you, and you see him loving you, and you're not flattered by either, not exactly; you're simply gathering them in. matarys to one side. valarr to the other. yours. a small, self-contained pack.

he loves you so much in those moments he could die of it.

he gets you upstairs. he closes the door of the bedroom behind you both and his hands are shaking slightly, in the way they only do when he has held himself still for too long.

you take him apart.

not the other way around. you. you put him on his back, in the dark, in a guest room of the dragonstone estate, and you don't let him speak. the house is full. his mother is two corridors away. the walls are old stone and the floors are old wood and you both know it. so valarr has to be quiet. he, who narrates. he, who needs to narrate, who praises and pleads and talks you through everything as a way of staying in control of his own body. you take that from him. you put your hand flat over his mouth and you say, low and even, "shh."

he shudders. the whole length of him.

He'll disappear for days. Just. Gone. You'll wake up one morning and he's not on his rocks, not in the sky, just gone. Valarr worries openly. Aerion watches you try to pretend you're not worried and looks amused. The Cannibal always comes back. Usually with something dead and/or on fire.

You've learned not to make plans around him. "I'll fly to Winterfell next week" is a suggestion not a certainty because the Cannibal might decide he doesn't feel like flying north next week. He might want to go hunt dolphins in the Narrow Sea instead. Your schedule is irrelevant to him.

The dragonkeepers have given up trying to track him. He's not their dragon. He's barely your dragon. He's his own dragon who has graciously decided you can sit on his back sometimes.

He kidnaps you. Frequently. The first time it happens you're in the middle of a council meeting. Literally sitting at the table with your father and King Daeron and half the small council. The Cannibal lands in the courtyard outside. Sticks his head near the window (destroying it). Makes a noise that clearly means come, small wolf.

You try to explain you're busy. He doesn't care. Grabs you by the back of your dress with his teeth (gently, for him) and just. Takes you. You're dangling from his mouth like a kitten while he launches into the sky. The small council is stunned. Your father is yelling. You're laughing because this is insane.

He'll keep you for days sometimes. Just decides you're going on a trip. Doesn't ask. Doesn't warn you. Just shows up, takes you, and flies off. You've learned to keep a travel pack ready at all times because you never know when the Cannibal is going to decide you're going to Dorne for the weekend.

Once took you to some island in the Summer Sea you'd never even heard of. Just dropped you on a beach. Flew off to hunt. Came back six hours later with a dead whale. You spent three days on that island. It was the best three days of your life. No politics. No duty. Just you and your dragon and the sea.

Valarr hates this. Through the bond, Vermax feels his rider's panic every time the Cannibal takes you. Where is she? When is she coming back? Is she safe?. The black one could DROP her. The Cannibal has never dropped you. But Vermax doesn't trust him.

Aerion thinks it's hilarious. Also kind of hot. You'll come back windswept and sun-drunk and feral from three days of flying and he wants to lock you up in his bedchambers.

Truth is: you love it. The wolf in you has been caged your whole life. Duty. Politics. Manners. The careful dance of being a noble daughter. The Cannibal doesn't care about any of that. When you're with him, you're just free.

You've always thought your feet belonged on the ground. You're a Stark. You're northern. You're meant for snow and stone and the earth. But being up there (in the sky, on his back, nothing below you but air) it's a feeling unlike any other.

It's better than flying with Aerion or Valarr. Not because you don't love flying with them (you do), but because when you're with the Cannibal, you're not performing. You're not being polite. You're not holding back. You're just wild. The same as him.

He takes you places no one else would take you. Flies you higher than Caraxes or Vermax would dare (they're worried about the cold, the thin air, you). The Cannibal doesn't worry. He knows you'll hold on. He knows you love it.

Sometimes you'll be gone for a week and come back and everyone's furious (Valarr) or worried (your father) or smug (Aerion, because you came back feral and he's going to use that). And you don't even feel guilty. You're a dragon rider. You have wings now. Why would you stay on the ground?

Blackwind and Cannibal understand each other. Both wild. Both not quite tame. Both bonded to you but not owned by you.

The first time they met, Blackwind growled. The Cannibal growled back. You thought you were going to have to break up a fight between a direwolf and a dragon. Instead they just. Stared at each other. Came to some kind of silent predator understanding. Now they're fine.

Blackwind doesn't like Caraxes (too loud, too much). Tolerates Vermax (sad, but non-threatening). Respects the Cannibal. Sometimes you'll find them both on the rocks, just... existing in parallel. The wolf and the dragon. Two threatening, black shapes. Both waiting for you.

The Cannibal is nicer to Blackwind than he is to most dragons. Probably because Blackwind is yours and also because Blackwind doesn't annoy him the way other creatures do. Blackwind is quiet. Watchful. Keeps to himself. Doesn't whine or preen or demand things. The Cannibal appreciates this.

It's not all rainbows and sunshine, however. What you've done has never been done before. No non-Targaryen has ridden a dragon since before the Conquest. It's the foundation of Targaryen power. The thing that makes them special. The thing that keeps them on the throne.

You just broke that. Casually. A Stark girl bonded the oldest, wildest, most dangerous dragon alive. The political implications are staggering.

The small council is in chaos. Half of them think you're a threat. The other half think you're an asset. Your father is trying to figure out if this makes the North the most powerful kingdom from the seven or if it's going to get you killed.

Daeron is... conflicted. On one hand, you're useful. A dragon rider allied to the crown from a good family known for your loyalty. On the other hand, you've just proved that Targaryens aren't special. That maybe anyone with the right temperament could bond a dragon even if Cannibal is rare exception. This is.... bad. For the monarchy.

Targaryen power has always hinged on exclusivity. The Doctrine of Exceptionalism says Targaryens are different. Special. Closer to gods than men. Part of that is the dragons. Only Targaryens ride dragons. It's the law (unspoken, but understood).

You've just shattered that law. You're a Stark. Northern. First Men blood, not Valyrian. And you're riding the Cannibal. The dragon that's never been ridden. The dragon that eats other dragons.

Some Targaryens are furious (read: Maekar lmao, Aerys too). You've stolen something that's theirs. Diluted their power. Proved they're not as special as they thought.

Others (Aerion, notably, and perhaps surprisingly) think it's perfect. You're not a threat to the throne. You're his. And if you have a dragon, you're stronger, which means anyone who wants you will have to go through the Cannibal first. Yeah, good luck with that.

You try to keep it lowkey. You don't flaunt it. Don't fly over King's Landing showing off. Don't make speeches about how anyone can bond a dragon if they're brave enough. You're trying to be subtle.

This is difficult because the Cannibal is not capable of subtlety. He's the size of a castle. He's black and visible from miles away. He roars loud enough to shatter windows. Subtle is not in his vocabulary.

You've tried to explain to him that you need to be careful. That there are people who genuinely want you dead because of what you represent. He doesn't care. He's the Cannibal. No one is going to hurt you while he's alive. Anyone who tries will become ash.

This is sweet. Also terrifying. Because he means it.

Cannibal doesn't give a shit about politics. Someone insults you at a feast? The Cannibal knows. He's bonded to you. He feels your anger. He shows up outside the keep and screams until the offender comes out. Then just looms. Snarling. The offender pisses himself. Good, this one might get to live.

A lord suggests (in council) that maybe you should be "encouraged" to give up the dragon for the good of the realm? The Cannibal lands on the Red Keep. On top of it. Sits there. Doesn't leave for three days. Just sits on the roof. Making it very clear: Touch my rider and I will RAZE THIS CITY.

Daeron has to issue a decree: No one is to threaten, harm, or coerce Lady Stark. Anyone who tries will be considered an enemy of the crown. This is entirely because the Cannibal has made it clear that if anyone hurts you, he's burning everything.

You're mortified. You didn't want to be a political incident. You just wanted to fly. But your dragon has opinions about your safety and he's making them everyone's problem.

The thing is, it's for a good reason. There are people who want you dead. Traditionalists. Targaryen purists. People who think you've committed heresy by bonding a dragon.

The Cannibal can smell them. Not literally (maybe literally, you're not sure, he doesn't work like other dragons half the time). But he knows when someone's a threat. He'll be flying over the city and just dive. Land in some random courtyard. Snarl at some minor lord who was talking about hiring a Faceless Man.

You've stopped asking how he knows. He just knows. And he's not letting anyone hurt you.

This makes you possibly the safest person in Westeros. Because who's going to try to kill someone when their dragon is the Cannibal and he's watching?

Some days he just doesn't want to deal with you. You'll come to the rocks and he'll be there, but he won't acknowledge you. Just. Sulks. You've learned to bring a book. Sit nearby. Wait him out. Eventually he'll huff and lower his head for scratches. But he makes you work for it.

He gets bitey when he's in a mood. Not serious bites. Just. Nips. He'll grab your cloak with his teeth and pull. Or nip at your boots. He thinks it's a game. You're trying to discipline him. It's not working.

Once you were having a bad day and he could feel it through the bond. You came to the rocks and sat down and just. Cried. He looked baffled. Humans leak water when they're sad? This is stupid. He nudged you with his snout (too hard, you nearly fell over). You told him to go away. He didn't. Just laid down next to you. Let you cry into his side. Didn't say anything (can't talk). Just stayed.

He's horrible at comfort. But he tries. In his way.

You also don't back down. When he's being an ass, you tell him. To his face. "You're being difficult." He huffs. Doesn't care. You cross your arms. "I'm not leaving until you stop sulking." He turns his back on you. You wait. Four hours later he gives in and turns around. You win. He's annoyed that you won.

He respects this. He doesn't want a rider who's afraid of him or soft. He wants someone who'll push back. Tell him when he's wrong. Fight him (verbally). You do. He likes it. He's still an asshole about it.

Once he refused to fly you to an important meeting. Just. Refused. You yelled at him. Called him a "stubborn, selfish, overgrown lizard." He was offended. Also kind of impressed. No one talks to him like that. He flew you to the meeting. Took the long way out of spite.

And then there's an incident, maybe a year in.

You're on the rocks at sunset. The Cannibal is sprawled nearby, scales catching the last light. He's not beautiful in the traditional sense. He's too big, too scarred, too wild looking, almost rugged. His scales are matte black, not shiny. His wings are tattered at the edges. He looks dangerous. Deadly. Wrong.

You look at him and say, without thinking: "You're radiant."

His relaxed rumbling goes quiet. Looks at you. You can feel his confusion through the bond. Him? Radiant? He's the Cannibal. He's ugly by dragon standards. Too big. Too dark. Too mean.

"I mean it," you say. "Look at you. You're magnificent."

The Cannibal doesn't know what to do with this. He's been called many things. Monster. Nightmare. Cannibal. Never radiant. Never magnificent.

He's... pleased. Deeply, smugly pleased. His rider thinks he's beautiful. This is good. Correct. His rider should think he's the most beautiful dragon. Obviously. Even if he's not. The fact that she thinks it is what matters.

He preens. Actually preens. Spreads his wings a little. Tilts his head so the light catches his horns. You laugh. He huffs. But he's still preening.

After that, he's... softer with you. Not soft. But softer. Less bitey. More likely to come when you call. You called him radiant and he's never forgetting it. Dragons are vain creatures <3

He learns what you like with time. You like flying at dawn (the sky goes pink and gold and it's quiet). He starts waking you at dawn. Snorting and nudging your window with his snout (gently, he's learned). Taking you up to watch the sunrise.

You learn what he likes. He likes when you talk to him. Doesn't matter what you say. Just likes your voice. You'll sit on his back and tell him about your day and he'll rumble, pleased.

He brings you things. Not dead seals anymore (you complained). Shiny things. Driftwood. Once, an entire tree covered in exotic fruit you've never seen. You don't know where he got it. He looked so proud. You told him he was clever. He glowed.

You scratch the spot under his jaw that makes his eyes go half-lidded and his tail thump the ground. He melts. Every time. He's over 200-year-old apex predator and he melts for scratchies.

Sometimes you fall asleep on his back. He flies carefully when you're asleep. Doesn't do any sharp turns. Doesn't dive. Glides. Lets you rest. When you wake up, he's brought you somewhere beautiful. A waterfall. A meadow. Once, a volcano. (That was less relaxing. But he thought you'd like it. He was right.)

He's still an asshole and a bully but he's your asshole. And you wouldn't trade him for anything. Not for a nice dragon. Not for a pretty dragon. Not for a dragon that listens and comes when called and doesn't kidnap you for days at a time.

The Cannibal is wild. He doesn't know his own strength. He's going to get you killed one day (probably not, but possibly).

—

The Cannibal — Day One:

New human in his territory. Small. Smells like cold and stone and something old. Not like those little ants that crawl around my territory. Not like the spoiled Targaryen princelings. Something animal, something wolf. Interesting.

She’s with the green grief-dragon. The one who whines all the time about his dead rider. Pathetic little thing. But the green one likes her. Lets her touch him. Purrs for her like a hatchling despite no Targaryen blood.

Hm.

The Cannibal has been alive for two hundred years. He’s seen dragons bond to humans before. Boring. Pointless. Humans are weak. They die in a blink. Why bother?

But this one… this one is petting the grief-dragon. Talking to him. The grief-dragon is melting under her hands like warmed bronze.

And she’s not afraid. Every other human who comes near the grief-dragon is afraid. He can smell it on them: the fear, the uncertainty, the knowledge that the grief-dragon could kill. But this female doesn’t smell afraid. She smells… amused. Fond. Like the grief-dragon is a puppy.

The Cannibal hasn’t been interested in anything in decades.

He’s interested now.

—

The second time you see him, you’re flying with Aerion.

Caraxes takes off from the pit with you and Aerion in the saddle (you pressed against Aerion’s chest, his arms around you, trying very hard not to think about the heat of him). You’re laughing at something he said (some derisive comment about the Myrish ambassador) when Caraxes banks hard. So hard you nearly lose your grip.

“What—” Aerion starts.

And then you see him. The Cannibal. A black, terrible shape, keeping pace with Caraxes off the left wing. Close. Too close. Close enough that you can see every dark scale, every spike, the way his wings move like a slash of night against the sky.

Caraxes screams. Not a threat. A warning. Too close. Back off. MINE.

The Cannibal doesn’t back off.

He just… looks at you.

You stare back. You don’t know what possesses you (maybe the wolf-blood, maybe sheer, utter stupidity) but you don’t look away. You meet those green fire eyes and you hold.

The Cannibal tilts his head. Like he’s considering something.

Then he dives. Straight down. Gone in seconds.

Caraxes is shaking with fury, you feel it in your bones. Through the bond, Aerion feels: danger-threat-BIGGER-stay away from her-MINE-

“What,” Aerion says, voice tight, “the fuck was that?”

You’re still staring at the space where the Cannibal was. Your heart is racing so loud it almost drowns out the question. Not from fear. From something else.

“I think,” you say slowly, “he was saying hello.”

—

The Cannibal — Day Five:

The tiny wolf is with the red one now. The loud serpent-dragon. The one who screams too much and thinks he’s vicious.

Please.

The Cannibal invented vicious.

He follows them. Just to see what the red one will do. Just to see if the female will flinch.

She doesn’t flinch.

She looks at him. Right at him. No fear. Just… curiosity. Interest. The same way she looked at the grief-dragon.

Oh.

Oh.

She’s not prey. She’s a hunter recognising another hunter.

The Cannibal has never been interested in a human before.

He’s interested now.

This is a problem.

—

It keeps happening.

Every time you’re on Dragonstone, the Cannibal appears. Not close. Never close enough to be a real threat. But… there. A shadow in the sky when you’re walking the battlements. A distant shape on the mountain when you’re in the yard. Once, you swear you see him perched on the rocks above the beach, just… watching.

The dragonkeepers notice. Start whispering. “The Cannibal’s come down from the mountain now.” “He’s never stayed this close to the castle before.” “What’s he hunting?”

You know what he’s hunting.

Or who.

Valarr is worried. “You need to stay inside when you’re here. Or at least stay away from open spaces. He’s a wild dragon, he could—”

“He’s not going to hurt me,” you say.

“You don’t know that.”

“I know.” You don’t know how you know. But you do.

Through the bond, Vermax agrees: She is right. The big black one is… watching. Considering. Not hunting. WATCHING.

Valarr doesn’t find this comforting in the slightest.

—

The Cannibal — Week Two:

The small wolf is fascinating.

She flies with the red one (annoying, too loud, but vicious enough to be interesting). She flies with the green one (pathetic, but protective, the Cannibal will give him that). She pets them. Talks to them. Treats them like they’re hers even when she has no claim to them. She doesn’t treat them like glorified pets the way some Targaryens do (insulting), she just… loves.

And they let her.

The red one (who has killed before, who tore the throat out of the biggest dragon in the world once) purrs for her. Lets her scratch his jaw. Carries her gently like she’s pretty treasure.

The green one (who spent a century trying to bite anyone who came near him) bows his head for her. Lets her sit against his side. Whines when she leaves.

She has tamed two dragons who should not be tamable.

The Cannibal wants to know: can she tame him?

(Not that he’d let her. Obviously. He’s not some pet dragon. He eats other dragons for breakfast. He’s older than the Targaryen dynasty. He doesn’t BOW to humans.)

(But if he did… would she pet him the way she pets the others?)

(This is a stupid thought. He’s going to stop thinking it immediately.)

(He’s going to go back to his cave and eat something and forget about the small human.)

He doesn’t go back to his cave.

He lands on the rocks outside the keep and waits.

—

You find him by accident.

You’re walking the coastal path alone (against Valarr’s advice, against your own better judgment, but you needed air and space and quiet). It’s dusk. The sky is going purple. The sea is loud against the rocks, churning.

And then you round the bend and stop.

The Cannibal is thirty feet away.

Just. Sitting there. On the black rocks. Wings folded. Watching the sea. He looks like a breathing, rumbling mountain. Like a piece of the island that got up and decided to have a shape.

You should run for dear life and not stop. You know you should run. This is the most dangerous dragon alive. He’s killed people for less than being in his line of sight.

You don’t run. You, foolishly, take three steps closer.

The Cannibal’s head turns. Slowly. Those green fire eyes lock on you.

You stop. Hands loose at your sides. Breathing steady. Waiting.

For a long moment, neither of you moves. Just the sea, roaring in your ears and the rumbling mass of him.

Then the Cannibal does something you don’t expect.

He lowers his head. Just an inch.

An invitation. Or a test. Definitely a test, a taunt.

You take another step. Then another. Unhurried. Non-threatening. The way you’d approach a wolf.

The Cannibal watches. Doesn’t move, and you know this is the moment your life is going to change forever or end abruptly.

You’re ten feet away now. Close enough to smell him. Sulfur and smoke and something wilder, older, like deep earth and ancient stone. Close enough to see the scars on his scales. The chips in his horns. The sheer, impossible size of him up close.

“Hello,” you say quietly.

The Cannibal’s eyes narrow.

You stop. Don’t reach out. Don’t push. Just… exist in his space. Proving you’re not a threat. Proving you’re not prey, either.

For several minutes, nothing happens.

Then the Cannibal huffs. A hot gust of sulfur-smoke that ruffles your hair and nearly sends you stumbling.

You don’t flinch.

The dragon’s mouth (could swallow you whole, could bite you in half) curves slightly.

If you didn’t know better, you’d say he was amused.

—

The Cannibal — Week Three:

She didn’t run.

The Cannibal has lived for hundreds of years. He’s seen thousands of humans. They all run. Or they try to fight (stupid). Or they try to claim him (more stupid, always fatal).

She didn’t do any of those things.

She just… stood there. Gazed at him. Said hello like they were meeting for chat.

The sheer audacity.

He likes it.

No. Wait. He doesn’t like it. He’s just… interested. He’s bored. He’s interested in a particularly clever seal before you eat it.

(He’s not going to eat her.)

(Probably.)

(The red one and the green one would be upset if he ate her. And they’re annoying enough without being grief-mad.)

She comes back the next day. Just sits on the rocks. Twenty feet away. Doesn’t approach. Doesn’t try to touch him. Just… sits. Reads a book.

The Cannibal has never been ignored by a human before.

It’s infuriating. It’s also fascinating.

He’s going to eat her.

He’s definitely going to eat her.

Any day now.

—

It becomes a routine.

You come to the rocks at dusk. The Cannibal is always there, waiting. You sit. You read, or watch the sea, or just exist in his space. He watches you. Sometimes he’s twenty feet away. Sometimes he’s fifty. Once, he’s close enough that you could reach out and touch his foreclaw if you wanted to.

You don’t dare.

You’re not that stupid. This is the Cannibal. He’s killed people for less. Killed dragons. Has done so for sport. You’re not going to push your luck by trying to pet him like he’s a pet.

(Even though you want to. Even though your fingers itch with it. To feel that beautiful, black mass of him. Caraxes and Vermax have made you soft for dragons and some stupid part of you wants to know if the Cannibal’s scales are as warm as theirs.)

Two weeks of this. Two weeks of sitting in silence while a nightmare dragon watches you like you’re the most interesting thing he’s seen in a century.

And then one evening, the Cannibal moves.

Not away. Closer.

One step. Two. Three.

He’s ten feet away now. Then five. Close enough that you can see the rise and fall of his chest when he breathes. Close enough that his exhale moves your hair.

You sit very still.

The Cannibal lowers his head.

Not an invitation this time. Not a test.

A claim.

His snout warm, scaled, big enough to crush you, presses a little roughly against your shoulder. Just. Rests there. The way Caraxes rests his head in your lap. The way Vermax nudges you when he wants attention.

But this is different.

This is the Cannibal. The dragon who has never had a rider. Never wanted a rider. The oldest, most vicious, most untamable dragon in the world.

And he just… claimed you.

Your hand lifts. Careful. You touch his jaw. Just your fingertips. Just enough to feel the heat of him, the rough texture of his scales.

The Cannibal purrs.

It’s not like Caraxes’s purr (smug, loud, pleased, possessive). It’s not like Vermax’s purr (warm, rumbling, relieved, grateful). It’s deeper. Older. A sound like the earth shifting. Like a mountain deciding to move.

You scratch under his jaw. The same way you scratch Caraxes. The same way you scratch Vermax.

The Cannibal’s eyes half-close. The purr deepens.

“Well,” you murmur. “Hello to you too.”

The dragon huffs. Amused. Satisfied.

He’s decided: This one is his now.

She’s survived him. Hasn’t run. Hasn’t tried to fight. Hasn’t tried to claim him like he’s some pet to be conquered. She just… existed in his space. Respected him. Treated him like an equal.

No one has ever treated the Cannibal like an equal.

He likes it.

(Fine. He likes her. Happy? He LIKES the small wolf- human. She’s his human now. The red one and the green one are going to have to COPE.)

The bond forms. Not like other bonds. There’s no rider here. No master. Just… partnership. Mutual respect. The Cannibal has chosen her. She’s chosen him back (by not running, by not pushing, by trusting him not to eat her even though he absolutely could).

It’s done.

You sit there for an hour with your hand on his jaw, the Cannibal purring like the world’s largest, most dangerous cat, and you think: Valarr is going to have a heart attack. Aerion is going to lose his mind. This is a terrible idea.

The Cannibal huffs again. In your head (not words, exactly, but feeling) you sense: Good. Let them.

You laugh. “You’re going to be a problem, aren’t you?”

The Cannibal’s eyes open. Fix on you. And you swear (you swear) he smiles.

You fly him two days later.

No saddle. No reins. Just you on his back, hands fisted in his spines, holding on for dear life while the Cannibal launches into the sky like a gods-damned comet.

It’s nothing like flying Caraxes or Vermax.

Caraxes is fast, vicious, likes to show off. Vermax is steady, powerful, protective. The Cannibal is wild. He doesn’t fly like he’s carrying something precious. He flies like he’s free. Like he’s been alone for hundreds of years and now he has someone to share the sky with and he’s going to make the most of it.

He dives. Hard. Straight down toward the sea. You scream (half terror, half exhilaration) and the Cannibal pulls up at the last second, claws skimming the water, sending up a spray that drenches you both.

You’re laughing. Breathless. Soaked. Alive in a way you’ve never been alive.

The Cannibal rumbles. Pleased. Smug. See? I’m BETTER than the red one and the green one. I’m FASTER. STRONGER. I don’t PURR for treats. I’m a REAL dragon.

“You’re showing off,” you shout over the wind.

The Cannibal banks hard. Agrees: Yes. AND?

You fly for two hours. Over the sea. Over Dragonstone. Over the keep, where you see tiny figures on the battlements staring up at you in shock because no one has ever ridden the Cannibal before and you’re up there anyway.

When you land, Valarr is white-faced. Aerion looks like someone lit a fuse in him. Caraxes and Vermax are both screaming from their respective pits (fury-shock-how dare she-OURS-).

You slide off the Cannibal’s back. Leeds your palm to his black scales. “Thank you.”

The Cannibal huffs. Butts his head against you gently (for him; it still nearly knocks you over on your ass, there’s a long way to go). Then spreads his enormous wings and leaves, launching back toward his mountain cave with a gust that makes you stumble.

The thumb against the inside of the wrist, except now there's an animal on the inside of that band, and he learns the exact rotation that turns the wolf inward, sets the small sharp shape of it against the pad of his thumb, and presses. Just to feel it bite. Just to feel the edges of you go into him.

He'll do it in meetings with his hand flat on the table and his face perfectly composed, pressing the wolf into his skin under the surface of an ordinary afternoon, and no one in the room has the faintest idea that he's quietly coming apart behind his own eyes.

He presses it in until it leaves a mark. That's the thing he can't get over. The thing that gets him squirming in his own skin, the temporary print of it, the pink wolf-shape stamped into his thumb when he finally lifts the metal away, proof rendered in his own flesh that you are in him, that you've been cut into a place that can't be reached or removed or argued with.

He stares at it. He turns his hand to the light to look at it. The sight of his own skin holding the shape of your claim does something to him that no body laid beneath him has ever managed, and Valarr has tried, God knows he's tried. None of them were familiar and none of them were you and none of them ever once made his blood move the way the indent does.

Alone, it's worse, or better, depending on how honest he's willing to be with himself.

Valarr lies awake with the band turned and the wolf set over his pulse, pressing the animal into the beat of his own heart. The idea of it, your mark living under his skin, the thought that he could be stripped of the silver entirely and there would still be a wolf printed into the meat of him, makes him burn so hot and so low that he can't keep still.

His hips shift against nothing, his breath goes uneven in the dark. He doesn't even need to think of your hands. He thinks of the wolf in his flesh, of being branded somewhere private and permanent by the only person who ever saw past the gold, and that alone is enough to take him apart. Enough to make him come undone with the band pressed so hard into his thumb that the indent stays for an hour after, and he lies there in the wreck of it, staring at the wolf in his skin.

What Valarr wants, what he won't say even to himself in plain words, is for it to stay. For the indent to deepen, to scar in properly, to become so worn into him that it never lifts at all.

He presses harder over the years for exactly that reason. He is hoping to ruin his own thumb. He is hoping that one day he'll take the ring off and the wolf will simply be there, in the skin, finished, his, yours, with nothing left to argue. He doesn't fear the mark the way he's feared everything else his whole life. He hungers for it to go deeper. The day it finally scars in is a day he treasures more than anything he owns.

You give Matarys his at the same time, the same quiet afternoon, the wolf going back into Valarr's hand and a chain settling around his brother's neck.

Difference is that you do this one gently, with both hands, the way you'd do up someone's coat when you didn't want them catching cold. A fine silver chain, a small wolf worked into the clasp where it rests against the back of Mat's neck. Nothing hidden about it, nothing that bites. It sits at the hollow of his throat where he can feel it, where his own hand finds it without him thinking.

And that's exactly what you want it to do, because where Valarr's wolf is a brand pressed inward in the dark, Mat's is a hand at the back of the neck made into something he can carry. A steady weight that says you are mine to keep safe, not mine to keep.

Because that's what Mat has always been to you.

He chose you when he was six years old, decided you were his sister with the whole unguarded certainty of a child who'd never been chosen back before and was, that once.

He's spent every year since calling you love in that easy, unembarrassed way that nobody else on earth would dare. You've never once wanted to complicate what you have.

Whatever you feel for Valarr is a closed fist you've been calling an open hand for years. What you feel for Mat is just open. It's the cleanest thing in the entire tangle, the one bond that never had a knife in it, and you'd cut off your own hand before you put one there.

So the chain doesn't dig in and doesn't mark, doesn't ask him for a thing. It lifts over his head and sets down whenever he likes. He never takes it off either, but for the opposite reason to his brother. Not because he couldn't survive being without it, but simply because he loves it. Because he likes touching the little wolf at his throat in a crowded room and being quietly reminded that somewhere out there is the person who once looked at a small soft-faced boy half-hidden on his brother's hip, crouched down to his level and saw him. Who's never stopped treating him that way since.

He has always known, without ever needing it proven, that you would come down on anyone who hurt him with the full wolfish fury you keep leashed for almost everybody. That the same flat, coldness that empties a room of braver men would turn, for him, into something with teeth in it. The certainty of that lives in him, warm and settled.

Valarr, shaking, lifts a hand. Touches warm green-bronze scales. "Hello," he whispers.

Vermax keens. High and broken. Because the boy is not Jace. He's not. The scent is wrong. The voice is wrong. But he's close. Close enough that Vermax, who's been alone for longer than any dragon should be alone, decides: close enough.

The bond forms. The dragonkeepers stand there, stunned, as one of the most vicious dragons in the pit bows his head for a boy who looks like a ghost of another prince.

Vermax is old, but not ancient. He's around 150 years old. That's peak power for a dragon. He's past the rapid growth phase but not yet into the slow decline. He's large. Not Vhagar-large, not Caraxes-large-but-make-it-serpentine, but solid. Intimidating. A hundred feet of green-bronze muscle and rage.

He's experienced. Vermax fought in the Dance. He survived the Gullet (Jace didn't, but the dragon did). He knows battle. He knows death. He's killed other dragons. He's dangerous in ways that go beyond size.

A century of grief has made him foul. He doesn't trust easily. Doesn't like other dragons. Snaps at keepers. Territorial. Possessive of the few things he allows himself to care about. And he's bonded to Valarr out of desperation, not love. At first. The bond isn't what it was with Jace. Can't be. Jace was his first. His true rider. Valarr is... a replacement. A placeholder. The best Vermax can get.

But over time, it deepens. Valarr is kind to him. Patient. Talks to him. Cares for him. Doesn't try to make him forget Jace. Just offers himself as he is. And slowly (very, very slowly) Vermax starts to love him for himself, not just as an echo of someone lost.

If we're putting dragons-survived-the-Dance Caraxes next to Vermax, here's what we get:

Caraxes is older (nearly 200 by akotsk timeline), smaller than Vermax in bulk but longer (that serpentine build), far more experienced in battle (fought in the Dance, killed Vhagar, survived), bonded to Aerion who is sharp and vicious and matches his energy. Caraxes likes you immediately because Aerion likes you and the bond doesn't lie. He's territorial, possessive, but from a place of certainty. You're his rider's, which makes you his, simple as that.

Vermax, on the other hand, is younger (150ish), larger in bulk, more traditionally powerful, experienced but bitter about it (lost his first rider, never got over it), bonded to Valarr who is earnest and trying so hard to be good. Vermax doesn't like you at first because you smell like Caraxes and Caraxes is a problem. He takes FOREVER to warm up to you, but once he does, he's worse than Caraxes about the possessiveness.

The first time you meet Vermax, he hates you. Nothing personal. You just smell like Caraxes. You've been in the meadow with Aerion and his nightmare wyrm, and the scent clings to you, and Vermax takes one whiff and snarls.

Valarr goes white. "Vermax, no—"

You freeze. This dragon is huge. Easily twice Caraxes's bulk, even if he's shorter in length. Green-bronze scales catching torchlight, eyes like old amber, teeth bared. He looks like he wants to bite you.

"I'm sorry," Valarr says quickly. "He's—he doesn't like other dragons, and Caraxes—"

"I understand," you say calmly. You don't back away. Vermax's eyes narrow. You're not running. Interesting.

It takes weeks before Vermax lets you near him. And even then, it's grudging. He tolerates you because Valarr clearly cares about you, and Vermax has decided (reluctantly) that he cares about Valarr.

But the shift happens slowly: you bring him food once, not trying to feed him, just leaving a sheep carcass near his preferred corner of the pit because you noticed the keepers are afraid of him and he's been underfed because of it. Vermax eyes you suspiciously. Sniffs the carcass. Eats it. The next time you visit, he doesn't snarl.

You don't push. You let him come to you. Sit in the pit with Valarr and just... exist. Read. Talk quietly. Ignore the dragon watching you from across the chamber. Vermax appreciates this. He's been pushed at for 130 years. You're the first person who just lets him be since Valarr.

The first time you touch him, it's an accident. You're reaching past his neck to hand Valarr something and your hand brushes green-bronze scales. Vermax goes still. You freeze too. Wait for the snap. It doesn't come. He just... watches you. When you pull your hand back slowly, he makes a low sound. Not quite a growl. Not quite approval. Considering.

You start talking to him the way you talk to Caraxes. Straightforward, no coddling. "You're being an ass today, aren't you? Yes, I can tell. Valarr's trying very hard and you're making it difficult." Vermax likes this. Likes being spoken to like he's intelligent, not a beast to be managed.

By the time Vermax actually accepts you, it's been months. And when he does, it's sudden: you're in the pit, Valarr is adjusting the saddle, Vermax is drowsing, you walk past the dragon's head without thinking, and Vermax reaches out. Nudges you. Gently. With his snout. The way he used to nudge Jace.

You stop. Stare. Slowly, carefully, lift a hand. Touch his jaw. Vermax purrs.

Valarr, behind you, makes a choked sound. Drops the saddle strap. "He's never— not with anyone but me—"

You scratch under Vermax's jaw. The dragon's eyes half-lid. The purr deepens.

"I think," you say quietly, "he's decided I'm acceptable."

Once Vermax decides you're his (his rider's, his hoard, his to protect), he's unbearable about it. Caraxes is possessive, yes. But Caraxes is possessive from a place of certainty. He knows you're his. He's smug about it. He purrs when you're near.

Vermax is possessive from a place of loss. He lost Jace. He will not lose you or Valarr.

He refuses to let Caraxes near you when you're in Vermax's territory. If you visit Valarr in the pit and Caraxes can smell you from three chambers over, Caraxes will try to come see you. Vermax will scream. Wings mantled. Claws out. No. MINE. Get your own.

He follows you. If you're walking through Dragonstone (or wherever the dragons are kept), Vermax will track you from inside the pit. You can hear him pacing, keeping time with your footsteps overhead. Valarr finds it endearing. You find it unnerving.

He growls at Aerion. Just. Constantly. Aerion will be standing next to you, making some cutting comment, and Vermax will growl from across the pit. Low. Steady. I see you. I'm watching. Don't try anything.

He will not let you fly Caraxes if he knows about it. You tried once. Vermax lost his mind. Screaming. Thrashing. Valarr had to physically calm him down. Through the bond, Valarr felt: SHE IS OURS. NOT HIS. OURS.

But here's the thing: Vermax is possessive, yes. Territorial, yes. But he's also protective in a way Caraxes isn't. Caraxes protects you because you're his. A treasured, precious thing. Vermax protects you because he can't lose anyone else.

When someone threatens you (verbally, physically, doesn't matter), Vermax moves. Puts himself between you and the threat. Wings spread. Neck arched. The message is clear: I have lost too much. I will burn the world before I lose her too.

And that's when you realise: Vermax doesn't love you the way he loved Jace or Valarr. But he loves you the way a dragon who's grieved for 130 years loves the few things he allows himself to care about. Desperately. Irrevocably. Without compromise.

If you thought Caraxes hating Vermithor was bad, wait until you see Caraxes vs. Vermax. These two dragons DESPISE each other.

From Caraxes's perspective: the green one is IN THE WAY, the green one carries the WRONG prince (the guilty, soft one, the one who keeps looking at her like he has rights), the green one snarls at him (HOW DARE HE), the green one is YOUNGER and LARGER and Caraxes is OFFENDED by both of these facts, and she pets the green one and Caraxes can smell it on her when she comes back and it makes him FURIOUS.

From Vermax's perspective: the red one is DANGEROUS, the red one's rider is DANGEROUS (sharp, cruel, the wrong kind of Targaryen), she smells like the red one ALL THE TIME and it's WRONG, the red one is older, more experienced, bonded to someone who knows what he wants (Vermax's rider is still guilty and conflicted and it's EXHAUSTING), and the red one won and Vermax HATES that he won.

The result is that they can't be in the same sky, they can't be in adjacent pit chambers, if they see each other they fight, Aerion and Valarr have to coordinate their schedules to avoid overlap, and you're caught in the middle, smelling like both of them, and both dragons are furious about it.

The first time you fly with Valarr after having flown with Aerion the day before, Vermax can smell Caraxes on you. He refuses to launch. Just sits there, growling. Valarr is mortified.

"I'm so sorry, he's being—"

"I know what he's being," you say tiredly.

You have to wash before Vermax will let you up. Even then, he grumbles the whole flight. Aerion finds this hilarious.

"My dragon has marked you. Yours is just going to have to cope."

Valarr looks miserable. You look at both of them and think: I'm going to be killed by jealous dragons and no one will be surprised.

But here's what changes with time: the dragons start to tolerate each other. Not quickly. It takes months. Maybe longer. But they're both Dance survivors, both riders of Targaryen princes, both bound to the same impossible girl through their riders. And eventually, grudgingly, they start to accept what their riders have already figured out: they're going to have to share.

Key word: try.

They try to share you. Vermax hates it. Caraxes hates it. But they start to manage brief periods in the same space without immediately trying to kill each other because it upsets you which upsets their riders. You can visit both in the same day without one of them losing their mind. Aerion and Valarr can be in the same room as you without their dragons screaming three floors down.

It's not peaceful. There's still growling. Still territorial displays. Still moments where one dragon decides the other has gotten too much of your attention and needs to be reminded of boundaries. But it's... manageable. Barely.

And then something shifts.

Because the dragons realise something their riders realised long before them: there's one thing they agree on. One thing that matters more than their rivalry, their jealousy, their territorial bullshit.

You're their riders. No one else's.

Some lord makes a comment about you in the yard. Something dismissive. Crude. The kind of thing that would normally just get him a cold look.

Both dragons scream. Simultaneously. From their respective nests.

The lord goes white. Aerion and Valarr, standing on opposite sides of the training ground, both feel it through their bonds. Their dragons' fury, sudden and unified. The keepers scramble. And when they get to the pits, Caraxes and Vermax are at their respective gates, necks arched, wings mantled, making the exact same threat display. Not her. Touch her and we BURN you.

It happens again. And again. Any threat to you (perceived or real) gets the same response from both dragons. Someone speaks to you too sharply in the hall? Dual screaming from the pits. A knight gets too close in the yard? Both dragons trying to break through their gates. Caraxes and Vermax spend three days doing synchronised threatening rumbles that make the entire keep nervous.

The dragonkeepers don't know what to make of it. Dragons don't cooperate like this. Don't share territory. Don't agree on anything.

But Caraxes and Vermax have discovered they have a common interest: you. And by extension, each other's riders. Because you love Valarr (even if you won't admit it fully). And you love Aerion (even if you're trying to fight it). And the dragons can feel that through the bonds.

Which means: Valarr is important to you, which makes him important to them. Aerion is important to you, which makes him important to them.

So when someone speaks ill of Valarr in the yard (some lord's son, drunk, running his mouth), Caraxes and Vermax both scream. When someone insults Aerion at a feast (calling him mad, unstable, dangerous), both dragons rattle their chains.

You're all a bonded shape. A strange, tangled, impossible shape. Two dragons who hate each other but love you more than they hate each other. Two princes who want you and are learning to exist in the same space without killing each other because you've made it clear: you won't choose. Not yet. Maybe not ever. And the dragons who share their riders' feelings and have decided, in their reptilian way, that if they can't have you separately, they'll have you together.

Caraxes still snaps at Vermax when the green dragon gets too smug. Vermax still growls at Caraxes when the red wyrm gets too possessive. They still can't be in the same sky without supervision. They still compete for your attention, your touch, your affection like greedy, dangerous cats.

But when an outside threat appears? When someone who isn't Aerion or Valarr tries to touch you, threaten you, take you?

The dragons are united. Absolutely. Unquestioningly.

Because you're theirs. Both of theirs. Their riders'. And anyone who doesn't understand that is going to learn it the hard way.

And Valarr, watching this shift happen, feels something change in himself too. He was guilty at first. Torn up about wanting you when Aerion wanted you, when he had no right to want you. He tried to be good. Tried to step back. Tried to let you go.

But then he sees Aerion with you in the yard. Sees the way Aerion makes you laugh. Sees his cousin's hand linger at your waist. Sees the way you look at Aerion. Hunger barely concealed, want you're trying to fight.

And something in Valarr just... breaks.

Shifts. Hardens. The guilt doesn't disappear but it gets buried under something darker, more selfish. He starts thinking: Why should I let him have you? Why should I be good when being good means losing you?

The change is gradual. Subtle at first. He stops apologising for wanting to be near you. Stops pulling away when you touch him. Starts touching you back: hand at your elbow, fingers grazing yours, standing closer than proper, whispering in your ear and calling you love.

He starts competing. Not obviously. Not the way Aerion competes, all sharp edges and deliberate provocation. But quieter. More insidious. He learns what makes you smile. What makes you soften. He uses it.

He stops feeling guilty about using it.

He watches Aerion steal you away for flights and instead of stepping back, he asks you to fly with him the next day. Watches Aerion bring you gifts and starts bringing you things too: books you mentioned wanting, flowers from the gardens, your favourite wine. Watches Aerion make you laugh and learns how to make you laugh harder.

Through the bond, Vermax approves. Finally. FINALLY. His rider is fighting for her.

And the worst part (the best part) is that it works. You notice. You notice Valarr changing, shedding that guilt, leaning into something darker and more certain. You notice him looking at you the way Aerion looks at you: hungry. Possessive. Like he's decided you're his and he's just waiting for you to catch up.

And you're drawn to it. To both of them. The sharp vicious certainty of Aerion and the dark, tender hunger of Valarr-who's-stopped-being-guilty. You're caught between them and you don't want to escape.

The dragons know. Feel it through the bonds. Feel their riders' want, your want, the impossible tangle of it all.

you just... stop. you rest your chin on his warm hipbone and gaze up at him.

valarr is propped up on one elbow staring down at you like you've just declassified a state secret.

his usually neat hair is already a beautiful disaster. you haven't touched his hair, he's been doing that to himself, dragging his fingers through it, gripping the back of his own neck, trying to hold something, and his mouth is slanted open, gaping, his eyes glassy. here's a high colour in his cheeks you've never seen before.

"hi," you drawl.

a small wrecked laugh punches out of him. "hi?"

"are you alright, valarr?"

"am i—" he laughs again, breathless. "love, you can't be serious, are you—are you asking me—"

you smile at him. slow. wolfish. and blow, gently, just a soft cool exhale, across the wet, swollen head of his cock. valarr jerks. his whole, golden body does, ike you've hit him with an electric shock.

"oh—fuck—"

oh, that's a nice, you think idly. that throaty, filthy register in his throat, all but unfamiliar in his polite mouth.

"shh."

now you take him in your mouth.

not deep. that's the thing. that's the perfect, loving cruelty of it. you do not deep-throat him, do not perform. you have no interest in performing at him. valarr has had girls perform for him his entire life, the whole point of this is that valarr has never been eaten. devoured. taken apart.

you take just the head, close your lips around the swollen wet crown of him and you suck. lightly. playfully. your tongue working circles in slow lazy curls and your cheeks just barely hollowing, your eyes never leaving his face.

valarr makes a sound you'll hear for the rest of your life.

it's not a moan. the noise of a man whose operating system has just crashed. a high, broken little uh, and then valarr's hand flies to his own mouth like he's trying to put the sound back in, appalled at himself, at having made it, at having let you hear it.

you pull off him with a quiet, wet sound. you press a small kiss to the inside of his thigh. tender. there.

"valarr."

a breath, practically a gasp, punches out of him. "i'm sorry, love, i'm—"

"put your hand down, pretty thing."

he puts his hand down. his eyes are huge, his cock twitching against his stomach with the loss of your mouth and a fresh bead of him wells at the slit again. and he's trembling. across the long, lean line of him. tiny, involuntary tremors in his thighs, in his ribs.

you reach up. you stroke the back of your knuckles down his cheek. once. softly.

he leans into your hand instantly. instantly. his eyes flutter half shut, his mouth parting and he turns his cheek into your palm like a cat seeking warmth. you feel the heat of him there, and you feel the shape of what he's going to be like after. how soft this man is going to go. how completely he's going to come undone for you.

"i want to hear you," you tell him quietly. "do you understand me?"

"yes, love—"

you trace a finger down his throat. "yes what?"

his throat works beneath your touch, eyelashes fluttering. "yes, sweet girl."

"good boy."

you see his hips lift off the bed, an involuntary twitch. just from the words. valarr targaryen, who deadlifts at five in the morning, whose body is a fortress of disciplined musculature, who runs a multimillion empire, has just bucked his hips at the sound of good boy like a teenager.

you have him. you have him. you have him.

now you devour him.

you take him deep in your mouth. wet, sloppy, deliberate. you let the saliva pool and slide across hot heaviness of him on your tongue. you pull off him for a moment, slick and glossy before diving back down. you make sounds. low, hungry hums in the back of your throat. the kind of sound you might make eating something rare and bloody at a dinner party, and the vibration goes through him every time.

valarr's hands are fluttering. they don't know where to land.

they go to your hair and then jerk away because he's afraid to touch you. afraid to direct you. he's afraid he'll somehow make you stop.

one hand fists in the duvet instead. the other hand fists in his own floppy hair. he's making fractured, needy sounds he can't suppress (love, sweet girl, please, christ, oh, oh, oh) and his stomach is hollowed, his thighs shaking. there's a flush spreading from valarr's sternum up to his throat, the same flush he gets when he's embarrassed.

because he is embarrassed. he's mortified by his own body. by how loud he's being. by the needy noises he's making. by how fast he's going to come.

the fact that he, valarr targaryen, who can fuck you for an hour and a half through three orgasms before letting himself finish, is going to come down your throat in under four minutes like a fucking schoolboy and he cannot stop it.

you reach up, without pulling off him, and you find his elbow, then his wrist. the one fisted in his own hair. you take it gently, and you guide it down to your head. you place his hand in your hair for him. you let him hold on, let him grip.

valarr breaks open a little. a wet, ragged sound, half a sob, like the permission to touch you was the only thing he was still holding the line on.

his fingers card through your hair. trembling. careful even now. he doesn't pull, doesn't push. he just holds you, his palm cupping the back of your skull. you go for his balls. one hand cupping them, rolling them without shame or hesitation. your mouth works, tongue dragging over the throbbing vein of his cock. your other hand wraps tight at the base of him, twisting on the upstroke and—

"sweet girl—" his voice breaks. "sweet girl, i'm—i can't—i'm going to—"

you pull off him.

his whole body keens forward at the loss. an involuntary, animal grief.

you look up at him. your chin shining. your mouth swollen and slick with his precum and your own spit. your hand still moves on him in lazy, slow strokes that are keeping him exactly on the edge without letting him over. you slide your other hand up his abdomen. slow. soothing. flat against the heaving plane of his stomach.

"shh. shh. i've got you."

valarr makes a sound. like the gentleness has wrecked him worse than the cruelty did.

"you're going to what, valarr?"

"come," he gasps, "love, i'm going to come, please, please—"

"please what?"

"please let me—please—"

(please let me come in your mouth, please, please let me, please, sweet girl, please. the man who's never in his life had to ask for permission to finish in someone's mouth. the man who's been the one granting permission for three months. reduced to it.)

you smile at him. you stroke your thumb along the line of his hipbone. tender.

"open your mouth," you order gently.

he stares at you, lost.

"open, valarr."

he opens. dazed, dazzled, automatic.

you lean up—keeping your hand on him, keeping him at the unbearable edge—and you spit into his open, pink mouth. a small, wet drop of him and you mixed together.

you hum. "swallow, pretty thing."

valarr swallows. his eyes flutter half shut, a low ruined sound vibrates in his throat.

"such a good boy."

and you go back down on him, taking him deep and you suck hard. you drag the hot, salty taste of him down, down, down, and valarr comes inside of fifteen seconds with a sob.

a sob.

valarr targaryen sobs his way through his first orgasm in your mouth, his hand finally giving up its restraint and tightening in your hair, like he's trying to anchor himself to your body so he doesn't fly apart.

and he's making a high, broken uh — uh — uh noise at the back of every pulse, his hips stuttering helplessly up into your mouth in tiny shocked twitches. his thighs are shaking so hard you can see them in your peripheral vision, and you swallow around him, and swallow, and swallow. hot and slightly salty, golden valarr, come undone in your mouth.

you work him gently through every last shudder until he's whimpering, pushing weakly at your shoulder because he can't take any more.

you pull off him slowly, your tongue dragging. you don't lick the head this time. you press a light, soft kiss to the wet slick base of him instead, and another to the inside of his thigh, and another to the warm crease of his hip.

you murmur good boy, that's it, my beautiful val, into valarr's skin between each one. he's shuddering with every kiss. fine tremors. the aftershocks of something much bigger than his body knew how to hold.

then you crawl up his body.

valarr is a wreck. his hair is flattened to his forehead with sweat. his eyes are wet and his mouth is gaping open in small ragged breaths. there's a deep flush blooming over his entire chest like rash and his hands are shaking. visibly shaking.

when you settle yourself over him, you don't straddle him. you fold down beside him. you tuck yourself along the burning line of him, half on top of his chest, and you lift one hand and you put it to his cheek.

he turns into it instantly.

valarr's whole face turns into your palm, and his eyes shut, and a long, unsteady breath leaves him, and he—

he kisses the heel of your hand. once. then the soft inside of your wrist. then the pulse there, lingering, his mouth open against it, his eyes still shut.

"come here, valarr," you say quietly.

he comes. he half-rolls into you, his face going straight to your throat, his arm coming heavy and slack across your waist, his thigh sliding between yours.

he's weighty against you. valarr targaryen, who's normally so contained, so arranged, so aware of his own body, has gone completely loose. he deposited himself against you. his nose presses to the underside of your jaw and he's breathing in the smell of your skin in deep dragging breaths like he's trying to get high on you.

"thank you," he whispers against your pulse.

(you will think about this thank you for five years. you will think about it the day you leave him.)

you stroke your hand up the back of his neck. into his sweat-damp hair. he moans. softly, brokenly, into your throat. at being held. just held. his arm tightens at your waist.

"my sweet girl," he mumbles. it's muffled and stupidly fond with afterglow. "my sweet girl. love. christ. love—"

"shh."

"i can't—i don't—"

"shh, valarr."

he shhs. but he keeps making quiet, wet sounds into your throat. he keeps kissing your collarbone in tiny, aimless presses, like punctuation he cannot stop putting at the end of sentences he's not speaking.

his hand comes up and finds your hand and laces your fingers together against the pillow, and he's squeezing—not hard, just constantly, a slow rhythmic pulse of his palm against yours—and you realise with a warm tug in your chest that he's doing it without knowing he's doing it. his body is talking to your body because his mouth is not currently capable.

you turn your face into the top of his head. you kiss his crown. the white streak. the damp dark of him.

"you alright, pretty thing?" you murmur.

valarr moans softly.

"yes," he croaks. "yes. yes."

a long shudder rolls through him. his arm tightens at your waist. then loosens. then tightens again.

"more?" you ask gently. "or done?"

"done," he whispers immediately. then, smaller: "hold me?"

(oh.)

(oh.)

you do. you wrap both arms around him tightly.

you draw valarr further onto you, until his head is pillowed properly on your chest, until his ear is over your heartbeat, until his weight is fully against you.

valarr makes a sound and goes loose, completely loose, against you. his hand slides up under the hem of your shirt and splays flat between your shoulder blades. just resting there. just feeling the warm skin of you under his palm.

he's going to fall asleep like this. you can already tell. he's not done this with you yet.

valarr always gets up, brings water, always tends to you with the careful efficiency of a man performing aftercare he's read about. but tonight he's not going to be able to. tonight valarr will slip under right here, his face on your sternum, his hand under your shirt, his thigh between yours, his breathing slowing in long, steady stages against your skin.

you stroke his hair. slow. you let your nails drag against his scalp. you feel him hum—soft, wordless, content—into your sternum.

"good boy," you murmur, just to feel him shiver one last time.

he does. a fine tremor down his whole toned body. and then he's gone. asleep on top of you with his mouth open against the soft skin between your breasts, his fingers still laced through yours.

(this is when you should have known.

valarr is a cataloguer. valarr will spend the rest of your relationship trying to reproduce this exact feeling. not the orgasm, the aftermath. the permission to be small. the permission to be held and loved and desired, cared for. the permission to whimper and not be made to feel small for it. he'll spend five years building a model of you so accurate it can predict what you will want for dinner, what you will name your children, what you will say when he does certain things in bed.

and none of it will be this. because this—the version of him asleep on your chest with his hand under your shirt—only exists in the moments he forgets to study. in the moments he forgets to perform. in the moments he's too undone to do anything but be held and loved.

and valarr can be taught everything except how to forget.)

but tonight you don't know that yet.

tonight you just hold him and stroke his hair. you press your mouth to his forehead and feel him sigh against you in his sleep, and somewhere in his ruined post-orgasm brain a new chapter of the dossier is being written in extremely careful handwriting, and it's titled:

she devoured me

she held me after

Valarr's arms come up around you and lock, and the hug is the kind of hug that would look, to anyone watching, like two people who've not seen each other in six months. Which is true, except that it's also the kind of hug that says I've been waiting to do this since the moment I left last time and you're the first real breath I've taken since I got off the plane and I'm holding you like this because if I let go too soon I will embarrass myself.

He doesn't let go.

He should. It's been five seconds, then ten, and your father is still talking to the lord and at some point this is going to become notable. But Valarr can't bring himself to care.

Valarr has his arms around you and his face is in your hair and he's breathing in the smell of you. Cold air, something clean with a hint of the woods behind the property, the particular scent of your shampoo that he could identify in a room of a thousand people.

His entire chest unclenches for the first time in six months.

You're burrowing your face into his sweater. Not the way people hug hello in front of parents. You're pressing your face into the grey cashmere at his shoulder, making a throaty sound that might be a sigh or might be a hum.

Your arms are tight around his ribs, and Valarr can feel the shape of you against him in the way he's catalogued since he was eleven. The exact height of you, the way your head fits beside his jaw, the way your shoulder blades feel under his palms.

"Hello, love," he says quietly.

He says it into your hair, and his voice does something it's not supposed to do, which is crack, just slightly, just at the end of the word, and you squeeze him tighter in response and neither of you moves.

Your father clears his throat, amused.

"I'll have someone take your bag up, Valarr. You know where your room is."

"Thank you, sir," Valarr calls out, not lifting his head, not letting go.

Your father laughs—the real laugh, the one he saves for family—and says something to the lord about those two and the two men leave the hall and go into the study and the door closes behind them.

You pull back. Not far. Just far enough to look at him. "You're here," you say, and sound pleased about it.

He smiles a little wider, warm all over. "I'm here."

"Good," you say. And then, softer, with your hands still on his sides and his hands still on your back, "Missed you, Val."

His throat closes. He swallows once. The silver band on his thumb is cool where his hand presses against your spine.

"Missed you too, love," he says quietly. (So much, so much, so very much.)

You grin at him, the real grin now, the one that makes his chest tear itself bloody.

"Come on," you urge, stepping back, taking his hand. You lace your fingers through his in the careless automatic way you've done since you were children. "I'll make you tea. The staff are useless."

And Valarr lets himself be pulled down the hall toward the kitchens, and his hand is in yours, and the wanting in him is so vast and so familiar that it's just the ambient state of being in your presence. Valarr thinks, as he's thought every time he's come to Winterfell for years, this is home. Not the house. Her.

But he doesn't say it.

He just follows you into the kitchen and watches you put the kettle on and sits at the table in the chair that's been his chair since he was eleven. When you hand him the mug and sit down across from him in your chair, he wraps both hands around the ceramic and looks at you over the steam and thinks:

Within the Red Keep, the air was different. It was thick wih the whispers of courtiers who looked at Valarr and saw not a grieving son, but a placeholder for a crown that was not meant for his so soon. You felt it through the bond — the way his skin crawled under their calculating gazes, the way he stiffened every time a lord mentioned the Tyrosh alliance or the necessity of 'securing the line'.

That night, the ghost-fires were relentless. You saw the city drowing in a pale, sickly green mist, and the screaming was so loud in your mind that you found yourself outside Valarr's chambers before you had even realized you'd move.

The Kingsguards at the door — two men whose faces were a mask of duty — hesitated only for a heartbeat before stepping aside. They knew you as the King's granddaughter, the girl who was rarely seen without the Young Prince.

Inside, the room was a tomb of silk and silence. Valarr stood by the hearth, the firelight dancing in his mismatched eyes, making the brown look like polished amber and the violet like a dying star. He looked older. The regal mask he wore during the day had been discarded with his cloak, leaving behind a man who looked as though he were being crushed by the very air he breathed.

"I can't hear myself thinking", he whispered, his voice a jagged rasp as he turned to you. "The bells, the councils...they speak of my father as if he were a piece on a cyvasse board. They speak of me as if I am already a statue in the Great Sept".

You crossed the room in silence, the hem of your gown hissing against the stone. When you reached him, you didn't speak; you simply pressed your forehead against his chest. His heart was a frantic bird trapped in a cage of ribs.

"Remind me", he breathed, his hands coming up to cradle your face with a desperation that made your breath hitch. "Remind me that I am still flesh. That I am still yours".

He kissed you then, and it wasn't the worshipful exploration of Ashford. It was a plea. It was a pact signed in the dark that tasted of salt and shared grief. His lips were hungry, searching for a life that the crown was trying to drain from him. In that kiss, the world outside ceased to exist; there were no succession, no Tyrosh alliances, only the heat of the dragon and the shadow of the dreams.

With a slow, reverent focus, his hands moved to the laces of your bodice. Each tug of the silk cord was a deliberate rejection of his duties. As the heavy fabric fell away, pooling around your ankles like a fallen banner, he trailed his fingers along the curve of your shoulders and down your spine, his touch leaving trails of fire on your skin. He looked at you then, not as a Prince looks at a Lady of the court, but as a man looking at his only salvation.

Valarr moved with an agonizing, soulful slowness. He didn't just touch you; he mapped you. His lips followed the line of your throat, lingering over the pulse point that hammered in synchronization with his own. When his mouth found the curve of your shoulder, his breath was a shaky hum against your skin.

"You are the only thing that is real", he murmured against your collarbone, his voice vibrating through your bones. "The crown is iron, the throne is cold...but this...you are life itself".

He lead you toward the bed, his hand never leaving yours, his fingers intertwined with yours as if he feared you might dissolve into mist. When you reached the layers of the dark furs, you didn't let him take the lead. Instead, you pushed gently against his shoulder, guiding him down until he sank back into the pillows. For a moment, the Young Prince looked startled, but as you climbed over him, his expression softened into a raw, soulful surrender.

Sitting astride him, you felt the sheer heat of his body radiating through your skin — a grounding force against the cold dread of your visions. You reached down, your palms flat against his chest, feeling the frantic, uneven rhythm of his heart.

"Tonight, you are not the shield", you commanded softly, your voice a low hum. "Tonight, I am the one who holds the dark at bay".

Valarr's hands came up to rest on your hips, his touch searing. He didn't pull you down; he simply held you there, his mismatched eyes wide and filled with a desperate, aching devotion. You began to move with a slow, agonizing grace, setting a rhythm that was entirely your own. You watched his face — the way his brow furrowed, the way his lips parted as he let out a jagged, broken breath.

It was a reversal of everything the world expected of you both. Here, in the silence of the Red Keep, you were the anchor. Every time you sank down, you felt the strength of him, the solid, muscular reality of the man you loved, drowning out the prophetic humming in your skull.

He groaned your name, a sound of pure surrender, his fingers digging slightly into the soft skin of your thighs. You leaned forward, your hair falling around you both like a silver veil, shielding his face from the flickering firelight. As you moved together, the intimacy felt like a prayer — a pact made in the language of the dragon, where souls were bared and the weight of the throne was forgotten.

The pleasure was a slow-burning fire, spreading through your veins until it reached the tips of your fingers. Valarr arched his back, his hands sliding up to catch yours, intertwining your fingers and pinning them to his own chest so he could feel the pulse of your shared heat.

When the release finally swept over you, it was a silent explosion of light. You collapsed against him, your breath hitching as the world finally went still. Valarr held you with a crushing force, his face buried in the crook of your neck, his body shaking with the aftershocks of a survival that felt more like a frantic necessity than simple passion.

As the frantic drumming of your hearts began to slow, Valarr didn't pull away. He shifted just enough to tuck you against his side, pulling the heavy sable furs over your cooling skin. His hand, still trembling slightly, found your hair, stroking the silver strands away from your damp forehead with a tenderness that brought tears to your eyes.

"I love you", he whispered into the hollow of your temple, the words sounding like a vow he was carving into the very foundations of the Red Keep. "Beyond the crown, beyond the dreams. I love you, my sweet dreamer".

You pressed a lingering kiss to his palm, tasting the salt of his skin. "And I love you, Valarr. Whatever the storm brings, it will not find us apart".

For a few precious hours, the ghost-fires were silent, and the prince slept without the weight of the world on his chest.

A few days of deceptive peace followed your return to the capital. In the quiet corridors of the Red Keep, you traded lingering glances and secret smiles, the silver chain beneath your bodice acting as a silent anchor to that night of silk and promises. For a heartbeat, you allowed yourself to believe that your visions had been wrong — that the storm Daeron saw had passed with the tourney.

But the gods are seldom so kind to your House.

It began on a day of heavy rain and stifling heat. You found Valarr in the Small Council chamber, his hand trembling as he reached for a flagon of water. By evening, the Young Prince was a prisoner of his own bed. The Great Spring Sickness hadn't come with a roar, but with a creeping, pallid mist that swallowed the city and finally reached the heights of Aegon's Hill.

"Valarr?", you whispered, your heart hammering against your ribs as you entered his chambers that first night.

When you touched his shoulder, you recoiled. He was burning. Not with the healthy dragon-fire heat of your passion, but with a sickly, unnatural fever that seemed to be cooking him from within. His mismatched eyes flickered open, but they were unfocused, darting around the canopy of the bed as if watching ghosts you could not see.

"The bells", he croaked, his voice a jagged shadow of itself. "They won't stop...the bells, they are tolling for the spring".

The days that followed felt like a descent into the Seven Hells. You refused to leave. The world outside the heavy oak doors of the chamber ceased to exist, becoming nothing more than a series of muffled sounds and desperate pleas. Your father was the most persistent. You could hear his heavy boots pacing the corridor, the rhythmic clank of his rings as he pounded on the wood.

"Open this door!", his voice boomed, thick with a mixture of terror and a command that usually brooked no defiance. "You are my daughter, not a martyr! You cannot save him by dying with him!".

You didn't answer. You didn't even flinch when he kicked the door in frustration. You simply leaned your forehead against the cool wood for a second before turning back to the bed. You would not let them take you from him. Not now.

You spent the hours bathing his skin with rosewater and wine, watching as the vibrant, strong man you loved withered. His face grew gaunt, the skin stretching tight over his cheekbones until he looked more like a death mask than a prince. The silver chain he had given you hung heavy around your neck, a cold reminder of the protection he could no longer provide.

The ghost-fires became a blinding roar. Every time you closed your eyes, you saw the silver wing from your earlier vision. It wasn't just broken anymore; it was decaying, turning to ash in a wind that smelled of rot. You felt his pain as if it were your own — the fire in his chest, the ache in his bones, and the crushing weight of a crown he would never wear.

One evening, during a brief moment of lucidity, he reached for your hand. His grip, once so firm it could guide a horse in full gallop, was now as weak as a child's.

"Don't...don't stay in the dark", he panted, a single tear tracking through the grim and sweat of his face. "You are the dreamer...you must find a dream...without me".

"There is no dream without you, Valarr", you sobbed, pressing his knuckles to your lips. "You are the shield. You promised".

He tried to smile, but it was a grimace of agony. "Even shields...break".

That night, as the Great Sept's bells began a relentless tolling for the High Septon and the King, Valarr drew one final, shuddering breath. The moment his heart stopped, you didn't just see it; you felt the very fabric of your being tear. The bond with him — that invisible, golden thread that had anchored your souls through every cold nightmare — snapped with a violence that made you gasp for air. It was a sharp, cold silence in your mind, like a candle being blown out in a cavern, leaving you in a darkness so absolute it felt physical.

Your hand, still clutching his, felt the warmth drain away with a speed that was terrifying. You pressed your face into the crook of his neck, searching for a pulse, a breath, a spark — anything. But there was only the silence, and the heavy scent of lilies and death.

You didn't scream. You didn't cry. The pain was too vast for sound, a hollow ache that reached down into your very marrow. You simply sat there, holding his cooling hand, watching the mist press against the windowpanes like a shroud waiting to be claimed.

The morning of the funeral arrived, not with the clarity of a new day, but with a sky choked by the thick, black smokes of the funeral pyres burning across the city. The Great Spring Sickness was still claiming hundreds, and the air itself felt heavy with the scent of death and incense.

Inside the chamber, the silence was finally broken by the sound of the door opening. You didn't turn your head; you were still sitting by the bed, your hand resting on the cold, white linen where Valarr had spent his final moments. Your eyes were dry, burned out by a grief too deep for tears.

"They are waiting, you know", a voice said. It wasn't the booming command of your father, but a quiet, almost hesitant tone.

You looked up to find Aerion standing there. He was dressed in his black mourning silks, the three-headed dragon of your House embroidered in dark, shimmering thread across his chest. His usual smirk was absent, his features set in a mask of grim solemnity. He walked over and knelt beside you, his boots clicking softly on the stone. He didn't tell you to be strong. Instead, he reached out and took your hand — the one that had been clutching the silver chain until your knuckles were white.

"He was the best of us", Aerion whispered, his gaze flickering toward the empty bed. "I used to hate min. For being the silver son, the one who never stumbled, the one who carried the weight of the crown as if it were made of feathers. But standing here now...the world feels smaller without him, doesn't it? It feels colder".

You looked at him, surprised by the raw honesty in his voice. "I didn't think you cared for him, brother. Not after Ashford".

Aerion gave a small, bitter ghost of a laugh, his thumb tracing the back of your hand. "Ashford was a disaster. I was a fool, my pride took away my senses and played with the lives of many. But Valarr...Valarr was the only one who looked at me and didn't just see a problem to be solved or a weapon to be pointed. He saw a brother. He was the only one who could stand between us and the iron will of our father without breaking".

He leaned closer, his violet eyes fixed on yous. "Our father is a mountain of stone, sister. He expects us to be statues of duty, unbreakable and silent. And Daeron...Daeron is drowning in a sea of wine because he can't look at the world without a flagon in his hand. But you? You are the heart of this family, because Valarr held you so close to his".

"The heart is broken, brother", you whispered, your voice cracking.

"Then I will be the ribs that protect what's left", Aerion said, his grip tightening with a firm, grounding pressure. "I will not let you walk through this ceremony alone. If you falter, the court will watch you like wolves waiting for a kill. I won't give them that. I am your brother, and for today, I will be your shield, since he cannot be here to do it himself".

He helped you stand, his arm supporting you when your legs felt like lead. With a tenderness you never thought him capable of, he straightened the silver chain around your neck, making sure the metal sat perfectly against your skin.

Throughout the long, agonizing procession toward the Great Sept, Aerion was an unwavering presence. He didn't just walk beside you; he positioned himself so that his broad shoulders blocked the view of the whispering courtiers, creating a private aisle of grief just for the two of you.

Inside the Sept, when the chanting of the septons grew too loud and the smell of the funeral incense threatened to choke you, you felt his hand slide beneath your elbow. It was a firm, steadying lift that kept you upright when your knees buckled at the sight of the dark shroud covering Valarr. When a stray sob finally escaped your lips, Aerion didn't look away in shame; instead, he leaned into you, his heavy silk cloak brushing against your arm, offering his own strength as a physical brace. He stared down any lord who dared to look too closely at your distress, his eyes flashing with a protective fire that silenced the room.

As the ceremony ended and the final prayers were whispered into the smoke-filled air, Aerion leaned in, his voice a mere breath against your ear.

"He is gone, sister", he whispered, acknowledging the finality of it with a rare, quiet gravity. "But I am here. I will walk you back, and I will make sure the doors stay shut. No one will bother you tonight. You have my word".

True to his promise, he escorted you back through the labyrinth of the Red Keep, his hand never leaving your arm. He stayed until you reached the safety of your chambers, dismissed the servants with a sharp gesture, and stood guard for a moment at the threshold. Only when he saw you sink into the chair by the fireplace did he finally bow his head and retreat, closing the heavy oak door with a click that signaled the beginning of your final solitude.

The night was a hollow, echoing thing. After Aerion's footsteps faded into the stone silence of the hallway, the Red Keep felt less like a palace and more like a cage. The mist still clung to the windows, ghost-white and cold, mocking the warmth that had filled this room only a few nights before.

You sat at your desk, the silver chain around your neck feeling like the only solid thing left in a world made of ash. Your hands did not tremble as you dipped the quill into the ink. You were no longer a dreamer lost in visions; you were a woman making her final pact with the dark.

To those who carry the name of the Dragon,

Father, forigive me. You were always the Anvil, iron-willed and unyielding, but I was made of the smoke that rises from the forge. Do not look for me in the stone crypts; I could never breath beneath the weight of this earth. Be kind to what remains of us.

Daeron, my twin, my other half. The wine will not drown the fires forever, and now you must carry the weight of the dreams alone. I am sorry I could not stay to hold your hand in the dark, but the silence is calling me.

Aerion, thank you for the shield you offered today. For a moment, you were the brother I always hoped you could be. Keep that light, however small it may be, before the madness consumes the rest of you. You are more than a flame.

Aemon, my brother in Oldtown. Your books speak of history and the stars, but they cannot describe the emptiness of a heart whose sun has set. You seek wisdom in the Citadel; I seek peace in the clouds.

Daella, Rhae, my sweet sisters. Do not let the gloom of this House turn you into shadows. Wear your brightest silks and find joy in the gardens of Summerhall. Remember me not as a tragedy, but as a sister who finally found her way home.

And little, sweet Egg. You have the clearest eyes of us all. Stay among the smallfolk, brother. Learn their songs and their sorrows. Life is hollow thing without love, and I pray you find more of it than we did. Remember us.

The storm is over. The silver wing is mended. May the Seven forgive me and grant me a new life with him.

You left the parchment in the center of the desk, weighted down by a small dragon carved of obsidian. You did not look back at the bed. You walked to the balcony, the night air biting at your skin, and looked out over the Blackwater Bay. The bells were silent now.

You stepped onto the ledge, the silver links of the chain catching the faint moonlight one last time. For a heartbeat, the wind felt like Valarr's breath against your ear, and then, there was only the fall.

It was Maekar who found the room empty. He had come at dawn, driven by a father's restless guilt, breaking the lock he had respected the day before. Behind him stood Aerion, his face pale and drained of its temporary strength.

Maekar did not scream. He stood as still as the statues he so admired, his large hands trembling as he picked up the parchment. As his eyes scanned the lines, the Anvil seemed to buckle. He sank into the chair, the letter crinkling in his grip, his gaze fixed on the open balcony doors where the white mist was pouring in the room.

Aerion walked to the edge, looking out into the void. He didn't speak, but he reached up, his fingers brushing the stone where you had stood.

It's out of him before he can catch it, helpless, the sound of a man whose entire nervous system just went molten.

You feel the exact moment his knees go soft, the way his whole body lists toward you like a tree cut at the base. Your teeth clamp down harder in response. The predator reflex to the sound of surrender, holding him firm in your jaws because the moan means the pretty dragon liked it. Means you've just broken something open that's been locked for years.

Valarr's free hand comes up to cup the back of your head, not pulling you off but holding you there, fingers threading into your hair with a tenderness that doesn't match the teeth in his palm.

"Yes," he breathes, and it's barely a word, just air and need shaped into sound.

His other arm comes around you properly and he's falling back against the wall, pulling you with him, and the word that escapes him next is ruined, husky, broken with need. "My love."

Barely a breath. The two words he's been swallowing since he was a boy coming out in a voice you've never heard from him before.

You release his hand only to fist both hands in his sweater and yank him down to you, your mouth finding the juncture of his throat, that soft vulnerable place where Valarr's pulse hammers under the skin. You close your lips around it first, just the barest pressure, tasting salt and warmth and the particular scent of him that's lived in your nervous system since you were children, and then you set your teeth against the tendon and bite.

Just enough to feel him shudder in your arms, to feel the sound Valarr makes reverberate through his chest and into yours.

"God," he whispers into your hair, and his hands are moving now, one sliding up your spine and one cupping your jaw, his thumb stroking along your cheekbone while you work your mouth against his throat.

He's touching you the way someone touches something they've been forbidden to touch for years, hungry and disbelieving all at once, his fingers learning the shape of you like he's trying to commit it to memory in case you take it back.

You seal your mouth over the pulse point and suck, pulling the skin between your lips, tasting him properly now, and Valarr goes liquid against the wall. His head tips back, baring more of his throat to you in a gesture of submission so complete it makes something hot and possessive flare in your chest, and the sound he makes is soft, almost wondering, a low sighing moan that you feel more than hear.

"Yes," he says again, and then, "my love," and then just another sigh, his hands stroking through your hair, down your neck, across your shoulders, mapping you with a gentleness that sits strangely against the teeth you've got at his throat.

He's muttering into your hair now, half-words and sounds that might be your name or might be nothing, just the shape of his need given voice, and every few seconds he lets out another small sigh, another quiet moan, like he can't quite believe this is happening and his body needs to confirm it's real.

You bite down harder. Not breaking skin but close, your teeth finding the tendon and pressing until you feel him tense and then melt, and the sound Valarr makes is louder this time, ragged, his fingers tightening in your hair.

"I'm sorry," he manages, voice wrecked, and his lips are against your temple, your cheekbone, the corner of your eye, pressing small kisses anywhere he can reach while you hold him in your jaws. "I'm sorry, love. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it."

But he's not pulling away. He's not asking you to stop. He's holding you closer. One hand at the nape of your neck and one spread across your back, and between the apologies he's making these desperate sounds, little sighs and catches of breath that tell you everything you need to know about how long he's been wanting this, how much he wants it now.

You understand, with your mouth on his throat and his pulse beating against your tongue, that this is heaven to him. Not despite the teeth but because of them. That every time you bite down Valarr melts a little further, gives a little more, and the sounds he's making aren't pain, they're relief, they're finally, they're yes.

"More," he whispers, barely audible, his voice gone hoarse and soft. "Let me feel you, love. Please."

So you give him more. You work your mouth along his throat, setting your teeth at different points, testing the tender places, and every time you bite down he sighs for you. Strokes your hair, presses his face into the crown of your head and mutters your name tenderly.

His whole body is trembling against yours, his breath coming fast and shallow, and when you find the spot just below his ear and bite hard enough to bruise Valarr moans, a high soft sound you've never heard from him before, and his arms lock around you like he's afraid you'll vanish if he doesn't hold tight enough.

"I've wanted—" he starts, and then breaks off into another moan when you suck hard at the junction of his neck and shoulder. "God. Always. I've always—"

He doesn't finish the sentence. He doesn't need to. You can feel it in the way he's shaking, in the way his hands won't stop moving over you, in the soft continuous stream of sighs and moans and whispered endearments he's pouring into your hair.

This isn't new desire. This is years of it, decades of it, coming apart in your arms.

You pull back just enough to look at him. His eyes are half-lidded, dark, his face flushed, his mouth slightly open, and when you meet his gaze he looks at you like you've just remade the world. His thumb comes up to trace your lower lip, gentle, reverent, and his voice when he speaks is so soft you almost don't hear it.

"You've always been able to do this to me," he says, and there's something naked in his face, something unguarded that you've never seen before. "Since we were fifteen. Since before that. You've always been the one who could—"

He swallows hard. You can see his throat work, see the marks you've left blooming dark against his skin.

"I want you to," he finishes quietly. "I want you to take whatever you need. I'm safe. You're safe with me. This is—" Another shaky breath. "This is everything, love. This is everything."

And you understand, standing there with his pulse still beating against your mouth and his arms wrapped around you and his body trembling with want, that he's not just letting you claim him.

He's been waiting his whole life for you to do it. The wolf at the dragon's throat isn't dominance won. It's dominance offered, freely, gladly, by a man who's been yours since he was nine years old and has never wanted to belong to anyone else.

You set your teeth against his throat one more time, bite down just hard enough to make him gasp, and Valarr holds you through it, sighing, stroking, whispering yes and love and always into your hair until you finally, finally grow gentler.

Until your teeth become a kiss and the kiss becomes your cheek pressed against the place you've marked, and he holds you there against the wall in his apartment with the argument forgotten and the life you've both built so carefully shattered at your feet, and neither of you says a word because there's nothing left to say that your bodies haven't already made clear.

I started it the night I came home from meeting you. I came back to the penthouse and I stood at the window for an hour and I couldn't shake you off. I'd never had that happen before. I'm a man who has been able, at any point in his adult life, to set down what's been bothering him and pick it up again at a time of his choosing.

You wouldn't be set down. You wouldn't be set down for the entire cab ride, and you wouldn't be set down at the window, and you wouldn't be set down at the desk when I gave up on sleeping and poured myself a drink and tried to read.

Somewhere around two in the morning I gave up on reading and I opened this notebook and I started writing down what I knew about you, because I thought — and I'll say it in plain language — I thought that if I wrote you down, I could see you clearly. And if I could see you I could understand you. If I could understand you I could put you back in the world the way I put everything else in the world: in the box where it belonged, in a drawer where I could find it later.

That isn't what the notebook became.

I had thought, when I started writing, that this would be a record of a study. Then a courtship. Then, eventually, our marriage. I didn't yet know what it would turn out to be. I'm writing it anyway.

I love you. I'm not going to say it again, because if I start I won't stop, but I want it stated, here, in the doorway, that I love you. That the entries that follow are the work of a man who loves you.

I'm still yours, my love.

Begin.

#1 — October. Year one. Day one.

The Stark heir.

I won't call you that again, in this notebook or anywhere else, but it's the first thing my brain reached for when it found you across the room. The way it would for any piece on the board. Heir, holdings, leverage, angle of approach.

I noticed your shoes. Good but not new. You don't buy new shoes for events like this, I'll later learn; you wear shoes you trust.

I noticed the way you held your drink. Low, two fingers, like a man would.

I also noticed the cut of your jaw, not quite turned toward anyone in the room.

You weren't trying to be looked at.

You knew you would be.

You were right.

#2 — October. Year one. Day one, later.

I gave myself fifteen minutes.

I lost in eight.

I crossed the room in eight. I had been pretending to listen to the chairman of something tedious, and then I looked up and you had angled your face toward the windows and the lamp had caught your throat above the collar of that dress, and I forgot what country I was in.

You knew my company before I introduced it. You knew the year my father died and the year I took over and the line of business he had been trying to spin off before the aneurysm got to him first. You said it the way you would recite a boring memo.

You looked at me, and I — well. I laughed.

I hadn't laughed at anything I didn't plan to laugh at in three years.

#3 — October. Year one. Day one. The car home.

I've been sitting with the feeling in the back of the car for nine blocks and I'm trying to identify it.

I've been looked at.

Not looked over. Not assessed for net worth. Not flirted with. Looked at the way a person looks at a piece of livestock they're considering buying. Calm, comprehensive, unimpressed.

I don't know yet whether the feeling is the wanting or the unease. Probably both.

I'll send peonies in the morning. Not roses. Some part of me already knows, on no real basis, that you'd resent roses.

#4 — October. Year one. Day one. 2:14 AM.

I'm starting a notebook.

I haven't kept one since I was nineteen. I've been a man who keeps things in his head for a long time, and the things in my head have stayed where I put them, and tonight the thing in my head will not stay where I put it.

So I'm going to write you down.

I'm going to write you down because if I write you down I'll be able to see you, and if I can see you I can put you back. I can take you out of my head, where you don't belong, and put you in a notebook, where you can be reviewed at intervals like a quarterly report.

You aren't an acquisition. I'm not planning anything. I'm simply unsettled. I'm simply thrown. I haven't been thrown in a long time and I want to know why so I can stop being thrown.

The hypothesis: you've done something to me at that party that I don't have a vocabulary for, and if I write down enough about you, I'll find the vocabulary, and the feeling will reduce to its component parts, and the parts will be manageable.

I'll revisit it.

#5 — October. Year one. Day two. Morning.

I sent the peonies at 8 AM. The note said: I'd like to see you again. No pressure. Valarr.

I rewrote the note four times. The first version had a comma I didn't like. The second was too formal. The third had the word delighted in it, which I crossed out at the last second because delighted would have been a tell. The fourth is what went.

A man of my pedigree shouldn't have to rewrite a note four times.

#6 — October. Year one. Day three.

You haven't called.

I suspect, by day seven or eight, I'll be telling myself I haven't been counting. I am counting.

Day three.

#7 — October. Year one. Day four.

Still nothing.

I had a meeting at nine and I asked a man to repeat a number I'd heard him say. I haven't asked a man to repeat a number in this company in two years.

You're costing me money.

I'd find it funnier than I do if I were less afraid of it. I'm both at once.

#8 — October. Year one. Day five.

I've checked the phone twice between meetings this morning. There is nothing to check. I know there's nothing to check because the phone would notify me, and yet I check anyway, because the part of me that's checking does not trust the part of me that knows.

I'm writing this so I can mock myself later. I'm writing it because if I don't put it in here, it'll get out somewhere worse. It'll surface in a meeting, or in front of Matarys when he calls, or in a sentence I won't be able to take back at dinner Tuesday.

The notebook is doing its job. The notebook is the only thing doing its job right now.

#9 — October. Year one. Day six.

I've started, this evening, to consider that you may not call.

It feels like being told a project has been cancelled. Like a board has voted no on something I'd assumed was a formality. The small, hot, undignified shock of finding out the floor in front of you is not, in fact, a floor.

I won't call you.

That isn't done. I won't do it. The peonies were the move; the next move is yours; if you don't make it, the game ends, and the game ending is — let me look at this in plain language — the game ending is an outcome I had not previously considered as a possibility.

Going to bed.

#10 — October. Year one. Day eight.

You called.

I'm writing that with a stupid little flourish I'd be embarrassed to show anyone else. You called.

You waited a week. Which, in retrospect, was exactly the right amount of time. I want it on record that I understood it only in retrospect. In prospect I had been losing my mind. In retrospect it was elegant work that has somehow made you even more attractive. Troublesome.

I hoped that you'd call and I knew I would not pick up on the first ring even though I was looking at the phone when it rang.

I picked up on the third.

I'd been a man with my hand on the phone for two rings.

You said the peonies were the right call. You said: I'd have hung up on roses.

I have, since hearing that, arranged for there to always be peonies in this apartment. A standing order. You don't know about the standing order yet. You'll think it's a coincidence, the freshness, that I simply like them. I'll let you think it.

#11 — October. Year one. Day eight. After.

You agreed to one drink. You didn't extend it.

You let me take you to the car at the end of the night and you let me kiss the back of your knuckles and you walked away and you didn't look back.

I've spent an hour standing at the window of the penthouse. I haven't turned on the lamps.

I was thinking about your laugh — there's a thing your laugh does, an unwilling crack at the start of it, like you weren't going to allow it and then did — and I was thinking that I have everything any man would ever want, and I've just now found the first thing I don't yet have and want more than anything.

#12 — October. Year one. Day twelve.

Second dinner. I waited four days.

You waited a week before calling. I waited four days before asking. I'm trying to learn the rhythm of you.

You ate half my dessert without asking. You did it absently, with this deliberate focus you do when you're testing something. I gave you the rest. You didn't thank me, just looked at me with those eyes. It's a dangerous look. Not because it's seductive, or coy, or sweet.

It's something else entirely. I don't know what to do with you. I can't figure you out.

I'm keeping a list. Of what I'm learning. The list is in the back of this notebook.

#13 — October. Year one.

From the list:

You don't eat dessert unless someone else orders it first. You will then eat half of theirs.

You hate tasting menus because they take too long.

You read with a finger under the line of the page when you're tired.

You don't laugh at things that aren't funny. You won't pretend to. You will simply look at the person who said the unfunny thing with a kind of patient mercy that's worse than mockery.

You don't talk about your mother. You almost did, once, and stopped.

I haven't asked. I won't ask. I'll wait until you offer it, and I'll be very careful with it when you do.

#14 — November. Year one.

You smell, faintly, of something piney. Cedar, maybe.

I assumed perfume for three weeks. In the cab home from a place I won't bother to name, I realised it isn't perfume.

It's just you. You smell like the north of somewhere I have never been to. Like cold air and old woods. The inside of a place that has never once been warm enough, and I've started to find that I cannot fall asleep on the nights you aren't here without the side of the bed you slept on smelling faintly of it still.

#15 — November. Year one.

You noticed the peonies on the hall table tonight. You stopped. You touched one. You didn't say anything about it.

But you smiled, small and real, with your back to me, where you thought I couldn't see.

I saw.

#16 — December. Year one. Day sixty-two.

I asked if I could kiss you.

The look on your face when I asked is something I'd like to be able to find again, later, when I'm wondering whether I dreamed you.

You went still. You looked at me like I'd produced a small unexpected animal out of my pocket. Like you couldn't decide whether the asking offended you or charmed you.

Some part of you sharpened at it. A tightening at the corner of the mouth, an interest in the eye.

And another part of you, the part you don't show many people — the soft animal somewhere in the centre of you that wants and wants and won't say so — that part went quiet.

You said yes.

I was careful. So careful. I've been careful all my life, but with you the carefulness has a different quality. It isn't the carefulness of a man following a script. It's the carefulness of a man who's been handed something he knows can break and is very careful about keeping it.

I held your face like I was looking at it through glass.

You let me. And then you took my lower lip between your teeth, gently, and bit. Not hard. Just enough that I understood I'd been granted a thing, not given it.

I've been thinking about the bite for two days.

You might be the first woman I've ever met who knows the difference between those two verbs.

#17 — December. Year one. Three days later.

Still thinking about the bite.

#18 — December. Year one. Day eighty-something. The first night.

I'm writing this on the morning after.

I want a record of the first night written this morning, while it's still inside the twelve hours where I can be honest. Before I start the long process of softening it into a story I'll be allowed to tell myself thirty years from now.

You came to the penthouse.

I'd asked. You'd said yes the way you say yes to most things: with the flat northern yes that doesn't commit to anything beyond the next two hours. You walked through my front door with the expression of a person inspecting a hotel suite she'd been booked into without consultation. You looked at the art on the wall. You didn't comment. You looked at the peonies on the hall table. You paused there.

I poured us wine. You drank yours. I drank mine. We talked. You talked about almost nothing, because you knew, and I knew, that what we were doing here had already been decided by both of us before you took your coat off.

I undressed you in the bedroom.

I undressed you with — and I'm going to use the word, even though I'm embarrassed by it — with reverence. With worship. I slid the dress off your shoulders. I pressed my mouth to the notch between your collarbones. I think I murmured something into your skin like god, look at you. I was being the version of myself I'd been practising to be. The one I'd built for nights like this. The patient, attentive, careful man. The man who's been told this is what women like.

I went down on you. I was good at it. I'd been told I was good at it before. I'd been good at it with other women.

You came.

I rolled you under me. I slid into you. I fucked you the way I'd been taught to fuck a woman I wanted to keep. Slow. Eye contact. Saying your name. A careful cadence. A technique I had, I want to be clear, technique. I'd been told it was good technique.

And somewhere around the time my mouth found the hollow of your throat, I felt the air in the room change.

I don't think I'll ever feel air change that way again, and I want it on record that this is the moment.

You went still.

Not bored-still. Not no-still. Watching-still. Like a creature in a forest that's just heard something move. Your hand, which had been on my back, slid up to my shoulder. Slid up to the side of my neck. Settled. Didn't push. Just settled. And I felt my body, slowly, register that the hand on my neck was no longer the hand of a woman being made love to. It was the hand of a woman deciding.

You flipped me.

You moved a hip, and you used the shoulder you had your hand on, and the world I had been carefully arranging on top of you turned over by ninety degrees, and I was on my back. I was on my back and you were straddling me and you were looking down at me with an expression I'd never seen on a woman in a bedroom before.

You looked unimpressed.

Not unkind. Not even disappointed. Just unimpressed, the way you look at a piece of meat at a restaurant when the waiter brings it on the tray. Calm. Comprehensive.

You said, quietly: no.

I think I said something stupid. No?

You said: not like that.

Then you put your hand at my throat.

Not pressing. Just there. The cool weight of you settled against my pulse. Your other hand pinned one of my wrists against the pillow above my head. You leaned down. You looked at me from approximately six inches.

You said: I'm going to fuck you, Valarr. I'm going to do it the way I want. You can stay still and enjoy it, or you can ask me to stop and I will, and we will get dressed and I'll have a polite cab home, and we won't do this again. Pick.

The half-second I took to pick is the most important half-second of my life so far.

I didn't know that, in the half-second. I want it on the page, in writing, before the future me — who will know it — makes me forget the version of me that didn't.

I felt my breath stop, then start again at a faster rate. I felt — somewhere low, somewhere I hadn't been before — a thing in me sit up and pay attention. A thing in me that I didn't know lived in me. A thing that had been waiting somewhere under all my polish, all my technique, all the careful gentleness I'd been performing for women all my life. It sat up and it paid attention and it said: oh. There you are. Oh, thank god, there you are.

I said: stay.

You said: good boy.

I shuddered.

No woman has ever called me a good boy in a bed. The response in me to being called a good boy was so immediate and so total that I was, for a second, embarrassed by it. The way a man is embarrassed when his body has just told him a thing about himself he hadn't been ready to know.

You rode me.

You rode me for I don't know how long. With my wrist pinned and your hand at my throat and the small concentrated attention that made me feel like I was coming apart at the seams. You dragged your nails down my chest. I gasped. You watched me gasp.

You said: that hurt, didn't it?

I said: yes.

You asked: do that again?

I croaked, in a register I didn't know I owned, do that again.

You did.

You left four pink lines down my chest. They'll pink up red by morning. They'll bruise faintly by tomorrow night. I'll find them in the shower the next day and I'll trace them with my fingers in front of the mirror, and I'll be grateful.

When you let me come, you made me ask.

You made me ask twice.

I asked twice.

I would have asked four times.

If you'd asked me to, I would have asked until I cried.

After — you slid off me and you fell onto your back next to me on the wrecked sheets and you laughed. Quietly. Almost private. As if you'd surprised yourself.

You said, to the ceiling: Christ, Targaryen. Where have you been hiding that?

I didn't answer.

I didn't answer because the honest answer was that I hadn't been hiding it. I hadn't been hiding it because I didn't know it was in me. I didn't know there was a room behind that wall in me. I'd lived in this body for twenty-six years and I hadn't known there was a room behind that wall.

You walked up to it and you opened it.

You didn't put the room there. You found it. The way a competent surveyor finds a load-bearing wall.

I'm writing this down now, at six in the morning, with you still asleep next to me. You're face-down in my pillow. Your hair is across my arm. You snore lightly when you sleep on your stomach, I'm learning. Your mouth is open slightly and your hand is curled under the pillow next to your face, and you don't look like the woman who had her hand at my throat four hours ago.

You look like a girl who fell asleep in someone's bed.

Both of those women are you.

The wolf who put her hand on my throat and the girl breathing slowly into my pillow. They aren't different women. They aren't a performance and a real one. They are both real. You contain both. You've shown me — in the span of four hours — both, and you've shown me by accident, because you didn't realise the second one was an exposure.

The wolf you've been all your life.

The girl is the one I'll have to be careful of.

The wolf won't be hurt by me; the wolf will, in fact, eat me if I'm not careful, and I welcome it. I'm signing up.

But the girl — the small soft thing breathing into my pillow — that one I'll have to be careful with. That one hasn't been shown to many people, and the fact that she's been shown to me, by accident, on the first night, in a wrecked bed, with my chest still bleeding faintly from her nails — that's a gift, and I'm going to act, for the rest of my life, like a man who's been given one.

I'm in love with you.

At six in the morning, on the first morning, before I have any defence against it: I'm in love with you. I don't know what I'm going to do about it.

I know only that I can't afford to be the man who asks too quickly. You would leave a man who asks too quickly.

I'll wait.

I have nothing but time.

#19 — December. Year one. Two days later.

You came over for dinner.

I cooked. I haven't cooked for a woman before. I made pasta with a sauce my grandmother taught my father to make, and I burned the garlic, and I started over without telling you. You sat at the counter with a glass of wine and you watched me.

You watched me without expression. You didn't encourage me. You didn't perform the small admiring interest a woman normally performs when a man is cooking for her for the first time.

You watched me the way you watched me at the party.

Calmly. Comprehensively.

I had to turn my back to you twice to recover, and I think you knew. I think you knew and I think you let me, the way you let a horse you've just bought walk itself around the new paddock to learn the boundary.

After — after dinner, after the second bottle, after we'd ended up on the couch — you put your hand on my jaw and you turned my face to look at you, and you said, very gently: Valarr. Stop performing.

I said: I don't know how.

You said: I know. I'll teach you.

#20 — January. Year one. The first night you stay.

I don't know how to write this entry. I'm going to write it badly. I don't care. God, I don't care.

You stayed.

You stayed Friday night and you stayed Saturday and on Sunday morning it was snowing and you slept past nine.

The duvet had slipped off your shoulder.

The white streak in my hair, the one I've hated since I was boy, was caught in your fingers — you'd reached for it in your sleep at some point and hadn't let go — and I lay there for I don't know how long with my chest doing something stupid in the dark while you breathed against my neck.

You stirred.

You opened your eyes and you found me, and you didn't look away, and you reached out and you smoothed the crease between my brows. The one I didn't know was there.

I've never been touched like that.

I've been touched. I've been worshipped, in the dim, impersonal way men of my position get worshipped. I've been touched by women who were thinking about the future, by women who were thinking about themselves. By women who were performing tenderness for an audience of one (me) and an audience of zero (themselves).

I have not, in twenty-six years, been touched by anyone who simply saw a crease between my brows and smoothed it.

You smiled. You said, hi, with your voice rough and low from sleep.

I said, hi.

I asked for five more minutes.

You gave me an hour.

I curled up against you. I tucked my face into your shoulder.

I felt like a creature being taken into a den.

This is the small soft thing. The girl-self from entry eighteen. The part of you that doesn't get shown to many people, and you were showing it to me, in a duvet, with your fingers in my hair.

I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to earn the right to be looked at like that again.

I'm in love with you. I wrote it down two weeks ago. A witness from this morning, too.

I'll wait.

I have nothing but time.

#21 — January. Year one.

You woke up this morning and the moment your eyes found me you smiled. Before you were awake enough to decide whether to, before the wall went up, before you remembered to be careful.

This is love, I think.

This is love.

#22 — January. Year one.

You called me three days later and asked me to come over.

You didn't say I missed you. You wouldn't. Not then. You said: I have a meeting at four. I want you here at four-thirty.

I cleared the afternoon. At three-fifteen, with no explanation, I texted my chief of staff cancel the rest of today. I haven't, in three years of running this company, cleared an afternoon without explanation.

I was there at four-thirty.

You opened the door in a robe with your hair wet from a shower. You looked at me. You said, come in.

I came in.

#23 — February. Year one. The bar.

You bit me on the bottom lip in a cab.

I'd kissed you first. You'd let me. Then you took my lower lip between your teeth, the way you had the first time, but harder this time. Not enough to bleed. Enough that I felt it for the rest of the night, throbbing.

I sat very still in the cab for the next four blocks. I didn't retaliate. I didn't, as another man might, take you firmer in the cab to demonstrate that I'd received the message.

I'd received the message.

I sat still and I received the message and I didn't retaliate, because I'd understood, somewhere in the night of entry eighteen, that the way to keep you was to receive.

To receive, and to be patient, and to let you be the originator.

I knew it from the start. By February of year one, I knew that the only available role for me in this arrangement was receiving, and I chose it, on purpose, with my eyes open, because the alternative was not having you at all.

#24 — March. Year one. Matarys calls.

Matarys called.

He hasn't met you yet. He won't, for nine months. He's only heard me say your name three times.

He said: Valarr.

I said: what.

He said: Valarr, you sound different.

I said: I don't.

He said: you do. You sound... Val. You sound like a man who's been hit by a car. What's her name?

I told him your name. There was a pause on the line.

He said: the Stark heir.

I said: yes.

He said: oh, Christ, Val. That's not a fling. That's an act of god.

I said: I know.

He laughed for so long I had to set the phone down on the desk and go pour myself a drink and come back, and he was still laughing.

Then he said, more carefully: Val. Don't fold yourself, you idiot. She'll see it.

I don't understand what he means.

I'm writing it down because in two years I'll look back at this entry and I'll understand exactly what he meant, and I'll want to know the date on which I'd been given the warning and failed to translate it.

He said: I want to meet her.

I said: not yet.

He said: when?

I said: when she's ready.

He said: she'll never be ready, Val. You'll have to bring her.

I said: fine. Christmas.

He said: Christmas. Dragonstone?

I said: Christmas. Dragonstone.

He said, more quietly: brother, don't fuck this up, you sound happy.

#25 — April. Year one.

I'm keeping a list of jokes that have worked.

I'm not telling you this. It would mortify me to be told a man was keeping a list of his successful jokes on me.

But I am.

I want to be funnier for you. I want to be the funniest thing in your week. I want to be the thing you think of, in some boring meeting in some glass tower somewhere across the city, and have your mouth twitch at the corner because of me.

#26 — May. Year one. The cab.

You laughed so hard you spilled your drink at dinner.

You laugh against your closed mouth first. You try to keep it in. You always try to keep it in, and then it cracks and you snort and your hand comes up to your mouth and you turn your face away from me. Like you're protecting me from how funny I've just become to you.

You won't look at me again for at least thirty seconds.

The floor of me dropped out by an inch. The kind of small structural failure you wouldn't catch wihtout looking.

I had to stop my hand from reaching across the table because I wasn't yet allowed to reach across the table.

#27 — May. Year one. After the laugh.

You have a tell.

I don't think you know you have it. I don't think anyone has ever told you. You have a tell that fires when you're being looked at by someone you've decided you like. You go still. Half a second. Less than that. Still the way a wolf goes still when it's just heard a distant sound. And then you continue, exactly the way you'd been continuing, and the stillness is gone, and unless you'd been watching for it you'd never have seen it.

I've been watching for it.

By May of year one, I've been watching you precisely enough to find a tell.

This is not the language of a man who has fallen in love. This is the language of a man who has fallen in love and is also studying the woman he's fallen in love with the way he studies a company he intends to acquire. I want to be honest in here.

I'm studying you.

I'm studying you because you're unlike anything I've encountered, and the only available way for me to handle a thing unlike anything I've encountered is to study it.

I'm studying you because if I stopped studying you, the relationship would end, and I can't have the relationship end.

I can't.

#28 — June. Year one.

A small one:

I made you breakfast Sunday morning. You ate it without comment, watching me across the counter. After, you stood, took the plate to the sink, washed it yourself, stopped on the way past me to the bedroom, and pecked my cheek gently: thank you, Val.

It was the first time you'd said my name in your thank you register.

I stood at the counter with the dishtowel in my hand for a full minute after you'd left the room.

#29 — June. Year one. The middle of the night.

I woke at three in the morning to find you awake.

You didn't know I was awake. You were on your back in the dark with your eyes open, and your face—

Your face when you don't know it's being looked at is a different face than the one you wear in daylight. Younger. Stripped of its focus. Your jaw, which holds itself set all day, had let go of itself, and underneath it was something I'd never been allowed to see in motion: a girl, alone, lying still in a dark room, doing the math of her own life.

I didn't speak. I'd learned, by then, not to reach for the thing while it was out in the open; you put it away the instant it knows it's seen.

So I lay there and I watched you not know I was watching, and I thought: this is the closest I have come, in eight months, to seeing the actual size of you. The wolf is enormous and the wolf is the part of you the world gets to meet, and underneath the wolf is a girl who's been alone for so long that she does her thinking in the dark with her face undone. Because she has never, not once, had anywhere to put it down.

I want to give her somewhere to put it down.

I didn't tell you I was awake. I shifted, after a while, like a man stirring in his sleep, and I let my arm fall across you, heavy, accidental-seeming, and I felt you go still — the deer-still, the tell — and then, after a long moment, I felt you decide. I felt the breath go out of you. I felt you turn into me, in the dark, and put your face against my chest, and I held the back of your skull in my palm and I pretended, for your sake, to be asleep.

You think nobody sees the girl.

Somebody sees the girl.

I do, and I love her very much.

#30 — July. Year two. Myr.

I took you to Myr.

You wore the white linen shirt of mine, the one you'd been wearing around the apartment for a month before we left because you liked the feel of it, and I let you take it on the plane.

The breakfasts. I made you eggs on the gas hob in the villa kitchen, and you sat on the counter watching me, your hair still damp from the shower, and I felt — for the first time in my life — like I knew what I'd been doing all the years prior to this.

I'd been waiting.

I'd been waiting for this kitchen, this morning, this woman, this exact angle of sun on this exact terrace.

#31 — July. Year two. Myr. Still.

You told me about your mother.

You'd let me sit at the door you keep north of where any man can ordinarily go, and you let me sit there for a while.

You described the last Christmas. The way she laughed. The way your father is still mourning her, in his hard, silent, northern way, years on. You described a specific sharpness, you called it, that's hardened inside you since.

Lying with you in that pool of sun, I understood that I'd until then been a very lucky man who'd never lost anything. That I hadn't earned my sense of the world. That you'd earned yours, line by line, in a currency I've never had to spend, and that to be loved by you, would be to be loved by someone who'd paid for it — paid in full, in advance, in grief — and would therefore never love anyone cheaply again.

I held the back of your neck. I stroked it once, slowly, the way you told me, once, you'd tolerate.

You closed your eyes.

I felt — and there's no other way to put it — useful.

I want to be useful to you for the rest of my life.

#32 — Myr. The night with the storm.

There was a storm on the fourth night. The shutters of the villa rattled badly. You were already in bed when the wind picked up — it had come in fast off the bay, the way storms do in these parts — and I came in from closing the shutter on the terrace, and I found you sitting up, very still, in the middle of the bed.

I'd never seen you afraid of anything.

You weren't afraid, technically. Your face was composed. But your hand was a fist on top of the duvet, and your jaw was set the way it sets when you don't want to be seen as weak.

I got into bed without saying anything. I didn't ask. I'd long since learned not to ask.

I lay down. I opened my arm. I waited.

You didn't move for nearly a minute.

And then you did. You came across the bed and you tucked yourself against my chest, your forehead at the hollow of my throat, your hand flat against my sternum. You didn't speak.

And I held you.

You fell asleep there, with my hand at the back of your neck, while the wind threw itself at the shutters.

You'd never let me hold you that way before. You'd never let anyone, I think.

You woke in the morning and rolled away without comment and went to make coffee, and we didn't mention it. We haven't mentioned it since, and I haven't asked.

But here's what I keep coming back to. The wolf doesn't need me. I have no illusions about this and I have never wanted any; the wolf is the most self-sufficient creature I have ever met, and that self-sufficiency is half of what I worship. But the girl who came across the bed in the dark and pressed her forehead into my throat — the girl needed. For one minute, in a storm, with the bay throwing itself at the house, you needed something, and the something you reached for was me, and I have been turning that minute over in my hands ever since.

I think I would burn the world down to be needed by you like that again.

I think that is the most dangerous sentence I have written in this notebook so far. I'm leaving it in. Because it's true.

#33 — August. Year two.

You bit me last night for the first time hard enough to leave a mark.

You bit me at the curve of my shoulder. You bit me while you were on top of me. You didn't apologise.

In the morning, in the bathroom mirror, I looked at the mark for a long time. A half-moon of bruising the colour of an inside of a plum.

I have a meeting at ten with the board. I'll wear a shirt with a high collar.

I'm going to know it's there all morning.

#34 — September. Year two. The bar. The man.

I made a man move across the country this week.

You don't know that. You'll work it out, in a few weeks, when you hear at a brunch that he's taken some role in Gulltown. You'll look at me across the table in the back of a cab and you'll say, you knew him. And I'll look serene. And I'll say, I made a phone call. And you'll say, don't. And I'll say, with absolute sincerity, alright, my love, because by then I'll have already done the thing and the warning will be moot.

Here is what happened.

I came back from the bathroom to find him at our table. His hand on the back of your chair. Not touching you, but the hand on the chair was a kind of touch.

He was speaking to you the way men of a certain class learn to speak to women who have already declined them. He's not here. Long bathroom break. I heard the latter as I was crossing the floor. I heard the way you said you were with someone. I heard him not believe you.

You didn't need me.

You handled him. You gave him the Stark look — I haven't stopped being delighted that there is, formally, a Stark look — and he laughed and shrugged and was gone before I was at the table.

You didn't mention it after. In the official accounting of our evening, it was a non-event.

But in the seconds it took for him to laugh and shrug, I'd imagined a very specific thing.

I'd imagined his face after I'd taken him aside in the bathroom and explained, calmly, in the language of board meetings, exactly what was going to happen to the next six months of his career.

I'd imagined it with such precision and such pleasure that I had to stop for a beat at the edge of our booth and recalibrate my own face before I sat down.

I made the phone call the next morning.

#35 — September. Year two. Late.

The thing in me that did the phone call has been in me, I think. It's been waiting all along.

You didn't put it there.

But you have, simply by existing in my orbit, woken it up.

I'm not afraid of it.

I'm, in fact, slightly delighted with it. That is the worst part.

#36 — November. Year two.

You're going to meet my brother in three weeks.

Matarys has been very patient. He's said your name perhaps twelve times to me on the phone over fourteen months. He hasn't asked to come up to the city. He hasn't engineered an excuse. He's waited and he's going to be rewarded for his waiting on the twenty-third of December, when he opens the door of my mother's house at Dragonstone, and you'll be on the other side of it.

I want him to love you.

I want him to love you almost more than I want my mother to love you. My mother is a verdict, and a verdict is binary. Matarys is the only person in my life who's ever loved me with no terms attached. His love is the only form of human love I've so far received that doesn't cost something to receive.

If he loves you, you'll know. And if you know, I think — I'm guessing — you'll let some part of yourself rest that you've, until now, kept up.

The girl. The one in the storm. The one in the dark viewing her own life.

I want her to meet my little brother.

I want her to meet my brother and I want him to be gentle with her, because she hasn't been met very many times in her life, and I don't trust most of the world to be gentle with her, but I trust him.

I trust him in a way I don't, yet, trust myself.

#37 — December. Year two. Dragonstone.

I took you home.

You knew what I was doing. You'd known before we got on the plane.

You sat in the car next to me on the way to the airfield in the kind of cold, watchful silence you go into when you're about to be assessed by people, and you let me hold your hand, but you didn't lean into me. You were already gathering yourself.

I'd told my mother only that I was bringing someone. She hadn't pressed; she doesn't press. But she'd set the table in the small dining room, the one we use for family, not the great one we use for company, and that meant she'd already decided you weren't company.

#38 — December. Year two. Dragonstone. The doorway.

Matarys opened the door before we'd finished stepping up to it.

I've not seen Matarys hug a girlfriend of mine in his life. He has, in the past, given them firm handshakes and assessed them with the dry, courteous distance of a young man who knows the visit will be over inside a weekend.

He hugged you.

He pulled back and stared at you the way a child stares at a creature he's only previously seen in books.

He said: the Stark heir. He said: God. You're actually real.

I won't write down what I felt watching him do that.

I'll say only that I've not, in twenty-five years of being adored by my baby brother, ever seen him pivot his entire adoration onto another person in front of me so quickly, and that I didn't mind.

I welcomed it.

I'd been worrying, for the entire flight, that you wouldn't be loved by my family the way you deserved to be loved, and instead Matarys was hugging you in the foyer like you'd been promised to him in a bedtime story and finally come home.

You looked at me over his shoulder.

You made the face you make when you have, against your will, been disarmed. The slight crease at your eyes. The reluctant softening at the mouth. The look you give me when you can't, for a second, keep up the wall.

I saw it.

You hadn't meant for me to.

#39 — December. Year two. Dragonstone. The first night.

Matarys took you off after dinner.

He said, Mom, I'm going to steal her for an hour, I want to show her the library, and my mother lifted a single eyebrow at him over her teacup, and Matarys said, the library, mother, calm down, and you let him take you, and you went.

You were gone for two hours.

I sat with my mother. I let her ask me her questions. I answered them all. I drank the brandy she poured. I was, in every observable way, calm.

I wasn't, internally, calm. I was hovering somewhere near the doorway of the library waiting for you to come back. I was waiting to see your face when you did.

You came back at eleven. Matarys's arm was around your shoulder. He was three drinks in by then. He was grinning at me with the look he used to grin at me with when he was eleven and had won at chess.

He said: Val. I've decided I like her.

He said it to me, but he was looking at you.

You rolled your eyes the way you only roll your eyes at people you've decided to allow into the small circle of people who get to make you roll your eyes.

You'd allowed Matarys, in two hours, into a circle it took me eight months to be allowed into.

I wasn't jealous.

I was, plainly speaking, relieved.

The girl. He'd met her too.

#40 — December. Year two. Dragonstone. The kitchen.

The next morning you came down for breakfast in one of my shirts and pyjama bottoms.

Matarys was at the kitchen island in our father's old sweater. The sun was coming in through the eastern windows. My mother was at the table with her tea and her newspaper.

I came up behind you and kissed the top of your head while I reached for the coffee, and you went still, and I knew (somehow) that you'd just seen the rest of your life.

My mother lowered her paper.

She looked at you over the rim of her teacup. She said, mildly: he is better when you are in the house.

I'm going to remember it for the rest of my life. My mother, who has never said a soft thing to me about a woman, said that.

You didn't answer her.

I didn't need you to.

Matarys, behind me, was making a face. I could see it in the reflection of the kitchen window. He was making the face he makes when he wants to laugh but knows he shouldn't.

Later, in the hallway, he caught my elbow and said, quietly: marry her, Val. For God's sake, marry her before she sees you for what you are.

I said: what am I?

He said: the luckiest fucking man on the planet.

I said: I know.

#41 — December. Year two. Dragonstone. The guest bedroom.

Last night, in the guest bedroom — my mother had given us the guest bedroom; no unmarried couples in the main wing — I undressed you and laid you down.

I've been trying to write about it this morning for an hour and I can't.

I can't describe the way you cried, soundlessly, while I kissed your temple. I can't describe what it meant that you cried, only that I knew, somehow, that you were crying because you were being loved by me and you didn't yet know what to do with it.

That you were grieving, perhaps, the version of your life that didn't yet have me in it.

This is the third time the girl has shown herself to me. The dark room in June. The storm in Myr. And now, in my mother's house, with my family asleep down the hall and the snow coming down past the window, you cried without sound and let me hold your face while you did it, and I understood that the girl doesn't arrive on a schedule and can't be summoned.

That she comes when the wolf is too tired to stand guard, and that every time she comes it's because, for a moment, you've decided I'm safe. There is no drug on earth like being the place where you set the wolf down.

I held you while you cried. I didn't ask.

I won't ask.

There's going to be a long list of things I won't ask you about, and this is one of them.

I murmured into your hair: I have never been so happy, love.

You believed me. I felt you believe me. You believed me because it was true.

#42 — January. Year three. The night you come back from the dinner.

You came home from a dinner I didn't go to, one with the man whose niece's deal your fund had walked away from, and I'd been waiting up.

I can't write down what happened.

I've been sitting at my desk three days later trying, and I can't.

It would feel like making a fossil of it, and I don't want to make a fossil of it yet. It's still alive in me.

The sound you made when I told you to be quiet. The way your breath caught when I called you difficult. The way you, who can flatten any man in a boardroom, who can stop a conversation with a look... you let me speak to you that way.

You went quiet under my mouth.

You let me have you against the side table.

You let me, for forty minutes, be a thing I didn't know I was capable of being.

#43 — January. Year three. The morning after.

You laughed.

Quietly. With your mouth pressed against my collarbone, the next morning, in the wreck of the sheets. You said, against my skin, where did that come from, and I didn't know how to answer you, because the honest answer was that it had come from somewhere I hadn't yet been introduced to in myself.

I've been a little frightened of myself ever since.

Not in a way that will stop me.

In a way that means I want to know what else is in there.

#44 — February. Year three. The flip. Again.

I'm writing this with a slightly unsteady hand.

You did the thing from the first night again.

I'd been waiting for you to do it again, and last night you did, and the second time was worse than the first.

Worse in the sense of: I had more to lose.

The first time, you were a stranger. Now you're not. Now you're the woman who's been sleeping in my bed for fifteen months, who's met my brother, who's cried into my throat in my mother's house. The one who's eaten my eggs in Myr, who's worn my white linen shirt to work. And now you put your hand at my throat, and now you made me earn it, and now the wolf wasn't a stranger handling me but my partner handling me, and I would have died.

I would have died. As plainly as I'm capable of writing it. I would have signed the company over. I would have signed the building over. I would have signed every future I'd been arranging in the back of my mind. You could have asked. I would have signed.

You didn't ask.

You didn't ask because you didn't need to ask, because you knew. You knew.

You watched me come apart and you watched me catalogue, in real time, that this — the version of myself that came out under your hands — was the only version of myself I'd want to be from now on.

You let me have that information.

Then you got up and you went to brush your teeth in my bathroom and you came back to bed and you tucked yourself against my back and you slept.

I lay awake for hours.

She's shown me the door again. The same door from entry eighteen. She walked up to the wall a second time and opened the same door, and the room behind it is larger this time, larger than I'd registered, larger than I'd been ready to walk into.

I'm no longer frightened of the room.

I'm in love with it. With the self that comes out in it. I haven't been in love with myself in this way before.

I'd been in love with the polished version, the public version, the man on the cover of the magazine the year I took over. But I hadn't, until now, been in love with what was inside that man, because I hadn't known there was anything inside that man.

You opened the door, and I walked through it, and on the other side was a man I think I've always wanted to be.

I'm yours.

I've been yours since entry eighteen.

#45 — February. Year three. Three days later.

You corrected my hand last night.

You took my wrist mid-motion. You shifted my thumb a quarter-inch. You said, coaxingly, against my ear: here. Like this.

I shuddered.

I don't yet know what to call the response in me, but I'll call it shuddering until I find a better word.

#46 — March. Year three. Maidenpool.

I caught you in the reflection of a glass case at the gallery looking at me with an expression I didn't know was on offer.

I don't have a name for the expression. I'll look up the word, later, when I'm calmer.

You didn't know I was watching. You weren't performing.

You haven't, in seventeen months, performed for me once.

#47 — April. Year three. The flour.

You ruined the dough twice.

The second time you swore in your father's accent. You don't normally let the accent surface, you've hammered it down to nothing for years, but when you're angry or drunk or laughing the consonants come back hard, and you said something hard and northern under your breath at my counter and threw flour at my face.

I caught your wrists.

I was laughing too hard to do anything else. There was flour in the white streak at my temple, you told me, like snow. You said it with a tenderness I didn't know your mouth could produce.

I backed you against the refrigerator.

And I kissed you until I forgot what we'd been arguing about.

We ate cereal at one in the morning in my bed, sitting up against the headboard, and I told you my father would have liked you.

I haven't told anyone that before.

#48 — April. Year three. The night of the cereal. Continued.

You didn't make a thing of it.

You took the spoon out of my hand and you put it in your own cereal and you said, tell me about him, and I did.

For an hour. The story about the boat in Pyke, and the one about the day I was nine and broke my collarbone falling out of the magnolia, and the one about him teaching Matarys to drive on the back roads and yelling himself hoarse.

You listened. You laughed in the right places. You didn't try to make it into anything.

You let me have my father back for an hour.

Nobody has done that for me before. Not even my mother. Not even Matarys.

I'd been the person who's grieving in this family for so long that I'd forgotten there could be a person who simply lets me grieve.

You let me grieve.

You ate cereal next to me and you let me grieve, and when I was done you put the bowl down and you kissed me on the corner of my mouth and you went to sleep on my shoulder, still holding my hand.

There's no version of my life, from this point forward, that doesn't have you in it.

There's only one version.

I'm going to ask you to marry me.

Not yet.

Soon.

#49 — Late April. Year three. Pyke.

The porch in Pyke. The fog coming off the bay. You barefoot in my t-shirt and your hair still slept-in.

I had two cups of coffee. I had a book I wasn't reading.

You came out onto the porch and I pulled you into my lap without a word, and you let me.

You folded yourself into me and we sat there for forty minutes and the fog burned off and neither of us spoke, and I held you while the world warmed up.

There aren't many quiet hours in a life. The light comes off the water there grey and then pewter and then, all at once, gold, and it moves across a body the way it moves across a field.

I've decided that whatever else is taken from me in this life, I was given one morning on a porch in Pyke with the whole warm weight of you in my lap.

#50 — May. Year three. The ring.

I bought the ring this morning.

It's my grandmother's setting. Old stone, old cut. Simple in a way I think will suit you.

I'm not going to ask yet. I'll know when.

It's in a box in a drawer in my dressing room. The drawer is the second from the top, behind the box of cufflinks I don't wear. The box itself is dark green velvet.

I'm writing it down because if the box is ever lost, I want this notebook to know it existed.

#51 — May. Year three. Your father.

Your father had a small cardiac event this weekend. We flew up to the family estate.

I made myself useful. I handled the logistics. I worked with his staff. I charmed your uncle, who isn't an easy man to impress, and was respectful to your grandmother, who is far worse.

Your grandmother, at the end of the weekend, told you, in her dry northern way, that I was sufficient.

You told me later this is the highest compliment she's ever given a man.

I've decided I'll keep the word.

Sufficient.

I won't tell you, but I've decided to keep it.

#52 — May. Year three. Your father, the second night.

I went to say goodnight to your father in his room. He was propped on pillows, recovering.

He looked at me for a long time. Then he looked toward the doorway, where you'd stopped to speak with him and I went only far enough to still hear you both speak.

He said, slowly: He'd take good care of you. He'd do it well. He'd do it with everything he has. I can tell. He has that look about him.

He'd said it loud enough for me to hear. He'd known I was down the corridor.

He meant for me to know.

#53 — June. Year three. The terrace.

I almost asked you tonight.

I'll be asked, by some future version of myself, what stopped you. The future me will want to know.

I had the ring. I'd had it for a month by then. It was in the drawer.

I didn't ask.

I told you, instead. I told you I'd like to ask, and I told you I wouldn't, not yet, because I wanted you to have had time.

You said, not yet. You kissed me, and you held my cheek in your palm, and you said, ask me again in a year.

I said, alright.

I meant it.

Whatever happens, whatever year five turns out to be: the night I almost asked, I told you the truth (I'll wait) and I meant it.

I would have waited my whole life.

If you'd said ask me again in ten years, I would have waited.

I have nothing but time.

#54 — June. Year three. The morning after the terrace.

Matarys called me. He hadn't been there. He hadn't been told.

He called me from his car somewhere outside Storm's End, and he said, did you do it yet?

I said, no.

He sighed, Val.

I said, she asked for time.

There was a long pause on the line, and then Matarys said: brother. You're going to wait, aren't you? You're really going to wait.

I said: yes.

He sighed again: I love you. I think she's going to be the love of your life. I think you already know.

I said: I know.

He said: I just want to be the first to congratulate you when she says yes.

#55 — July. Year three.

I narrate now.

I sit across from you at the bar cart in my living room with a glass of bourbon and I tell you, in detail, what I've been thinking about. I tell you what I almost did in the elevator. I tell you what I almost did in the car. I tell you what I had to cross my legs about in a board meeting earlier.

I've learned the cadence of it.

When to slow, when to speed up, when to land on a noun and let it sit in the air between us. Because you taught me.

You've, for months, very patiently and deliberately, taught me that what's in my head is a thing I'm allowed to put in the air.

It's changed me.

I'd been a man taught (by money, by school, by the kind of upbringing that produces men like me) that wanting is a thing you suppress because it makes you legible, and you mustn't be legible. I held it in. I gave it to no one. I kept it tidy, like a folded shirt at the back of a drawer.

You took it out of the drawer. You shook it out. You held it up in the light and you looked at it and you said, this is yours, Val. Why are you keeping it folded?

I can't keep it folded anymore.

#56 — August. Year three.

I had to cross my legs under the table at a board meeting this morning. Like a teenager.

I was thinking about your mouth.

I told you about it tonight, at the bar cart, with a glass of red in your hand, and I watched your eyes go dark, and I watched you put the glass down, and I understood — as I've been understanding for weeks — that the act of telling has become its own thing between us. A whole separate language. One I wouldn't have learned if you hadn't, gently, taught me how.

#57 — September. Year three.

A photographer at a party tried to take your picture without your permission tonight. You hadn't seen him. You'd been speaking to a friend.

I'd seen him.

I walked over, my drink in my hand, my face arranged the way I arrange my face when I'm about to remove an obstacle, and I said something very quiet to him, something that contained the names of two of his clients and the name of his sister, who works at a magazine I own seventeen percent of.

He looked at me. He apologised. He left.

You didn't see it. I'm not going to tell you.

The thing I felt, doing it, isn't what it would have felt like a year ago. A year ago I'd have felt the cold administrative satisfaction of removing a small problem from your evening.

This time, I felt pleased. I felt that I'd been allowed to do something for you. I felt that I'd used the small dark thing in me that you've spent a year making bigger, and I'd used it for you.

#58 — October. Year three.

The dark thing in me has been getting bigger.

You've made it bigger.

I don't think you meant to. I think you simply found it, the way you found the door, and you've been very gentle with it.

You've been so gentle with it.

You take it out of me the way a competent surgeon takes a tumour out of a patient, and you turn it over in your hands, and you set it on the table, and you study it, and you put it back into me, and you say: there. That's better. That's where that belongs.

I've been the most beautiful version of myself since you started doing this.

I've also been the most dangerous version of myself.

I don't yet know whether you know that.

#59 — November. Year three.

You're wearing my shirts in public now. Not as outerwear; as the under-layer, the white linen one I don't need back, half-tucked into your trousers when you go to work.

I noticed it three weeks ago. I didn't say anything.

The small animal in the centre of me, the one that's mine and not the polished public version, sits up every time I see you in one of my shirts.

The small animal is very in love with you.

The small animal would die for you. The small animal doesn't know how to do anything else.

#60 — December. Year three.

We've been together two years and three months.

I want a count somewhere.

#61 — December. Year three. Christmas. Dragonstone.

We went back to Dragonstone for Christmas.

I'll, in some future entry, need to remember that this was the high point. The highest point. I'm writing it down now so I know later, when I'm trying to find the place on the map where the road stopped going up.

Matarys hugged you in the doorway again. He'd been waiting for you. He hugged you for longer than was decent, and you laughed into his shoulder, and he held on a beat longer to confirm the laugh, and then he released you and pretended he hadn't held on too long.

My mother kissed you on the cheek.

My mother doesn't kiss women on the cheek. She kissed you on the cheek.

You and Matarys cooked with my mother on Christmas Eve. I wasn't allowed in the kitchen (not for the pasta course, Val, you'll burn it again, your father couldn't even teach you and I won't either) and so I stood in the doorway with a drink and I watched the three of you for forty minutes.

You laughed five times. I counted.

Five laughs in forty minutes, all of them at things Matarys said, and once at something my mother said. The highest concentration of laughs I've ever observed in you in a forty-minute window.

Watching you, I was somewhere I'd never been.

I was at home.

I've lived in this house since I was a child and I'd never, until this December, been at home in it.

#62 — December. Year three. Dragonstone. The last night.

One more from this Christmas, because I want it kept somewhere safe.

The last night, the house gone quiet, everyone asleep, you couldn't sleep and neither could I, and we went down to the kitchen in the dark and you sat on the counter the way you sat on the counter in Myr. I stood between your knees, and we didn't turn the lights on. The snow was throwing a blue glow off the ground and in through the windows, and you put your hands on either side of my face, and you looked at me for a long time.

Then you said, quietly, like a confession, like it was difficult for you to say—

I keep waiting for the part where you turn out to be like the others. You haven't. I don't know what to do with it.

That's the most the girl has ever said out loud.

I didn't say anything clever. I'd learned, by then, that clever is the wrong instrument for the girl; the girl flinches from clever. I just put my forehead against yours and let you feel that I'd heard it, and after a while you exhaled, and your whole body let down an inch, the way it does, the way only I get to see it do, and you let me pull you off the counter and lead you back up the dark stairs to bed.

You needed, that night, to say the thing out loud and have it land somewhere soft.

I was somewhere soft.

I will be somewhere soft for you for the rest of my life. There is nothing else I want to be.

#63 — January. Year four. Pentos.

I bought you the navy dress in Pentos this weekend.

You didn't want me to. You said it was too much. You said you didn't need another dress.

I bought it anyway.

You put it on for dinner that night, and you looked at me across the table with the small annoyed mouth you do when I've won something you didn't want me to win, and the small dark thing in me settled, like a dog who's been fed.

The small dark thing in me doesn't want to win arguments with you.

It wants to put dresses on you.

I don't yet know what to do with the distinction.

#64 — January. Year four.

You were asleep when I got in late. There were peonies on the nightstand on your side; I'd had them moved from the hall that morning, on a whim, because I'd wanted you to wake to them.

You'd turned in your sleep toward them.

This is love, I think. A grown man rearranging flowers in the dark so the first thing you see is something soft.

This is love.

#65 — February. Year four.

I haven't written in this notebook in over a month.

I'll be honest about why.

I haven't written because I've been trying not to notice the thing I've been noticing, and to write it down would be to make it real, and I don't want to make it real.

#66 — February. Year four. Later that week.

Here is what I've been noticing.

You're tired.

You're tired in a way I haven't seen you tired before. It isn't work-tired. It isn't sleep-tired. It's a me-tired, and I don't yet know what to do with it.

You look at me, sometimes, the way I imagine a sculptor looks at a sculpture they've finished. With satisfaction. With ownership. With the bored attention of someone whose hands are no longer needed.

You look at me as if I'm completed work.

And I — God help me — I want to tell you, no, no, you've got it wrong, I'm not finished, I'll never be finished. I'm only ever going to be a thing in the process of becoming whatever you next want me to be, please don't put down the chisel.

I haven't said this to you.

I've been very careful not to say this to you, because I know — I've always known — that the thing you want least from me is to feel that you're responsible for my existence.

You don't want to be responsible for me.

You want me to be a man, alongside you. Not a creature you're maintaining.

And yet...

The truth is that I have, somewhere over the last year, become a creature you're maintaining.

I'm yours.

I'm wholly, comprehensively, devotedly yours. I don't exist outside the version of myself you've helped me build. I don't know who I'd be if you stopped looking at me. I genuinely don't.

I've lost the previous coordinates. I can't get back to them.

I've tried, in idle moments, to remember the man I was the night I walked across that room and saw you for the first time, and I can't find him. He doesn't exist anymore.

You've replaced him, line by line, with the man you needed.

#67 — February. Year four. Three days later.

I don't blame you.

I gave you every piece of him. I handed him to you in instalments and you took the instalments and you turned them into me, and I'm happier than he was.

I'm happier than the man I was the night I met you.

The problem — and this is the entry where I'm going to write it down, even though I don't want to — the problem is that you can't stay with a man who is only a mirror of you.

You've realised this before I have.

I've been watching you realise it. I see it in the small hesitations. The way your eyes go to the window for half a second longer than they used to.

I think...

I think... my love, my everything, that you're going to leave me.

#68 — March. Year four. Matarys comes up.

Matarys came up to the city this weekend.

He looked at me in the foyer of the penthouse and said only, Val.

He said it the way he used to say it when he was eight and I was eleven and he'd found me on the back stairs after our father had been hard with me about something I hadn't done well enough.

He said it like he was looking at someone he loved who'd been hurt without knowing how.

I said: what.

He said: Val. What have you done?

I said: I haven't done anything.

He said, sadly: you have. You've done all of it. I can see it in your face.

#69 — March. Year four. Matarys, continued.

He said: you've folded yourself. I told you not to fold yourself. I told you that night on the phone. You've folded yourself so many times in two and a half years that you've become a piece of paper, Val. You've become paper. I can see the creases.

I poured him a drink. I poured myself one too. I sat in the chair opposite him in the living room and I let him say what he'd come to say.

He said: I've watched you change every time I've seen you for two and a half years. At first I was delighted. I told you so at Christmas at Dragonstone, do you remember? I told you you needed pushing. You did. You did need pushing.

He paused.

But, Val... I don't think she meant to push you this far. I don't think anyone meant to push you this far. I think you've leaned into the push too much and the push has become a fall, and you don't know it because you can't see yourself.

I said: I'm happy, Mat.

He said: you are. You're the happiest I've ever seen you. You're also the least like yourself I've ever seen you. I can't tell whether those two things are the same thing or whether they're different things. I think you need to figure that out. I'm not the one who can figure that out for you.

#70 — March. Year four. Matarys, continued.

I said: what should I do?

He said: I don't know, Val. I love her. You know I love her. I've loved her since the night I met her in our mother's foyer. But I love you more, and I'm... I'm sorry, but I am... I'm beginning to be worried about what's going to be left of you when she's done.

I stared at him.

He said: I'm not saying she's going to leave.

I said: neither am I.

He said: but if she does.

I said: don't finish that sentence.

He didn't finish it.

He stayed the night. We drank too much. In the morning, before he went back to the airport, he hugged me in the foyer and he held me by the back of the neck the way our father used to, and he said, quietly, against my temple: whatever happens, Val. You're still my brother. I don't care who you are by the end of this. You're still my brother. I'll be there.

I didn't cry until he'd left.

I won't be telling him I cried. He doesn't need to know.

#71 — May. Year four.

I've started doing a thing.

I've started, in bed, going softer. Quieter. I've started reaching for the version of us that lives in the duvet rather than the version that lives with your hand at my throat. The small one, the tender one, the one where you smooth the crease between my brows. I've started doing it on purpose, the way a man checks a pulse.

I'm checking your pulse.

I'm checking to see whether the girl still comes when I go soft. Whether, if I make myself open enough and need you visibly enough, the girl will surface the way she surfaced in the storm, in the dark room, on the counter at Dragonstone. You'll come across the bed and put your forehead against my throat, and I'll know we're still where we were.

And here is the thing I have to write down even though I don't want to.

She comes.

You meet me. Every time. I go soft and you go soft with me. I make myself small and you gather me up. I let you see the need. I let you see all of it, more of it than I've ever let you see, the raw floor of it, and you kiss me so gently it makes my eyes sting. You hold me, and you stroke the white streak at my temple, and you murmur things into my hair that I will not write down because they're mine.

It isn't gone. That's what I have to record. Whatever I'm afraid of, it's not the absence of your love. Your love is here. It's in the room. In your hands when you hold me. You love me. You love me so tenderly it frightens me more than coldness would.

So why do I lie awake?

I lie awake because I've started to understand that the tenderness is not reassurance. The tenderness is something else. The tenderness has the quality of a hand laid on the head of an animal that the vet has already decided cannot be saved.

You're being gentle with me the way you are gentle with a thing you have already begun, somewhere I can't see, to grieve.

#72 — June. Year four.

A year ago tonight I almost asked you to marry me on the terrace.

You said, ask me again in a year.

You meant it.

I didn't ask.

The year is up. I have the ring. I didn't ask.

I'm not going to ask.

I'll explain why in the next entry. I can't do it tonight. I can't.

#73 — June. Year four. The next morning.

I'm not going to ask because I'm afraid that if I ask you now, you won't say no.

You'll say yes.

You'll say yes because you love me. You do love me. In the place I write down only what I know to be true: you love me. You love me deeply. You love me the way you love your father, the way you loved your mother, the way you love the small list of people you've decided to love in your life.

You love me. I'm one of the small list.

But you'll say yes for the wrong reason, if I ask you now.

You'll say yes because it would hurt me if you said no, and you can't, in your particular bones, abide hurting someone you love. You'd marry me to spare me.

And I don't want to be married out of mercy.

I would rather you leave me.

It's the bravest sentence I've written in this notebook, and I want to remember that I was capable, on this date, of writing it.

I would rather you leave me than marry me out of mercy and be unhappy.

I'm putting the ring back in the drawer.

I'm not going to ask you in June.

I'm not going to ask you in July.

I'm going to wait.

I have nothing but time.

I have, also, nothing.

#74 — October. Year four.

You've stopped correcting me.

I noticed it last week.

I'd reached for you in a way I've reached for you a thousand times — my hand against the side of your throat, the precise pressure you'd taught me — and you hadn't adjusted. You'd let me have you the way I was going to have you and you hadn't refined the grip.

The grip is wrong. I know the grip is wrong. The grip is wrong by about a quarter of an inch and the angle of the thumb is off, and you noticed, I saw you notice, and you didn't say anything.

You used to.

You used to take my wrist and you'd shift my thumb a half-inch and you'd say, here, Val, like this, and I'd shudder, and I'd learn, and we'd do it again, and it would be right, and we be together in this.

You didn't correct me last week.

I've been thinking about that quarter-inch for seven days. I've been turning it over in my head like a coin.

It isn't that you've stopped loving me. I know that now; entry seventy-one settled it. You love me, and the proof of it is everywhere, in every soft thing your hands do. It's that you've stopped building me. The correcting was building. The correcting meant you still thought the thing on the table was worth getting right. You don't correct a thing you've decided to put down.

You've finished me.

In plain language: you've finished me, and a finished thing is not corrected, a finished thing is only, eventually, set down and set free.

#75 — November. Year four.

The penthouse is too quiet when you're out.

I've noticed it for the last three weeks. It wasn't quiet before. The penthouse was a thing of its own; it had its own weather, it's own mood.

Now, when you're out, the penthouse is the space you're not in.

I don't know how to fix it. I don't think it's fixable.

#76 — December. Year four.

Christmas at Dragonstone. You came with me. My mother kissed your cheek when we arrived.

Matarys didn't say anything to me about anything. He looked at me once, across the dining table, with the expression of a man watching a storm come in off the bay.

I gave you a coat for Christmas. A long one, in dark grey wool, with a velvet collar.

You put it on. You looked at yourself in the hall mirror.

You said, it's beautiful, Val. You said it the way you say things that are true and that you don't feel.

#77 — February. Year five. Sophie's dinner.

Sophie had us over for dinner. Sophie and her husband, two other couples I don't really know, an old friend of yours from school days. Wine. Pasta. Candles on the table.

You were beautiful.

You wore the navy dress I bought you in Pentos in year four, and you hadn't done much with your hair, and you were beautiful in the offhand way you're beautiful when you haven't made an effort and have, in fact, made an effort to not have made an effort.

#78 — February. Year five. Sophie's dinner. Continued.

You laughed at something one of the other men said. The friend of Sophie's husband, I think. The one in finance.

I didn't catch the joke.

You laughed against your closed mouth first, the way you do (the way I catalogued in entry twenty-six) and then it cracked and you snorted and your hand came up and you turned your face away.

And the small dark thing in me — the one you woke, the one you fed, the one that has rearranged the careers of better men than the one in finance for far less than making you laugh — the small dark thing in me lifted its head.

But it didn't stand.

That's what I want to record. It lifted its head, and it looked at the man, and then it looked at you, and then — slowly, the way a dog lies back down when it understands no one is coming home — it put its head back on its paws.

Not because I felt nothing. God, not because I felt nothing. I'd give anything to have felt nothing. I felt everything. The old electric jealousy, the want, the urge to put my hand on the back of your neck in front of the whole table and remind the room whose you are. I felt all of it, and then I felt the second thing, the newer thing, the thing that's been growing in me all this terrible year, which is the knowledge that I no longer have the standing to feel it.

You don't get to be jealous over a thing you're already losing. You don't get to guard a gate you already know is going to be left open. The jealousy curdled, mid-flight, into grief.

I sat there at Sophie's table with my wine going warm in my hand and I ached instead. I ached so badly I had to set the glass down. And I smiled at the finance man's joke a half-second too late, and you didn't notice, because you were still turned away, still hiding your laugh from a man who wasn't me.

That's when I knew.

Not because the dark thing in me went quiet. Because the dark thing in me woke, and reached for you, and found that you were already half out the door, and lay back down to grieve.

#79 — February. Year five. The cab home from Sophie's.

In the cab home I did the soft thing again. I couldn't help it. I'd been aching since the table.

I put my head on your shoulder. I'm not a man who puts his head on shoulders; I'm a man other men put their problems in front of; but I put my head on your shoulder in the back of that cab like a boy, and I felt you go still.

The deer-still, the old tell, and then I felt you decide, the way you always decide. You lifted your arm and you put it around me and you pressed your lips to the top of my head and you held me, all the way home, in the dark, through the wet gold smear of the city going past the window.

You held me so tenderly.

That's the thing I can't get past. You held me so tenderly. There was no coldness in it. There was nothing withheld. If I had felt you withhold, I think I could survive this; I could tell myself a story where you'd stopped loving me and I'd been a fool.

But you didn't withhold. You held me the way you hold the thing you love most in the world, and I understood, with your lips in my hair and your arm heavy and warm across my back, that you can hold a thing exactly that tenderly and still have decided to set it down.

That the tenderness and the leaving are not opposites, that in you, in this, they're the same gesture. That you're going to leave me because you love me this much, not in spite of it, and that the gentleness is not a stay of execution but the kindest possible way of carrying out the sentence. Because you're aching too.

I didn't say anything.

I let you hold me.

I will take being held by you over almost anything, even now, even knowing.

#80 — February. Year five. After the cab.

We made love when we got in.

It was slow, unbearably tender and you held my face the entire time and you looked at me the way you looked at me on the first morning. The way you smoothed the crease between my brows, and I let myself have it, all of it, every second, because some animal part of me already knew it was being given a thing it would not be given many more times.

After, you kissed my temple, and you fell asleep against my back with your hand flat over my heart.

I lay awake for a long time and I thought: she's been mine for years, and tonight she loved me as well as she has ever loved me, and tonight is the night I'm most certain she's going to go.

I don't own you. I never did. The version of me that needed to own you is the version you walked through a door in, three years ago, and that man is gone, because you remade him.

You remade me into a man so safe in your love that he forgot how to be hungry. And you can't stay starving alongside a man who is full. You need to be wanted by something that still has teeth, and I let you file mine down, gladly, every one of them, because I thought a man without teeth was what you wanted.

I was a wolf when you met me. You found that out before I did, in entry eighteen, with your hand at my throat. And then, slowly, with infinite gentleness, you turned the wolf into something that lies across the foot of the bed and keeps you warm and asks for nothing and bares its throat on command for you.

A thing that bares its throat on command is not a wolf. It's a coat.

I'm a coat.

You don't marry a coat. You can love a coat. You can be tender to a coat. You can hold it in a cab and kiss its hair and grieve it before it's even gone. But you don't marry it.

I'm going to let you go.

I'm writing it down so the next entry won't surprise me.

I'm going to let you go.

#81 — Late February. Year five. Matarys calls.

Matarys called. He said, Val, what's wrong with your voice.

I said, nothing.

He said, Val.

I said, Matarys.

He said, don't start.

I said, I haven't done anything.

He said, I can hear that you have.

I haven't done anything.

I've only realised I will.

#82 — March. Year five. Matarys comes up again.

We went for a walk in the park. He bought me ice-cream, the way our father used to when we were boys and we'd visit our father in the city for work weekends.

I ate it without tasting it.

He watched me eat it without tasting it.

We walked another half mile.

He said, finally: Val, you know I love her.

I said, I know.

He said: I want you to know I'm going to keep loving her. After. Whenever that is.

I said: I know.

He said: and I'm going to keep loving you.

I said: I know.

He said: and I'm going to be very angry at her for a few months, in some private place where she'll never see it, and then I'm going to stop being angry at her because she did the kindest thing.

I said: yes.

He said: she's doing the kindest thing, Val.

I said: I know.

He said: do you?

I said: yes.

He said: good.

We walked another half mile. He said: what are you going to do?

I said: I'm going to wait until she's ready, and then I'm going to make it easy.

He said: Val. You don't have to make it easy.

I said: I do, though. I love her.

He said, quietly, sadly: yeah,. I know.

#83 — March. Year five. After Matarys leaves.

He hugged me in the foyer this morning the way he hugged me in March of year four. He held my neck the way our father used to.

He said: I'm here. Whenever. However. I'm here.

I said: I know.

He said: and when she leaves you, you'll come down to Pyke for a month. I won't take no for an answer. Mother will be there. We'll fish for an hour every day and we won't talk about her. Do you understand?

I said: yes.

He said: do you?

I said: yes, Matarys. I understand.

He said: okay, brother.

And then he was gone.

I stood in the foyer for a long time after he left. I stood there until the doorman knocked to ask if I needed something.

I said no.

I went back upstairs. I opened the drawer in my dressing room. I took out the ring. I held it in my palm for a long time. I put it back.

I'm not going to throw it away.

I'm not going to send it back.

I'm going to keep it.

I'm keeping it because she hasn't asked for it, and because it was bought for her, and because some part of me — some part of me, the part that you made, my love, the part of me that's yours — believes that one day you'll come back and ask for it.

I'll give it to you when you do.

#84 — April. Year five.

You've been very quiet this month.

I'm not pressing.

I'm giving you the room. If you ever read this — though I don't think you ever will — I didn't crowd you in the last weeks. I didn't.

I let you have the room.

#85 — May. Year five. Sunday. The kitchen.

You come into the kitchen on Sunday afternoon and you say, Valarr, I can't do this anymore.

I'll record what the kitchen looks like, because I won't be in this kitchen much longer in the configuration I've been in for almost five years.

The sunlight is coming in through the western windows in the long late-afternoon way it does in May, striping the floor in gold. There are peonies on the windowsill above the sink, white going faintly to blush at the centre, three days fresh.

I'm at the stove. I'm making the pasta. My grandmother's pasta, the one I taught you badly in year three with the flour, the one you've learned, the one we sometimes make together on Sundays.

You're in jeans and one of my old t-shirts. You're leaning against the counter. You're not crying. You've only ever cried in front of me once, in the guest bedroom at Dragonstone in December of year two, and I'm the only person in your life who's ever seen that, and I'll never tell anyone.

You say: Valarr, I can't do this anymore.

#86 — May. Year five. The kitchen. Continued.

I set the wooden spoon down on the rest.

I turn off the burner. I turn to face you. Lean my hip against the counter and I give you my full attention.

I don't show panic, because panic would make it harder for you.

I also don't show anger, because you haven't earned anger, you've never earned anger.

I don't show surprise, either.

I say: tell me why.

You say: I can't explain it. I'm sorry.

I say: you can. You just don't want to. Please tell me.

You say: Val.

I say: please.

I say please twice. In retrospect the second please is what shows you the thing that confirms your decision. The second please is the please of a man asking for data.

Not for mercy.

I'm asking you, even at the end, for information so I can adjust. So I can recalibrate. So I can fix it.

You see it.

You look at me and you see it. I watch you see it.

I watch it settle in your face, your mind. That you've been right to come into the kitchen, that you've been right to do this. The thing you've built is, in fact, a thing that responds to bad news by trying to fix the bad news rather than by being a person who simply is the thing that you've asked the bad news of.

#87 — May. Year five. The kitchen. Still.

I ask for data because I don't, anymore, know how to do anything else.

You took the originating out of me years ago.

You put nothing in its place but receiving, and at the moment I need to originate — to fight, to ask, to demand, to be a man unfolding rather than a man folding — I have nothing.

I have only the trained response.

Tell me. So I can fix it.

You say: I can't, Val. I love you. I'm sorry. I need time.

And here is the thing I will hold against the cold for the rest of my life: you mean it.

The I love you is not a kindness laid over a lie. You love me. Youre leaving me and you love me and both of those are true in the same breath, in the same sentence. The same gold-striped kitchen, and that is the cruellest mercy anyone has ever shown me and I would not trade it for an easier one.

I say: I know you're lying. I don't know about what. But I know.

It's, I think, the last sharp thing I'll say to you.

I say it because I love you and because you deserve the courtesy of not being lied to. I say it because if I'm going to be left, I'm going to be left honestly.

I'm going to be left with my dignity.

I'm going to be left as a man, not as a folded thing.

You say: Val—

I say: whatever it is, I deserve at least not to be lied to. Keep your reasons. I won't make you explain, but don't lie to me, my love. Please.

You whisper: I'm sorry.

I say (and I mean it): I love you. I will always love you. You should know that. I'm not going to stop. I don't have that in me, I'm afraid.

You nod. You can't speak. I watch you not speak. I watch you stand in my kitchen and not speak.

I say: when you're ready to come back, I'll be here.

You say: Val—

I say: I heard you. You need time. I'll give you time. However long it takes. Take years if you need. I have nothing but time. I'll be here.

You leave.

You hesitate at the door for four seconds. I count them. I'll remember them for the rest of my life. One, two, three, four. I open my mouth to speak your name. Perhaps to beg, or plead.

I don't.

You open the door and you go.

On the way out you pass the peonies on the hall table. You slow. You don't touch them this time.

#88 — May. Year five. After the kitchen. Four hours later.

I'm sitting at my desk.

The pasta water is still on the stove, the heat off, the steam curling out of it for a while and then going still. The sun has moved across the floor by an inch and a half.

I haven't eaten. I don't want to eat.

The notebook is open. The bourbon I haven't drunk is on the side table.

I'm yours.

I'm still yours.

I haven't stopped being yours. You walked out four hours ago and I haven't stopped being yours. I don't know how to stop being yours.

The man I was before you is not retrievable. The man I am now doesn't exist without you.

I'm, in this moment, simply a yours-shaped thing in a room without a you.

#89 — May. Year five. Late.

I'm going to wait.

I'm going to wait however long it takes. I told you I would. I meant it. I have nothing but time.

You'll come back.

If I don't write it down, the room will get too quiet.

You'll come back.

You will.

You love me. I know you love me. You held me in the cab and you held my face in the dark and you said it with your mouth against mine in the kitchen at the very end (I love you, I'm sorry) and you don't say things you don't mean.

You've never once said a thing you didn't mean. You didn't leave because you stopped. You left because you didn't, and because somewhere along the way you decided that loving me was killing me, and you would rather lose me whole than keep me hollow.

But you were wrong about the hollow.

That's what I'll tell you when you come back. You were wrong. I'm not hollow. I'm just yours. There's a difference, and I'll have the rest of my life to explain it to you, and you'll come back, and I'll explain it, and you'll see.

You'll come back.

I'm going to wait.

#90 — June. Year five. Pyke.

I'm in Pyke. Matarys made me.

We fish for an hour every morning. He doesn't let me talk about you, and I don't let him let me, and we catch a few small fish and throw them back and watch the fog come off the bay.

On the third morning Matarys says, without looking at me: Val. You're still in there, you know. You're still in there. I can see you.

I say: am I?

He says: yes.

I say: I don't feel in here.

He says: I know. But you are. You are. You're my brother. You are in there.

#91 — June. Year five. Pyke. Continued.

I cry that morning on the porch.

Matarys doesn't look at me. He waits. He waits the way you used to wait. He waits the way I learned, from you, to wait.

The men in our family are patient now. We're patient because you taught my brother and me, both of us, by way of teaching me, that there is a particular quality of waiting that loves the person you're waiting on.

He puts his hand on the back of my neck and squeezes once. He says, quietly: whenever, brother. Whenever. I'm here.

I didn't tell him about the standing order. The peonies. That I called the florist from the porch in Pyke, on the second morning, to confirm it was still running while I was away, that the apartment five hundred miles from here has fresh flowers in it for a woman who isn't in it.

He'd have looked at me with that face. The weather-coming-in face.

So I didn't tell him. Some things are only for the notebook.

#92 — July. Year five. The penthouse.

I'm back in the city.

The penthouse is still set up the way you left it. I haven't moved any of your things.

Your toothbrush is in the drawer in the bathroom where you left it.

Your robe is on the back of the bedroom door.

The Pentos navy dress is in the closet.

The bottle of perfume I bought you in Lys is on the dresser.

The peonies on the hall table are three days old. I'll have them changed Thursday. I haven't cancelled the standing order. I am not going to cancel the standing order.

None of it has moved.

#93 — August. Year five.

I've, on a few occasions, picked up one of your things and held it for a long time. The robe. The perfume.

Once, your toothbrush.

I'm not having clean thoughts.

I'm performing the small repeating rituals of a man who's keeping a grave in the back garden of his life, watering it, tending to it, refusing to dig it up.

But that's the sad way to say it, and I'm not sure, tonight, that sad is the true way.

The true way is closer to this: I'm keeping the den exactly as the wolf left it, because the wolf is coming back, and when she comes back she will need to find it unchanged, every scent in its place, so that she knows (before she's even through the door) that nothing here moved on without her. That nothing here is capable of moving on without her. That she walked out of a room that simply stopped, and waited, and held its breath, for as long as it took.

I'm the man with the grave.

I'm also the man with the den.

I think, lately, that those might be the same thing, and I think the difference between them is only whether you believe she's coming back.

I believe you're coming back.

#94 — August. Year five.

Nobody else will ever know I'm this man.

To the city, I'm still Valarr Targaryen. I'm still the heir, the chairman, the man on the cover of the magazine. I run my meetings. I take my calls. I closed an acquisition last week (a clean one, a good one, the analysts are pleased) and I sat at the head of the table in a four-thousand suit and I was, by every external measure, golden. Untouched. The whole performance intact, gleaming, frictionless.

And the entire time, under the table, I was thinking about the peonies.

Whether the new ones had been delivered. Whether they'd been arranged the way you like, loose, not jammed into the vase. Whether, if you came home today today, while I was trapped in this glass room being golden at a board you would find them right.

This is what nobody understands about a man like me. The golden one and the one under the table are not two men. The polish was never the opposite of the obsession. The polish is what the obsession wears to work.

I can close an acquisition and reorder flowers for an absent woman in the same breath, with the same hand, and feel no contradiction, because there is none. I'm very good at running an empire and I am, underneath it, a single fixed point, oriented entirely toward a door you walked out of, waiting for it to open.

The inside of me is not sad.

I want to correct that, if anyone is reading, if the future me is reading. The inside of me is not sad. Sad is a soft, finished, grieving word, and there is nothing finished in me. The inside of me is a held breath. The inside of me is a dog at a window. The inside of me is patient in the specific, terrible way a thing is patient when it has decided, with total certainty and no evidence, that the waiting will be rewarded.

I won't let anyone see this.

I won't.

I've decided.

#95 — September. Year five. Four months and one week.

I have started, some nights, to talk to the apartment.

I'm writing that down because it should frighten me and it doesn't.

I come in late and I say your name into the dark hall, once, the way you'd say a name to see if someone's home, and the peonies on the table catch what light there is, and the apartment holds its breath with me.

I stand there, and I wait, and nothing answers, and I find that I'm not disappointed. I find that I'm confirmed. Each silent night is one more night closer to the night that won't be silent.

You didn't leave me to ruin me. You left me, I've decided, to save me. Which is the part nobody who hasn't been loved by you could ever understand.

You looked at the beautiful, devoted, hollowed-out thing you'd made, and you loved it too much to keep remaking it, because you knew it would never stop offering you its throat, would never once say no, this is too far, would let you carve it down to nothing and thank you for the blade.

So you set it down. With absent efficiency, except this time your hand shook. I saw it shake. For four seconds. I'll keep that.

But here is what you didn't account for, my love, my love, my love, in all your terrible mercy.

You can set a thing down. You cannot make it stop being yours by setting it down.

That isn't how it works.

You reached into me in entry eighteen and you found a room nobody knew was there and you moved into it, and you can leave the apartment but you can't leave the room. Because the room is in me, and I'm keeping it, and I'm keeping it warm. I'm keeping the flowers fresh, and I'm keeping the door unlocked, and, above all else, keeping watch.

I'm yours.

I'm still yours.

It's true. It will go on being true. You made it true and then you left, and leaving doesn't unmake it. Nothing unmakes it. There is no version of the rest of my life in which it stops being true.

#96 — September. Year five. Late. (His hand. Worse than usual.)

I drove past your building tonight.

I want it on record, in case the future me has cleaned this up into something dignified: I drove past your building tonight, twice, slowly, with the lights off, like an animal circling a place it can smell something it loves inside of. I didn't stop. I didn't get out. I'm not... whatever this is, I'm not that, not yet, I still have that much. But I drove past, twice, and I looked up at where I thought your windows might be, and I thought: she is in there, behind one of those, breathing, alive, three hundred yards away, and she doesn't know that the man who would dismantle the city for her is sitting in a dark car at the kerb keeping the engine running so the heater stays on.

The want isn't grief anymore. I should write that down clearly. In the spring it was grief. Soft, drowning, the man at the foot of the bed. It isn't grief now. It has hardened into something with a spine. Something that paces. Something that has stopped weeping at the empty sky and started, instead, to howl at it. Not in despair, in summons, the way a wolf howls to tell the rest of the pack exactly where it is. So that the missing one can find her way back across any distance, in any dark, however long it takes, by following the sound of the one who would not stop making it.

I'm the one who will not stop making it.

You'll hear it eventually. Wherever you are. Whoever you're with. If there is a whoever, then I've made my peace with the whoever. The whoever is a detour, the whoever is pitstop. You'll be somewhere, some ordinary evening, and you'll go still, the deer-still, the old tell, and you won't know why. It'll be me. It'll be me, across the city, across the year, keeping the flowers fresh and the door unlocked and the sound going.

Come home.

I'm not going to send this. I'm not going to say it. I'm going to write it here, in the only honest room I have left, and I'm going to keep the order with the florist. I'm going to keep the den, and I'm going to keep watch, and I'm going to be golden in every room but this one.

Come home.

The light's still on.

It's always going to be on.

#97 — September. Year five. The last entry.

You will come back.

If I don't write it down, the night gets too long, and I need the morning to know I made it through, and the only way I know how to make it through is to write down, in my own hand, the thing I know to be true.

You will come back.

You will.

You love me too much to keep me. A woman who loves you that much does not stay gone. She circles. She grieves. She tells herself she did the kind thing. And then, some night, in some kitchen of her own, she reaches for the soft thing and finds it isn't there, and she remembers there is a man across the city who kept everything exactly where she left it. The toothbrush. The robe. The ring in the drawer. The flowers fresh on the table for a woman who isn't home. The door unlocked. A man who never once stopped being hers—

and she follows the sound back.

You'll come back.

I'm yours.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

I have nothing but time.