all her paths are peace

In all the years you had lived in Oldtown, never once had Ormund deviated from this morning ritual. You remember the first time you had seen it. You had been a small child then, prone to wandering from your own chambers in the middle of the night into this one, back when it had belonged to the late Lady Hightower as much as it did her husband. She had always been kind to you. Like a true mother, when your own was so far away. 

Whenever sleep would not come, or the young Hightower boys had filled your head with tales of monsters lurking beneath the floor, you would creep from your bed and patter barefoot down the stone passage. You would ease open the heavy, creaking door and stand silently at the foot of the canopied bed until Lady Hightower stirred. She would always lift the blankets for you. From his side of the bed, Ormund would grumble some half-hearted objection about indulgence and the necessity of teaching you independence, but Lady Hightower paid him little mind. She would draw you into the warmth between them and promise that no monster in Oldtown would dare pass through their chamber door.

Even after she died, you did not cease coming.

It hurt, at first. To lie in the bed where she had once held you, the space now empty without her. Ormund never objected to your staying. Though he remained stoic and stony throughout his own grief, perhaps there was comfort for him, too, in not being left to sleep alone. When you wept silently into her old pillow, he would smooth your hair back from your face and say nothing. 

The habit endured long after your tears had dried and the black mourning clothes had been packed away. Some nights, you would attempt an honest effort at remaining in your own chambers, only to find yourself once again padding down the candlelit passage towards his. 

Ormund never turned you away. Now it was his hand that lifted the blankets for you to crawl beneath. Now it was his arm that pulled you in, wrapped around your waist in the night, his face that pressed into your hair, his body whose warmth you sought beneath the covers. 

The servants of the Hightower knew that your own chambers were little more than a formality, so seldom occupied that dust gathered upon the bed. You slept in your cousin Ormund’s chambers, you bathed there, you dressed there. Nearly every trace of your daily life had migrated into his rooms, until there was little left in your own to suggest they had ever belonged to you. 

It was only natural. After Lady Hightower’s death, the keeping of the household had fallen into your hands. It was you who approved the servants’ schedules, arranged the seating at feasts, and received the wives and daughters of visiting noble houses. Some might have found it strange that Ormund’s ward should occupy so much of his late wife’s place while remaining neither wed nor formally mistress of his household. Stranger still, perhaps, that if anyone entered Lord Ormund’s chambers before the sunrise, they would find him curled around his ward– Queen Alicent’s youngest daughter– his body arranged in the shape a husband’s would make.

If they did find it strange, no one within Oldtown had the courage to remark upon it. 

“You’re awake.”

You propped yourself up on your elbows to watch as Ormund closed the prayer book and rose from the altar. 

“Yes,” you answered as he crossed the chamber to the washstand. He dipped his hands into the porcelain basin and brought the water to his face. “I heard you praying.”

Ormund hummed as he dried himself with the folded linen cloth laid fresh each morning beside the ewer. “It would serve you well to join me in morning prayer.”

You ducked your head. “Yes, my lord.”

“I think only of your soul. One burdened by the sins of your…Targaryen…forefathers should labor all the more harder to absolve herself of them.”

“Yes, my lord.”

You waited for him to chide you further, or launch into one of his soliloquies on how faithfulness did not sleep merely because the sun had yet to rise. Ormund did none of that. 

Instead, he made his way to the bed and lowered himself onto the edge beside you, his weight dipping the mattress. Ormund lifted one hand to cup your cheek and ran his thumb gently beneath your eye. You nuzzled into his touch without a thought. 

“We will have visitors from the Reach in the Hightower later today. In particular, Lord Godric Ashford will call upon me this morning in my solar,” he said, as casually as if he were discussing the day’s weather. 

Your brows rose. You knew that several noble houses from across the Reach were expected at the Hightower in the coming days for discussions of taxes, grain, and the season’s feasts. Hosting them was hardly unusual. Nor was it unusual for one of their unmarried sons to request a private audience with your guardian. “Lord Robert’s son?”

“Yes, unfortunately,” Ormund mused, seemingly more occupied with gently stroking his thumb back and forth over your cheekbone. “I assume he intends to ask for your hand in marriage.”

Your stomach twisted in a mixture of dread and excitement. Lowering your eyes, you worried at a stray thread in the coverlet. “Do you…do you think he might be suitable?”

The thumb on your cheek stopped. Ormund’s face tightened slightly, as though some rancid smell had entered the room. “That, my dear, remains to be seen.”

He stood from the bed, and you instantly missed the warmth of his touch. You watched him cross to the wardrobe and pull open the carved doors, retrieving his clothes for the day. 

“But you will still hear him, yes?” 

“That is what I have agreed to,” Ormund answered with obvious reluctance, stepping into his breeches. “And I suppose I must keep my word. I will hear his presentation, just as I have heard the others before him.”

He slipped his arms into the doublet, turning to you as he began buttoning it. “You will not concern yourself with the meeting. You were entrusted to me for good reason. Namely, my rectitude and discernment in such matters. You would not want to be betrothed to some ignorant oaf, would you?”

“No, my lord.”

“And you know that I have only your best interests at heart, including the question of what sort of man you should be given to. Correct?”

“Yes, my lord.”

Ormund smiled affectionately. “Good girl.”

Your heart squeezed at the praise. It had always been that way with Ormund, desperately seeking any type of reassurance that you were saved. That you were obedient. That you were wanted. That you were good. 

The sound of light footsteps and swishing skirts echoed under the chamber’s door. Your servants, no doubt, waiting to be beckoned in by the Lord Hightower to serve upon his ward. 

Ormund made his way back over to you, but this time stayed standing, looking down upon you. “You will attend the sept this morning. When Lord Ashford has finished his proposition, you will come to me in the solar. This evening, we will receive our guests for supper in the Great Hall.”

You bowed your head obediently, just as he taught you. “Yes, my lord.”

Ormund turned to the door as if he meant to call the servants in, and then paused. He slowly turned back to you, his blue eyes swimming with a feeling you had become quite familiar with. Determination, and something weightier under it. Something you had never been able to name, but knew intimately. 

“It is the seventh day,” he stated, his voice low. You knew that. You knew by now not to recognize the day by name, but by its count. “You will come straight to this chamber after supper. Bathe first.” 

Silently, you nodded. His face twisted in disapproval. “Your words, please.”

“Y-yes, my lord.”

He exhaled, a small measure of satisfaction returning to his face. “Good. Very good.” 

Ormund laid one hand over yours where it rested atop the coverlet, looking suddenly very serious. “And do tell your women never use to that horrid citrus oil on you again like they did last week. It taints you.”

“I will.” 

He squeezed your hand in appreciation, then straightened himself and turned towards the door. “You may enter.”

The door opened at once, like your women had been waiting. They filed into the chamber with lowered eyes, none appearing surprised to find you sitting in Lord Ormund’s bed. He did not bother to look at them, his gaze fixed on you as he spoke. 

“See that she is properly dressed to receive visitors.”

The girls spoke in unison, eyes still fixed on the ground. “Yes, Lord Hightower.”

Ormund nodded at you once. An unspoken acknowledgement passed between the two of you. The seventh day. What the night would hold. Then he departed, leaving the chamber door open behind him. 

Your women moved quickly and efficiently, drawing back the blankets and settling a robe over your shoulders as they began the familiar work of preparing you for the day. There was no time to dally. Before long, your hair had been pinned, your gown laced tightly in Hightower green, and your throat and wrists adorned with jewels Ormund had gifted you on namedays and holy days.

One of the girls uncorked the vial of citrus oil and reached for your neck. You grabbed her hand, stopping her. 

“Lord Ormund,” was all you had to say. 

She bowed her head in immediate understanding and exchanged it for another perfumed oil he had shipped from Lys for you. 

Soon, you looked as a proper Hightower woman ought to look. And by the next tolling of the bells, you had entered the sept of the Citadel.

The seven-walled chamber appeared much as it had when you first arrived in Oldtown– or, at least, as it had in your earliest memories once you had gone from a crawling babe to a waddling child. Damp clung to the stone floors. At the center stood an altar crowded with pools of hardened wax and burning candles, while bejeweled likenesses of the Seven watched from alcoves set into each wall. Your attendants lingered behind you like silent shadows as you moved through the sept, a veil drawn over your hair.

You walked as Ormund had always instructed you to walk: head bowed, hands clasped, each step quiet. The very picture of piety in a woman.

Stopping at the Maiden, you thought once more of the late Lady Hightower. You often served as her little companion to the sept on mornings like this, following closely behind as she knelt and prayed before each altar. You could feel the memory clearly: the whisper of her skirts against the stone, the warmth of her hand around your smaller one, the patient way she corrected your prayers when your childish tongue stumbled over the words. 

The truth was that you had no memories before ones such as these, ones of Oldtown. 

You were just a babe when your father, King Viserys, sent you south to be fostered among your Hightower kin. Ormund had always said that, for all the sins of your parents, they had at least possessed the wisdom to recognize Oldtown was where you belonged. 

The explanation for your immediate exile from King’s Landing had always been a convoluted one.

On some days, you had been sent away because court was dangerous. On others, because King’s Landing was steeped in pride and your father wished for you to be raised in the piety of your mother’s kin. Lady Hightower had longed for a daughter. Your health was fragile as a babe, Oldtown’s air was better for a delicate infant. Alicent had a difficult birth and needed time to rest. The reasons always shifted depending upon who offered them.

The clearest explanation, though it was the one that had always gone unspoken, was that you had simply not been wanted.

At first glance, there was nothing about you that suggested descent from Old Valyria. You possessed neither silver hair nor amethyst eyes. Beautiful, certainly, but not plainly Targaryen. You bore none of the unmistakable marks of your father’s house.

More importantly, you had no dragon.

Ormund refused to speak of that last matter. You did not know whether an egg had been placed in your cradle according to custom, whether it had failed to hatch, whether the hatchling had died, or whether no egg had ever been given to you at all. Whatever the circumstances, it seemed the Seven had determined that you were not to be a Targaryen, but a Hightower.

“A blessing,” Ormund often called it, standing behind you, watching intently as you brushed your hair in the evenings. “That your appearance was not marred by the stain of inbreeding. You should be grateful the gods favored you enough to preserve your beauty from such impurity.”

What he really meant was, “You should be grateful the gods gave you to me”. 

And you were. Your childhood in Oldtown had been a happy one. Ormund and Lady Hightower’s sons took to you as a true sister, including you in their games no matter how often you ran weeping to their mother after they shoved you into the mud. You received the finest education the Citadel’s maesters could provide and were thoroughly instructed in histories, languages, scripture, and the workings of court. Ormund instilled in you the virtues expected of a holy and pious woman. Lady Hightower taught you kindness. You wanted for nothing. You were cared for completely.

Being cared for, however, was not the same as being wanted.

One by one, the boys grew into men. They departed to serve in other courts, took wives, and established households of their own. You remained behind. After Lady Hightower’s death, the question of where you belonged began to trouble you even more. 

You searched everywhere for some reflection of yourself. In histories and poems. In portraits, tapestries, and family trees. You studied every face and name, hoping one might reveal why you had been born in the first place. 

Though Ormund preferred that you remain ignorant to the fact, you knew you were a Targaryen.

He contradicted himself often in that regard. He insisted that you were a Hightower whenever you longed for King’s Landing, yet invoked the sins of your Valyrian predecessors whenever you displeased him. As a child, the inconsistency had deeply confused you. Now, though, you knew better to question it. 

The histories did not speak of Targaryens as aliens deserving only shame. On the contrary, they praised them. Aegon the Conqueror had crossed the Narrow Sea and conquered Westeros, his lineage sitting upon the Iron Throne from then until the end of time. They had bound themselves to mighty beasts that would bow to no other riders. Why should you not wish to be one of them? Why should you be ashamed?

Perhaps that was why, during one of your rare visits to King’s Landing, you became determined to find some way of securing your place within your own bloodline. Ormund had permitted you, after much begging on your part and great reluctance on his, to attend the wedding of your brother Aegon to your sister Helaena. You had still been young enough to think yourself a girl, though womanhood waited only just around the corner, and through that haze of youth the wedding had seemed beautiful.

Now, of course, memory revealed what you had been too young to recognize then: the discomfort across Helaena’s face, the uninterested ambivalence with which Aegon accepted the ceremony, the celebration disguising a union neither seemed to really desire. But that morning, surrounded by jewels and music and flowers, by feasts and speeches proclaiming the strength of their union, you had understood only one thing.

If your appearance could not prove you a Targaryen, perhaps marriage could.

When you returned to Oldtown, full of courtly notions and girlish fancy, you announced to Ormund that you would marry your brother Aemond– who had scarcely looked your way throughout the entire visit. Ormund had been seated behind the desk in his solar, writing upon a sheet of parchment. At your declaration, the quill froze between his fingers.

With deliberate care, he set the quill aside and lifted his eyes to you with a dreadful stillness. “You will do no such thing.”

Your smile slowly faded. “But…Aegon married Helaena. That is what Targaryens do.”

Ormund rose suddenly from behind the desk, his chair scraping harshly across the stone floor. You remembered how the sound had frightened you.

“The Targaryens– your father’s family– are incestuous barbarians,” he had declared. “Their minds are so corrupted by generations of inbreeding that they no longer possess the sense to recognize depravity. Your mother whored herself to a Targaryen. I will not give you to your own brother. I will not allow you to repeat her sins and bring further shame upon the Hightower name.”

By then, he had crossed the solar and taken your chin firmly in his hand, his fingers dimpling the skin of your cheeks. You had begun to cry, though you could not tell whether it was from fear, shame, or the sudden loneliness of knowing you might never truly belong anywhere.

“But then I could live with Father and Mother,” you whispered, tears slipping down your cheeks. “I could go home.”

Ormund bent until his face was close to yours, his breath hot against your skin. His grip tightened beneath your chin. “This is your home.”

The memory faded as you reached for a candle from the basket beneath the Maiden’s altar. You held its wick to one of the burning flames and watched a bead of wax gather at the tip before slipping towards your fingers.

Aemond had been the first man Ormund refused you. He had not been the last.

Among Ormund’s duties as your guardian was the arrangement of your eventual betrothal. Ormund approached that responsibility as he approached all others: with severe discretion, particular judgment, and standards so high that no man alive seemed capable of meeting them.

There had never been a shortage of suitors. You were young, unmarried, and beautiful– and whatever Ormund might say of your father’s house, the hand of a Targaryen princess remained a prize few sensible men would dismiss. 

As you grew older, the procession became a lengthy one.

The first man to formally inquire after you had been Ser Joldwin Mormont. You remembered him quite clearly. He had been nearer Ormund’s age than your own, tall and broad as most Northmen seemed to be, with a rough face that was not altogether unpleasant. He was steady in temperament and remained remarkably calm beneath Ormund’s inquisitions. He had even brought you a gift: a beautiful velvet cloak trimmed in bear fur. You had thought he resembled the carved likenesses of the Warrior found in the sept. He would make a good husband, you had decided.

Ormund had not agreed.

He had no shortage of qualms. Men of the North were ignorant, uncivilized, and hardly better than an illiterate barbarian dragging around a club in Ormund’s opinion. Bear Island was remote, bitterly cold, and impoverished. Worst of all, the Mormonts possessed a peculiar habit of treating their women as though they were equals. 

It was not a place, he decided, where you belonged.

Ormund had declared Joldwin entirely unsuitable, and forced you to toss the beautiful cloak into the fireplace of the Great Hall. He said it smelt of bear shit.  

After that, the list of suitors started to blend together. 

There was a Martell, handsome enough to make you blush with warm brown eyes, who winked at you across the hall. Ormund reacted as though the man had attempted to bed you in the middle of the Hightower. The Dornish were lecherous and tried to “fuck anything that walked”, he told you. 

There was a young Rowan who stuttered frequently and spoke so softly that you had to lean closer to hear him. Ormund dismissed him as weak and unfit for a wife. 

A ruddy-cheeked and quite cheerful Redwyne heir sent you summerwine and a song composed in praise of your beauty. Ormund called him frivolous.

One man lived too far from Oldtown. Another lived so near that Ormund questioned whether he sought your hand only to gain influence within the city. One possessed too many ambitions. Another had none. One was too young to govern you properly, while another was so old that Ormund expressed outrage at the very notion of subjecting you to him.

There was always some defect. Too proud. Too timid. Too wealthy. Too poor. Too worldly. Too sheltered. Too handsome. Too plain. 

Ormund’s standards contradicted one another so thoroughly that, had all his preferences been gathered together, the perfect husband would have needed to be commanding without controlling you, gentle without indulging you, wealthy without greed, devout without presumption, and situated near enough that you might never truly leave the Hightower.

Such a man had yet to present himself.

Perhaps, you thought as you placed your candle down before the Maiden’s altar and bowed your head, Lord Godric Ashford would be different. Perhaps today would finally be the day Ormund found a suitable match for you. Perhaps today was the day you would understand what fate had intended for your life. Perhaps you would finally be chosen.

You set your candle upon the Maiden’s altar and prayed for love, for a fruitful marriage, and for a husband who chose you with a pure heart. You tried to imagine such a life with Godric, though you did not yet know his face. 

You hoped he was strong, like Ormund. Tall, like Ormund. Handsome, like Ormund. 

You hoped that he might be enough like Ormund to earn his approval. You hoped, without really understanding why, that he was like Ormund. 

By the time you returned to the Hightower, Lord Ashford had already been shown into Ormund’s solar and begun his proposition. 

Ormund had never permitted you to be present for such conversations, of course. Serious matters, he insisted, were to be muddled by girlish sentiment. Over the years, you had therefore found other ways to learn what decisions were being made about your future without you. Some time ago, you had discovered a narrow passage running behind the rear wall of Ormund’s solar– an old servants’ entrance, long forgotten, its doorway boarded over and concealed behind a heavy tapestry.

And so, upon returning to the Hightower, you dismissed your ladies with the excuse that you wished to pray alone in your chambers (surely the gods would forgive the lie, given the good reason for it). Once they had gone, you slipped behind the tapestry and crept down the cobwebbed corridor until you reached the boarded door. Pressing your ear to the weathered planks, you heard the low murmur of men’s voices.

“...and I would never seek to separate her from Oldtown, Lord Hightower,” an unfamiliar voice spoke. You leaned closer. It was firm but polite, young but not imprudent. Lord Godric Ashford. He sounded kind. “I understand the princess is quite close with you, and I would ensure she could visit the Hightower as often as she wished. Family is of the utmost importance to me.”

You heard Ormund’s chair squeak. You could imagine he had leaned back in it, hands clasped in front of him, assessing Lord Ashford as he did all things brought before his judgement. “That seems to me an indulgence. She would be your wife, would she not? You would not want her with you in Ashford?”

“Of course, my lord. But I would not be so cruel as to forbid her from visiting the man that raised her. My own mother was a Caswell, and she visited my grandsire at Bitterbridge at every turning of the season.”

“And if she wished to visit more often than you considered appropriate?”

There was a brief pause. “I would speak with her, as husband and wife should.”

“Hmm. And if speaking did not bring her around to your judgement?”

There was another lull, longer this time, before Lord Godric gave an uneasy chuckle. “Well, I would hope my wife did not need to be disciplined as a child would.”

“Hopes are not the same as reality,” Ormund replied easily. “Particularly where Targaryen blood is concerned. They are a willful and proud people. Very resistant to correction.” 

“I-I have heard no such things of the princess, my lord.”

“No? Then what have you heard of her?”

“Every account has described her as the very image of what a noblewoman ought to be: beautiful, gracious, and demure. I’ve been told she is quite pious, as well.”

A thoughtful silence settled over the solar. You wished desperately you could see Ormund’s face. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet. 

“She is.”

Your heart swelled and instinctively, you pressed yourself closer to the boards. You were a good girl. 

“But do not mistake her nurture for nature, Lord Godric. She did not arrive in Oldtown so.”

“My lord, I did not mean to suggest–”

“Every virtue you have heard praised in her was cultivated beneath my hand. Her modesty, her devotion. The weeds of Targaryen pride had to be pulled, one by one. A garden does not become handsome just because a flower has good intentions. It becomes handsome because a gardener has the discipline to attend to it every single day and cut away what ought not grow.”

Lord Godric hesitated in his answer. “And…you believe a husband must continue that work? Pull the weeds from her?”

“I believe,” Ormund answered slowly, “that any man who means to take her from me must be capable of preserving what I have made.”

What he had made. 

You drew a shaky breath, your fingernails pressing into the weathered boards.

Perhaps it was true. Ormund had spent years teaching you the faults of your father’s house. They were blasphemous, unnatural. Incestuous and violent. An abomination before the Seven. His lessons were so ingrained within you that even the faintest reminder of your Valyrian blood could fill you with shame.

You had not chosen that blood. You had not asked to be born into it. You had only ever wanted to be good. And if Targaryens were innately wicked, perhaps you truly did owe everything virtuous within you to Ormund.

As a child, you had often wondered what sort of creature you might have become without his guidance. If he were true, which he often was, you would be a terrible creature malformed by sin. The thought frightened you still. But another more terrible one followed suit: without his guidance, you would not have had him.

No arms around your waist in the night. No hand smoothing your hair. No voice telling you what was right, what was wrong, what was safe. A life without Ormund. You tried to imagine it and found only emptiness. Would such a life truly be worth living?

And yet…you wanted to be chosen.

Your own mother and father had decided they had no need of you in King’s Landing, though they kept their other children close. You had been sent to Oldtown, where you doubted Ormund and Lady Hightower had been given much choice in whether they would receive you. No one had ever truly chosen you.

That was what made the suitors difficult to dismiss. They came before Ormund willingly, they asked for your hand because they wanted you. You liked that more than you wished to admit. 

And though the thought of leaving Ormund filled your stomach with dread, it had become increasingly difficult not to resent him for refusing every man who tried to choose you.

“I believe I have heard all I need,” Ormund said suddenly, his voice decisive. Your heart faltered. You knew what that meant. 

“...My lord?” You could hear Godric shift closer to the desk. “I hope I have not caused offense of any sort. I only meant that, should the princess become my wife, I would do all within my power to–”

“I said I have heard enough.” Something heavy was placed on the desk with a thud. A wine cup, presumably.

You wanted desperately for Godric to protest. You wanted him to declare his love to you, though he had never once seen your face. You wanted him to insist that perhaps the choice of whom you married ought to belong, at least in part, to you. You wanted him to accuse Ormund of cruelty for denying you the right to a husband.

The last thought filled you with immediate shame. You whispered a hurried prayer under your breath to the Father, begging forgiveness for having judged the man who had only ever sought to protect you.

Godric did none of that. Instead, he simply uttered with cool restraint, “As you will, Lord Hightower.”

A chair scraped across the floor and heavy footsteps crossed the solar, followed by the opening and closing of its main door. You withdrew from the boarded door slowly, blinking as tears began to brim at your eyes.

Usually, disappointment was all you felt when another suitor was refused. A dull ache in your heart followed by the acceptance that Ormund must have seen some defect you had overlooked. He knew the nature of men and the dangers of the world in ways you did not.

This time felt…different.

Godric had spoken respectfully. He had promised not to sever you from Oldtown. He had regarded your devotion and gentleness, and when Ormund questioned whether he could govern you, Godric had not boasted of cruelty or correction. His only failure had been suggesting that you ought to be treated as a wife rather than a child.

By the time you emerged from behind the tapestry, Lord Ashford was gone. The corridor stood empty, save for the guard outside the solar, offering no glimpse of the man who had come to ask for your hand and been dismissed before you could even see his face.

Ormund had instructed you to come to him once the proposition concluded. Usually, you obeyed quickly. Now, though, you lingered outside the solar door with your hand raised to knock, struggling to understand the feelings swimming in your mind. Confusion, disappointment. And something dangerously close to anger.

You knocked anyways.

“You may enter,” Ormund called. 

You opened the door and stepped inside, carefully pulling it shut behind you. Ormund had moved from the desk to the window and stood peering down at the city below. The shutters had been opened. He turned at the sound of the door closing, looked you over once, and– apparently finding no objections with your appearance– gestured towards the carved chairs near his desk. 

“Sit.”

You did. 

Ormund remained beside the window and drew a long breath through his nose. His face tightened with mild disgust. “Lord Ashford seems, from his smell, to possess a great fondness for horses.”

You sniffed discreetly. There was nothing in the air besides parchment and the dried florals Ormund preferred to keep throughout his rooms. “Perhaps he rode in this morning.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps the men of Ashford prefer to sleep in stables.” Ormund reached into the pocket of his breeches and withdrew the ornate pomander he carried. He held it beneath his nose and inhaled deeply. Only once he appeared satisfied that every trace of Lord Ashford had been driven from his nostrils did he return it to his pocket. Then he turned to you, settling against the window ledge with his hands clasped before him. “You attended the sept this morning?”

You stared down at your hands, folded in your lap. “Yes, my lord.”

“And for whom did you light a candle for today?”

You chewed on your lower lip. “The Maiden.”

Ormund nodded in consideration, crossing his arms over his chest. “And why did you choose the Maiden today?”

“I…I wanted to pray for your meeting with Lord Ashford to go well.”

“You prayed for Lord Ashford?”

Your palms had begun to feel sweaty. “Y-yes, my lord.”

“You prayed to marry him?"

“...yes, my lord.”

The muscle under Ormund’s eye twitched. He pushed himself away from the window and approached you slowly. Rounding the corner of the desk, he stopped beside your chair. Then, tugging at the fabric of his breeches over his thighs, he lowered himself until he was kneeling at eye level with you. You kept your gaze fixed on your lap. 

“You wish to leave Oldtown so badly,” he said softly, so quietly it was barely a whisper, “that you would pray to marry a man who you have never met?”

“M-my lord, I did not–”

“Look at me.”

Trembling, you raised your gaze to meet his. Ormund’s face had gone still, though the blue of his eyes had turned icy. Your stomach lurched. 

“I have risked much to raise you,” Ormund began, leaning in closer to you. “I have shielded you from those at court who question why King Viserys cast his youngest daughter out of King’s Landing. I have protected you from men who would use your blood and name for their own advancement. I have purged you of the evils of Valyria and shaped you into a proper woman. And now, now you hate me enough that would you leave my bed for a stranger?”

Heat burned at your cheeks, hearing Ormund speak like that. Like your shared bed was something…you could not finish the thought. “No, Ormund, please, I don’t–”

“You hate me enough that you would question my judgement?” he pressed, voice lowering to a gravelly hum. “You believe you know better than I? That I am ignorant?”

Hot tears had begun to spill over, wetting your lashes and blurring your vision. “I don’t, my lord, I don’t know b-better than you, I only wanted–”

“Tell me, then.” Ormund seized your face in one hand, his rings digging into your cheeks as he forced your chin upward. “Tell me that you do not wish to leave me.”

“I-I do not wish to leave you, my lord,” you choked, sobbing fully now. 

“Tell me that no man could care for you as I have.”

“No man could c-care for me as you have!”

His hand tightened enough around your chin that your cheeks squished together. His face, though, had shifted, a diseased softness bleeding into it. “Now, you must tell me what you have forgotten to say.”

Shame and something hotter burned low in your gut. He always made you say the words like this. When you had no option but to force the truth out of you. 

“I…” your breath shuddered. “I love you.”

Ormund’s grip refused to loosen. “Again, please.”

The words caught in your throat, scraping like sand. “I love you, Ormund.”

Finally, his face eased, and so did his hold. 

“There,” he murmured, sickeningly tender as he wiped his thumb across your cheek, catching one of your stray tears. “Was that so difficult to say?”

You shook your head quickly. You did not trust your voice. 

Seemingly satisfied, Ormund rose from where he was crouched, dusting off his breeches. The matter was finished. He returned to his desk, lowering himself in his chair, no trace of the man who had just seconds ago demanded the sick truth of your devotion. You remained frozen, unable to move, cheeks wet and burning. You suddenly were conscious of how horrible you must look, swollen eyes and shaking hands. 

Ormund glanced up from his papers. “You will go and ready yourself for the evening’s feast now.”

Numb, you stared at him. He raised one brow in question. Ormund did not like to repeat himself. 

“Y-yes, my lord,” you stuttered. 

“Wear the blue silk. The one with the square neckline,” he dipped his quill into the ink, already moved on from the excitement and back to his usual self. He glanced up once more, eyes moving across your face. “And…have the women repair your face. It would be quite unbecoming to our guests to see you have upset yourself.”

You were thoroughly humiliated. “Yes, my lord.”

Legs shaking slightly, you rose and smoothed your skirts. 

“And, one more thing,” Ormund spoke, though he continued reading the parchment he held. “You will not speak with Lord Ashford this evening.”

You paused. Was this a trap? “Would it…would it not appear discourteous if I refused to–”

“The matter has already been decided, my girl. You have no need to encourage him further.”

“I…I understand.” You bowed, trying not to trip over your still unsteady feet, and then turned towards the door. You had just put your hand on the latch when Ormund spoke again.

“Have you forgotten something?”

You paused, and then looked back in the solar. Ormund had finally lifted his eyes from the parchment and was leaning back in his seat. He tapped one finger against his cheek. 

Your cheeks grew hotter, though you had done this hundreds of times before. Thousands, perhaps. You crossed the solar to where Ormund sat, his expression completely neutral. Heart beating in your throat, you bent carefully and pressed your lips briefly to his cheek. He caught your wrist before you could retreat.

“Once more, properly this time,” he commanded.

You swallowed and kissed him again, lingering this time until you felt the faint scrape of where he had shaved that morning and breathed in the familiar fragrance of his pomander.

Ormund released his grip on you, mouth curled in a smile. “Good girl. You may go now.”

You bowed, lower this time, and left the solar with the warm and humiliating feeling you had become accustomed to now living in the very place Ormund had hollowed out inside you over years and years. 

As you walked down the halls of Hightower, face lowered so any passerbys would not catch a glimpse of your reddened cheeks and puffy eyes, you wondered why you felt the way you did. 

Lord Ashford would be at the feast that evening, and though Ormund had forbidden you from speaking to him, you knew that you would search for him among the gathered faces. For what, you could not say. To prove something, perhaps. But what, exactly?

That Ormund was right? Or that he was wrong? 

And afterward…no matter the excitement from the day, you had not forgotten Ormund’s reminder that morning. 

“It is the seventh day.”

You dreaded the fact, but not for the ritual that awaited you, but rather the shameful fact it made you excited. 

It seemed this was to be a day of contradictions.

You wanted Lord Ashford to see you, and you hoped he never appeared so that you might obey Ormund without temptation. You wanted Ormund to loosen his hold upon you, and you wanted him to swear that he would never allow you to belong to anyone else.

How could both desires live in the same body? The same heart? You did not know.

You knew only that, by the end of the night, Ormund would decide which desire you were permitted to keep.

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