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“And what has Alicent lost?” you argue, sharper than you intended. Your head whips hard to the side in time to find Ormund flinching beneath the bite of your words — a small flicker at the edges of his eyes; a brief lowering of his brows. 

You soften with a sigh a moment later and remind yourself that Ormund lost something too, even if the loss was not pulled from his body to claim it. 

“Forgive me, I… I only meant that… The Queen has four living children. And she carried each one with grace— There is no part of her that could possibly understand how I feel… And I wouldn’t wish it upon her besides.”

Ormund exhales through his nose and takes a step closer, boots scuffing the cobbles. “Then at least let me tell them that you are unwell—”

“No,” you dismiss with a shake of your stubborn head, eyes shutting briefly when the corset tightens again. “I refuse to be spoken of like some frail, ailing thing while the King sups at our table.”

Your gaze is wet with unshed tears when they open again, snapping to Ormund’s pale ones with a glimmering determination. “I am the Lady Hightower,” you tell him, brows raised and eyes firm. “So I will greet them standing. On my own feet. In my own home.”

Ormund’s chest, still heavy with grief, blooms with a distant sort of pride at your words. Perhaps because a part of him had long understood that you did not always dream of being the Lady Hightower. Your marriage was made of meetings and ledgers and alliances rather than any actual tenderness, as was true in most great marriages in Westeros. He knows, had you had it your way, you would’ve wed that gardener’s boy you grew up with — who you attempted to bring with you to Oldtown upon your betrothal, along with many of your household’s servants.

Ormund had the brawny, olive-skinned boy sent away within a fortnight — the moment he understood what kind of feelings the peasant boy had for you, and you for him. It was perhaps the first mad thing he ever did for you and, by Ormund’s later admission, the first time he realized that he might love you truly. (Though he had not thought it mad at the time, or love until many moons later, when he was struck with the sudden realization that the thought of Oldtown with you in it would be entirely unbearable.)

“Then we shall go,” Ormund nods in acquiescence as he plants himself just ahead of you. His gaze fixes into a sterner look a second later, as he tilts his chin to his chest and ducks into your eyeline. “But know I am not happy about this.”

“And yet Oldtown will remain standing anyway,” you joke in a softer coo. “I have faith that we’ll survive one of your unhappy mornings, my lord.”

The walk from your chambers to the gates of Oldtown is not long, but you feel every stone beneath your slippers as if the journey were some great pilgrimage across the whole of Westeros. 

You brace Ormund’s strong arm with both your hands, fingers curling into the fine wool of his coat hard enough to blanche your knuckles. He slows his long stride to match your smaller, more careful one without a word shared between you — a wall of green and muscles at your side, shielding you from the curious eyes of courtiers wondering why their lord and lady moved so slowly. So close.

It’s the first time you’ve tasted fresh air in three days. The breeze smells of the sea from the harbor and fish from the markets — mixing with the sweet citrus of the orange and lemon trees blooming in the gardens. Their white petals scatter like snow along the pale stone with every gust off the bay. You breathe in deeply through your nose, trying hopelessly to clear away the metallic tang of your own blood stubbornly clinging to the inside of your nostrils.

“His Grace, Viserys of House Targaryen,” the herald calls as the royal party files in on fine horses and gilded carriages, black banners snapping in the wind. “First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men.”

Viserys is the first to exit when the caravan finally stills. He descends the steps a knight places down for him, portlier than you remember from your last journey to King’s Landing, some years before your marriage. His kind face has started to wither from fatigue and age alike. The crown seems heavier upon his head, though perhaps it’s only from where his silver hair has started to thin at the scalp.

Alicent follows out just behind him. She wears a black dress with drooping sleeves and a veil to cover her long auburn curls, fit for a funeral procession. A knight of white armor and long black hair helps her descend the steps as she cradles a small, dark bundle squirming in protest in her arms.

You sink into a curtsy. A white-hot pain swells from the pit of your stomach to the top of your spine — a lightning strike that burns for minutes after. You grip Ormund’s arm until your fingers tremble, though the polite smile on your face remains when you rise again.

“Ormund,” Viserys greets with an easy smile. He clasps your husband’s free arm with a genuine affection while his tired eyes drift along the white stone towers of the city. “My… Oldtown is just as fair as I remember it.”

“I agree, Your Grace, though I confess I am far more partial,” Ormund responds with a dry humor and a knightly smile. “I hear the view improves the longer one is forced to stare at it.”

Viserys laughs while, beside him, Alicent tries and fails to summon her own. Her elegant features are worn from the weeks of travel, many of which you imagine were spent balancing the fussing weight concealed against her chest just now.

“And my lady…” Viserys inclines his silver head towards you, studying your face with a pair of kind eyes. “You look well.”

You feel, in a word, like death dressed in Hightower green. You feel hollowed out and stitched together again, the farthest thing from well. But you nod once and thank the King all the same, profoundly grateful when your voice doesn’t shake.

“Truly. Marriage suits you both well,” Viserys nods. “Though, I admit, I’d hope Daeron might have had a cousin or two near enough in age to grow up beside him here. Once he’s old enough for such things, of course.”

Ormund tenses beside you. 

His arm feels very suddenly like holding onto stone. His pale eyes turn glacial in a flicker; a withheld grief that he forces himself to swallow down the second it rises like bile in his throat. You say nothing at all. You just keep smiling and pray to whatever god will hear you that you do not weep in front of the King and all his men.

“But there’s still time— You’ll have one of your own before long, I’m sure of it,” the older man continues, possessing no notion of what had happened behind these walls hardly two days past. If he notices anything amiss, he does not dwell on it, and turns instead to Alicent. “Go on. Let them see the boy.”

Alicent’s arms tighten instinctively around the bundle in her grasp and inhales sharply through her nose. It had been her own decision that Daeron be sent to her family’s ancestral home. Her last child was not quite six months when she counseled her King to send him to ward, far from the chaos of King’s Landing. But she finds herself suddenly plagued by the harsh realization that this will be the last time she will hold this baby as he is now. The next time she’s like to lay eyes on him again, he’ll be an unrecognizable young boy, and not nearly the small thing fussing against her collarbone now.

“He hasn't slept," Alicent warns as she steps closer. Her green eyes are warm and weary when they flit to you. “He didn’t take well to the carriage. Or the ship. He’s cried the whole way from Blackwater, I think. Poor thing…”

“I’m sure we can manage a crying babe, my Queen,” Ormund says gently, though there’s a distant aching in his voice disguised as good humor that only you could recognize. “I grew up with Gwayne, if you remember. I’m more than acquainted with wailing boys by now.”

Alicent musters a small smile and closes the distance between you to settle her son in your arms. 

He’s warm — that’s the first thing you notice — he’s a small furnace swaddled in Targaryen black. He stirs briefly at the transfer from one chest to another, round face screwing tight in the prelude to a wail. Your heart clenches to brace yourself for that sound. It never comes.

The babe turns his face into the curve of your throat and settles into stillness with one small fist curled into the fabric of your gown. The tiny sound he makes isn’t a cry, but it isn’t quite a coo either. He sleeps, finally, in your arms — not even two days after you held your daughter between them, who had never awoken at all.

Ormund’s wide hand settles at the small of your back. Even in its steadiness, you feel the subtle tremor of his fingers against your spine. His throat tightens with the sudden urge to cry at the sight — of you, still frail and yet so bravely composed, cradling another woman’s child after laying your own to rest in the sept. He swallows through the hands of grief strangling his throat and feels a warmer feeling settling in its wake.

“Well…” Viserys hums, watching the baby sleep against you with a proud look in his weathered eyes. “It seems the boy’s found his corner of Oldtown already— Isn’t that lovely, Alicent?”

The woman nods, though shock still etches slightly in her pale features and behind the dark green of her eyes. “Of course, Your Grace,” she says and clears her throat, blinking back her tears with a queen’s practiced grace. “Thank you both for taking him.”

“He'll want for nothing here," Ormund swears with a firm nod. “You have my word. We'll raise him as if he were our own trueborn son.”

You pull the blanket gently back to peer at the sleeping baby swaddled within it. He’s practically all cheeks, with his mother’s mouth and nose. 

You had been certain, two days past, that your life had surely ended with your daughter’s. That there would be nothing more to life than a hollow, vacant silence. But now, there is warmth — and a babe’s slow breath fanning along your collarbone. 

You do not yet have a name for the foreign feeling swelling inside of you. It’s not joy, not yet, but it isn’t grief either. Or, at least, not only grief. And for now, that would have to be enough.

127 A.C. / Training Yard

The sound of clashing steel finds you before the sight of it does. The ring and scrape of blade on blade carries across the bustling courtyard, where you’ve gone to look for a young prince who was, as Maester Yorrick informed you with a palpable impatience, nearly an hour late for his lessons. You find the boy exactly where you imagined he would be — sword-training with his uncle, who has since stripped down to a pale tunic now darkened with sweat from the exercise.

Daeron, now thirteen years of age, is all knees and elbows from a sudden growth spurt that had taken him seemingly overnight. He presses a defensive attack upon his uncle with all the fierceness of a knight, but with the gracelessness of a teenage boy. Even you could tell from where you stood that his swing had no hope of landing. Ormund turns the blow aside with a lazy flick of his wrist, no more troublesome than swatting a fly from the air.

“Awful,” you hear the man scold from afar. When Daeron grits his teeth and presses forward once more, Ormund steps back and lets the boy’s momentum carry him a half stride too far. His blade misses his mark by inches. “Gods, that’s even worse—”

Daeron lunges a third time, fuelled now by a boyish rage that twists his freckled features. Ormund steps inside the overextended reach, hooks a boot around the boy’s ankle, and trips him onto the dirt with his blunted blade pressed to his ribs. Daeron hits the ground with a thud, red-faced and breathing heavy. His long auburn tendrils cling to his sweaty temple when he whips his head to glare up at his uncle.

“Dead,” Ormund proclaims from where he stands over the boy, flat but not totally unkind. He raises his brows and tilts his chin to his chest. “If this were a real sword, I’d have had your head before the thought to swing finished forming in that head of yours.”

Daeron twists himself upward and shoves the faux blade away with a boyish scowl. “You always say that,” he grumbles, refusing the hand Ormund extends to help him up. He rises to full height on his own and swipes dirt from his pale palms.

“Yes. I always say it because it's always true. You're thinking with your temper again— I can see it in your shoulders before you’ve even moved,” the older man lectures as he turns on the heel of his boot and walks off a few paces. “Again. And this time, think before you swing. Not after—” 

“I think that’s enough for this morning,” you call to them as you step further into the yard, dress skirts rushing around your ankles in the summer breeze. “Maester Yorrick has been waiting all morning. And his patience, unlike yours, my lord, has its limits.”

Daeron nods once, shoulders sagging with an absent relief. “Yes, ma’am—”

“Give us a few more minutes,” Ormund dismisses simultaneously. “He’s close to getting his footwork right. I can feel it.”

You flash the man a look — one slight lift of your brow, one flicker of dullness behind the eyes. Years of marriage have honed that wordless look to a firm edge, one which finds Ormund like a blade. He nods in concession with a heavy exhale through his nose.

“You heard her, boy. Go on,” Ormund says, jerking his chin toward the tower and extending his hand out for the practice sword.

Daeron obeys without question. He passes the dull blade over and crosses the yard to you. You see the sweat and dirt streaked across his freckled face the closer he gets. “Come here to me,” you sigh and catch his round chin between your thumb and forefinger when he plants himself ahead of you. You swipe the filth from his cheeks with the hem of your sleeve like you’ve done since he was small enough to fit in one arm.

“I’m not a child anymore, you know," Daeron reminds you with a childish grimace as he suffers your motherly affections. “I’m a squire now.”

“Oh, a squire, are you?” you croon in response with an obvious air of sarcasm. You smooth wild auburn hair from his temples before pressing a chaste kiss to his hairline. “Go on now— before Maester Yorrick decides to make you study your histories until sundown.” 

Daeron nods and ducks past you towards the tower stair, though you catch the corner of his pink mouth twitching upward into a grin before he’s turned away. You watch him leave with an attentive stare as Ormund discards the training swords at their posts. He approaches you in long, slow strides, allowing you to see the mark that training has left upon him — the way the sweat dampens his dark curls and the collar of his tunic, making the fabric stick to his broad shoulders and toned chest. 

He smells of sweet wine, musky bathing oils, and salty sweat when he towers just before you. He tips his chin to his chest and raises his brows to his hairline, pale eyes glimmering with an expectant look.

“…Well?” 

You blink up at him with a feigned innocence. “Well, what?”

“My kiss,” he answers with a shrug like it’s obvious, like he were a man coming to collect his debts. “You gave the boy his, and I’ve spent half the morning training him— I should think that I’ve earned at least that much.” 

“Oh, really?” you squint. “After you told the boy he’s like to lose his head?”

“I told him the truth,” Ormund argues with an unrepentant laugh and takes a slow step closer to you. “Is the truth unkind merely because it stings a little going down?” 

His hands splay along your waist, wide and warm along the edges of your corset. It takes everything in you not to cave for him right there, in the full view of the crowded courtyard. You cross your arms over your chest instead. “If you keep being so hard on him, he’ll grow to hate sword training altogether—”

“May be. But he will go on alive a good deal longer for having learned it the hard way now— instead of on a real field, with real steel, without me there to guide him.” Ormund ducks his head to catch your eye, pale gaze glimmering in time the pink smile tugging at his lips. “Surely you are not truly cross with me, my love…” he croons quietly.

You shrug with a raised chin, unwilling to concede so easily. “Perhaps I am.”

“Well, then, it’s hardly my doing,” he chuckles, a sound far warmer than the silver-gold sunshine sprawling over the courtyard. The pads of his thumbs smooth over your ribs in an absentminded affection. “You've gone so soft on the boy that you can scarcely bear to watch him lose a practice bout, without petting his hair over it after."

“Well, someone in this household has to be soft with him," you argue lightly, more teasing now than truly cross. Your slipper scrapes the dirt as you take a short step closer to him. What little distance remained between you closes now in an instant; each rise and fall of his chest brushes your folded arms. “You spend your mornings convincing the poor boy the world means to kill him, and I spend my nights convincing him that he could rule the world entire if he wished... Perhaps he’ll come out well-balanced for it, in the end.”

“Assuming one of us doesn’t kill the other over the method first,” Ormund quips.

“Precisely,” you nod.

“Well, I think it’s a fine system,” the man agrees gravely, drawing you an impossible inch closer by the hands still on your waist. His breath fans warm across your jaw as he leans in closer, still smelling of the mint leaves he’d chewed after breakfast. “And one I certainly intend to go on employing indefinitely… If my wife forgives me long enough to let me kiss her.”

His low voice glitters somewhere in the center of your chest. Your eyes narrow despite the small smile curling hopelessly at your mouth. “I don’t think I’ve yet decided,” you lilt.

“Well, I have,” he croons quietly, and does not wait for your retort before leaning down to press his lips against yours.

His broad nose flattens into the side of yours under the weight of his kiss, a slow and languid thing — as natural as the white waves ebbing and flowing against the pale stone tower of Oldtown. Your hands twist in his pale tunic billowing in the sea breeze, dissolving into the man like salt in water. 

There is nothing you would not forgive this man for, you think distantly to yourself. There is no madness he could not lead you toward, not if he kisses you like this the entire way there.

130 A.C. /  Ormund’s Solar

The raven arrives like all the rest — unceremoniously, on a sunless grey morning, from the trembling hands of the weathered maester. You tend to your needlework by the crackling hearth, burning low to fight off the morning chill blowing in from the sea, while Daeron reads in the opposite chair with one leg slung over the arm of it — both of you still waking with the early morning.

Across the room, Ormund sits at his desk and breaks the seal with a dull crack. Your gaze drifts to the man as he unrolls the letter, parchment whispering beneath his ringed fingers. You watch his pale eyes flit across the words once, and his brows lower in confusion a moment later. He shifts in his seat and reads it again, slower this time. His spine straightens with a soldier’s subconscious instinct as he draws a deep breath in and forgets to let it go. 

The quiet feels loud as it swells within the solar. The popping fire startles you briefly, as you get lost in Ormund’s wordless dread. You feel his silent panic as if it were your own. You rise from your seat and lay your needlework on the cushion behind you, careful not to trouble Daeron’s reading as you stroll to the man’s side.

“Ormund?” you call quietly to him. “Ormund— What does it say?”

He says nothing in response; he just lifts his ringed hand and passes you the parchment curled between his middle and forefinger. His eyes remained fixed on a negligible chip in the cobblestone wall across the room as you pluck the paper from his hand. His silence is not convincing; his silence, as you’ve learned in years of marriage, is far more frightening than any voice he could raise.  

Your eyes dart over the scrawled ink thrice over, just as he had, because your mind refuses to process the words on the first two passes.

“By the time this reaches you, the city has already fallen. Rhaenyra Targaryen holds King’s Landing and names herself Queen upon the Iron Throne. She has taken the Queen Dowager prisoner, as well as the King’s wife and last living heir. Send word of your household’s safety. Guard the boy.” 

The letters blur and steady and blur again, swimming before your eyes. Your blood runs cold while the glowing hearth simultaneously fills the room with a near-unbearable heat. As your breaths come faster and shallower to you, you hear a small voice call from behind you.

“Is something wrong?” Daeron wonders aloud as he glances up from the heavy novel in his lap. His auburn brows knit low over his green eyes, casting a faint shadow over his freckled cheeks, which are slowly starting to lose the softness of boyhood.

“Go on to your chambers, Daeron,” you tell him in a voice strangely steady compared to how shaken you feel. “It’s time to break your fast. I’ll have the servants fetch it for you.” 

“I’m not hungry,” the boy insists as he rises slowly from his chair, setting his book aside and walking slowly from the hearth. His eyes dart back and forth between your profile and Ormund’s when both of you refuse to look at him. His shoulders straighten with a strangling tension. “What’s happened? What does it say—?”

“Daeron,” Ormund snaps, voice cutting through the quiet room like a blade. His eyes are similarly sharp when they snap finally to the boy’s pleading once. “Listen to your mother, boy. Go.”

Mother, he says. The word lingers and hangs in the air for a long moment. Even in his newfound worry, Ormund’s eyes still flicker with a startled awareness at how easily the slip-up had escaped him, though there is little time to dwell on it now. 

Daeron's pink mouth parts with some half-formed protest at the ready. Whatever words he could conjure up on such short notice turn to dust on his tongue at the look his uncle gives him, chiseled features hardening into an unfeeling sort of look. Daeron exhales a held breath, gathers his book from his seat, and heads for the door without further argument.

Ormund’s knowing voice follows him out: “And don’t stand outside the door eavesdropping, either. Straight to your chambers. I'll know if you've stopped on the stair."

Only when the door shuts behind the boy with a soft click do your teary eyes lift from the parchment in your trembling hands. You say nothing for a long moment. The muffled sounds of the bustling castle fill the silence — the sounds of an oblivious world still living, though it feels a little like yours has stopped.

“I know," Ormund says before you’ve spoken, before you’ve needed to speak. “I know.”

“Okay,” you nod once. “So what are you going to do?”

He huffs a not-quite laugh. “I’ve only just found out about this. As have you,” he answers, a little sharper than he means to. “I’ll need a moment to think about the problem before you ask me to solve it, my love.” 

“A moment is no longer a luxury we have,” you argue, voice rising despite yourself and wavering on every syllable with a palpable fear. “Rhaenyra has dragons, Ormund— she has Daemon and three new bastard riders sworn to her besides. She does not need a moment to bring any of them to our door.”

Your dress skirt spins around your ankles when you turn suddenly in place. Ormund’s pale eyes follow your form as you storm back towards the hearth, ranting the whole way there.

“She will come for him, Ormund— not if, when. She will stop at nothing to silence any claim that challenges her own,” you continue, voice cracking under the weight of your unshed tears. “Daeron is a threat to her! Simply by breathing, he is a threat to her, and she will not leave him idling here out of some… familial courtesy for some half-brother she’s never met.”

The flame crackles quietly when you toss the letter into it. The wax seal blackens and weeps; the ink turns slowly to ash. You’d hoped that destroying those words might, in turn, settle the uneasy feeling they’ve brought you; but to no avail.

“I know that,” Ormund nods with a jaw clenched tight, ringed fingers curling into fists over his thighs beneath the desk. 

“Then think!” Your shout bounces off the cobbled walls as you turn to face him once more. His face blurs behind the burning tears clouding your vision. The swelling emotion thickens your voice as you yell to him, half-wild with a preemptive grief. “I have already buried children who never got to draw breath— I will not bury another who has drawn fifteen years of them under this roof! Do not let them take him, Ormund— I don't care what it costs. Do not let them our boy!”

Ormund’s chair scrapes the cobbles as he rises slowly to full height. He crosses the solar in slow, silent strides. Your glassy eyes stay locked with his as he nears. You peer stubbornly up at him from beneath your lashes, clumped with unshed tears; but you do not protest when his palms smooth over the outsides of your elbows to pull you into his arms. 

You melt hopelessly against his chest, fisting the back of his doublet in both hands, and trembling slowly as you choke down a sob. Ormund’s wide hands smooth along your back and feels his chest tighten with a striking, familiar ache. He thought once there was no worse sound in the world than hearing your weeping over a lost child; but he knows, now, that there is something equally as troubling: your weeping over a child you fear you’re about to lose and feeling like there is no time yet to stop it.

“I will not let anyone take him,” Ormunds promises evenly, with a distance that suggests he’s already assembling a plan in the depths of his mind. His arms curl tighter, pressing you harder against him. “I swear it to you. By the gods, they will not have our son.”

You pull back from him, just far enough to search his steady gaze with your wearier one. “But how?” you press weakly, more of a demand than a real question.

Ormund ponders for a long moment. The shadow of his adam’s apple rises and falls in his throat as he swallows. And when he speaks again, the words fall from his tongue flat and even, as if he were testing each one the moment they left his mouth.

“No one at court has laid eyes on the boy since he was a babe in arms…” he answers lowly, brows lifting to his hairline. “Alicent hasn’t seen him in years… There is no one outside these walls who would know what he looks like… So if they come— when they come… I suppose Rhaenryra would presume any silver-haired boy as Viserys’ heir.”

Your brows furrow as confusion twists slowly across your face.

“We’d only need enough lye and patience,” Ormund continues with a shrug. “And a boy willing enough to answer to a name that isn’t his, and to go with Rhaenyra, should her dragons come calling.”

You tense within his hold as the words run through you like ice-cold water. “You mean to… to send a different child in his place?”

“Yes,” Ormund answers instantly and without apology. “It isn’t a kind plan, I know. And I won’t pretend that someone else’s son won’t have to suffer for it, if it comes to pass, but… You did not ask me for a kind plan.”

You grieve the heat of his hands when he lifts them from your back, just to smooth his gently calloused palms over your jaw a moment later. He rubs the rough pads of his thumbs along your burning cheeks. You melt into his touch of warm velvet and peer up at him with teary eyes. Ormund’s gaze softens around the edges as his mouth lifts into a sad sort of smile.

“You asked me not to let them take our boy,” he continues lowly. “And however cruel it may be… this is but the only coin I have to buy that promise with.”

You know that a part of you should be horrified. You know what he is describing is a monstrous thing — an innocent boy’s whole life offered as a shield for another’s. You search deep within yourself to find that terror, but cannot seem to locate it. Instead, you find relief, like a crack of sunlight peeking through storm clouds — the very hint of a promise that your family was not long in the dying just yet.

“Do it,” you hear yourself say, shaking your head between his hands. “Whatever it costs… Whoever it costs… Do it.”

Ormund nods with a deep inhale through his nose, leaning forward to press his mouth to your hairline — to seal his promise with a kiss.

130 A.C. / Tumbleton Sept

Rhaenyra's dragonriders come for Daeron not nearly a fortnight into the army's march. Ormund sends the son of a merchant in his place — a boy of the right age and the right pale coloring, plucked quietly from Oldtown and dressed in borrowed finery before anyone thought to look twice. “Be brave, young prince," Ormund had said to the blanch-haired boy, only for show, though what he really meant was: “I will have your family hanged if you do not play your part.”

Ormund knelt before Daemon Targaryen and swore his fealty to the Queen, but marched on for Tumbleton the second the dragons took flight, all the shame. 

The chaos follows them there, too.

Daeron attempts to seek a momentary refuge in the foreign castle’s candlelit sept. A cramped chamber made of brown stone and hazy smoke from the flickering candles, where Tessarion grumbles in protest of captivity. The lack of sunlight has dulled her fluorescent blue scales, and has made her ill-tempered due to the lack of exercise. Daeron alone she allows close, pressing her great head into the boy’s small neck, and momentarily forgetting about the heavy chains around her throat when he pets her stony scales. 

Ormund finds him there. Ormund has a way of finding him anywhere. It is a gift and a curse, perhaps — comforting when Daeron was small and frightened of the dark; but less so now, when Daeron’s every attempt at solitude is interrupted by his uncle, constantly watching him as if he were a traitor to be surveilled and not his kin.

“I have warned you against indulging in affections for the best,” Ormund says as he approaches. The man cradles the boy's freckled cheeks in his wide, calloused palms despite Tessarion's low growl of warning.“You are a good boy,” he says, and in the very same breath, without losing the tender smile on his face: “You have a taint in your blood,” and “You must be king.”

Ormund makes less and less sense to him these days — the throes of war, Daeron supposes, though a part of him is frightened that it began long before that. 

Sometimes he thinks Ormund only makes sense when you’re near enough to translate his tangled, wild emotions back into something grounded and real. You’ve always had a way of gentling the man; usually with nothing more than a steady hand along his wrist to calm whatever storm had been moving within him. 

Daeron has seen you do it a hundred times over without ever quite understanding how. But he prays now for your swift return from the city, so that you might do it again — so that you might soften whatever unfamiliar thing has taken root in his uncle when he commands his soldiers to drag in the peasant man from earlier that afternoon. The one who broke Ser Garrick’s nose defending against his own wife’s assault; an act any decent lord would have called simple justice. 

Ormund draws his sword from its sheath at his hip. The hiss of the steel leaving the leather fills the small stone sept, loud enough to echo off the old walls that have likely seen a great many prayers and, Daeron suspects, not so very many murders. The older man turns the blade and offers the embellished hilt to the boy, pale eyes hardening when he hesitates.

“We have risked much and more to raise you up,” Ormund says, strong features twisting into something resembling offense. “Surely, you do not wish to disappoint us now.”

Us. Daeron is pulled into his uncle’s orbit at that single syllable alone; the unbearable thought of failing the only two people in this world who have ever troubled themselves to love him — one standing before him with a blade held out like a peace offering, and the other somewhere in the depths of the dark city but still steady on his mind all the same.

Daeron lays his palms out flat before his brain has fully comprehended the motion. He prays Ormund doesn’t notice how they tremble when he rests the sword upon them — the weight of the blade cold and heavy upon his fingers.

Daeron’s hands tremble around the ornate leather hilt of Ormund’s sword. His misty eyes find the prisoner kneeling just before him on the cold stone — bloodied and chained for a crime any noble man in Westeros would surely commit with honor — before glancing slowly to where his uncle looms behind him. Candlelight flickers in shades of orange-gold upon the man’s chiseled features, pooling a deep black in the hollows of his eyes.

“What would Mother think of this?” Daeron hears himself ask, voice cracking under the weight of the tears burning hot in the backs of his eyes. 

It is his last and most desperate attempt to reach for his uncle, just as he has seen you do, and to pull him back from the dangerous ledge he stands upon. But he knows the man has already made up his mind; and he knows that there is no version of him that walks out of this sept without spilling blood.

Ormund’s face softens slightly, though there is little tenderness in what he asks of the boy now. “Alicent would understand,” he coos in a gentle voice. “War asks difficult things of every great house—”

“I didn’t—” Daeron swallows hard, smaller now than moments before. “I did not mean the Lady Alicent…” 

Realization flashes across Ormund’s face — a visible recognition of exactly which woman the boy had meant, and has always meant every time the word slipped accidentally from his mouth and was never corrected for it after. Daeron was not yours by blood, but he was yours in every other way that matters. The small, warm weight of him stopped crying the moment he was placed into your arms fifteen years ago, and never truly stopped being yours since.

Still, Ormund does not soften for it. If anything, something in him hardens further as he takes a slow step closer to the boy.

“Your mother would be proud,” he answers, brows lowered as if the answer was the plainest thing in the world. “Don’t you see? Any strike against this army is a strike against her, against everything she’s built to keep you safe… Any man who raises his fist against our men raises it, in the end, against her… And do you not want to protect her, just as she has spent every day protecting you?”

Daeron swallows hard. The weight of Ormund’s words feels heavy in his throat, heavier than the blade in his hands as his trembling fingers tighten around its hilt. His teary green eyes linger on the steel, flickering shades of gold in the candlelight. 

“No, please, I beg you,” the battered prisoner rasps, dried blood matting at his curls from whatever rough handling had brought him here. “I have a family, my lord. Please—”

Daeron’s eyes lift to find the man’s pleading gaze and linger upon him for a long while. He sees your face in the very back of his mind, the only real mother he’s ever truly known, and hears Ormund’s disappointed voice layered over it as he draws the heavy blade back. 

Then he strikes. 

The cut is not clean. The blade lodges at an off angle in the man’s corded neck and sticks somewhere deep between flesh and bone. The man’s pained shout comes out wet and gargled, bouncing off the cobbled walls and in the depths of Daeron’s mind. 

The boy’s body flinches from what his own hand has done as bright crimson blood spouts from the gaping wound and splatters along the old stone. 

His face crumples as he removes the blade. It takes a world of strength in his thin arms to wrench it out again. A quiet whimper sounds in his throat when the blade drags against bone and stumbles backward when the man’s limp body collapses at his feet with a dull smack. Dark blood spreads slowly across the stone in a widening, glistening pool that catches the candlelight like moonlight on the bay.

Daeron looks down at the crimson dripping off the steel blade. He does not notice his uncle’s approach until his broader hands are gently guiding the sword from his fingers — fingers that no longer feel like his own. 

Ormund wipes the steel clean against the dead man's tunic, one side and then the other, with the methodical care of a man cleaning a hunting knife after a kill. He sheaths the blade back into its hilt and closes the remaining distance between him and the boy.

When Daeron’s mind finally returns to his body — ears still ringing, vision still hazy — his wide eyes snap to his uncle’s face and sees a quiet pride swimming in his features once more. It’s as comforting as it is horrifying. And when Ormund's strong arms wrap around the boy’s shoulders and draw him close to his chest, that feels like a dizzying concoction of the two even more so.

“I am proud of you, boy…” Ormund tells him as he leans in close, pressing his mouth to the boy’s hair in a near-kiss, though he whispers to him instead:  “Do not tell your mother of this. Understood?"

Daeron does not answer, though Ormund does not ask him for one now.

130 A.C.  /  Tumbleton Castle

You return to the castle late in the evening, weary down to your bones from the long day. 

You had gone into town with what coin and grain the army could spare, and found Lady Kat there among the frightened smallfolk, tending to the smith's wife, whose arm still sat bound in a rough splint. The woman's round face was kind, but you knew that no amount of offered bread or soft words could cure what comfort had been taken from her.

“Do you know where my husband is?” she had asked you before you left, with something desperate in her voice that made you wish you had a better answer than the only truthful one you could give.

“I’m sorry. I do not know," you told her, smiling in what sympathy you could muster, honest in your ignorance if nothing else.

The question sits strangely in your chest on the ride back to the castle, though you struggle to place exactly why.

Dinner is already laid out by the time you arrive. The long table is embellished with more food than Tumbleton's starving smallfolk have likely seen since the war began. The notion sits heavy in your stomach before you’ve even entered the dining hall, where Ormund rises from his seat to greet you. 

His warmth is striking, a shade too bright for the late hour. He presses a jeweled chalice of ale into your hand with a tender grin and a pair of soft eyes, asking after the wife and the town's wounded with an attentiveness he doesn’t usually spare for such small domestic accounts.

“Sit,” he tells you with one wide hand along the small of your back to urge you the short distance to the table. “You've had a long day, my love. Eat something before it goes cold."

Confusion floods your face at the emptiness beside your usual seat. “Where's Daeron? He hasn’t missed out on lemon cakes since he was old enough to chew them.”

“He's not feeling well. Best to let him rest,” Ormund answers with a polite smile as he pours himself a goblet of wine. His soft eyes flit between you and the glugging flagon. “Sit with me, love. I’m sure you’re half-starved yourself."

He sits down in his cushioned seat at the head of the long table and gestures for you to take yours. You remain stubbornly in place, because you know him far too well for anything else. Years of marriage have taught you every register of his voice; every flicker behind his eyes; every twitch in his features. And this one, all warm and careful and slightly too eager, is one you’d learned to trust least of all.

“What have you done?” you deadpan.

Ormund scoffs a breathless laugh, bouncing his broad shoulders in a shrug. “Why do you insist I’ve done something?” 

“Because I can hear it in your voice.”

Ormund huffs again, though it’s more of a sound of surprise than true laughter this time. “Well, I assure you, dear wife, I have done nothing at all.”

“Is that what will Daeron tell me?” you press. “When I go to his chambers and ask him myself?"

“He will tell you that I'm an excellent uncle and an even better husband," Ormund quips with his elbows propped on the table and his pointer fingers steepled together. “And also that you ought to sit down and eat your supper with your poor husband, before you go making a production out of a boy's upset stomach.”

You leave despite his words, led purely by the intuition swirling in your stomach that drags you directly to Daeron’s chamber door. You knock once and receive no answer — when the silence holds on the third try, you let yourself in and find the boy alone in his room, curled small on the edge of his bed in a way that strikes you deep in the chest; a reminder of that swaddled babe curled against your chest fifteen years past.

He does not look up when you enter, nor when you lower yourself gingerly onto the edge of the mattress beside him without a word. His shoulders shake in small, tight increments as he struggles to choke down his own sobs. He drags each breath in through his nose and holds it for a beat too long until it shudders out of him again.

He freezes when you lay a gentle hand on his shoulder, going rigid against whatever emotion he’s trying not to shake loose.

“What's happened, my love?" you coo to him, gentling your voice the way you might for a much younger child. “Tell me."

He shakes his auburn head against the pillow and sniffles to himself. “He told me I couldn't…"

“Who? Ormund?”  you press and feel a preemptive anger kindling hot in your chest before you’ve even heard the whole of it. “Well… Your uncle tells me a great many things that I’ve long since learned to ignore. So I imagine he can spare us the indulgence of a secret or two.”

After another shaky breath, Daeron pushes himself up from the mattress. He snivels wetly and wipes his flushed cheeks with the back of one hand. You smooth down his wild flaming tendrils until he finds the words to speak.

“The blacksmith…” he wavers. “The one who struck Ser Garrick this morning…”

Your stomach swirls with a sick feeling when he trails off. Your blood runs cold with a fear of what he might say next. You think instantly of the woman with the kind face and the splinted arm, asking so gently if you knew where her husband had run off to. You have to remind yourself to breathe again as you ask, “What of him?”

“Ormund made me…” Daeron’s breath catches in his throat with a horror reignited in the pit of his chest. “He said any strike against the army was a strike against the crown. Against me. Against you.” He forces each word out through unshed tears and feels half-furious at himself when his voice shatters. “He told me it would be a king’s justice. That it— that it would make you proud.”

The boy’s eyes lift to yours then, glassy and green and rimmed red. They dart back and forth over your face, searching for an ounce of comfort within it.

“Are you?” he asks in a voice barely above a whisper. “Proud of me, I mean.”

You nod until the words have climbed through the fear swelling in your throat.

“Of course I am,” you answer breathlessly, but with no hesitation at all despite the dread searing in your chest. “I have been proud of you since the day I met you. Nothing you could do— Nothing of what your uncle made you do could change that. And you did it, I have no doubt, because some part of you believed it would keep our family safe. Protecting the people you love, even when doing so costs so much, is no easy feat, my love. I know this better than you might think…” 

Your mind drifts to the pale-haired boy — the merchant’s son who was brown of hair before you found him. The boy who was borrowed and dressed up in a prince’s wardrobe and sent off to whatever fate Rhaenyra’s justice had in store for him. The boy who is very likely chained or worse for a crime that was never truly his, simply because you and Ormund decided his captivity was a fair trade for Daeron’s freedom.

Daeron watches your eyes well with tears of your own, and his freckled face crumples further at the thought of hurting you further. “I did not mean to make you sad…" he mutters with a wet gaze that flits between yours.

“You haven't," you tell him firmly, though your voice remains steady. You gather the boy into your arms and press your cheek against his hair, feeling his tear-stained cheeks wet the skin of your chest. “I’m not sad, my love. I promise. I only love you. That's all….”

You sit with him for a long while after that — until his breathing steadies and his shoulders lose their edge. Only then do you rise, with one last kiss to his forehead, and leave him to whatever uneasy slumber he can manage after what the long day had done to him.

You run into Ormund on your way down the long corridor. His broad form towers in the narrow passageway as his wide hands splay before him in confusion. “What’s taken you so long? Your dinner’s already gone cold.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Your shoulder scrapes along his arm as you shove by him with little affection. Ormund huffs and falls easily into step with you on his much longer legs. The two of you move through the stony corridors in a silent tension that grows with every step you take, torchlight guttering along the damp walls as you pass them. The words of an argument well in your throat the whole way to your chambers and refuse to break free until the door has shut finally behind you.

“I cannot believe you!” you shout, features twisted in anger. “How dare you tell my son to lie to me! After everything—"

Ormund shakes his head. “I only told him to spare you a grief that serves no purpose—"

“You told him to kill a man, Ormund! A smith. A husband.” The words come out through a jaw clenched tight. Your eyes glitter in the flickering candlelight with every one that spills from your mouth, hands gesticulating wildly at your sides. “I stood in that town not an hour ago and told his wife I didn't know where he was. And I didn't know, because you hadn't thought to tell me you hadn’t let him go at all! And now I have to carry that too, on top of everything else because you've decided I didn’t need to be troubled with it—”

“It’s war!” Ormund shouts, voice ringing through the cobbled walls. His handsome features harden instantly as he stares you down with emotionless pale eyes. His long fingers curl into fists before relaxing once more in a repeated cycle intended to calm him. “I will not apologize for teaching that boy what war requires of men who mean to survive it. For now, it’s only Ser Garrick’s broken nose, but we will have far worse than that done to us before this war is through. If Daeron doesn’t learn that now, he’s as good as dead—”

“He’s sixteen—”

“He’s the King's last trueborn son, with any righteous claim to the throne!” Ormund thunders over your teary retort, approaching you with long strides. “He is the rider of a dragon that is the only thing standing between this army and total ruin— What don’t you understand about that?”

Ormund towers over you at once. His firm hands close hard around your arms, keeping you close and unmoving before him. He ducks his head to your height, eyes darting wildly between yours.

“Do you think I enjoyed putting that sword in his hand?” he continues, quieter now. “Do you think I've slept easy a single night since we left Oldtown, knowing what I'm shaping him into— why I have to?”

You swallow hard through a tight throat, peering up at him through the tears clouding your vision. “I think you’ve decided his suffering is a fair price for war,” you waver. “And I think you decided that without asking me.”

“Yes,” Ormund nods without reservation. “I have decided a great many things without asking you first— I did not ask you first when I decided to blanch that stranger’s hair and send him off in Daeron’s place, did I? And yet you still thanked me for it with your words and body when it kept our boy breathing.”

His words tear right through your chest. You shake your head in protest of them even though you know that he’s right — that you are no better than Ormund even in his madness; that you would do worse and more for Daeron if the war called for it, if you were brave enough to do it. 

“Did I complain, all those years, when grief after grief left this house without an heir of its own blood?” Ormund goes on, quieter now but no less harsh, as his features twist in a stifled sort of anguish. “Did I complain when courtiers wondered in whispers why a man would stay wed to a wife that could not give him an heir?” 

You flinch at his words like you can feel them physically, tearing you from the inside out, though his long fingers caging you force you to stomach them.

“I never complained. Because I love you and because I understood it was no fault of your own,” Ormund continues. “So I have earned, I think, the right to make one hard choice without you looking at me as though I’ve become some monster for it.”

Anger pricks your skin beneath your heavy gown like needles.

It is not the unfairness of the blow of his words that sends you reeling, but rather the sheer astonishment at how low he has stooped in his fury — in his grief. It is, perhaps, the cruelest thing he’s ever said to you; made crueler still for how plainly he does not seem to recognize his own cruelty at all.

“Say that again,” you tell him in an emotionless monotone. “Say it plainly, exactly how you mean it— that you think I am some monster—”

“I didn’t mean…” Ormund huffs and hangs his head, tense shoulders dropping as the lingering anger slips from his skin like rain. “I am not saying this to be cruel— Gods know, I’d sooner cut out my own tongue before I meant any cruelty to you.”

His pale eyes are wet and soft again when they lift to meet yours. His hands loosen their grip on your arms as they lift to cradle your cheeks, softly calloused and warm like velvet along your blazing skin.

“Daeron is the only child either of us has been permitted to keep,” the man continues, softer now. “He is not merely a boy I love, though gods know I do, but he is the only proof that we were ever meant to be parents at all… After everything this life took from us in the trying… Do you understand what I’m telling you?"

“So what?” you press, voice breaking. “The only way he gets to stay ours is if he survives long enough to sit a throne? Is that the only way to remove the taint from his blood— that’s what you called it, right?”

Ormund softens further in the face of your anger.

“Without Aemond, without Vhagar, this army has no dragon to answer to whatever Rhaenyra sends against us next… But Daeron has Tessarion, and Daeron has a claim that half this army would follow into the fire itself,” he coos gently to you, as if anything louder might break you entirely. His thumbs smooth gently along your cheekbones, wiping away a tear that clings stubbornly to the burning skin there. “The war is coming here, my love. It is not a thing we can shield him from any longer. He is our only hope of surviving what is coming, and every bit his birthright to lead it."

“Surely…” you trail off in disbelief, wild eyes searching his bluer ones. “Surely you do not mean to make our child fight in this war."

“It is the will of the gods,” Ormund croons as if it were that simple.

Something in you knows, as each word spills from his mouth, that this is not a man reasoning clearly. You can hear it in the smoothness of his voice and in each too-quick answer on his tongue. And yet, you want more than anything for him to be right. You want it so badly it frightens you — for the gods to will this war’s end, for Ormund’s victory, for your son’s survival. 

You don’t realize you’re crying until Ormund draws you fully into his chest with one wide hand along your back and another cradling the back of your head. Tears fall from your lashes and wet the front of his emerald doublet.

“Listen to me…” he mutters into your hair. “If he sits that throne, no one in this realm could ever call him anything but ours. He is Viserys’s heir, yes, but he became a Hightower the moment you held him— and if he rules, no man will ever again whisper that he is not truly yours. He will restore ancient order to the throne. That is how we keep him.”

You shake your head in protest as you lean back from him again, just far enough to peer up at him with tear-heavy eyes. “Just bring him back to me,” you plead fiercely to him. “When this battle is done, I don't care what it costs you to manage it. Bring him back—”

“I will," Ormund nods with the same iron certainty that has carried you through every hard year of your marriage. “I swear it to you. I’ll bring him home—”

“And you,” you remind with a stern finger jabbed into the center of his chest. “You come back to me, too— I have buried enough of what I love in this life, Ormund. I will not bury another. You come back to me. Both of you.”

He nods and leans down to press his forehead against yours. Each of his heaving exhales through his nose fans warm across your chin.

“I will,” he breathes against you, thumbs sweeping again along your cheekbone. He shifts against you to brush the smallest of kisses to the bridge of your nose — so gentle that it makes you feel like crying. Your hands curl hard around his wrist to keep him close. “The gods owe us a debt. And we will see it repaid in full before this war is through, I promise you.”

You cling to the certainty in his voice the way a drowning woman clings to driftwood; the way a starving woman clings to the memory of her last full meal — you cling to him the way a grieving woman clings to the gods themselves.

Otto, Hand of the King, had surely whispered inspirations into your father’s and mother’s ears. Who better to guard the Princess than the son of the court's most trusted advisor?

Gwayne, the dutiful son and knight that he was, had agreed without a thought. To protect the realm's Princess was an honor.

“Ser Gwayne?” You called softly. “Perhaps you would like to sit with me?” You ask, watching him shift in his stance to glance back at you. You watch him mull it over, seemingly unsure if he should leave his post at the doorway. “You have worked tirelessly to watch over me; surely you could close the doors? They are the only viable entry in; you could watch them from the comfort of the fire with me- it is unusually cold tonight.”

Slowly the heavy oak doors slid shut. Gwayne approached, slipping his helmet off and setting it on the table. He ran a hand through his tousled auburn hair. The fire outlined his sharp features, blue eyes burning orange for a moment as he sat down with a heavy thud.

You offered him a smile; Gwayne was kind. Kinder than most of the stoic Kingsguard around here. You tugged you shaw closer to your body; it was a frigid night.

“You don’t wish to retire for the night, your grace?” He asked carefully, “It is late, your eyes are heavy, you need to rest.”

“I cannot, the nightmares persist.”

“The milk of the poppy should-”

“No- no I cannot take it anymore.” You huff, “They push it onto me every night; it may help, but I feel so unlike myself. So tired, too relaxed. I lay there, body so heavy I fear that I may never wake, that I may never be able to speak again. So heavy, trapped, my head so full of clouds that my mind stops working. I sleep so deep into unconsciousness that I fear I would be unable to call for you…” You’re frowning hard, arms around yourself, clutching your shawl tight.

Gwayen scowled, “I understand.” He looked you up and down, frowning. He knew very well about the addictive remedy. Handed out like sweets to many noble ladies who found themself unable to sleep from the stress of court life. Their eyes turned dull, voices slowed and slurred. People left half alive in bed for days.

And you, still young, being dosed with it because no one had given you peace and comfort? Gwayne had hoped, foolishly, that the remedy would miraculously treat you kindly.

“You will not drink that again,” he said quietly. Firmly. “I will do everything in my power to make you feel safe.”

“You have already done so much for me, uncle.” Your voice softened, the formalities dropping from your vocabulary as you rubbed your heavy eyes and looked to your uncle.

Silence befell both of you. Candlelight flickered around you; a thin blanket of tension filled the space between. For just a moment, you felt his eyes linger on you. Seconds too long, perhaps he hoped it had gone unnoticed, but you had. It was a rarity to feel his eyes linger, but when they did, you felt a swell of warmth wrack your body.

Even before his promotion to your Knight, you had noticed him- the sparse times that he visited King’s Landing. You often watched him joust in the crown’s tourneys. He visited from time to time to see Alicent and Otto, meandering about the castle’s grounds.

“Uncle?” You leaned a bit, placing your hand over his. “Do you remember the last tourney held for my nameday?” his fingers twitched under yours. “It was years ago, but I often find myself thinking of it. Lots of the Hightowers came. I remember because I was so happy; as was my mother. She said it felt like home again.”

Gwayne smiled, “I do; it was particularly extravagant.”

You smiled back. “I recall that nameday so often because you escorted Helana and me through the godswoods; she wandered off and- do you remember? The stag?”

“I do, you were so frightened of it-”

“It was enormous! I have yet to see a bigger stag in my life!” You laughed, “but you hushed me, took my hand and drew closer to the beast…he was beautiful, you placed my hand upon his back.”

Gwayne leaned back in his chair, the smile never leaving his lips. “He wasn’t as frightening as you insisted he was, quite docile actually.”

“I felt so silly being so afraid of him, and I remember how grateful I was that you were there with me.”

His smile faltered just a bit, his eyes tearing away from your own as he stood back up. “It warms my heart knowing you remember.”

His restraint was a bother to you. You had sat there, close yet not close enough; you knew the unspoken desire within yourself, and at times it felt as if Gwayne did as well.

“I think it’s time the princess retires for the night, don’t you?” He closed the book that lay open and forgotten in front of you. His tone was more parental than Knightly. “The Tourney begins tomorrow; you must rest.”

“Yes, of course.” You sighed, tone flattening a bit. You stood, following at Gwayne’s side into the hall.

……

You slept a few hours, better than usual, but you still felt a heavy weight on your eyes when the curtains were drawn, and the sun beamed in. Gently, your handmaidens roused you from the covers. Eyes dropping with sleep, you got up and began your morning routine.

Today, a Tourney would be held. Your sister’s nameday- though it felt more like your father's. He was more excited than the Princess herself. A grand feast afterwards, dancing, music, the whole ordeal. You looked to your father with eyes of concern; he was so weak, so frail that even the excitement of a tourney roused worry that the ordeal may be too much for him.

“It’s scorching outside; perhaps this gown will do?” Your tired eyes scanned the flowy material presented to you. You half-nodded; what you would wear was the least of your concerns. Still, your handmaidens helped you bathe and dress, and adorned you with jewelry.

Tourneys were okay; you didn’t find as much enjoyment as your Father and many others did. You’d sit pretty in the box, beside Alicent and your siblings. Quiet, hands folded perfectly and back straight. “Do you have your eyes set on anyone to receive your favor?”

“My favor?” You asked in time for one of the young ladies to hand the small braided ring of flowers to you. “Right, I’m not sure- there is no one in the lists that particularly interests me.”

No one, except Gwayne.

But to publicly toss him your favor seemed…brutish in the context of court gossip. He was a highborn noble, his father the Hand of the King. Formidable knight. He faced down rebel armies and wildling hordes without a second thought. Known to be boastful, as most men of his accomplishment were. Devoted to his faith and House, now entrusted with a Royal Maiden’s protection.

Objectively, he could be seen as a respectable match for a maiden; however, perhaps not for a Princess. You knew your duty well: find a husband to bring political tact and strength to the crown. The Hightowers were already quite favorable to the crown; a marriage with Gwayne could strengthen the allegiance, but in truth brought little gain. And a princess was too valuable to marry with no gain.

Well, all of that and the issue of him being your mother’s elder brother- perhaps the most glaring.

Your mother had nearly vomited at the union between Helana and Aegon; you imagined the Targaryan tradition of in-house bethrothals was far from her mind.

“I would like to see Ser Gwayne before the tourney starts.” Four Kingsguard escorted you and Helana; Aegon meandered behind the both of you. The morning sun was heavy upon your skin, the air thick with heat, and the clamor of excitement that was the tournament grounds grew louder with each step.

“Looking to wish your Knight good luck?” Aegon teased from behind you. “You know Gwayne will not win.” He mused.

“He has done a great service to me; of course I want to wish him luck.”

“Uncle Gwayne is formidable, but the competition is fierce,” Helana states simply. She’s holding her needlepoint, no interest in watching the tourney- if anything, you knew she wished to be excluded from such activities.

“I don’t wish for him to win, just for safety.” You pouted.

“Perhaps you should gift him your favor then.” Helana offered.

“Oh, no, I don’t think…”

“Mother would keel over!” Aegon laughed. “I’m sure Otto is in Father’s ear, orchestrating your future marriage as we speak. Ser Marrow, take my sister to see her Knight.” Aegon waved him off. “We will wait in the box for you, sister.”

“Tell Gwayne that I have prayed for him as well!” Helana called after you.

The grounds were wet, grass still slick with morning dew and dirt muddied from late-night rain. You hiked your skirts up carefully and followed in Ser Marrow’s path. There were men everywhere, in various stages of armor. Horses whinnied and stamped their hooves. The clang of swords rang in your ears as knights sparred with squires. Banners snapped in the wind: reds and golds of House Baratheon, blacks-and-greens of Hightowers.

He stood tall in full plate armor polished to a shine. His auburn hair was tied back loosely; his helmet rested on a stand nearby. A few lesser lords chatted around him. He turned away from them as you approached, smiling sweetly as Ser Marrow stood aside and watched over the area. “Ser Gwayne, I have come to wish you luck!”

Gwayne strode toward you. The other men around him fell silent, watching curiously. It was unusual to spot a Princess meandering about the grounds.

“You’re too kind,” Gwayne said quietly, eyes darting around to see who exactly had stopped to stare. “But I don’t need luck. I’m a Hightower.”

“So I’ve heard,” you smiled, “I wish for you to battle safely today, so you may enjoy my sister's feast unharmed tonight.”

“You worry that I will enjoy the feast tonight?”

“Well, I need you there to escort me, of course.” You laughed, “You’ve worked tirelessly at my side; a night of levity has been well earned. There will be so many guards there, you have no need to stay at my side all night.”

Gwayne nodded; he seemed pleased. “I will come out of the lists whole, I promise.”

“Good.” You swallowed, throat dry as you lost words to say next. Your fingers twitched around the wreath of flowers in your hands. You thought of what your sister had said. “I also wanted to…gift you my favor, Gwayne. As a token from Lady Luck that you might succeed and…and block out the chaos of the joust around you so you may focus and win and…”

He seemed to freeze, his brow rose just slightly, and he opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again. You imagined that if he were talking to anyone else, not a Princess of the realm, that he would say something witty or edged with innuendo…but he simply stared at the woven flowers.

“You don’t have to…” You cleared your throat, feeling a rush of embarrassment strike you. Of course, he stood lamely with no idea how to react. For him to wear it would mean publicly signifying your support and affections; it would be a romantic and political gesture. A big gesture, even more so when coming from yourself. You curse to yourself, what in the seven kingdoms had possessed you to offer it? Helena surely hadn’t meant it in the way you did. Innocently, unknowing of your affection for the older man.

You knew not why your head spun so often these days. Perhaps the hysteria from the other night. Perhaps the privilege of having your uncle all to yourself this time around. Through his visits over the years, he always made time to visit with you. Always, you were his favorite of the bunch he’d jest. You knew deep down it was true, besides perhaps Daeron. But Daeron didn’t count, you’d tell yourself, cheeks flush pink as you thought of your dear uncle naming you his favorite.

“I sorry, Uncle; this was a stupid- in-inappropriate idea of mine. I meant it only as a good, kind gesture-”

“Don’t,” he stopped you from pulling it away from him; softly he took your wrist. He pinched the finger of his glove between his teeth and pulled it off, releasing you and doing the same with the other. Your eyes locked in his hands. Large, rough from years wielding the sword. They had brushed against the skin of your wrist, firm and sure.

Carefully, he plucked the flowers from your grasp. He inspected them. “Wisteria?” He asked. “I heard the King had them specially ordered, planted in the gardens just for you.”

“They are my favorite.”

Gwayne gave a half nod. “I couldn’t deny a favor from you; I’ll wear it during the tourney. Thank you, Princess.” His hand found yours again, gently cradling it and drawing your hand up. He leaned slightly and pressed a chaste kiss to it. As any man or lord may do when meeting a princess, but it awoke the butterflies resting in your stomach. Feeling almost lightheaded, his lips were soft and warm. You pulled away, though you wished he had held your hand longer; pressed more than chaste police kisses to your skin.

“It’s my pleasure.” You breathed, “The heat gets to me now; I should find my seat. I will be cheering for you, uncle.”

Gwayne watched you leave with Ser Marrow, turning back to find the rest of his party’s eyes still lingering. “Go on back to work.” He snapped, “It’s about to start; hurry and finish preparations.”

His squire hurried to his side. “Shall I fasten it to the horse, Ser? It’s far too delicate for your lance, unless you don’t mind if it’s destroyed?”

“The horse,” Gwayne ordered. Sliding his gloves back on and snatched his helmet from the table at the sound of the horns.

The tourney was lively; no one of importance fell to injury, and Gwayne had risen high into the lists per usual. You had sat with your sister, practically chewing your nails off as you watched every time he took the field. Helana quietly worked the needle, eyes glued downwards, trying to ignore the noise, as well as Aegon’s rowdy behavior behind the two of you.

Gwayne's eyes drifted to you often; through the cover of his helmet, his eyes focused on you. Thankful that no one could tell, it was almost embarrassing the number of times they passed to you. Almost a habit now.

Knighthood had taught him to be steadfast and vigilant, always looking over his shoulder or scanning a room for unrest. However, it didn’t come nearly as close to how quickly he found you in every room you occupied.

He’d search constantly. Across court appearances, through corridors, from the other side of the courtyard. Even mid-conversation, his eyes naturally drifted to you. Sure, his visits to Kingslanding were sparse, but every visit, his eyes fell onto you. Studying, contemplating, making sure you’re alright, for no other reason than because he could. Because he knew, as the youngest Princess housed here, you were often overlooked- out shinned by your brothers, or the politics surrounding the family.

Gwayne’s horse snorted and kicked it’s hoove out into the dirt. The long morning of festivities was coming to an end. He dismounted, giving his steed a good neck scratch and thanking it for riding so well. His squire took him away, and Gwayne slid his helmet off. Getting a needed breath of fresh, humid air. He looked to the seats, walking up slowly as other Knights called to their family or wives sitting, some leaning over the railings to commend them. His sister had already risen and gone to their father; Helana had gotten up and left in a hurry, as did Aegon- surely ready to begin drinking in preparation for the fun he planned to have tonight.

Gwayne came to the railing, pushing a hand through his hair- matted down with sweat and dirt. He watched with strained, tired eyes until you noticed him. You smiled and rose, hurrying down from the top to stand above him. You leaned over the railing; Gwayne’s eyes watched you carefully.

“Am I unscathed enough for you?” He called up with a smile, watching as your lean over the edge for him, eyes trained in and making sure you didn’t fall.

“Yes, but rather dirty.” You scrunched your nose at him. “I demand a bath before you escort me anywhere.”

“You drive a hard bargain, but a bath it is. Will you go straight home now?”

You nodded. “I will go home and be ready for the feast, perhaps visit the Spet before.”

He nodded. “Travel carefully. I will relieve Ser Marrow once the night's festivities begin.” You nodded, reaching down, leaning more over the railing. In your hand was a small poppy, picked from the plants adorning the stands. Gwayne smiled, reaching to carefully take it from you. “You’ve torn your nails to shreds,” he commented.

“I was worried.” You replied simply.

“Gwayne.”

“Father,” Gwayne replied mildly. He was seated in his quarters, hair slick from his recent bath. The Wisteria favor you had given him sat on the bed beside him. He had tossed it there when getting back in; now clean and wound down from the adrenaline of the games, Gwayne was awaiting the feasting to begin.

Silence stretched between them, Gwayne, eyes half lidded, almost bored. “You asked the princess for her favor.”

“I did not ask; she gifted it to me.” He corrected, standing to face his father, but refraining from raising his voice.

“Then you to wear it publicly, before half the realm's lords?” Otto seethed. “You are no lowly knight, Gwayne, and she no lively whore from the silken street you can tactlessly entertain.”

“You gave her to me as her Knight; was that not a reckless play on your part, father? Surely, you had no intention; all this seems to be a last-minute play you’ve dealt. Tell me what this play gains you?” He asks, irritation dripping from his lips. “She is no whore, she is my niece. I merely did her a kindness today.”

Otto scoffed; his face twitched. The look he gave his firstborn was more than disapproval. That was all Otto Hightower was good for: control. Cold, calculated measures. There was a reason he was trusted hand to two Kings, and likely would continue to advise until the day he died. Everything done in silent interest for himself, his house, his family. He called Alicent to court when she was a mere girl; from that day he moved her about the chessboard of political court.

“She is the King's daughter. Her marriage is meant to create an alliance- she is your niece,” he repeats, his words falling pointed at the reminder.

“And you will gladly sell her away to any common lord that may grant you the most gain.” Gwayne spat. “You will whisper into Alicent’s ear until it is set and you are once again the winner.”

Otto stepped closer now, lowering his voice to a dangerous tone. “You shame her by making her a topic of gossip, and you shame me to act so thoughtlessly. I have already heard the gossip- that perhaps the queer customs of house Targareyan have seeped into the green’s blood- I will not entertain such vile tongue.”

Gwayne was unrelenting. “The fortnight that I’ve been here watching over her, I have stood as you and my sister parade her around. I understand very well that this is the natural order of things. I know you hold the position that a Lady is not to want and desire, but-” Gwayne scowled and straightened his back, “she has made a choice for herself, and today, she gave me her favor.”

“You battle with yourself, son,” Otto calmly spoke. He stepped closer, eyes boring into Gwayne's. “You ‘ought go to the Sept and pray, for you know deep down this is not the way of things.” Gwayne’s jaw tightened. “I can only hope you remain honorable, and do what must be done.”

The Sept was silent, per usual. The room was still around you, save for the flickering flames of candles. A soft golden glow illuminated the cold stone walls all the way up to the stained-glass windows. A halo of warm light lit them. Your nose crinkled slightly at the strong scent of incense and burning wicks. The low murmurs of prayer hung in the background as you recited your own. Kneeling on the floor, knees aching for you had been there so long. Hunched with grace over the altar. Your fingers traced over the cool stone absentmindedly, lips parting as you recited words you’d had memorized since you could remember.

Seeking solace, strength, peace of mind.

You almost found it all here in the Sept. It was always a quiet place you could escape to, even if your mother often accompanied you. Still, here you could close your eyes and tune her voice out. Her demands and concerns- constant, poised worry. The demands of your royal status constantly worried you; your mother’s insistent need to make sure you molded into the perfect Princess drove deep splinters of anxiety in you.

You love your mother. Unconditionally, but more often than not, you feared even speaking to her nowadays. You were well of age to marry, and your mother had begun to plant the seeds of searching for a viable match.

You weren’t odd, just different than your siblings. Aegon was spoiled and reckless, Aemond quite bold, Helena strange and dreamy. You were shy and quiet. That was what most people in court whispered about you. You were too quiet; had you ever spoken a word publicly? How could a princess be so tight-lipped and reserved?

The forgotten Princess, you had heard a servant girl snicker to her friends one day. Even now, after the attempt on your life, you remained in the shadow. You did not mind, letting the rest of your family take the realm's attention.

Your knees ached, begging for you to stand and relieve them, but you just squeezed your eyes closed tighter. Your eyes fluttered open at the soft rustling of fabric. Careful footsteps approached you. You huffed, expecting a Septa to come to offer words of wisdom or correct your posture with a stern face.

“Uncle-” you fixed the annoyance on your face quickly at the sight of your sharp-featured Knight. Auburn hair wisped neatly back to place, lips curved slightly, and eyes sparkling under the candlelight.

“I’ve come to inquire why you missed your sister’s feast-”

“I missed supper?” You perked slightly. “Apologies, I lost track of time…”

Gwayne's eyes softened on you, slight enough that most wouldn’t notice. He stepped closer, boots clinking softly against the floor. “You’re always here,” he observed, “Praying, hiding.” You dropped your head just slightly, and he reached to tuck a stray stand of hair behind your ear.

You gave him a small smile, lifting your eyes to meet his. Your dear Uncle, your favorite of the family. While he didn’t visit often, you could recall him dearly. Shared words of wisdom in strategy and politics, much more palatable than when your mother or grandshire spoke of them. You never cared much for either, but you enjoyed the stories and quips Gwayne would recall to you.

A particular memory always made you smile when it struck you. An early morning in the courtyard with him and your brothers, watching them practice the sword. While the elders sparred, Gwayne had come to you and offered his own sword, correcting your stance and hold on in. Smiling and laughing alongside you. You had no desire for the sword, but any time spent with your Uncle was valuable.

You gave him a small smile, lifting your eyes to meet his. Your eyes dropped to the sword at his hip, fingers twitching slightly as you recalled the feeling of cold steel against your neck. Heavy. His hand came to rest upon it, large hands engulfing steel. Strong and steady. You could recall how it felt to have them on you, gentle and respectful as he adjusted your posture. It left goosebumps on your skin as you recalled.

Such thoughts were what brought you to the Sept tonight, the uncontrollable thoughts of your dear Uncle. How good he had looked today, how you had gone to your chambers and rest for a short time, restless in bed, you sent your handmaidens away- not caring to embarrass yourself before anyone else. Your mind had gone into overdrive- how he had looked so good before the tourney and even better after. How his chest rose and fell, soft pants puffed from his lips. Hair pushed back, albeit dirty, but still attractive to your eye.

You had pressed your fave into the silk sheets, thoughts of him bathing striking your mind relentlessly.

“The Queen was asking for you. She worries.” A lie by omission. Her worry was more so laced with frustration than concern. You gave him a doubtful look, but he held his tongue.

“What were you seeking here?” he asked quietly.

“Clarity,” you said before thinking.

Gwayne nodded. He knew well of the faith of the seven. House Hightower radiated faith and prayer as much as it’s poicatal power, abilities to raise armies with a single wave of a hand. Night prayers were a ritual as much as a burden to him- a burden he could never forget even in his darkest moments. He spoke to the Seven as he had been taught as a child, private whispers that offered grateful thoughts and praises, and begged forgiveness for transgressions.

As all humans were, he was a sinner. And of all the sins that plagued man- wrath, greed, jealousy- it was the sin of the flesh that grasped him. Son to Hand of the King, nephew of the Defender of the Faith. Held old values to uphold and beliefs to defend, but like everyone, it lurked in him. He was a lustful creature, coveting the most precious, forbidden thing.

His eyes fell back on you.

You two felt the faith deeply, as your mother wanted you to. Her last daughter, her only chance to get this right. Bless Helana, she would say, but she befell the oddity that was the House of the Dragon.

“The feast is still going; may I escort you?”

The words of his father were beginning to set in. “Go to the Sept and pray, for you know deep down this is not the way of things.”

“Yes, may we pass through the gardens on the way?”

“Of course, my lady.”

Gwayne can only wonder if accepting your favor was a mistake. He’d been so sure earlier- was still sure deep down. But Otto was right; a Princess was a match out of reach for him. You should marry tactfully; you were not a maiden promised to a brave knight- you were the crown’s chest piece, a fate decided at birth.

That and, he wet his lips, watching you walk a few steps before him; you were his niece. His father so coldly reminded him, despite Alicent being the favorite, Otto had always been able to read Gwayne just as easily.

“The Wisteria is amazing under the moonlight, right, Gwayne?”

He lifted his eyes to the hanging flowers; beams of soft moonlight snuck through small gaps. Purple flowers shook softly in the cool breeze of night. Gwayne surveyed the area, lost in his thoughts enough that he had let his guard down.

“Gwayne?”

“Yes?”

“May I speak freely to you?” You ask, biting your lip carefully as you slow your steps and turn to him. “Completely free, as if I were not a Princess?”

Gwayne raised his brows, but gave a careful nod. “Speak as you wish; I will not stop you.”

You pursed your lips, drawing your eyes over him. He had always been kind and gentle. Never treated you as an ignorant child growing up, even if his appearance was limited. Otto often took pleasure in reminding you of your young age and lack of knowledge of the world. He was the foil to his father, thank the gods above.

“You have always treated me well, and I have never forgotten all that you have done for me- especially as of late. You have not taken the nightmares away, but know that you are housed under the same roof as I have settled my mind enough to sleep here and there… I know that your devotion to my protection may just have been a duty given to you by your father and the King, but must I be foolish enough to think you may care deeper for me?”

Sometimes there was a glint in his eyes that made you foolishly hope he would one day see you as more than his sister’s friend, or the quiet princess of the realm. That his instinct to protect you was more than mere duty.

Gwayne went still. Not the controlled stillness of a knight at attention; no, this was deeper. Your words landed as stones dropped into water; ripples spreading through him, unsettling almost.

“Must I be foolish enough to think you may care deeper…?”

For once in his life, Gwayne. A man who always had a cutting remark ready had no answer prepared. He cupped your face in his hand. Warm. Calloused from swordplay and shield work. A knight’s hand, shockingly gentle. Your eyes, wide with curiosity of what he would say. Gwayne exhaled silently through his nose, the knit in his brow returning. He seemed unsure now, but slowly he leaned in and pressed a kiss to your forehead. Between her brows where worry gathered every night before you slept- or tried to sleep.

The kiss lingered just a breath longer than necessary. Then Gwayne rested his forehead against yours, eyes closing for the briefest moment. A rare vulnerability in him as of late. His throat had run dry, his body at battle between tensing and relaxing.

Oh, this was wrong. There was not a single prayer in the seven kingdoms he could recite to rectify these feelings- these impulses.

“Please forgive me,” he began quietly, “I yearn for you, even though I should not.”

“Gwayne,” you murmured, heart swelling with hope.

“I desire you more now than ever; I cannot rid myself of this affliction.” He admitted, “Though I have tried to ignore it, I’ve sought faith of the seven to guide me away- nothing changes.”

“This is not something you must wish away,” your brows scrunched in confusion.

“I’m sorry, but I cannot give you more than I already have.”

“Why?” Your hands raised to grip his tunic, stopping him as he tried to stand and back away.

“You know why.”

“You’re highborn and noble, a formidable knight; you have done more than show your ability to protect me as of late.” Your hands balled into his clothing tighter. “I see no reason why my father would deny you.”

“We are blood.” He whispers, nearly afraid to say it. “We are blood sweet girl; there is no honor in anything I wish to do with you.”

Gwayne’s hands find yours, brushing over your soft skin. Different than his own calloused pads of his fingers. Rough against the tender skin you had picked at all day as you worried for him. You feel him nestle closer to you, his forehead still warm upon yours. His nose brushes yours, his lips inch closer to yours. You almost raise to your toes to meet him, but in an instant he tore away from you.

“You make this hard.” He nearly laughs, “We cannot- I shall ride back to Oldtown in the morning; it is clear to me now that we cannot-”

“Leave? You can’t leave me- u-uncle, you are the only peace of mind I’ve been granted since that dreadful night.”

“If I stay, nothing good will-”

The chilling sound of his sword unsheathing rang in your ears. His free arm jutted out to push you away and behind him. “Who goes there?” He called into the calm blackness of the garden.

You hear now what Gwayne had, rustling the bushes. The grip on his sword is iron.

“I-it’s only me.”

Helana had come stumbling out of the dark. Hands raised slightly as she stepped to her uncle. “Sorry, I was only looking for you- mother questions where the two of you are- as does the King.”

“So they sent you to find us?”

“No, I came of my own will; guards are looking for you.”

“Where is your escort?” Gwayne dropped his sword down. “It is dangerous to prance about the Gardens so late, especially with many lords meandering about with bellies full of wine. Where is Aegon?”

Helana opened her mouth, likely ready to spill a deadpan comment about Aegon whereabout or drinking- you could only assume he was on his ass by now. You scurry to her side, a hand on her shoulder as you quietly hush her. “Do not get too worked up, uncle; I am sure Helana just needed air.”

“Yes.” She nods, “and I worried for you sister.”

“I will take both of you to your chambers now; it's time you retire.” He gathers you both closer. “I will leave you with your handmaiden and take your sister to her room. I’ll return to stand guard tonight.”

Gwayne did as promised, leaving you to bathe and change with your handmaiden. Your eyes were heavy anyway, and you weren’t feeling very festive for the feast anymore. Your handmaiden left when Gwayne took his station at your door; you could hear his footsteps approach, now weighted with armor.

“I thought I gave you the night off; you need rest as well.” You had come to the door and pressed your ear to it to hear him.

“I’ll rest fine when dawn comes, and you have rested.”

“Come inside; I wish to speak to you.”

“That would be…” He sighs, muffled. “Inappropriate.”

“When I gave you my favor this morning, you sounded so sure of what you wanted. Tell me what has troubled your mind? Surely you didn’t just realize that I am your niece; I was your niece at the tourney grounds as you accepted my favor.”

“It was a kindness, nothing more.”

“You lie.” You spit, “You lie, I know it.”

You creak your door open, peeking at him with a frown. He glances at you, and you yank at his arm. He’s strong enough not to budge; you know this, but slowly he inches into your chambers. You push past him to close the door, pressing your back to it and sighing.

“Gwayne-”

“Do not speak,” he demanded softly. “You know where I am coming from; you know of duty as well as I do.”

“You worry too much about duty.”

“Given who my father is, is that of surprise to you?”

“Is what this is about? Otto and his political schemes?”

“Would it upset you if I said it was?” He asked, voice dropping quieter. “Not of that, but you will be expected as a man to bring wealth and alliance to the crown. You already have the Hightower wealth and loyalty-”

“Then allow me to secure it even tighter- my father would not dare resist-”

“Do not drive yourself into hysterics over me.” Gwayne silenced you. “I have loved you quietly for some time, but it must remain quiet. We cannot do this-”

“Please-” tears rimmed your eyes. “Uncle, I-I cannot stop thinking of you.”

Simple words, devastating words that shattered every rule Otto Hightower had preached to him. “You’re kinder than any lady I’ve met. Brighter than courtly. I’ve watched you study late into the night just to understand the world around you better. You dream of the East, but you know you will likely never visit. You handle the books so gently; I have felt the warmth of your trust placed into me.” He exhales and draws closer. “I know I should want another, but I do not want another, and it is shameful.”

He leans, placing a kiss to your cheek, one of longing and lasting, nudging his nose to yours as he breathes. Another one captures your lips, this time more fervent, both palms smoothing to the sides of your face as he draws you near.

“You still hold back.” You murmur, eyes staring into his. Face dusted pink and hot.

“I must.” His whisper, voice breaking just slightly.

“I want you- please.”

Something flickered within him. Primal, long buried inside him.

His hand slid from your cheek to the back of your head, gentle but firm. The cool steel of his arm left goosebumps along the back of your neck. Before another breath could pass between you, he swept back in for another kiss. Firmer, needier. He kissed you not as a knight, or a noble tactful trying to court, not even as Gwayne himself, but as a man who had sought you in silence for years. Careful at first, mouth covering yours with restrained passion. The rarity of a real kiss for a knight after years of discipline. Your arms slide around his neck, your body flush with his. He reluctantly breaks away.

Moonlight comes flooding in from your sheer curtains. You can hear the distant crash of the sea outside; cool air nips your skin. He takes his glove between his teeth and tears his glove off. The other follows, clinking against the stone floor. His hair sweeps into his face, his sword set aside. You step closer to him, hands finding his arm. Carefully you help him undo the armor.

It's an ordeal; he was dressed to serve you, not in this way. But you, patient amongst the comfortable silence of your chambers, you help him slip out of every piece of his armor. You feel closer to him now, his skin hot under his doublet.

He kisses you again. Deep, still careful despite his growing hunger. He tilts his head slightly to better fit against yours, and presses closer to you until there is no space left. The heat of his body enveloping yours. He pulls away just slightly, eyes highlighted with silver from the moon, searching yours for any sign of resistance.

“I should stop.” He whispers. “Things have already gone too far.”

“I don’t want you to.” Your voice is breathy.

“We shouldn't- I shouldn’t take you to bed, but…”

“But?”

His hand had dropped to the small of your back. Fingers pressed circles into your skin through the silk of your nightgown. “But I want to.”

“I want to too, Gwanye.”

“Your virtue-”

The shame of it all.

“No one will know.” You insist, “Does it matter if we are to be together anyway?”

A low, almost inaudible sound rumbled in his chest- not quite a growl, but something close. Having spent so long casting his gaze away, he was now trembling with desire before you.

It's wrong, so very wrong to snatch the virtue of a maiden like this. It was different from his sparse visits to the street of silk; you were, well, you. His eyes wracked down your body, catching faint glimples of your outline through the loose silk adorning you.

“Gods above,” he muttered, “you’ll be my wife.” He says, though it sounds more like assurance for himself than you. He kisses you again.

“Gwayne,” you murmur between his kisses. “More please, kiss me more.” The feeling of his teeth softly biting your lip, a soft hum escapes at the feeling. Unsure, you part your lips slightly for him. His lips move with gentle pressure, capturing yours more fully- a real kiss now. Warm breath mingling with soft moans, a slow exploration of mouths learning each other for the first time.

The first brush of your tongue against his- tentative, sweet, curious. It sent a jolt through Gwayne’s body. It was clumsy. Inexperienced. Perfect.

No court-trained lady had ever kissed him like this. So shyly and eager, so full of trust. And when your fingers slipped into his thick auburn hair, gentle at first, then slightly tugging as if trying to pull him even closer. A shudder ran down his spine.

His breath hitches, and then he responds. Kissing you back with deeper feeling now, letting your tongues meet more fully in slow dances that grew bolder by the second.

One hand still cradled your face while the other slid lower, not with greed or demand. Possessive in its affection as if claiming every inch without taking too much too fast.

Gwayne pulled back to see the flush on your cheeks. Your kiss-swollen lips, the way your breath came quick and shallow. The soft tremor in your whisper: "I've never done anything like this before, you know?”

“It’s alright, sweet girl.,” He tilts his head slightly, looking into your eyes. “Do you want to? There is no rush if you wish to wait and do this properly.”

You gaze at him, arms loose around his neck. His face is flushed as well. Flushed with want and need, and everything in between.

“I want you, all of you,” you murmur. “Now that I have you,” you pause, drawing him close once again, “I don’t want to stop.”

He kissed you again. This time trailing slow kisses from your cheek to the corner of your mouth, then down the delicate line of your jaw. Each one was deliberate: tender and chaste at first…but growing warmer with every brush of lips against skin.

One hand traced gently down to rest on the curve where your neck meets your shoulder. You shivered; his hands cold, it drove him mad. And when a tiny breathy sigh escaped as his lips grazed just below your ear?

He pressed another kiss there and lingered this time before he kissed lower. A gentle press against the hollow of your throat, then another just above your collarbone, followed by one on the sensitive spot where the shoulder meets the neck. Your chest rose and fell quickly under his mouth, warm skin visible just above the neckline of your dress. The fabric had slipped slightly, and he could see how flushed you were, how alive with sensation.

For a man who spent years mastering control, this moment demanded surrender. Slowly, so slowly, he pressed another kiss lower…just above the edge of exposed collarbone. Then another. And another. Each one was softer than before; not rushed or greedy, but worshipful.

His hands found the ties of your nightgown, slowly undoing it. The dress slipped slightly at your shoulders as he worked. Cool air hit your newly exposed skin. He watched it rise under goosebumps and swallowed hard.

His own breath grew heavier now, his pulse thudding low in his chest. Realization settled: you wanted more. More than gentle kisses on shoulders or tender touches through fabric. You were trembling, not from cold anymore, but from want.

Without breaking eye contact, Gwayne slowly slid both hands down to your waist and then gently began guiding you backward. You followed his lead blindly; the back of your legs hit your bed, and slowly you sank with him. He stood above you a moment longer. He moved to begin unlacing his doublet, while you made a bold move to shake the loose straps of your nightgown off, letting the fabric fall, slow and soft against your skin, pooling at your waist and leaving your breasts exposed for his eyes.

You can feel his gaze burning into you; suddenly, the shyness returns. He stops unlacing his top, raising an eyebrow in amusement as you shy away from him, almost sliding your gown back on had he not reached to stop you. He gives a cockly smile, “Where is the boldness you showed me earlier?” He teases, “You seemed so sure of your words.” he repeated yours from earlier. He pulls the gown away again. His eyes trail over your body with hunger.

His doublet is unlaced, tossed aside. His porcelain skin white under the moonlight. His chest firm under your hesitant touch, “Let me take care of you.” He murmurs, your hand cradling his face as he looks up to you. Cold hands run up your sides, one stopping at the dip of your waist and the other gently brushing over your bare breast. His hands come to cup your breasts, gently caressing and playing with them as his thumb rolls over your nipple. “You’re so pretty,” he whispers, voice low and soft.

He kneels before you, as if a knight kneeling in devotion. Dropped to his knees as if praying at the Sept, he nestles himself between your legs. Mouthing along your inner thigh, his hands slide up your legs and bunch the silk fabric up. Pressing lazy, loving kisses over your chest and down your stomach. You feel him caress your thighs again. He leaves a few kisses on the inside of your thigh as his fingers run over your wetness, stopping to roll over your clit a few times. You squirm at the feeling, little gasps and whimpers filling the room as he lets a finger dip into your pussy, an amused smile taking his features as you squirm and tense slightly around him. He takes his time sucking and nipping gently at your clit, taking in your moans and whimpers as your back arches and your hands find themselves buried into his hair. You pull, perhaps harder than intended; he hisses slightly.

“I’m sorry,” you gasp, loosening your hold on his hair slightly.

He merely shakes his head, lifting his eyes to yours. “Don’t apologize, pull as you please.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” you mumbled, sucking in another sharp breath as he fit himself back between your legs, his tongue falling out to trace wetness again.

“Then I intend to make you,” he states between languid licks. The apex of his nose brushes your clit, you jolt slightly, fingers winding into his hair once more.

He wasn’t lying; he truly did intend to drive you mad. It was a new feeling, unfamiliar to have a man descend upon you in such a way. His lips and tongue worked against you carefully, soft as he nipped at your clit once again- perhaps harder than he should’ve, but he rewarded you with a soft moan as you fisted his hair tighter. He sighed content, almost relieved to taste you after years of quiet longing. Years of prayer that did nothing to ease his affliction towards you. His head, for once, empty of scrutiny as he feasted upon you.

Nothing had ever felt as good as his tongue between your legs; you couldn’t imagine what ever could compare. Gwayne seemed just as content. The ache in his knee was unnoticed, the slick wetness coating his face not even a second thought.

Short, hot breaths and moans filled the quiet room. Yot tired to calm down your squirming, but you couldn’t help it as his hold on your hips and his fingers rose again to press into you grew firmer. His other hand returned to your heat, a finger teasing your entrance as his mouth remained occupied with your clit, One to start, his lips locked around your clit still. You squirm and stifle the nose in your throat as he teases a second into you. His fingers hard, cool and thick within you, it's a tad uncomfortable at first- a new intrusion within your body you hadn’t even explored with your own hands.

The discomfort is gone as fast as it came. You jut your hips ever slightly, wanting his fingers deeper. “Is it okay?” He takes a break to ask, his eyes shine as he looks up to you.

“Yes,” you breathe. You shrink slightly, the crude noises of his fingers fucking into you unfamiliar on your ears.

“So pretty,” he murmured as your back arched and eyes squeezed shut.

“Gwayne-” your soft moan of his name is cut short with a small gasp; his fingers curl inside you. “More,” you nearly beg.

He eats up every noise that you make. He shifts just slightly, feeling his cock strain hard against his breeches. Words fail him for a moment, the only thing that matters now being making you cum.

“More.” Your tone grows harder, more demanding. He smiles; it’s as if you were ordering him around as a Princess did her gallant knight. He hums softly against your clit, and you arch your back at the odd sensation.

Your fingers feel as if they might rip the hair from his scalp, but he doesn’t falter. Gwayne only smiles against you. Your eyes screw shut, brows knit together as pleasure overtakes your body. Your body tenses and relaxes over again; he digs his fingers harder into your hips, holding you in place to focus once again on your pleasure.

“Are you okay, my sweetling?” he manages between wet kisses. “I make you feel good, don’t I?”

“Yes.” You gasp; you feel so close to the edge. “Yes- s-so good.” He laps at you greedily.

“That’s it, that’s my girl,” he says. Moving painfully slow as you cry out, “It feels good, doesn't it?” He leaves lazy licks upon you, watching the way you squirm and tense at the stimulation, overly sensitive with tears pooling in your eyes. He rests his head against your inner thigh, giving you a moment to calm before climbing back up.

“Shall I-” your arms shake slightly as you force yourself to sit up and meet him. “Shall I please you now?”

“As much as I would love that,” Gwayne began, climbing over you slowly, lowering your back to the bed. “I wish only to focus on you tonight.” Suddenly you’re pressed back to the bed, beneath him against the silk sheets. Your breath came in short, uneven puffs as his lips traced a path down your neck. Every slow, open-mouthed kiss he pressed to your skin was hot.

He shifted his hips, and his hard cock dragged between your thighs, a hand teasing your clit in a slow circle. Your mind leaves you, still coming down from the first orgasm. You hadn’t even noticed his pushing down of his breeches, hadn’t gotten to appreciate the sight of him, though it seemed he favored it this way tonight.

“Please,” you whispered. It came out desperate. His eyes darkened. For a moment he thought of what had happened already- now, as he pressed his cock to your entrance- there certainly wasn’t any turning back now. No room for regret or guilt, his mind muddied with lust and adoration as he looked down at you.

“Please, what?” he asked finally.

“Please.” You grasped at him desperately. Finally, he rolled his lips in another slow grind against you.

An aching heat coiled in your belly. You looked up at him, chest heaving. “Gwayne,” you pleaded, “Please.”

“Say it properly,” he murmured, brushing his thumb across your kiss-swollen lower lip. “Tell me what you need.” His eyes looked deep into yours.

“Just—please. I need you inside me…” Your voice was quiet, unsure if you were saying the right thing. Your face was burning hot; sweat clung to both. “I have thought of this so often, uncle; I need you- I cannot wait a moment longer, please.”

Your voice, so airy and soft, roused goosebumps along his skin. He pressed a kiss to your neck, nuzzling into you for a moment. Taking in your scent, the feeling of hot skin against him.

He moved to catch your mouth in a kiss; slowly, he sank into you. The moonlight caught the gleam of admiration in his eyes as he stretched you open. Gently, slowly, deliberately. Your mouth opens, unsure of what to say; you simply cling to him for dear life. “Is it okay?” His breath is hot against your ear.

“Yes,” you breathe. The sting of him isn’t unbearable, just unfamiliar. His teeth graze you, and for a moment he wishes so deeply to bite- but he holds back, not to leave a mark for any hungry court eyes to spot.

You reach your climax first. Your hands still tangled in his hair, his nose pressed into your neck, soft, breathy moans leaving him now and against as he feels you squeeze and fall apart on his cock. Your head rolls back as you cry out under him. His thrusts slow as you pant and whine under him. His climax comes soon after.

The room stills once again. Gwayne rests upon you gently, his forehead finding yours. Finally, he gets off you, carefully, slowly. You whimper at the loss of him, the feeling of being empty. His hand rests softly against your cheek as he kisses you.

You’re flushed red, with faint dry tears descending upon your cheeks and waterline. He rubs them away carefully; you look as though you could pass out. “I love you,” you managed to say between breaths. “Please, do not leave me, uncle- please.” You could cry for him any second, fall to your knees and beg.

“You shut up before I take your tongue!” Criston Cole threatens knife to your throat while you sit leaning back in the chair you had been thrown onto.

“Is he always this annoying?” You ask Gwayne casually, not looking at the man holding the knife to you. Only focusing on the auburn haired man.

“Yes.” Ser Gwayne responds tightly, not agreeing with the way the hand of the king was behaving. You maybe the daughter of the enemy but you are still a woman and princess, you should be treated with respect.

“My condolences.” You say dryly, not caring if you get killed. You having come to terms with your death the moment you fell from your dragon.

“You little bitch, just wait till the men get their -.”

“My lord hand.” Gwayne interrupts, hating how unhonourable the man and his army are. They are knights, they should act like it. “We shouldn’t treat a woman as such.”

“Ser Gwayne as you seen so fond of our hostage you can be in charge of the whore then.” Cole snaps furiously before storming out of his own tent. Drama queen.

“I apologise for him calling you a whore princess.” Ser Gwayne says, hating the man who just left.

“He’s just bitter.” You say rolling your eyes, a part of you wishing the man had killed you. It being a kinder fate than living in the unknown. “Is it true?”

“What true?” Gwayne asks, unsure of what you could of heard given you haven’t spoken to anyone since getting captured. Not knowing you get mean when scared.

“That he’s been fucking your sister? If so it could explain the attitude.” You say crudely, looking the handsome knight up and down while he places his hand on his sword in anger. “Oh, jealous?”

“Don’t speak of the queen dowager in such a manner.” He snaps before taking a breath and releasing his grip on the sword. “Now tell me what you know.”

“Well I heard that they were fucking when her grandchild got murdered.”

“On your mother’s order.” He counters raising an eyebrow at you. Knowing you’re trying to get a rise out of him.

“My mother never gave that order, she would never want to hurt a child.” Especially after what happened to Visenya and Luke, you think. “Even after what your family did to mine.”

“What has my family done exactly?” He asks leaning against the table infront of you, wanting to hear your justifications.

“Where to start?” You ask rhetorically, giving a fake thinking face. “How about how your father has been plotting from the start to get his blood on the throne, or should I start with how your sister and father have been terrorising me and my family since before I was born?” You ask voice raising slightly as you continue, fury enveloping you while you remember your childhood. “How about the time your father spanked me during a counsel meeting for ‘misbehaver’ as the king was to weak to. Or when your sister made my mother walk through the keep moments after giving birth to torture her? Or even the time your supposed king tried to fuck me when I was crying after my father died! Take your pick.” You snap hating that you can feel tears building behind your eyes.

“King Aegon didn’t take your virtue.” Gwayne denies, not wanting to believe his nephew could be like that.

“You’re right he didn’t.” You reply with a fake smile, not understanding why you’re telling the man things you hadn’t told anyone before. Thinking maybe you just wanted someone to know before you die. “But not because of honor or any bullshit like that, he stopped because I kneed him in the dick and ran off. Is that truly who you want to rule?”

He doesn’t say anything in response just walks out, before telling the guards not to do anything until he returns.

-

“Eat.” Gwayne says offering you some food, you unaware it’s his. Cole refusing to waste food on a prisoner. You having been moved to Gwayne’s tent, you having been left to him.

“No.” You say crossing your arms over your chest, trying to keep a sense of power. Even if it’s just by refusing food. Your stomach betraying you when it grumbles.

“Please eat, I went through a lot of trouble to get you this.” He says placing the food down infront of you.

“Fine.” You say reluctantly, taking a bite of the bread.

-

“There’s a guard waiting outside so you can’t escape.” He says later that night, leaving you in his tent. “I’m going to find somewhere else to sleep.”

“Can you stay?” You whisper reluctantly, hating the fact you have to ask. But feeling safer in his presence.

“Why?” He asks thinking you would love a moment alone.

“I’m scared.” You admit, hating that amount of fear you have.

“Of what?” He thinks, knowing he’s put his most trusted soldiers outside the tent.

“I’m in an enemy camp full of men, you tell me.” You snap, knowing given the chance a lot of them men would take it.

“Fine.” He says making a small camp on the floor near the tent entrance.

-

“He’s such a dick.” You mumble sat next to Gwayne on a log while Cole gets himself a second bowl of food. Him having refused to let you eat again so you’re sharing with Gwayne. You having been prisoner for a fortnight. A very long fortnight.

“I know.”

“You’re not meant to agree with me.” You reply trying to hide your smile, hating that he can make you laugh. “He’s your ‘Lord hand.” You say making fun of Cole’s new position. Him nowhere near qualified. “But I suppose that’s what breaking your vows gets you.”

“Can we please not talk of my sister? I don’t like being reminded of it.” He says knowing what you’re insinuating, a deadpan look on his face. You unaware that’s what he looks like when trying not to laugh.

“I really don’t see the appeal of him.” You muse watching the insufferable man eat.

“Like I said, please stop.”

“I’m not just talking of your sister I’m talking in general.” You say thinking of your mother. “He’s good looking but the moment he opens his mouth I just want to bash his head in with a hammer.”

“I’m not responding to that.” He says taking a drink so you can’t see his smile.

-

“Ser Gwayne?” You whisper in the middle of the night, you shaking from the cold despite Gwayne letting you sleep in his cloak along with a blanket.

“Yes?” He asks, already awake. Unable to sleep due to the cold.

“It’s cold.” You state, not wanting to be the one to ask.

“What do you expect me to do about that princess?” He ask, smiling up at the ceiling, knowing exactly what your going to ask. You having been sat incredibly close to him earlier trying to steal his warmth.

“Can you lay next to me?” You ask reluctantly, knowing he won’t until you ask.

“Pardon?”

“It’s helps with warmth, sharing a bed.” You say factually, also just wanting the reassurance of someone next to you. “We don’t have to cuddle.”

“I’m only doing this because I’m also cold and I’d like my bed back.” He say lying, quickly getting up and slipping into the cot next to you.

-

“Stop squirming.” He complains trying to sleep.

“I can’t get comfortable.” You complain moving so your back is to him.

“Just.” He sighs before pulling you close and into his arms. Legs wrapping with yours keeping you still.“Come here.”

-

“How much longer do you think I have?” You ask a few nights later when cuddled up in bed together. His shirt and breaches hung up to dry after all the rain today, your dress beside it. Leaving you in just your shift and him his small cloth.

“What do you mean?” He ask, looking down at you while you rest your head on his chest. Pretending you’re cold.

“Until I die, how much longer do you think I have left to live?” You ask, wanting his honest opinion.

“You’re not going to die.” He says, not waiting thing about it. As that would mean he’d have to admit his feelings for you.

“Yes I will, I’m only being kept alive so Aemond can kill me himself.” You whisper as if saying it louder will make it happen sooner.

“No you’re not.”

“Gwayne.” You say looking up at him, seeing the pained look on his face. “I’m going to die, I’m at peace with it. I just hope my family will be ok.”

“You’re not going to die.” He says firmly, not willing to accept it.

“You know I’ve always wondered who I would marry if things had gone differently.” You muse, resting your head back on his hard chest. Savering the moment together.

“What?”

“I used to speak of it with Baela when we were little.” You say a reminiscing smile on your face. “This was before we found out her and Jace were betrothed, we’d speak of our dream wedding and husband’s.” You explain, thinking back to when you and your best friend/step sister would cuddle up in bed for a sleepover and talk. “Looking back she was just describing Jace, but I just wanted the perfect knight. Kind, honourable, a protector, a true knight not the fake kind who want the power for all the wrong reasons.”

“You put a lot of thought into it.” He says, wishing he could be that knight. “What of the wedding.”

“A pretty dress, I never minded if it was a Valyrian wedding or one before the seven or even the old gods of the north. All I wanted was the perfect knight while I wore a pretty dress.” You explain smiling now picturing Gwayne when you think of you make believe wedding. “What of you?”

“I’m a Man I don’t have an opinion on weddings.”

“Humour me.” You say drawing shapes on his chest.

“I wanted a wife who could make me laugh and be happy, I wanted love.” He admits, never having spoken about it before. “I’ve never wanted someone who blindly follows everything I say, I want my wife to have her own opinions.” He says simply. “As for the wedding it would be before the seven, I’d be in my best clothes and she could be wearing anything and I’d still think her the most beautiful woman in the realm.”

“I hope you get that one day.” You say quietly, wishing it could be you but knowing the fates won’t allow it.

“I hope you get your perfect knight.” He says kissing the top of your head. “You deserve a happily ever after.”

“Can I kiss you?” You ask, wanting one night of pretending he can be yours. “You can say no, it’s just I’ve never kissed anyone before and I’d like to know what it’s like.”

“What of your knight?” He asks desperate to kiss you but not wanting to push you.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get the chance to marry him.”

“Are you sure?”

“Kiss me Gwayne.” At your command he finally closes the gap and kisses you softly. His lips barely grazing yours before you pull him closer. Wanting a proper kiss not just a peck. Him happily complying, letting you straddle his hips as you deepen the kiss. You both lazy kissing for a while before you start grinding against him, waning more.

“Princess we shouldn’t.” He whispers against you, biting his lip to silence his moans while you move against him. Your lips not leaving his while you do so. “We’re not married.”

“In the sight of the Farther.” You whisper into him ear kissing just below it. “ The Smith.” You continue kissing down his throat. “The Warrior.” You say now at his chest, him just looking at you with an unreadable expression on his face. “Mother.” You kiss over his heart at that. “Maiden.” You continue kissing down him. “Crone and Stranger.” You say looking up at him, kissing just above his small cloth. Kissing just above before pulling them down, biting your lip at the sight of him hard cock, his hips bucking against you. “I am his, and he is mine from this day until the end of my days.”

“Come here.”

“Gwayne-.” You gasp not expecting him to pull you up and flip you so he’s now on top.

“Farther, Smith, Warrior, Mother, Maiden, Crone, Stranger. I am her’s, and she is mine, from this day until the end of my days.” He says quickly, looking at you with awe and adoration in his eyes. Trying to commit this moment to memory. “I don’t currently have my cloak.”

“Your cock will do.” You giggle, gasping when his hands slide between your thigh’s fingers running through your wetness. “Fuck, Gwayne.”

“Shh my wife.” He teases, bringing his fingers up to his mouth to taste you, closing his eyes momentarily, craving more of you. “We must be quiet for we don’t want a public bedding do we?”

“I need you.” You whine, desperate for him, needing him even more after he calls you his wife. “Please husband.”

“You have me, take this off.” He responds tugging at your shift. “Fuck you’re beautiful.” He whispers talking in your naked form, him biting his lip at the sight not sure where to begin.

“Fuck Gwayne.” You whimper when he finally decides what to do first, his lips finding your breasts. Hand squeezing and pinching at the one his lips aren’t paying attention to. “Fuck.”

“Good girl.” He groans against you, sucking and nipping at your nipple while you pull his hair. Not knowing what to do with your hands. “You’re so good for me.”

“Gwayne please fuck me.” You whine, despite for more bucking your hips up at him. Despite for friction.

“Let me eat you first.” He says kissing down you, nipping at bits of skin while he does so.

“What?”

“Let me eat your pussy, please my love.” He practically begs, face now inbetwen your thighs. Him licking his lips at the sight of your dripping lips. “Shes so desperate for me.”

“I,uh, yes.” You pant out not expecting that request. You quickly covering your mouth with your hand when you feel his tongue run through you, his moan sending vibrations through you. “Fuck.”

“You taste so good princess.” He says against you, tongue playing at your entrance while his nose knocks your pearl. “I could spent eternity down here.”

“Please.” You say grinding up at him needing more.

“Oh my needy princess.” He coos taking one last lick before moving his mouth to your pearl and pressing a finger into you. “Shhh be quiet, remember?”

“Gwayne.” You moan, hand going back to cover your mouth. Knowing you need to be quiet but the pleasure making it difficult. “I, fuck.” He just keeps sucking and drawing shapes in your pearl in response, a second finger entering you before a third quickly follows. Him groaning against you when you pull his hair, the pleasure to overwhelming you don’t know what to do. “Fuck, I think, I’m, fuck.”

“Cum for me wife.” He commands, keeping the exact same pace when your orgasm hits, him only pulling away when he can tell it’s getting a bit to much for you. “Good girl.”

“Gwayne I need you to fuck me.” You say pulling him back up to you, him smiling in response. His lower face wet with you. “Now.”

“Are you sure?” He checks, knowing oral is different and wanting you to be 100% sure in your decision.

“I’m sure, fuck me husband.” You demand wrapping your legs around his waist. To get your point across. “Please.”

“As you wish.” He smirks, giving you a kiss. You not caring you can taste yourself on him, to desperate for him.

“This will hurt a bit, but I’ll go slow.” He reassures hand going between you both so he can guide his hard and dripping cock along your entrance, tip nudging your pearl a few times before he pushes into you. Making you both moan at the feeling, him silencing you both with a kiss. “Good girl, almost there.”

“Fuck.” You whimper against him, feeling him stretch you, his cock reaching parts you didn’t know was possible. Whining when he bottoms out, feeling completely full of him.

“Are you ready for me to move?” He whispers, waiting for your consent before continuing. Him knowing if you told him to stop he’d do so immediately.

“Move, fuck me Gwayne please.” You beg trying to move your hips against his but him just following your movements.

“As my wife desires.” He says pulling out over halfway before thrusting back into you, you both gasping at the feeling. “You feel so good.” He whispers thrusting in and out trying to find a pace you both like when his hand finds your pearl and his thumb starts rubbing it.

“Gwayne.” You moan, him finding the perfect rhythm, you never having felt anything like it. Him hitting deep inside of you with every thrust, your not knowing pleasure like this possible. Him consuming you.

“I know baby I know.” He groans into you, feeling his orgasm grow closer but trying to fight it. Him wanting to cum at the same time as you.

“I’m close again.” You pant, feeling the familiar feeling creep up in you again. Feeling overwhelmed with all the sensations.

“Already? You are needy for me.” He teases knowing you’re close by the way you clench around him, bringing him closer and closer to the edge. Him not having had a release in weeks but trying his best to last for you. “Where do you want me to cum?”

“In me, please Gwayne fill me with you.” You beg, cuming around him, triggering his own orgasm him fucking you through the aftershocks. “Fuck!”

“Shhh.” He laughs tiredly not pulling out yet, wanting to say as close to you as possible. You just nuzzling into him when he moves you both to your sides. “I’ve got you.”

-

“Run away with me.” He says to you the next day, him having planed everything out this morning.

“What?”

“You heard me.” He says, your bags already packed with all the supplies you’ll need. Him knowing all the weaknesses in camp and already knowing when to leave.

“Gwayne-.”

“I know the consequences but we’re almost at Haranhall and I can’t bare to think of what could happen.” He interrupts, “So run away with me.”

“Yes.”

“Really?” He asks worried, you were going to say no.

“Really.” You confirm kissing him.

-

Bonus

“Do you have a whistle?” You ask a few days later, having disappeared in the middle of the night. Right after he asked you. You both now far away having covered your tracks and at the top of a mountain.

“What? Yes, but why do you want it.” He asks confused.

“Silverwing has been flying through here.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.” You say using the whistle in the set pattern you taught your dragon years ago on the off chance you got separated.

“What the-.”

“Silverwing!” You shout excitedly as your dragon flys over, landing close so you could cuddle her. Her having missed you. Refusing to return back to dragonstone without you, waiting for your call. “I’ve missed you so much girl.”

-

"The Smith, he labours day and night,

to put the world of men to right.

With hammer, plow, and fire bright,

he builds for little children."

The song of the Seven

Ser Gwayne Hightower did not know exactly what, but his mind wasn’t at ease when he arrived at the Red Keep and met his sister for the first time in almost ten years. It was the most awkward reunion, he couldn’t tell what yet he knew something was wrong, odd about her. The Queen Dowager wasn’t the quiet but confident self she was when he left her so many years ago; sure the time ought to have changed her and they're facing a war, still ser Gwayne had a nagging feeling something was amiss.

He felt like he was talking to his own mother in the final weeks of her life, she was self-righteous and religious, faithful to the point of blindness. Alicent didn’t prove herself any more devout than she ought to show in such times, but he couldn't ignore the notion in his head. He decided to investigate.

It was his first night in the castle and after a brief and strange chat with his sister and nephews the uneasiness only grew. It was then decided to get acquainted with the knights and test the waters.

Ser Gwayne sat in the dining hall, along with his men and the Kingsguard, seated beside Ser Criston Cole. Now titled the Hand, the former knight whom he was now supposed to lead an army with. He didn’t like it a bit, though he reasoned it’d be clever to keep his mouth shut about such matters.

 The truth was this place made him apprehensive, King’s Landing had nothing on the clear air he was used to in Oldtown, here all reeked of piss and something unnatural. He couldn’t trust his own thoughts around these walls, not even the coming battle he was to face made him this agitated. The people were unrefined and tasteless, he never learned to like the town; for himself alone he felt allowed to acknowledge he was most fortunate to not be obliged to follow his father here. Yet it was not always so, he grew feeling quite resentful of his father for not being requested to come along — as it was asked of Alicent.  

It was of no consequence anymore, he knew. It is all in the past, he was forced to remember, and tried to focus on the here and now. 

The hall around him was filled with people and although it was expected of him to dine with his family in a more refined room, he denied the pleasant invitation. It was his wish to see what he was getting into. The food served was too spicy and rich for his taste and it was with great surprise he heard a dirty knight yell across the room a praise to ser Criston.

“My compliment to the cook, my Lord Hand!” was said with a most vulgar accent.

Yet ser Criston only nodded, not bothering to look up from his plate. Savouring the food.

What a strange man! That peaked Gwayne's interest. 

“I wasn’t aware you led a double life here, ser” Gwayne taunted, raising a brow. “Why only now am I hearing about your culinary skills?”

The knight hummed in acknowledgement of his attempt to strike up a conversation but kept on eating the green broth regardless. Such rude manners, thought Gwayne, but he was used to a more genteel society and ser Criston until short time ago was still simply a knight. For most of his life he was present in the society of lords and ladies but did not participate directly; he must not yet be accustomed to behave as such. He insisted.

“Come on now, I must insist, how do you manage to cook and be the Hand at the same time…?”

“I do not” Criston answered, short and annoyed, showing his true character. “My sister is the cook, they only jest.”

“And what an amazing cook she is,” said another knight. “I wonder if we’ll be graced by her presence before we part.”

“Mine, yes. Say, ser Criston, will she come to say her goodbyes to you?”

“No.”

Ser Gwayne observed as the knight grew increasingly irritated, he was certainly not a person to trifle with.

“And why is that? Won’t she want to pay her respects to you?”

“If she knows what is best for herself, she won’t come.” With that, he got up and left. Leaving behind a throughout clean plate.

Gwayne knew then the answer would lead him somewhere.

Ser Gwayne Hightower came to know about your existence in the most unexpected manner.

It was shocking how easily one could get a hold of information in the Red Keep when money was involved. Well, money and reputation — being the Dowager Queen’s brother helped, ser Gwayne supposed. Either way, the matter was settled and he was on his way to the kitchen.

Learning that ser Criston’s sister still worked as a cook when the knight himself was presently in a fairly more advanced position was most curious and so Gwayne decided to investigate the girl to see if he could understand why. He had a gut feeling the knight was onto something; he did not like it a bit, not when they were about to lead an army together into battle. So much could go wrong so fast, Gwayne needed to know what was going on. What was his sister’s secrecy about.

It was so unlike Gwayne to question other knight’s personal lives and doubt their honour that he was starting to doubt his own instincts. These instincts never failed him before and he didn’t particularly wish to turn his back on them now, not when they were the reason he survived so far as a knight. So he followed the instructions the servants gave and passed the last door to the kitchen.

Before he could ever see your face, he heard your laughter.

Loud. Happy. Unladylike.

That alone was enough to stop him in his tracks. 

Then, quickly so nobody could see him hesitate, he composed himself, fixed his posture and turned the last corner. And saw you.

You had your back to him and idle chatted with the other women in the room. You were occupied with mixing a pot with boiling broth and you didn’t realise he entered the room; the women around soon found each a task to do and shut their mouth. You did not. 

“So I told him I would prefer to be sent to clean King Aegon's chamber pot than…” you laughed again, turning around. Gasped, the wooden spoon falling from your hands.

“M'lord” you bowed, wide eyes, and gathered the spoon in a swift move. You left it in the sink. “My apologies.”

“I should be the one apologizing, my lady” he stepped forward. “It is all my fault, I should've introduced myself. I'm most sorry, it wasn't my intention to startle you.”

You only nodded, your expression wary like that of your brother. Gwayne could see your full eyebrow furrowed, even though you still didn't look at him.

“You're too kind, but I'm not a lady, ser. Only a servant.”

Gwayne shook his head, feeling warmth creeping up his neck. Finally understanding why the refusal to face him.

“Of course, I apologize again.”

“Can I be of service, ser? The food was almost ready, the maids were about to take it to the dining hall.”

Although your merry tone, your face didn't reveal anything at all, still guarded. Gwayne had the impression you wished him gone. How could you not? He was keeping you from your work and still didn’t say his name nor explained his motive for being there. And he was a stranger to this place as well, you must be wondering where he had come from. He decided to amend that by justifying himself. 

“Yes, actually. I was hoping you could help me with a particular matter.”

You huffed, astonished by his forwardness, and finally looked up at him. And what beautiful eyes did you have, large and glowing with emotion.

“Ser,” you said, serious. “You must be confused. This is the kitchen floor, I can only help with food, not with…”

Gwayne's neck and ears burned hotter.

 “My lady” he interrupted, forgetting once again your title, suddenly understanding her unwilling manner. Of course, I’m to her simply a stranger, he thought, bold enough as to importune her at her work. With the most wicked purpose! he realised, ashamed.  “I only mean help concerning your brother.”

“M'lord, I don't quite comprehend your meaning,” you stated, much more annoyed than curious now. “You mean to tell me ser Criston wished dearly to see me before parting? Whatever for?”

Ser Gwayne nodded, sipping the sweet tea you made him. He wasn't as tall or wide as some of the White Cloaks you knew, but still very elegantly tall, and was currently sitting cross legged at the kitchen table that proved to be too small for his statue.

His manners were giving you flashbacks of the time, not long ago, you served as a chambermaid and brought the food to the ladies and lords upstairs - although troubled, his reason made you curious. You truly wished he had left already and being alone with him didn't help your peace of mind either; however, it wasn't like you could send him away. He was the brother of the Queen Dowager and is to inherit the Hightower castle; you suspect he wouldn't accept a “no” as an answer. Especially not from a servant; so you complied.

“Exactly, my lady” said he, once again mocking you by giving a title that wasn't yours. It was infuriating, not that you could ever show how offending it was, lords like him fancied themselves charming whenever they made these goodhearted mistakes. Yet this one was clever enough to show some embarrassment whenever he mistitle you — he shook his head lightly and cleaned his throat. “The Lord Hand showed himself eager, hopeful even, to have a chance to see you before parting. I understand you came to King's Landing together when you were quite young, right?”

“Yes, m'lord. Ser Criston was but six and ten when we first arrived at Flea Bottom.”

“Six and ten! He was quite young indeed.”

“Yes, but he only became a knight much later.”

He nodded again.

“Yes, I remember the day,” ser Gwayne murmured thoughtfully. “Yet you are originally from Dorne. What brought the two of you here?”

“Criston always wished to be a knight. He was so very skilled, I believed he had a good chance to become one here in King's Landing.”

“So it was your idea, I presume, to come here instead of staying in Dorne.”

You hesitate. Why didn’t he question ser Criston about this particular matter? He would answer them gladly, the fact he had a humble background and still made it to become a white cloak along with so many lords and noblemen always made him very proud of himself.

There was a time you were proud of him too.

“Oh, no, ser. It was all ser Criston dear wish” you said cautiously, you didn't know what history your brother was telling people nowadays. You decided to go with the truth, more simple that way. “But we had very little to hold us back there. After our parents died, as the eldest daughter, I felt responsible to give him the future our parents couldn't. At least, the chance to make a name for himself. And prove himself worthy he did, as you see.”

“Yes, indeed,” Gwayne replied, pensive.

Ser Gwayne had much to say, but nothing he could ask without the risk of intruding your personal matters and seemingly too forward in his requests. His doubts were far from being clarified: why did ser Criston allow his sister to live in misery when he now held the power to help you? Did you do something so terrible as to now be out of Criston’s good grace? Or was he the one wrong? Could it simply be sibling rivalry? 

He doubted it; ser Gwayne couldn’t think of a single misconduct or error of judgment that could lead him to abandon Alicent. Surely it was so with every family, even with one that didn’t come from wealthy, right? Ser Criston came to become a knight out of his own ability and talent, he couldn’t be so unfeeling as to leave his only sister to fend for herself without a reason. And a good one it must be.

Gwayne just couldn’t fathom what happened, so far you've been honest in your approach and had such a fair face. He would have to look into it.

“May I be so bold to question you, ser?” you woke him from his thoughts.

Gwayne looked up at you. You had not made an attempt to converse the whole time he was in the kitchen, only answered his questions and stayed quiet otherwise. He couldn't help but smile.

“I hardly have a reason to deny you, my lady. You complied with my questionnaire without hesitation, ask what you please. I'll be glad to answer.”

You smiled back pleasantly.

“I thank you, ser," you said in a singsong tone. "I am only curious about one thing. If my brother is so anxious I say my goodbye to him, why didn't he come to me himself?”

Writing Gwayne was so much fun. He is a little shit and I love him very much. Like, yes, he is the knight in shinning armour and he's fair and just and genteel and wants to settle thing right with his sister. BUT!!! He is also a very pompous man that lives in a ivory tower (pun intended). And the Reader!!!! Ugh, love her. Her relationship with her brother isn't going so well (I wrote this last year when I had the biggest fight with my brother and took great inspiration) but she tries and loves him! Our girl DO NOT trust the loyalty for reasons I'll disclose latter on and having Gwayne around gives her major headache. Worry not, they'll work it out hehehe ALSO! the green broth mentioned is my fav dish EVER! I know that broths are a very popular dish everywhere and that almost every country has its own recipe, but our Caldo Verde is, in my humble opinion, the best. We eat it in the winter here, so I'm thinking I might cook some this week... For now, that's all I have to say. Hope you enjoyed it as much as i did. See ya!

"Cook" by Eduard Charlemont and a cut from "Kiss me and you'll kiss the 'lasses" by Lily Martin Spencer are the paintings used!

you tug a handkerchief out of the pocket of your gown to pat at your neck and ears, as well as across your forehead. as you go to place it back in your pocket, ormund softly taps an outstretched hand on your thigh to silently request the slightly dampened cloth.

he doesn’t lift it to his nose immediately, not as you know he would’ve if you weren’t seated in the center-front pew of the sept. instead, ormund runs a hand across the linen, lingering on the lopsided stitch of your initials. initials sewn by your closest lady-in-wait, nicolette, years ago after coming into the service of your house of birth. you were both young then, seven-and-ten, and nicolette’s needlework wasn’t nearly as steady as it is now.

if it weren't so suffocatingly hot, all the attending nobles would show considerable shame at the speed in which you all rise when the septon finally dismisses the service. the attendees start to spread out; some to request a word with the septon, others to the candle-room to pray.

“we should socialize for awhile, my love,” ormund states, standing awfully close and pressing a gentle hand to your lower back.

you’re too outdone by the heat to even entertain the idea of tens on tens of trivial conversations, “that is the proper thing to do, yes,” you admit.

ormund cocks his head with a taunting grin, “are you suggesting that you don’t care to mingle, and on a holy day at that.”

“i am suggesting that any matter of actual consequence can be sent via raven to the high-tower, rather than discussed at length here in this heat.”

“speak to the lady ashford, at least,” ormund implores, tongue-in-cheek, “she’ll only continue to pester you about the solstice tourney, until you do. she’s already sent plenty of ravens, as you’re well aware.”

all of which i tore, or asked nicolette to disregard and discard of, or threw into the hearth myself. so, yes, i am well aware.

“‘it’s not the time for any of the reach’s annual tourneys. we’re in the midst of a war. or is lady ashford somehow not privy to our current situation,” i retort, quiet enough to reach only ormund’s ears.

“go, y/n,” ormund insists, though it is at this point impossible to conceal that chuckle of pure delight, a clear sign of how much he loves when your resolve cracks ever so slightly, revealing the petulance underneath. when it’s directed at other people, that is.

“i might as well, i suppose” you grumble, rolling your eyes, “it’s too hot for socializing, we shall all roast like pigs on a spit.”

to that, even ser jon cracks a slight smile, “that much is true, my lady,” he agrees.

as a sort of ‘thanks’, ormund presses a gentle peck to your lips; it’s proper and perfectly chaste, suitable enough for the ever watchful eyes about the sept. those of the gods, lords and ladies alike.

once ormund slips off, and daeron and jon with him, nicolette appears at your side to point out the lady ashford near the sept’s ornate double doors. there the lady is speaking in the center of a group of other noblewomen.

you gather your skirts to start the trek across the spacious sanctuary, with nicolette gathering what’s left on your other side.

“the solstice tourney,” you murmur, more to yourself than to nicolette, “that of all things is what plagues the lady ashford. not the needless war that shall surely require all of our men to take to their swords and shields soon enough, including lady ashford’s own lord husband. i am starting to think she’s incredibly simple.”

you aren’t able to get far at all though; “my lady y/n, what duty calls so that you must rush so swiftly by your cousin-in-law.”

it is the charming drawl of ormund’s cousin, ser gwayne hightower, sitting in an otherwise empty pew, with an arm propped on the back of the bench.

“ser gwayne,” you pause so abruptly nicolette nearly crashes into you, “my apologies, i hadn’t noticed you there.”

“oh, all is well. come, sit,” he gestures to the vacant pew, “unless you were attending to a much more important matter, of course.”

“no no, it wasn’t of any import at all,” you insist, very thankful for the interruption.

“what of lady ashford, my lady,” nicolette asks, after a pleasant curtsy to ser gwayne.

“i’m positive i’ll much prefer ser gwayne’s company,” you say, signaling nicolette to take a seat nearby.

“what’s this about the lady ashford,” he raises an eyebrow.

“the lady insists on preparing for the annual solstice.”

“to what end, the realm is at war,” gwayne points out, trailing off skeptically.

“at least someone sees reason,” you revel in the company of another sound mind, “i mean, my lord husband knows it is a pointless endeavor, though he implores i entertain it nonetheless. my ‘duty’ as the lady hightower, he says. surely there are better things to allocate our coin to, perhaps the thousands of reach men ormund must summon to war, those that the crown hasn’t already summoned,” the sarcasm in your tone isn’t lost on gwayne.

he leans languidly against the pew, with a humored snicker, “well, i can say we’d be the better for it if you took up my lord father’s place as hand of the king, rather than that ser criston cole,” he teases.

“i am surely no hand of the king, ser gwayne,” you smile mildly at the thought, “though i do say a prayer for ser otto on the daily, the rightful lord hand.”

gwayne tilts his head, eyes narrowed in a way that translates fondness. the corners of his lips curl into a smile, which isn’t at all unusual; he smiles often when you’re around. much to ormund’s irritation, which only worsens whenever you insist that it is only a fondness for the friendship you share, nothing more. and nothing at all to interpret as romantic.

in truth, it is a marvel that gwayne isn’t married; a man of house hightower, the son of the hand to three kings, a sensible and upright knight, though not so much so that he’s dull. tack on that softer shade of hightower auburn that frames a face that’s more than easy on the eyes; the average noblewoman prays nightly for a future husband like gwayne.

even so, it was ormund’s irritatingly attractive everything, an ‘everything’ that aligned with your taste so much so that it pissed you off upon first meeting him, that drew you in. alongside a most peculiar personality that, even after years of marriage, you still can’t put into the proper words. a personality that, alongside your own, makes for a very stubborn and unruly dynamic at times. even so, as lord and lady hightower, you are undeniably steadfast spouses, with a household molded around a genuine love.

“as do i, and i truly thank you for it,” gwayne says softly, it’s clear the topic is a tender one.

“i am glad to do so, and to pray for you as well. ormund says you are off to king’s landing soon, sometime within this upcoming week.”

“i am, my lady. though i am sorry to spoil your plans for the solstice, there’s no need for it now that i can’t be there to crush my dearest cousin in a joust,” he jests in an attempt to re-lighten the mood.

“now is not the time to jest,” you laugh, “the gods shall strengthen your shield, and i shall pray for your safekeeping until you return to oldtown.”

gwayne gingerly takes one of your hands, planting a sweet kiss to the soft skin in gratitude; it’s as proper and chaste as the one ormund pressed to your lips earlier, though it lacks the same sort of affection.

nonetheless, you are aware that the man standing awfully close behind you (once again) wouldn’t agree at all on the matter.

“cousin,” gwayne releases you to greet ormund, glancing up and over your shoulder. the two get along well enough, apart from the occasional [constant] insult, even when you aren’t involved. when you are involved, we’re left with moments such as the current one.

“cousin,” ormund repeats.

rudely.

neither breaks eyes contact, considering it a forfeit of some sort.

“husband,” you attempt to interrupt their immature little showdown, “nicolette and i were on our way over to lady ashford, when we ran into ser gwayne; a most pleasant surprise, isn’t it.”

“an unpleasant distraction indeed, i do agree, my love,” ormund sneers.

“that’s not what i sa—” you start, only for ormund to interrupt.

“gwayne, we’ll be seeing each other at today’s council at the tower, i presume.”

“it is my last appearance at council. i ship out to king’s landing soon enough. someone must step out of the comfort of their castle and take to the sword, there is a war to be won,” gwayne affirms.

“i suppose so. oh how we’ll miss your presence in oldtown.”

before gwayne is able to answer, ormund holds out a hand

to offer it to you; a cue that it’s time to go. “i think my lady and i are due for a final prayer. worthy is the husband

that kneels with his wife in prayer, wouldn’t you both say.”

you stand up, though you refuse to take ormund’s hand.

“it was great to see you, gwayne. i’ll try to at least see you off before you leave oldtown,” you say, smiling despite how badly want to strike ormund to the ground.

“i’ll looks forward to it, my lady,” gwayne stands, pulling you into a hug, throwing a sharp glare in ormund’s direction over your shoulder.

“he has always known how to sniff you out like a hound, hasn’t he,” ormund declares as soon as one of the guards closes the carriage doors behind ser jon, the last to enter the carriage. you, your very agitated husband, and nicolette are already inside. ser jon sent daeron and a few other guards to ride in the carriage behind this one, an attempt to spare daeron’s delicate ears from what’s to come.

“is it now a sin to speak to one’s cousin-in-law, one that must leave the safety of oldtown to join the war effort, at that.”

you sit on one side of the carriage next to nicolette, while ormund and ser jon sit on the opposite side. the center of the bench is usually daeron’s spot.

“does that cause you unrest, y/n. gwayne isn’t the first nor the only one the crown summons to war in these trying times.”

“i am aware ormund. there is still no wrong in wishing him well, for fuc—”

“ah ah,” ormund waves a finger, preventing the unsavory word from slipping, “not while we remain on holy ground.”

you wouldn’t argue with that. so, the carriage falls into silence for the ten minutes it takes to maneuver through the crowds of churchgoers and others in the hectic street near the sept.

once the carriage steers off of the smooth créme stone surrounding the sept, and onto the plain cobblestone of oldtown’s normal streets, you waste no time in continuing at full volume, “for fuck’s sake, does the holy word not say that the gods smile upon close and amiable kin. you are being brash ormund.”

“do you not think it brash for my cousin to undress my wife with those greedy eyes in the center of the sept, for others to witness of as well,” ormund argues, “he’s a crafty bitch in knight’s armor, a brazen fucking cunt, and i-”

“actually,” you interrupt, “we spoke of gwayne’s lord father, your uncle, who i pray over daily. who, in case you’ve forgotten, was unjustly unseated as hand of the king again. a perfectly simple conversation.”

“that much has not escaped me, y/n.”

“oh, it hasn’t, has it. well, let’s pray that the rest of your wits, what little there is, return to you soon,” you say, sickeningly sarcastic.

“oh, so i am a simpleton now, since i prefer my wife to not fraternize wi—”

“yes, yes you are. a simpleton, in every sense of the word,” you speak over him for once.

ormund nods bitterly, throwing up his hands, “a simpleton, i am. me she says.”

“him, i say,” i murmur, not one to ever allow that infuriating man to have the last word.

“was i speaking to you,” ormund asks, tilting his head.

“was i to you,” you counter, “there is somehow still some petty answer on the tip of your tongue.”

“cut out my tongue then, since it displeases you so.”

“it does, and i will. i think i shall put it out on display as well. i’m sure i’ll enjoy you much much more without it.”

ormund laughs mockingly, “aww, will you. you’re rather fond of me and my tongue when it’s—”

you hate nothing in the world more than the effect that that condescending tone’s got over you, and the fact that you love it so much, even at a time like this.

“oh shut the hell up already, you rotten little rat. sniff my handkerchief like the little idiot you are and be quiet—”

“did you call me a fucking idiot,” he scoffs in irritation at your childish choice of an insult, “know that if i bore you no affection i’d have your tongue for that.”

“would you; or are you too busy sniffing around at my heels of to do much of anything. perhaps you’ve helped you and your sinful nose to my smallclothes too, the unclean—”

“i do and will continue to do so. in fact, i did so last night and twice the night prior. what of the ‘habits’ of your own that the gods would name unclean, whorish even.”

“and do i indulge in these whorish things alone, you lustful cretin,” you demand, “hand me my handkerchief, since you feel so strongly of me.”

ormund snatches it out of the pocket of his doublet, “fine. take it, i have no need of it,” and flings it across the carriage onto the space between you and nicolette.

“glad we agree, then,” you mutter.

“very glad,” ormund scoffs.

“great,”

“very great.”

there is an instance of silence, though it doesn’t last long.

“jealousy is an awful sin, you know,” you add.

“mhm, and i feel for those that suffer from it,” ormund

answers with sarcastically fake concern.

“then i pray the gods are steadfast in delivering you from it, my love.”

next to you, nicolette raises her eyes to spot ser jon already

staring at her with pursed lips. to which nicolette offers a sheepishly knowing smile. out of anyone, these two are well aware of the childishness their lord and lady conceal so well most of the time. to jon and lettie’s relief, the carriage is completely silent for the remainder of the ride.

the moment the carriage comes to a stop in the courtyard, ormund forces the doors open from the inside, forget waiting for an attendant to open the doors for you all, as is the normal thing to do. ormund also ignores the marital custom of offering one’s wife a steady forearm to help her out of a carriage. ser jon, in the fashion of a true gentleman, offers an arm in ormund’s place and guides you out of the carriage. an arm ser jon then extends to nicolette as well.

“why thank you, ser jon. there is at least one man in our midst that well-mannered,” you state.

in response, ormund starts off for the entrance without you, with ser jon on his heels.

“prick,” you murmur to yourself.

to your left, daeron steps out of the other carriage to find his ill-mannered sire halfway to the castle entrance. to which the young prince peers over at you, “are you and lord ormund quarreling again, my lady.”

as soon as daeron’s in reach, you rest a gentle hand on one of the prince’s shoulders, “pay that no mind, daeron. we all know it won’t take long for our lord to realize the error of his ways and return to his senses.”

daeron goes to offer an arm for you to take as you walk, a gesture ormund taught to and instilled in the prince. however, ormund interrupts the gesture from farther in front, “come daeron,” he demands.

“prick,” you murmur again, as daeron smiles apologetically and scampers along to catch up to ormund and ser jon.

that was earlier in the day, no later than ten-am. the remainder of the day consisted of a sewing session in the gardens (which was cut short due to the heat), a most peaceful lunch without ormund around to bitch-and-moan, and quite the remarkable showcase of your talents in archery out in the shade of the training yard.

from three to five you engage in a very pleasant nap, followed by an attempt to visit the library upon getting up; an attempt that is ruined by the sight of ormund already in the library.

it isn’t until a little later that evening, after the aforementioned council is adjourned, that you are “graced” with ormund’s presence again.

it’s about seven-pm at that point, and it isn’t nearly as warm as earlier. you’re in your chamber, nearing the end of a bath. marienne, another of your ladies-in-wait, stands to the side of the tub with a towel, while nicolette prepares a clean robe. the third lady-in-wait, eda, lights a stick or two of clove incense to set on your vanity.

the four of you are forty-five minutes into an enthusiastic conversation on nicolette’s newfound attraction to ser jon. an attraction nicolette denies, which is a statement you deny the validity of, and an attraction marienne and eda are sure ser jon shares.

“there is no shame in it, nicolette,” eda grins, to which nicolette groans again in adamant protest.

“exactly, ser jon is a very formidable knight,” marienne snorts.

as you step out of the tub into the towel, laughing along, there’s a persistent knock on the door.

“perhaps it is ser jon, lettie,” you tease, as nicolette leans against it to hear the guard on the other side.

“lord hightower approaches and requests a private moment with the lady,” the guard informs through a thin slot in the door. nicolette glances over at you, all too aware of the hostility between the two of you today.

“lady y/n prefers to enjoy a little.. uh.. solitude tonight,” nicolette responds.

there is a faint shuffling of feet on the other side, then the guard speaks again, “lord hightower is adamant, perhaps the lady will kindly reconsider.”

“y/n, cease your pettiness,” ormund orders, pushing past the guard to the slot. ormund won’t attempt to enter unless you grant permission, though.

you let out a very very long sigh, “very well,” and pull the towel tighter, take a seat on the edge of the tub in preparation for whatever bullshit ormund brings with him.

“the lady will allow it,” nicolette says, and in seemingly less than a second ormund is standing in front of you.

“lady wife,” ormund speaks.

“lord husband,” you reply, equally as curt.

your ladies slip off to the side, silent as a trio of mice when a wicked old cat comes near.

“leave us ladies,” ormund turns to the three of them with a charming smile. although their dismissal is out of their control, all three throw an apologetic glance your way. well, excluding eda, who’s able to guess exactly how lord ormund plans to ‘put an end’ to the petty spouses’ quarrel.

“can i not even bathe in peace, now,” you speak, the second the two of you are alone.

ormund strolls over to your vanity, taking a seat on the stool’s lavender cushion. ormund’s lips remain shut, as he occupies himself with the various trinkets on the vanity. while examining an ivory hairpin he says, “you can’t remain vexed forever, y/n.”

“i’ll remain vexed forever and some,” you proclaim.

“you are my wife, there is not a lord alive that doesn’t harbor some possessiveness over his lady wife.”

“and that’s all well, i only thought you had the decency to set that and your boysish feud with your cousin aside, at a time like this especially. do you and gwayne not fight for the same purpose, in the name of the same gods.”

“mhm,” ormund huffs mockingly, finding you cute even when you are scolding or spewing insults at him.

“move, will you,” you approach the vanity with a sigh. clearly the conversation isn’t going to go anywhere.

“i won’t, actually,” ormund taunts.

“ormund it is too late for these games. i must tend to my hair, and lotion myself, and-”

“alright alright, spare us all the speech, you spoiled thing,” he pulls you into his lap.

you are too spent to reply or refuse; ormund plants his chin on your shoulder, cheeks pressed together.

“i only pray you show as much care when i leave off for the war,” ormund rasps after while.

“why would i not, ormund. you are my husband. gwayne is without a wife, it is only a simple kindness to pray for your cousin’s safety as well.”

“i suppose you are right,” ormund groans, adjusting you again.

well.

you never expected him to admit it.

“you are right,” he repeats, “my cousin is without a wife. a pious little wife to pray nightly for his safe return to oldtown, or to send letters to weekly, or one desperate enough to pleasure herself to the thought of him with the same filthy hands she’d clasped in prayer only moments prior.”

you scoff, “are you suggesting that i’d do such a decrepit thing,” you ask, smiling nonetheless

ormund’s lip sticks out just a little, finding amusement in the face that you asked a question with oh so obvious an answer, “do you think i don’t know my own wife.”

he stands up without warning, and directs you to the bed. you comply, though when you opt to simply sit at the end of it, ormund smiles slowly. menacingly almost, gesturing to the headboard.

you comply. again.

and your lack of protest pleases ormund.

in the few seconds it takes to get rid of your robe, and settle, now entirely bare, into a comfortable spot in the center-top of the bed, ormund’s shed shoes, sword and scabbard, and all other garments. at this point, both of you are bare and staring unabashedly at the other. you at the contours of his hips leading to the patch of almost-auburn hair resting atop his length. ormund slides onto the bed, towering over you on steady knees, planted on the insides of your thighs to prevent you from trying to close them.

ormund raises a hand to himself, stroking it ever so slowly.

you try to sit up, almost as if the current view isn’t nearly enough. to that, ormund places a heavy hand to the center of your chest, pushing you to lie down again.

“ormund,” you whine, not at all a fan of not getting your way. to which you receive a stern, “do as i say,” in return. ormund’s hand travels south, making sure to stroke over your skin which is still a little damp, stopping only when it reaches your center. the wetness there isn’t on account of the bath, though. ormund disregards all concepts of prep, sliding two fingers in, all the while, he hasn’t stopped stroking himself.

as he speaks, he switches hands for nothing more than the disgusting urge to transfer your wetness to his length. it’s difficult to tell since your eyes clamp shut with every languid rub in the right place, but you could swear you saw ormund sink the fingers that came out of you into his mouth before switching hands.

“while i am away, think of me and only me; pray for me and only me,” he instructs.

selfish brute.

“that’s not—” you start to protest.

ormund rotates the pad of his pointer against a sensitive spot to shut you up.

“when you lie awake at night, think only of me.”

“i-” you try again to answer, racking your brain for some bratty response. however, your husband knows exactly where to touch when he’s sick of your smart mouth and expects nothing more than a yes or a no. actually, no no’s at all.

“what did i say, y/n.”

“i won’t—”

ormund delivers a series of two slaps to your cheek, hard enough to sting, “try again,” he tsks.

you hold out, somehow. the last of your irritation from earlier today isn’t evaporated entirely, and you can’t let him win so easily.

“hm,” ormund grunts in dissatisfaction, pulling the fingers out of you.

ormund leans forward, elbows on either side of your head, head dropping to rest on your chest, “you aren’t listening well today, are you,” he asks condescendingly. he inhales, taking in the scent of cinnamon and mint, your signature choice of soap.

he lifts your right leg up, back back back until your knee rests beside your head.

you let out a pathetic whine of frustration. frustration for the fact that you allow this man to do with you as he pleases, time and time again, even after he irritates you beyond comprehension.

to muffle the whining, ormund’s lips lock onto yours, establishing a rhythm in little to no time.

simultaneously, he guides his hips to meet yours, aligning with your entrance.

ormund pushes only the tip in; you’re so slick though, that more of it makes it in than ormund intends.

“remind me,” ormund settles his forehead on your shoulders, curls tickling the skin, “what are you going to do while i’m away.”

you can barely handle the pace ormund’s set, prioritizing reach over speed, damn near digging into you.

“pray,” you sigh, bluntly and begrudgingly so, trying your hardest to keep your head on straight.

ormund thinks it’s adorable that you think that’s working, and anywhere nearly enough to warrant you lifting your hips, asking after more contact.

“y/n,” he warns, hips lifting, threatening to pull out entirely.

“ok, ok. pray nightly, only for you.”

“that’s right,” ormund rewards you with an inch or two more, “only for me.”

“what else,” he encourages.

“and—and i’ll think only of you, only you. everyday,” you sigh out, arms snaking around his shoulders, hands pushing into the muscles of his back.

“good, good girl. go on,” he grunts, with a peck to your lips.

he allows another inch, then another out of kindness of his heart.

“i can’t—”

“you will,” he interrupts, “continue.”

you take a second to breathe, or to remind yourself how to, rather.

“forget gwa—to hell with gwayne. i’ll throw his letters in the hearth, all of them. and wait patiently for you, only you, as the—as the faithful and obedient wife does.”

ormund smiles against the clammy skin of your shoulder, very satisfied.

“there it is,” he pushes in all the way, all at once.

you tighten your arms around ormund’s shoulders, hands anchoring to the curls in the back of his head. he doesn’t protest when you yank; the guttural groans that vibrate against your shoulder are that of the purest pleasure.

ormund’s so thick, the pressure of each thrust reverberates in your core, through your thighs, and back up again.

“perhaps putting a babe in you is the perfect incentive to hold you to your word, hm.”

“yes, yes, please,” you plead, invigorated all over again.

you and ormund talked about starting on your first child a month or so ago, before the confirmation of war.

“is that what you want.”

“yes,” you moan, “please, i’m so sorry for what i di—i won’t do it again, please.”

ormund pecks your lips again; he never denies you much of anything, and he definitely won’t deny you now, not when you’ve finally said the words he wants to hear.

he rises to lean straight up again on his knees, lifting your other leg up and back. you’re as open as possible. it’s all so overwhelming you clench your teeth around a part of the sheets.

you reach your peak moments earlier than ormund, arching off of silk sheets that are tacky with sweat.

you can tell ormund’s close when he starts to abandon all sense of rhythm. when he releases, there’s so much of it, there’s nowhere near enough space to stuff it all in, there never is. he pulls out as the last it releases, landing on your thighs and stomach.

ormund lifts a hand to your mouth, then slots your lips together again to taste himself on your tongue.

when you push ormund off in need of air, he rolls over to the side, stretching out entirely, chest rising and falling in unison with yours.

you stuff the sheets underneath your hips for a little height to help the seed take, “i’ll need another bath at this rate,” you rasp, throat spent.

ormund swings a leg off of the bed with a groan, “well, the holy word says a husband that washes with his wife is a worthy one, indeed.”

“it says no such thing,” you snort, watching ormund walk around to your side, pressing another kiss to your lips.

You tried to ignore it, you did, you tried to ignore the fact that after the birth of your second son your husband never visited your chambers again, you tried to ignore the steps and giggles outside his chambers at night, you tried to ignore the glances he would give to any other new young woman who showed up in Storm’s End. And you mostly did, you were grateful even, that he at least was discreet in public.

The neglect was harder to ignore though

He started to leave you to have your supper and break fast alone

And your boys, of five and two, Orys and Steffon, were starting to miss their father. 

You had tried to seek him out, and he would indulge you, you believed that was the worst part, he would indulge you in these feasts like dinners, all big fake smiles and grand gestures, he would tell you about his day, kiss the side of your face and then move along to his chambers. 

It is not like you tried…. but… something had happened in the birth of your son, and now… it hurts, those first times you tried with him, it hurted, and the worst part is, that you kept desiring him and yet your body kept betraying you.

That brings you here, to King’s Landing.

It was the celebration of the King’s 60th name day, and all great houses had been invited. Lyonel wouldn’t have come if it weren’t for the promised jousting, and the feast too. He had weirdly insisted you join him, you did not want to attend, you had no lost love for King’s Landing. 

And seems like basic decency has abandoned your husband, seems like all reason and his respect for you too…

He was entertaining a woman, sitting her on his lap while you sat just a few feet away

You tried to look forwards to the puppet show that was happening in front of you, but they were not being discreet no matter how much they believed they were. You could still hear their whispers, her moans

You couldn’t believe this.

You catched a glimpse and this woman was actually moving like she was  impaling herself….

You wanted to throw up

You wanted to run, but  were completely paralyzed and couldn’t move

You felt gazes on you, of the other servants, of your lady in waiting.

“Mommy!”, you could only drew breath when you heard the voice of your eldest son, grabbing onto your arm, “let’s go closer”, he said excitedly.

“Y-yes my love”, you said shakily, and rose from your seat. You actually let the boy of four name days guide you through the darkish tent, letting him be your strength, you didn’t even know how your knees didn’t buckle under you. 

You sat amongst other children in the very first row, not caring anymore for what was proper, you sat there crossing your legs under the thick skirts of your dress to prevent them from shaking, your son was happy to sit in your lap. 

You couldn’t keep the tears from falling, you couldn’t keep the trembling of your fingers, you felt so disgusted.

“Why are you crying mommy?”, asked your son, placing his chubby hands on your cheeks

“I…”, you could barely talk, your throat tightened by an invisible hand, “I’m just scared of the sorcerer”, you drew out, referring to the malevolent puppet who had enchanted the princess or something like that. He huffed and surrounded your neck with his hands

“I’ll protect you mommy”, he said with certainty, you hugged him tight as your life depended on it, letting him ground you against what was happening.

You felt nauseous

Once the show was over, they lit up a few candles so people could leave, you were quick to stand, and there he was, he was still sitting there, with that wench on his lap, now, in front of everyone who could tell what was happening. You didn’t stop to suffer it any longer, you grabbed onto your youngest Steffon, who was getting fuzzy in the hands of his nurse, and took him with you, holding tightly onto Orys by his tiny hand, who was oblivious to what his father was doing. 

The puppeteers' show was being held in a tent in the garden, and the walk back to the Red Keep was well signaled, and your boys were sleepy, so you walked back to the castle to put them to bed, as the hour had grown late. 

You went to their assigned room, right next to yours, with the help of their nanny you put on their pajamas and when they were ready, you tucked them in yourself, kissed their sleepy foreheads and cuddled them until they slept. 

Despite it all, as you looked at your sleeping babies, you realized they made everything worth it.

You walked back to your rooms, thinking Lyonel might spend the night elsewhere, the thought brought you both dread and relief at the same time, not entirely sure how.

But as you sat on the vanity, brushing your hair Lyonel stumbled into the room, clearly drunk

“Oops”, you heard him mumble with a chuckle

“What are you doing here?”, you asked bitterly

“These are my rooms”, he said mockingly, it was sad really, you saw him and you barely recognized the handsome man you had married, the gallant knight, “can’t I sleep with my own wife?”

“Not before you take ten baths with salt water and lemon”, you said bitterly, turning your back on him to keep brushing your hair

“Oh, that”, he chuckled. “got a bit carried away”

Yes in front of important lords of the realm and you believed even Prince Baelor was there too

“Yes, a bit”, you mocked, as you angrily brushed your tears your anger began to slip out. 

“Oh come on woman!”, he said, “it was just…”, you fucking someone else in front of you and other people

“I don’t know why you brought me here”, you interrupted him, not hiding your tears, turning to him again, “to humiliate me?”

“No…”, he sighed, as the conversation bored him

“I do not know what I could have possibly done to you, for you to treat me like this”, you kept going, “I don’t deserve this!”

“You won’t let me fuck you!”, he said as if it was the answer to all your problems

“I told you it hurts!”, you said angrily, bitter tears falling down your cheeks, “Steffon ripped me apart when he was born and the maesters told us the muscles had healed the wrong way!, they also told us that slowly… with practice… but you won’t….”, he grunted, interrupting you, falling to the bed

“Come here then”, he said, ”let’s practice”

“You are disgusting", you cried, standing from your bench and walking towards the door

“Where are you going?”, he asked

“To sleep anywhere else”

You felt immediately guilty after closing the door so had it sounded all over the empty hallway, there could have been people sleeping you just woke up.

You couldn’t go back to your children like this, so you just kept walking down. You also did not know the Red Keep that well, this thing was like some labyrinth, you just kept walking aimlessly. 

Until you reached what you guessed was a different tower. 

“Are you alright?”, you jumped in your place, turning quickly towards the voice. There he stood, in all his glory, Baelor Targaryen

He was looking at you like he would look at a missing child

“I’m very sorry, your grace”, the man held so many titles you didn’t know how to call him, as he was also Lord Hand of The King, but you guessed he was first and foremost a Prince. You saw that he was patiently waiting for you answer, "I am, I just… sleep evaded me so I went for a walk”, you tried to explain

“Yes, sleep would evade me as well if a saw my husband engaging in such activities”, he said and you stood very still

You wanted the floor to swallow you whole

“I’m sorry”, you didn’t even know what to say but to apologise for your… husband…

“You do not need to apologise, if anything…. your husband should”, he said firmly. His gaze was so intense, so felt like you were bare in front of him, “sleep did escape me as well, perhaps a cup of wine will ease us into slumber, if you’d join me”, he said softly

How did you say no to a Prince?

“That would be lovely”, you said with a soft smile. You did not care if it was the hour of the owl, you did not care if it was improper for a married lady and a prince to be alone.

He invited you to the tower of the hand, the soldier guarding their prince stood there solemn, not even giving you an errant look

Baelor Targaryen was seen as the perfect heir, perfect son and gallant gentleman.

If he had not encountered you this night, alone, with tears marks on your cheeks, after that poor display of the Baratheon, he would have never pursued you, no matter how beautiful to him you were, how fetching, how sweet.

But he did find you there, lost.

Baelor Targaryen had always been the type of man who liked to save people, he had the savior complex, and tonight…. he wanted to save you. From what? Perhaps he couldn’t save you from the humiliation and cruelty of your husband, but he certainly could aid in soothing those pains for you. 

You did not intend to feel as comfortably as you did, sitting there across from him, goblet of wine in hand, a silly smile on your face, a giggle in your mouth when he told you something silly, or maybe it wasn’t silly at all. 

You did not intend to relax around him, but he put down his intimidating presence and made it seem like he was the safest person in this castle.

You did not intent to let him kiss you softly like the touch of the feather

You certainly did not intend on going with him to the Hand of the King’s rooms, hand in hand, heart pounding on your chest.

You had warned him about the pains, but he assured you were going to take it slow, that at the minimum show of pain he was going to stop, that there was other ways to have sex that did not involved penetration, that he planned of making you feel loved and worshipped

And he did

Oh he did 

His hands were the softest you’ve ever felt, his mouth was the most delicate you ever had on your skin, and he unmade you with them twice, before he even thought of revealing his nakedness to you 

He had admitted he had never done this before, meaning taking to bed a married woman, or anyone else since his wife passed, and you believed him

You didn’t even think about your cheating husband, he was not worth it. 

The only thing you could think of was Baelor inside of you, making you feel that pleasure that seemed to bring you back to life. 

It was so mind blowing, you only woke up when the sun was already shining brightly over the narrow sea.

“Oh no!”, you shouted, standing from the bed like it was on fire

“What’s the matter?”, he asked, a soft smile on his lips

“I need to leave”, they all would awaken by now, your children, even your husband if the sun had hit the window right… 

“Will I have you again?”, he asked, extremely calm for someone of his standing

“I don’t think so”, you said quickly, while placing back your dress as best as you could, he only chuckle from the bed, raising slowly, you jumped when he placed his big hands on your back, helping you tightening it 

“Thank you”, you whispered, and with one last look, you left, running down the stairs of the tower of the hand.

When you arrived at your sons’ quarters they were already awake

“Mama!”, greeted Orys, smiling at you as he ate a piece of apple his nanny had cut for him, “we are going playing with papa!”, he said proudly, and you paled, Lyonel had been here and he had not seen you. 

“My lady”, said your lady in waiting, smiling at you apologetically, “shall I draw you a bath?”

“Yes”, you said, “quickly”

Oh gods…. did they know? they seemed like they all knew, you, appearing there in the same dress as last night, all riled up, clearly not have been sleeping there….

You still felt Belor Breakspear between your legs. What have you done?

You had committed adultery, you had sex with another man who wasn’t your husband.

The bath was quickly set up, and soon you find yourself soaking your regrets in warm water, your trembling hands washed your body, especially between your legs

You did not regret it, not one bit, Baelor had awoken a crucial part of you that you believed was dead, or at least broken. You had experienced pleasure in his hand you had never felt before, he had adored you, worshiped your body. 

“Wife!”, water splashed everywhere from when your husband called you, “taking a bath, at such a strange hour?”, you looked at him weirdly, hugging your legs against your chest, “where were you this morning?”, he asked, he was wearing this sick smile on his lips.

“Here”, you lied, he chuckled

“No you were not”, he teased, he was dressed very appropriately, and you could tell he had bathed and used the essences he used to wear back when you married, back when he wanted to impress you, and woo you, and present himself as this gallant man. 

“I went to have a walk”, you said then, “sleep evaded me, due to what I had to experience last night”, you said disdainfully, he hummed.

He walked around the bathtub, slowly, circling you, like he was measuring you

“All night?”, he asked, “because I came to find you after our argument, since you had sober me up, and couldn’t find you, and then early this morning and yet my beautiful wife was not here either” 

He was playing you

“Did you wish to tell me something husband?”, you asked, he sat on the edge of the copper tub, looking down at you with this shit eating grin, like the cat who ate the canary

“Just that…. you were right…”, he said dismissively, looking directly at your face. “What happened yesterday was…. “

“Sickening”, you said, his eyes never left yours, this was some sort of battle of wills

“Inexcusable”, he continued, “you have done nothing but be a loving, caring wife… you provided me heirs…. you had organized Storm’s End, ruling with a gentle yet tight fist”, he said, “and I have been…”

“Unfaithful… disloyal… a cunt”, you listed, he laughed

“Yes”, he admitted, still with that smile on his face, “I have, while you…. had been there, in your own place, standing there, strong like an oak”, you squinted as you looked at him, you did not like this at all. “As you remained the faithful and loyal wife I do not deserve”, you flinched when his hand went to the side of your face, to arrange a lock of hair behind your ear, “or you where, until now”

“What are you doing?”, you asked him

“Where were you last night?”, he asked again

“Why do you care?”, you asked him, “go fuck another wench, servant, lady I do not care”

“Ah but you do”, he teased

“I just don’t like to be humiliated, that’s all”, you said with greeted teeth. His smile got wiped from his face

“Neither do I”, he said sharply, his hand travelled dangerously close to your neck but kept it there, his fingers ghosting your throat, “where were you last night?”, he asked again

Of course he could fuck a thousand women and you couldn’t fuck one man, that’s just how it worked you guessed. 

“I told you I was walking”, you said simply

“Mmmm to who’s chambers?”, he asked, he knew you were lying, his unsettling smile creeped back into his face. “You deny me yet you welcome other men?”, he asked gently

“I do not know what you speak of”, you said firmly, looking at him. And he knew you were not going to budge 

“Look, in light of my past indiscretions… I’m willing to look the other way”, he said simply, you nodded slowly, “just this once”

“Lyonel….”, he shushed you

“Just this once”, he said sharply, with a tone of voice you had never heard, at least, not directed at you

You barely nodded, he then again smiled, satisfied, gave you soft pats on your cheek and left you.

He didn’t even ask you who he was

He didn’t even ask you if this was the first time, you guessed, that since, like he had said, you had been always there, he knew for certain this was the first time you had…. slept with another man. 

He closed the bath room doors behind him, leaving you alone once more.

You tried to relax against the edge of the tub, and yet, something else drew your attention.

Moon tea

You needed moon tea. 

Perhaps you should talk to the maesters later.

But now, the jousting has begun.

You were in the stands near the royal box, you had your children with you.

This time of day, it was the turn of the great houses to present their champions, of course, Lyonel was the one to represent his House and the whole stormlands. Yet the knight who everyone deemed as the favorite was Otto Tyrell 

It was a beautiful day, your night spent in the arms of the prince had completely distracted your troubled mind, and you finally could see your husband without wanting to wretch, so that was something. 

You needed to calm yourself, you thought as you bounced your son over your knee making him giggle

“Nite!”, he said, pointing at a knight riding past

“Yes, knight”, you said proudly, he gave you that beautiful smile with the little teeth he was growing, making you beam at him.

A horn being blown interrupted the preparations for the joust

“Prince Baelor Targaryen, heir to the Iron Throne and Hand to the King Daeron the good, has entered the lists”

And there he was, on his black steed, in his magnificent black armour, it was certainly something to gaze upon.

Memories from last night came flashing back to you…

He rode until he was in front of you, and he nodded at you, you froze in your place, not believing what you were seeing 

“Would you do me the honor, my graceful lady, to give me your favour?”, he asked.

You couldn’t believe him

Why?

Why would he do that?

You looked at your husband, who was atop his horse on the other side of the field, and he looked like he could kill someone.

No.

You gave him a crown made of mistletoe and golden daffodils 

Oh Lyonel, he spurred his horse, wanting to reach the prince, but the horn blew again and they were ready to start the jousting. 

Your stomach turned at the thought of both of them facing each other. Even from the stands you could see your husband atop his horse, furious, Oh Gods

What have you done?

What did Baelor do?

It was to your luck that they were not placed together on the lists, and since Lyonel had not been champion the day before, he did not get to choose his opponent, so he couldn’t pick Baelor. You now just had to wait, and prepare to face your husband’s wrath. 

But nothing could have prepared you for that. 

Once the jousting was done for the day, the nannies took your children with apologetic smiles and without you telling them to, you found it odd, but only because you trusted them entirely is that you let them go with them, but then, two Baratheon soldiers came to the stands.

“My Lady, Lord Lyonel asked us to escort you back to your rooms”, you did not want to go with them, but you also couldn’t make a scene in front of all the most important Lords of the Seven Kingdoms.

They escorted you back to your rooms, and made you sit on the table in the corner. You didn’t know what Lyonel could possibly have concocted from his horse and only his cousin as a squire, but now…. you feared for your integrity.

Your husband was known as the Laughing Storm, a jovial, funny man who liked his feasts and his wine, and his jousts.

To all lords he seemed like a man who could never be angry, to anyone.

And it was mostly true, you, his wife, had only seen him truly enraged a couple of times, due to a disloyal Lord who had failed his own words to provide grains to his people, or something else related to a big scale of a problem….

But this… the smile he was sporting this morning, the way he looked at you, you trembled in your spot

One hour, he held you, sitting there waiting for him. Until you heard his steps all the way down the hallway

You couldn’t believe that even in the Red Keep, of House Targaryen, he still managed to have a presence as imposing as the House of the Dragon itself.  

Both doors opened to let him in like a storm into the room, his greying curls almost covered his face due to his quick race to the room, he seemed to scan the room until he found you and when he did, those dark eyes of him seemed to become even darker

“Why didn’t you spread your legs for any other bastard out there, WHY DID IT HAD TO BE HIM?”, he roared, making you jump in your place. He slammed both doors closed, it was a miracle they still stood nailed to their hinges 

“Lyonel”, you called, you had never seen his this angry

He took long steps to reach and for the first time, you feared that he was going to strike. But he didn’t, he didn’t even touch you, he clenched his fists and started pacing around the room

“the fucking heir to the iron thorne, fucking my wife”, he started mumbling as he paced around the room.

“How many times?”, he asked, enraged

“Once”, you said simply, you actually fucked him like three times over the night but it counted as one, it was only one occasion really. 

“How could you!?”, he asked

“You told me that you didn’t care”, you said, “that you could let it slide just once”

“That was before I knew it was Baelor Fucking Targaryen!”, he said, losing it again, and you truly did not know what that made a difference. 

“You fuck every woman that stops by Storm’s End but I’m the worst person in the Seven Kingdoms?”, you asked.

He came near you again and slapped the table, hard, making you wince. 

He looked at you, truly looked at you, but you were afraid and did not want to anger him further, so you said nothing

“You know very well what I think about them”, he said simply. Yes many hated the reigning family of the Seven Kingdoms, and you had heard your husband speak nearly treason while on his cups, you never believed he was serious about it.

There was a knock on the door now, and Lyonel went to open it like he knew what it was, he came back with a ceramic jug and a small glass

“Drink”, he said

Moon tea

You wanted to, you meant to, but right now, you just looked at your husband. 

“You deny me, your husband, of your own body, and yet you spread your legs for Baelor fucking Targaryen, i bet it dind’t hurt when the perfect prince fucked you”, he said, so sharply it wounded you

“It didn’t”, you admitted, “he was gentle and kind”, he again clenched his fists and paced some more around the room

“Drink”, he demanded, standing in front of you, “I will not have you birthing bastards”

You did not want to anger him further, you grabbed the small pitcher, served yourself in the small glass, and drank it without question. You winced at the bitter taste, but he seemed pleased.

“You know what I can do to you?”

“Yes”, you said bitterly, “I know”

“You have make me a cuckhold”, he said darkly, “to none other than a fucking sister-fucking inbred cunt”, he whispered this part to you, making sure nobody else could hear it, for that was treason. 

He paced once gain, containing his fury, and then he turned to you again

“I still expect more children from you”, he informed you

“You are never going to touch me again!”, you defied

“You are my fucking wife, it is your duty and my right”, he said, as angry as you ever seen him before. “And you have no choice”, you held his gaze, he looked like a maniac

“Are you going to force me?”, you asked quietly

“No, because you are going to understand than you rather give me more children, as soon as its obvious you are not expecting a Targaryen bastard, or, I will send you to fucking Old town to become a silent sister, how’s that?”, he asked 

You just looked at the table, a single tear falling from your eye

That night Lyonel slept right next to you, he dind’t even touched you, and yet, you felt your body burnt all over. 

The very next day, the jousting continued. 

This time, Lyonel was on the field, yet Baelor was not, he had the audacity to come near you, while your husband was facing a knight

“My lady”

“Your grace”, you said courtly

“How….?”

“We shouldn’t be speaking”, you said, trying to look forwards, to the palizades, you played with your hands as you blinked quickly, trying to prevent the tears from falling

“Has he done something to you?”, he asked, whispering, “because I will…”

“You’ll do nothing”, you said, “he is my lord husband”

“If he lays a single finger….”

“He would never hurt me”, you said, “not physically, at least”, but he did not move, “if you truly wish to help me”, you said, without even looking at me, “you’ll never speak, or look in my direction again”

“I’m very sorry, for all the troubles it might cost you”, he said sfotly

“One more moon, my lady”, sentenced the Maester

You felt your nose tingle, your lips pouting, and then came the tears, as you whispered in your mouth

“I can’t take it anymore”, you cried, you felt your husband’s hands on your shoulders, caressing your skin covered by your dress

“Come on, my love”, he whispered, “you’ll get through this”, he said, with just the tinge of mockery it took to awaken the dragon

“I hate you!”, you cried, “you did this to me”, you whined childishly, hiding your face in your palms

You just couldn’t keep being pregnant, especially a whole moon.

You were huge, you could barely rise from the bed or from chairs after supper, you were so uncomfortable, there were days where you couldn’t even wear shoes, as your feet had enlarged, it has been moons since you could see your toes at all.                     

Yet you curled onto him, and he held you in his arms 

“I know my love”, he whispered, “I know what can make you feel better”, he whispered, “a bath, boiling hot water, what do you say?”

“Lukewarm, my lord”, remembered the maester. You whined against his chest making him laugh.

But he prepared that bath nonetheless… and now you were content, the water allowed you to float a bit, to not feel the weight of your belly, it was terribly soothing. 

“Remember me to commission a bigger tub, so we can both fit in there, or rather, us three”, you frowned, looking at him angrily. He just looked back at you, with that grin, he sat by your side, his arm around the edge of the tub, his head on top, he looked like a lazy cat 

“You are implying I’m going to let you do this to me again”, you said with a mocking smile, he only chuckled

He took time to admire you, he even placed his big hand on your round belly. There, strongly, your abbe kicked right under Lyonel’s hand, as he or she knew it was their father

“That’s my little stag in there”, he said gently, with a dreamy smile, feeling another kick

“Well, it does feel like he has antlers”, you whined, “or the wings of a dragon”, you said sheepishly

“Is your discomfort so great, my love?”, he asked, almost feeling guilty

“Our child is… of big size”, you answered on a sigh, "I feel so heavy, like I can’t walk, it’s hard to move….”, he laughed then, a frank, honest laugh that soothed your aching chest, you leaned in until your head softly laid against his

“Baratheons make big babes”, he said softly, “I am very sorry my love”. A child who was going to grow as big as his father…

“A son of fire and storm”, you whispered, “What if… it’s a girl?”, you asked him, he frowned

“Oh wouldn’t that be nice”, he said, with a dreamy smile, “a little girl, with my locks and your beautiful face? please”, he whispered, “Poor girl, she’ll have to become a Septa, no sorry bastard in this whole world would be good enough for her”, you giggle, just imagine how good of a father he was going to be

“Wouldn’t you be disappointed?”, you asked, he scoffed

“A little doe”, he whispered dreamly, “A boy or a girl, either way the Storm Gods had decided to bless us”, he said, “besides we can always have more”, you splashed water on his face and he laughed yet again. 

He kept admiring your naked body 

“The water is getting cold”, he said softly, “Let’s get you out of there so I can massage your feet…. and other parts of your body that surely will make you feel better”, he teased

“I’m the size of a horse”, you said, “how can you desire me still?”

“You have never looked more beautiful”, he whispered in your ear, as he helped you up.

He took you to your shared rooms, he made sweet, gentle love to you, and then he made you put on a simple shift, so you could both lay in bed as he massaged your feet

You were about to start purring

“This isn’t necessary”, you whispered, apologetically

“I think it is”, said Lyonel, his big hand pressing right in the best spot on your swelling feet, “after you almost bite the head off of your lady”, he said mockingly, with a big grin on his face, “you wouldn’t let anyone else touch you”, he noted, massaging your feet

You hands went to your huge belly, caressing it softly

“Any husband would be happy about that”, you noted sheepishly

“And trust me, I am”, he said proudly. “Besides I already been grown used to the fact that when you are pregnant, you had make me your slave”, you snorted a laugh

“A slave?”, you mocked

“Yes, you had you at your beck and call, I draw you baths, you even slaved me in the chambers, making me do strange acts to you”

“Strange?”, you kept teasing

“Oh yes, I am starting to think that you are a some sort of Lustful witch”, he mocked, making you laugh once again

“Lustful witch”, you whispered, “I kind of like it”

“Oh of course you would”, he whispered, “I’m nothing but your sex slave”

“I seem to recall you enjoyed doing those things to me”, you said then

“Oh yes, added to the fact that I’ve never knew if you were going to chew my head of… or ride it”, you both laughed wholeheartedly

The hour had grown late, the sun already hidden behind the sunset sea, and yet, there was knocking at your private chambers. You shared concerned looks, at the people in the castle knew better than to disturb you if it weren’t important

“Come in”, said Lyonel, kissing your feet before releasing them, and placing a big quilt over your body before the person could enter

It was the maester

“My Lord, my lady, I’m very sorry for the late hour, yet, I must inform you of the most recent unfolding events…”

“yes, yes, out with it”, mocked Lyonel

“A storm is coming”, he said solemnly, you both kept quiet and just looked at him

“Yes, well, it is the Stormlands…. and this is Storm’s End, this is what we do”, you husband said sarcastically

“No my lord, this is the kind of storm that floods the streets and does permanent damages to rooftops and houses alike, men of knowledge from Essos agree that is like none other”

“Yes, well, alright, what should we expect?”, he asked impatiently

“Well, we, as the castle are well sorted and expected to just… ‘wait it out’”, he said nodding, “But as a precaution I send the majority of the household back to their homes with supplies to weather this out”

“Good, good”, you however, grew worried

“What about…?”

“Your ladies had been sent home, my lady, since there is a moon yet to expect the little lordling, yet, I insisted that Betha Storm remained”, you could breathe a little more easily, now, as Betha was the lead nurse maid and midwife of the household, she had been with you since the maester confirmed the pregnancy, teaching you things, helping you through the changes, and preparing you for the day. 

“Good”, you said, yet feeling uneasy.

“Now leave us, old man, my lady needs to rest and so do you”

“Yes my lord, at once”, he said making a short bow and retreating.

“Fun”, you just muttered with a soft smile.

“Now…. where were we?”, he asked, jumping into the bed making you laugh once again.

The maester was right

The huge storm made the stone of the castle tremble beneath its fury, Lyonel held you tightly as if you could fly away, and you tried to sleep through it, as many other storms before.

But this felt different…. you were moved by strange dreams, that some turn to nightmares, you didn’t know who was making those sounds, rather the storm or your mind.

And then, began the pains

You were so deep in your dreams you didn’t know if they were real, they came and went like the waves crushing against the stones below, yet somewhere in the midst of a hurricane you felt some kind of pressure and then relief….

And then the pain was sharper than the others…

And then a voice

Lyonel's voice.

“Wake up my love", he said, “there is something wrong….”

Then you felt how…wet… you were

“What is happening?”, you managed to ask, as you believed the entire wall had been blown to pieces and storm had drenched the entire bed

Lyonel jumped from the bed and removed the covers, to reveal a dark spot all around your midsection, the room was lit up by torches Lyonel set up no doubt

“What…?”, you asked, and then the pain returned, crashing over you, making you cry out. This was it, what your Midwife warned you about

“I’m in labour”, you cried, and Lyonel stood there, drenched too, “The maester said a moon””, you cried, “its too early”, you whined

The fear in your voice seem to woke him up

“I will fetch Betha right now”, he said quickly, “you are going to be fine my love”, he said surely. 

You could hear his screams for the woman over your own

In five minutes, the woman entered the room, followed by a maid, they brought clean linens and boiled water.

“You!”, she demanded of a soldier, “bring the birthing chair, if you drop it, you are dead”, the man shakily nodded and went with one of his fellow guards to bring the precious item.

You stored it nearby, it was a strange contraption, you still laid on the bed, but Betha was quick to reach your side and helped you up like you weighed nothing. Once you were settled, she turned to Lyonel, who stood there like a deer in front of a hunter

“This is no place for a man”, the midwife snapped, grabbing him, one of the tallest men in the Seven Kingdoms and pushing him out of the way like he weighed nothing. 

You had no strength to argue, to say you wanted him here, the fear and pain clouded every other necessity, yet your body has entered a state of prime instinct, as it seemed like she knew what to do, even if you didn’t.

You hold onto the arms of the chair for dear life as another wave of pain bathes you.

“It’s too soon”, you cried

“It is not my lady”, she said with certainty, “the baby is ready to join us”, you realised she told you that to soothe you, you can see the furrow in her brow.

She helped you put your feet on the wooden holders, spreading them, as you clung into the arms of the chair, you felt so exposed like this, yet the pain was growing to intense you didn’t have more time to think about it

“You are almost ready”, she said

“It’s happening quite fast”, admitted the maid, but she did not seem concerned 

The situation wasn’t ideal, the maester had dismissed most of the group of nurse maids and wetnurses Lyonel had assembled for you, as your ladies, the maester was asleep and you also believed it was too soon.

You cried out, even if you weren't shaken by a wave of pain.

It was tortuous hours, yet the sun didn’t shine because of the storm still rattling the foundations of the castle made 4 thousand years ago, 

And yet… After hours of effort… a cry that seemed to rival the storm could be heard over the room.

“A boy my lday!”, she said happily, “strong as a horse”

“A stag Betha”, laughed the sweet maid.

They had him cleaned, and you as well, and they brought you your son.

He was so small, incredibly so, you smiled widely, feeling an incredible relief, he was alright, he was healthy and he was here in your arms

“He came right of”, said Betha, pleased, “afterbith and all”

“That was ‘right off’?”, you asked, they both laughed, they cleaned you next, and then, like the storm raging outside, Lyonel entered the room as you cuddled your son to youc hest 

“A boy!”, he said, pleased, wasting no time in reaching you, still sitting on the strange chair. “Let me see him”, he whispered happily.

And yet, when you were about to show your son’s face to his own father for the first time, another wave of pain hit you so suddenly you believed you had been struck by lightening

“OH…. FUCK!”, you cursed. You luckily didn’t crush your son who started crying as well, “what’s happening?”, you whined, you, instinctively, placed your feet back again in the holders, spreading your legs.

betha was between your legs in a second

“I think there is another babe”, she said, surprised

“What?”, Elisa took your child, while Lyonel was standing there, not knowing what to do. 

While Elisa was tending to your child, another pain struck your weakened body

“Lyonel don’t leave me”, you cried, reaching for him, that seemed tot ake him out of his stupor

“Not even death would tear me from your side my love”, he said firmly, grabbing onto your hand, you smiled at him, before another contraction shook your body

“Well, I need him here”, demanded the midwife, grabbing onto him and placing him between your legs. You would have felt terribly ashamed, if it weren’t for the excruciating pain.

Lyonel had this face, this astonished, shocked face 

“It’s the head”, claimed the midwife, “come on my lady, you’ve done this once already”

“I can’t do this again”, you cried

“Yes you can”

“What do I do?”, asked Lyonel, desperate, the woman gave him a big blanket

“You are going to catch your child as he enters this world”, she said, determined, 

It felt like another set of hours, yet this time was quick, it was minutes

You managed to push the baby out of your body with a final cry, and Lyonel catched him, you would never forget the face he had.

“A girl”, said the midwife, pleased, and yet, Lyonel was completely paralyzed, with the child in his hands. You cried with relief and with happiness, a little girl, but your body was so shaken by pain you couldn’t quite see her yet, and more importantly, you couldn’t hear her. 

“Lyonel?”, you asked, but he was looking at the bundle in his hands, you had never seen this expression on his face

Then a cry, who brought your husband a breath of his own as he smiled widely

He couldn’t believe what he just saw, what he just did, as his crying daughter was still caked in her mother’s blood

“A girl”, he said, with the widest smile you had ever seen on his face, as he cradled the babe against his chest, “my little fawn” 

It's a story he would tell to anyone who would listen, how you gave him not one but two babes, how he was there, ‘like a real man’, not like other men who preferred to stay outside their wives'birthing chambers, how you were a goddess in human form, well, he knew that already

But now here you were, laying on the bed with your son in your arms, trying to nurse him, while Lyonel paced around the room with his daughter in his arms

“I don’t understand", he said quietly, “how can you love someone this much?”, he whispered, his eyes never leaving her small, sleeping form

“A wonder of nature”, you whispered, admiring your son

“And even…. if we have more, how can I possibly love them as much?”, he asked outloud, you would have laughed, if the pain didn’t linger still.

“Love is infinite", you said surely, “it doesn't divide, it just multiplies”

You spend precious moments in silence, the storm has broken, giving away to a greyish dawn, letting you see everything vividly

Your babies had their father’s hair, as for their eyes, you couldn’t quite see them clearly yet.

“We don’t have a crib for our daughter”, you observed, as if you couldn’t acquire one before the sun hid in the horizon.

“She can sleep in my arms” he said as if it was nothing, you didn’t see how he was going to let her go, as he had barely let Betha clean her.

“We don’t have a name either”, you whispered, you then looked at him, “can we name the boy Orys”, Lyonel smiled, of course his Targaryen wife would like to name her son like the rumored bastard brother of Aegon the conqueror, living proof of the bond between your two houses.

“Only if we name her Argella”, he whispered, caressing her round cheek

“I like it”, you agreed

She began to make suckling noises, her tiny mouth trying to suck what didn’t exist.

“want to trade?”, you asked, he nodded, not convinced, yet holding his son was something he wanted to do as well, he handed your daughter in your other arm, and then took his son 

“Well… now that we know I am well, and our children are well… I can safely say… I think, and I do not intend to speak for you, my love, but it seems like all that discomfort was not only worth it, but a bargain well struck”, you said simply

He smiled, looking at your son in his arms

“What do you mean?”, he asked

“We got two, for the discomfort of one”, you said simply, I’d say it’s the best deal ever”

You woke up in a duality of soreness and pleasure, as you felt a hot wet mouth drop kisses on your shoulder 

“Mmmm”, you whined, Lyonel chuckled against your skin

“Wakey wakey my lovely wife”, he teased, dropping one kiss on your neck, it felt good, it did, his warm hand looked for your naked body under the covers, his hand actually covered your breast. HIs mouth kissed a special spot on your neck that made you feel so good you actually drew a moan.

He stopped all movements, you actually felt him smile against your skin

“Oh?”, he teased, kissing you in the same spot, making you draw the same sound again, making him chuckle, “found one”, he whispered, and then he actually attached his lips at the spot and sucked, making you see actual stars as you drew an even louder moan.

You had sometimes ventured under your skirts but it had never felt like this, his warm, careful hands mapping your body, his mouth in that spot that actually made you feel so good… 

“My lord”, you whispered

“I don’t know who you are referring to”, he teased, his hand pinching one of your nipples gently, making you squirm.

“Are you ready for me, my love?”, he whispered. You didn’t even understand what he was asking you, but you felt him.

Between your folds, his manhood. your back was to him, you were laying on your side as was his. The pressure was great, but not as uncomfortable like the night before, just a little press and he slid in

You moaned softly, the pain residing quickly, as his hands and mouth kept working

He shuddered against your ear as he clung onto you. 

He retrieved himself only to push inside again, and then again, thrusting into you slowly and deep, so so deep. This position made you feel like he was up in our belly.

“my perfect little dragon wife”, he grunted in your ear, “are you alright, love? Does it feel good?”, it felt so good you didn't even think you could string a sentence together. He pinched your nipple again, making you squirm, making him moan, it felt tighter somehow. “answer me”

“Y-yes”, you moaned, “it feels good”, it was suddenly overwhelming, his hands everything… his cock deep inside you, his mouth in your neck. You whined as you grabbed onto his arms for dear life, as you felt like a tidewave washing over you, making you snap in pleasure. 

“So good you just cummed on my cock, my beautiful wife”, he was so pleased with himself, he started fucking you a bit rougher, “you are so tight”, it was overwhelming, the dirty talk, you had never heard such lewd words coming from someone’s mouth, not in civil conversations. With a grunt in your ear, and him hugging you tightly against him, there came the hot, messy sensation. “fuck, got me spilling myself like a green boy”, he chuckled, and you didn’t know if that was good or bad.

He retrieved himself, making you feel uncomfortable again. 

He accommodated himself on his back, and then he pulled you towards him.

He was so big and strong he could just grab you, and put you in the position he wished

He went straight for a kiss, accommodating you on his side

“Did that feel good?”, he asked, you just nodded, words escaping you, “I need you to be honest with me”, he said gently, caressing your naked back, “I want to make you feel good…”

“It did felt good”, you said honestly, you cuddled into his naked chest, you weren’t sure when he took off his shirt though

“Good, because we are going to be doing a lot of that”, he whispered as he kissed the top of your hair. 

it was an intense morning

You didn’t miss the complacent smiles the maids gave each other when they brought you something to break fast and helped dress you. 

Lyonel wanted to go back to Storm’s End as soon as possible 

You did not

But he was your husband, and didn’t ask you, so you guessed he wanted to get back home after the tourney, and your own wedding.

That didn’t stop you from going to see your father, who had locked himself in his study.

“My lord husband wished to depart to Storm’s End as soon as possible”, you started the conversation, he eyed you, like reading your own intentions

“Well, he has been away from his seat quite a while”, he said

“I was wondering, if I could stay a bit longer”, you began

“Why?”, he asked, frowning, directing all his attention onto you, leaving his quill and parchment aside, “has something happened?”, he seemed more severe now

“No…”, you said, shaking your head slowly, “it’s just… I want to stay home”

“Did he do something to you?”, he asked

“No!”, you said quickly, “it’s just, I do not wish to leave you papa”, you confessed. Now he seemed angry.

“I’m not a child for you to be caring for me”, he said severely.

“I know”, you said firmly, “but with Aerion gone, and Aegon… who went with the Hedge Knight… and what happened at the trial…”

He was still tormented by the death of his brother at his own hands, and you guessed he was going to be as such the rest of his life

“None of that”, he said severely, “You are a Baratheon now, and you shall go wherever your husband pleases". He said, not really knowing what to say to you. When he saw the way your eyes wetted. He stood up from his chair and came to you. And hugged you tightly against him.

“I will be alright”, he said, kissing the top of your head, “and you will be too”, he said. 

He released you, even attempted to smile at you, though it was a bit deformed, succeeding in his attempt to cheer you up

“Your mother hated me at first”, he said, making you giggle, “she did”

“I don’t believe that”

“I swear, her brother had to literally grab her and pull her out of her rooms the day she was sent to King’s Landing”, he continued, “she told me afterwards of course”, you smiled at him, “he sported a claw mark on his cheek, to this day I believe”

You took a long breath

“You will be fine”, he said, "Baratheon knows the consequences if you are not”, he said severely, you nodded, smiling widely, “now… lets get you on your way”, he said, weirdly gently

You got dressed in your riding attire, this one was a dark red, with intricate designs on the laps on your chest and sleeves with golden thread.

You exited Summerhall for the last time -for the time being-, ready to depart, to find an entire party outside, everything getting ready, the Baratheon committee was ready to go, another three carriages added for your comfort, your trunks and possessions. 

You talked to the master of the stable, who was riding the horses. 

“I was wondering if I could take a horse from the stables…”, but Lyonel interrupted you, opening the door of a carriage for you

It looked new, the paint shiny and fresh. 

“I would feel so much better if my darling wife would take the carriage”, he said, to someone from the outside, it would have seemed dashing, but to you… it’s like they were cutting your wings 

It happened quicker than you thought, it may look like a carriage, but it certainly felt like a cage…

Your father was by your side, placing his hand on your shoulder

“great idea”, he said firmly. You nodded, taking out your gloves, since you were not going to need them to protect your hands from grabbing the reins.

Once both husband and father walked away talking about other details, the master of stables came to you.

“The mare with the white coat, my princess”, he said in a whisper, you knew him since you had a memory to remember faces. “It’s from your father’s stable”, you have used her, whenever Ashflake would be quickened with a foal. “To have a trusted mount on Storm’s End”, he said with a soft smile

“You are too kind, Manfred, thank you”, he smiled, contented, and left you. 

You turned to meet the rest of your family, Daeron couldn’t pull himself out of bed this morning, Egg had left for the country, or escaped, according to your father… Aerion had been sent to Lys… 

Only your sisters remained there, with teary eyes 

You hugged them tightly, with promises of seeing them again you didn’t know if you could keep, then, there was Valarr

“I wish you good fortune cousin, in the wars to come”, Valarr said solemnly, you barely nodded at him, and you got inside the carriage refusing the help of those that were near. You tried not to cry, but when you found yourself alone, you couldn’t help it.

You hugged yourself as the carriage started moving, pulling you away from your home, your family, everything you knew. 

The journey was uncomfortable and long, you guessed Lyonel was eager to go home since you barely stopped to eat. You were watching the landscape slowly change, sometimes, he would even ride by the carriage side… he would look at you, like checking if you were still there, and then ride ahead again.

By the time the sun was setting, and the carriage stopped, the camp was already set

It wasn’t odd, to send a cart ahead to prepare the camp for the Lord 

They even raised the huge pavilion from Ashford. 

“My lady”, he was there to help you out of the carriage, so you took his hand and let him lead you to the inside of the tent. 

There was only one table set for the both of you

“We’ll have supper early, so my people can use the tent to rest”, he said with a soft smile, and you nodded

Once the dinner was served, he asked the servants to abandon the tent, leaving you both completely alone. You were so nervous. For the first time, you were truly alone with him, not contemplating the first night you spent together in your rooms, now he sat there, looking at you. 

“Is the dinner to your liking?”, he asked, you immediately nodded, it was the hunt of the day served with vegetables, it was really good

“Yes, of course my lord”, you answered quickly, “is it to yours?”

“I rather feast on something else…”, he roughly set his utensils down on the table with a grin, he licked his own lips while his eyes were set on you

He made the chair scrap against the floor as he push himself back and off the table 

“On w-what?”, you asked shakily, not really knowing what he meant, but he didn’t answer, he kept his crazy eyes on you, and then, under your surprised gaze, he dropped to the floor on his knees. 

He crawled towards you, slowly, taking his time, and you truly felt like you were the stag and he was the dragon, as he gazed upon you like that. 

You didn’t know what to do but to fall back on your chair, waiting as he came upon you. 

“I plan to feast on my dashing new bride”, he said teasingly. Kneeling on the floor right beside you. Again, he was the second tallest man you had ever seen, and strong as well, he grabbed your heavy wooden chair with you on it and pulled it until you were completely in front of him and not under the protection of the table. 

“W-what….?”, you cleared your voice as he reached you placing both his hands on each of the arms of the chair, caging you in, “what do you mean my lord?”, you managed to finally ask

Having his this close was breathtaking, you literally couldn’t breathe properly as he gaze you up with those eyes of his that didn’t seem to miss a thing

“Lyonel”, he tried again for you to call him by his name, his hands travelled down the skirt of your dress and you felt your legs tremble underneath the thick fabric. You were paralyzed, you didn’t know what to do… he seemed to have something else in mind although you didn’t know what.

When he started raising your skirts you tried to stop him, fighting him for the fabric, and yet, unlike the time of the wedding, he didn’t release you. You cursed yourself for having change from your gear to this uncomfortable dress. 

“Let me”, he said, but this time, he was pleading gently, “I will not harm you, I promise”, you whimpered, not yet convinced, “I swear, this will not hurt…”

You did not feel comfortable, and yet, you felt like you couldn’t deny him, you were his now, his lady wife… your body… was his to enjoy. 

You had been lucky so far that he didn’t force you… and yet… this time… he seemed determined.

“My Lord…”, you called again, when your skirts were around your waist and he leaned in under the rest of the fabric… right between your legs… Only then he stopped looking at you, because he focused on something else. 

He removed your under garments, those silky pants you used underneath your dress. You tried to close your legs but he had already placed himself in between them.

“Lyonel!”, you called then, when you felt his hands on your bare thighs. Only then he appeared from underneath your skirts to look at you his tongue peeking out between his sharp teeth

“You’re gonna have to trust me wife”, he said with certainty, his warm hands squeezed your feverish thighs. “If you truly don’t find enjoyment in it, you can say so, but I will make you try it first”

You still didn’t know what he wanted to try on you, and you truly didn’t trust him yet to truly give him permission, but he didn’t wait for it, he dived back again in between your thighs.

You gasped when you felt his breath right there… right in your intimacy… you tried to close your legs but he didn’t let you, he had sneaked his way right in between them

“My lord….”, you didn't even know what you wanted, but you didn’t even have time to phrase it…

it happened so quickly… he had both your thighs under his hands and he parted them and then… you felt him.

His tongue, big and wet lapped at your folds making a drowned gasp part from your lips at the impression of the action itself

But you didn’t have time to recover and he dove right in again, this time you felt his lips around a place that made your body tremble and a moan leave your mouth

“Oh gods”, you had never felt anything like it, a pleasure like no other building tightly inside your belly. But he kept going, slurping, sucking, licking, you didn’t even know, from a second to the next your body was on fire. A knot tightening in your belly. This time Lyonel allowed you to close your legs but only around his head, but that didn't stop him

You didn’t know what was happening, only that the knot snapped a wild pleasure bathed you from head to toe. Making you scream and moan because of the impression. 

Lyonel laughed against your cunt, making you wince because of the over-stimulation. 

He licked you one last time before he released you, his mocking smile appearing from under your skirts. His beard under his mouth was drenched, in you, in your release.

“What was that?”, you asked him, still shaken up

He licked his lips lewdly while he made eye contact with you, and then released you gently. 

“That was you cumming on my mouth for the first time”, he answered, “Best feast I ever had”, he teased, and you didn't know what to do. What to say. He stood up until he towered over you, looking down at you he offered you his hand for you to take it. 

You were barely regaining your breath and your bearings but you took his hand. it cost you to stand on your feet, your legs still weak, but he only chuckled, pleased with himself and took you by your waist to lead you to your tent.

“I didn’t know I was going to be married when I left Storm’s End”, he said gruffly as you walked from the big tent you ate in, to the one you were going to sleep in. “So I didn’t pack a tent for a princess”, you only smiled

“It’s alright, My Lord”, he stopped and grabbed your face to kiss you, taking you by surprise. He swallowed you gasp in his eager mouth, leaving you breathless. 

“Lyonel”, he said, when he barely separated himself from you, "I can't take it anymore, if it is not ‘my love’, ‘my stag’ or ‘my dear’ you’ll call me by my name or call me a cunt if you wish, but if you call me ‘my lord’ one more time I’ll kiss you until you forget all manners”, he said more sharply than before. And you nodded, your ears ringing. He moved the thick fabric so you could enter. It was simple really, two chairs and a small table on one side, one big bed with furs on the other a lamp made with antlers hanging from the center of the tent.

You wondered briefly if he bedded someone in that bed at the tourney, maybe a lady, or a servant or a whore, or one of each, or many.

But you got distracted when you saw the mythical antler clown on top of the table. You walked towards it, smiling without even realizing it. You wouldn’t admit it, yet, but he looked incredible with it. 

There was a piece of parchment next to it, with a message

“For when you are mounting your doe”

Charming, you thought. 

You couldn’t see your own face but you certainly could feel how heated your cheeks had become 

“You like it?”, he teased in your ear, you jumped because you didn’t even realize he was right there behind you

“I-I do”, you answered shakily, releasing the heavy crown, leaving it back in the table

“Why do you do that?”, he asked, his hot breath on the side of your face. 

“Do what?”, you asked back

“Cower”, he answered simply, “Are you afraid of me?”, he asked. If your father was in the room, you’d look at him for guidance, and that made you realize what he meant

“I-I don’t know”, you said back. “Should I be?”

“Never”, he said with certainty, “never of me”, you turned back to look at him

“But…”, he shushed you. 

“I will never harm you or treat you badly”, he promised, “I will never judge you from speaking your mind or forbid you to do something you enjoy”

“But Lyonel…”

“I will never touch you with anything that isn't devotion or care”, not love though, not yet. He kissed you then, his hands on your hair to keep you steady.

“You want me to use the crown while I ravish you, don’t you?”, he grunted against your mouth. You were so embarrassed you didn’t even know what to say. “My dirty little wife”, he mocked

“I-I’m not sure”, you whispered

“So polite”, he teased, he released you from the upper part of your outfit quite easily. “Do you like it when I speak lewdly to you?”, he asked.

You didn’t truly know what to answer to that really, but his warm hands on you made your mind begin to swim.

“No words? let’s put it to the test”, as he was used to it already, he grabbed you by your skirts again and hunched them up, uncovering your lower region. 

He slid one of his fingers between your folds making you gasp

“Ups”, he teased, “seems like you do like it”, he chuckled

“No”, you defended, cheeks heated with embarrassment

“Here”, without even being told so, he helped you out of that dress, and you just let him, you found yourself wanting to have sex as much as he did.

It was quite pleasurable, if you were being honest, and besides, you were doing your wifely duties, right?

Yes wifely duties…

Having children…

He laid you down over the furs on the bed, they felt incredible against your naked body, he was on top of you in a second, after he undressed in front of you.

“My beautiful wife”, he called, pleased with the look on your face.

“Lyonel…”, you called, deciding to say something before your mind was clouded by pleasure

“Yes, my deer?”, deer or dear you weren’t quite sure

“Do you mind if we… wait a bit before we have children?”, you asked, he looked at you with those big eyes of him, and then laughed

“Why wait?”, he asked leaning over you, he kissed you, barely a peck on the lips, “I wish to see your belly grow with my heirs”

His mouth as his hands were in the right place at the wrong time, meaning, they made you forget all about it, dissipated all fears under your question

Of course he didn’t want to wait… who would? He was older than you, he wanted to have heirs, he made sure to pull you out of your thoughts with his mouth on your neck, on your chest

“Oh!”, you moaned when he trapped one of your nipples in his mouth, sucking it gently while he cupped the other with his warm hands

“Can you do something for me?”, he asked, breath ragged

“Yes”, you'd do anything at this point

“I’m going to get my antlers… I need you on your knees and hands”, he said with this wide smile, with a last kiss he left you there, panting. And he went to do as he said. He had a nice ass, all round and firm because all of his horse riding - you supposed-, his back was rippled with muscles and you could clearly see them with each movement of his.

He was very handsome

He came back with the biggest grin, looking at you like you were a feast he intended to indulge in, with the antlers on his hands. But your eyes traveled north, to his manhood.

it's the first time you saw it, now that you think about it, it was… hard, you had never seen one before, it was thick, and long, it had this bulbous head, shined under the candlelight, it was all red, like it was angry, then his stones, where covered in thick black curly hair, they were round and heavy-looking. You wondered if it hurt him, when it was hard.

It was odd to think that fitted inside you, that you had found pleasure in it. 

“Come on darling”, you only then realized you haven’t move, “look, this things are heavy, I don’t want to hurt you while I’m wearing them…”, you moved slowly, with uncertainty, under his wicked smile that made you shiver 

You turned on the bed, and then you bent your legs, placing your knees on the mattress, doing as he indicated. You felt a bit embarrassed, and definitely exposed in front of him, you even began to feel cold.

Until he placed his big hands on your ass 

You moaned softly, at the warmth of his touch

You looked at him over your shoulder, he looked down at you with agrin and the antlered helm. The sight alone made you shudder. 

“This will feel… more intense”, he teased with a satisfied grin. “Now… before you get cold…”, you whimpered when you felt him entering you. Your body jolted forwards, but his hands were quick to grab your hips and keep you there

“Lyonel”, you whined.

He was right, it did feel more intense, he eased into you, inch by inch. You grabbed onto the sheets underneath with strength, you still felt the need to escape him, but he wouldn’t let you, he kept pushing in, deeper and deeper, he was right, it felt so. so intense

“Fuck, my wife…” even he seemed to be in another plain entirely, “so tight, so perfect for me, all mine”

You didn’t know if it was his words or the fact that he finally bottomed out inside of you, you melted onto the furs due to pure bliss

“You like that?”, he asked, “answer me”, he teased

“I do”, you whined.

“In all fours for me, my perfect little wife”, he teased, “who would have known that this perfect Targaryen princess would become such a whore”, you clenched on his cock, you both felted

“I’m not a whore”. you whined against the bed, he laughed

“That’s right”, he said, “you are only MINE”, he retrieved himself and then he thrust into you, making you draw the loudest moan, a sound so deep from your belly it surprised even yourself. It felt so good, yet so tight

He repeated the motion, slowly, sensually, making sure you could feel every vein and ridge of him.

You whined, wanting something but at the same time not truly knowing

“What is it my wife?”

MY wife, you liked that, how possessive he was with you

“More”, more, you wanted more from him. He laughed

“Greedy little thing you are, uh?”, he asked, but he was a pleaser, he started fucking you harder, that familiar knott was tightening in your belly, his thighs started to make sounds as he clashed with your ass. He laughed, loud, you bet others could hear, yet you found yourself moaning as well.

It felt so good, you never thought it could feel like this 

He used his hands, to grab onto you tighter, to draw you to him, to make it rougher, quicker, harder.

You were going to… reach your climax… and he could feel it, you knew he could.

“Does it feel good, my doe?”, he said between laughs

“Yeah”, you managed to say

“Yeah? Does your stag mounting make you feel good?”, he asked with yet another laugh

“Yes”, you admitted, the pleasure overwhelming you.

“I’m going to breed you”, he kept going, “but I want to look at your face as I do”, you were so close, but before you could cum, he released you

You screeched when he retrieved himself from deep inside you, the feeling so uncomfortable, you only then realized your knees were so weak you fell on your side to the bed

“Look at you, and I’m not even done with you”, he said with pride, he grabbed you, handled you as he liked, he made you fall on your back and spread your legs. Like you weighed nothing he pulled you towards him. He was kneeling on the bed, looking down at you with his antlers, and this big smile on his face.

One hand on your hip, the other on his cock and he entered you again.

This time it wasn’t that slow, he pushed right in as he grunted, the muscles on his belly tightened by the exercise

One he was fully sitting inside and had you moaning like the whore he called you to be, he started fucking into you again.

But he wouldn’t held you, he was over you while you laid on the bed, legs spread for him and he fucked you. Your breasts bouncing uncomfortably, and he enjoyed the view, smiling wide with the antlered crown atop his head

The sight alone made you clench on him, he grunted with a toothy smile and drew a laugh

“You look so fucking good”, he said, “my perfect wife”

“Lyonel”, you didn’t know what to do with your hands, you just grbbed onto the furs even tighter, as you bounced on the mattress

“Come here”, he said, he was lodged deep inside you when he stopped, he placed his hand on your thigh, “put your feet on the mattress my love”, and you did, and repeated the notion with the other. Then he grabbed you, held you against his chest. Now you were face to face, and he kissed you softly, hugging you tightly against him as you began fucking up to you. You surrounded his broad shoulders with your arms 

It didn’t take long for your peak to reach you, like in soft waves, you clenched again, making it so tight for him he quickly followed

He looked into your eyes with a satisfied grin. 

He filled you up again.

And again later that night

And again that morning.

You slept all the way back to Storm’s End.

You heard excited chats and murmurs out of the carriage, so you opened the window

And there it was

The panoramics had changed from green meadows and forests to stoney cliffs and clouded skies, and out there, like a lighthouse before the sea, was Storm’s End unmistakable tower.

It might be the biggest castle you had ever seen, standing taller and broader than the Red Keep, truly a bastion that had stood against the wrath of Kings, Dragons and Gods alike.

“Let’s hurry, there’s a storm coming in!”, you heard someone scream, and you smiled.

You couldn’t stop watching even though a soft rain started to fall over your heads.

Soon you passed a stone archway, entrance to a massive protective wall and then, you were inside the courtyard

As soon as the carriage stopped, Lyonel opened the door of the carriage with a big smile

“Welcome home, my wife”, he said, he offered you his hand and as soon as you took it he pulled you out of the carriage. He grabbed you by the waist and led up up the stoney steps to the main entrance of the huge tower

The whole thing seemed to be carved out of stone, just like Dragonstone. 

The main entrance led to a huge hall, and then to the Storm Throne

“Well, there isn’t much to do in here”, he said with an apologetic smile, unaware of your astonishment, “a lot of time inside…”, he then turned to you, with a much more wicked smile, “that’s is why Baratheon’s are known for having many children”, he teased, you cleared your throat that suddenly felt dry as you looked away from him again, not wanting to miss a thing

“It’s incredible”. you managed to whisper, you looked up at the vaulted ceiling, tall, and the spiraled stairs at the side that led to the rest of the castle and surely the rooms

It was dark, and gloomy, you were not going to argue with that, but it was new, so, so far, it was incredible.

Soon it dawned on you, you were going to run this place, this whole holdfast, you were the Lady of Storm’s End, you had helped your father with things on Summerhall, but not in this scale, but the prospect was exciting. 

Soon, Lords, guards and servants began to appear in the great hall, for sure to welcome their Lord… and their lady

“This is my lady wife, princess (y/n) of house Targaryen”. Lyonel presented, proudly. He encountered the first familiar face he could find and presented you to her, it was a young woman, no older than seven and ten

“This is Lady Maris of House Wylde”, the young girl courtesied to you in a perfect fashion, “she is to attend you, and be your lady in waiting”

“It is very nice to meet you”, you said

“The pleasure is mine… your grace!”, Lyonel laughed at that

“She is a lady now”, he corrected. 

“I’m very sorry”, you smiled at her

“You don’t need to be”, she seemed sweet, but Lyonel did not linger on her as he moved you to present to you to other lords who resided in Storm’s End for the season 

The introductions were over,  thankfully, and he personally led you up the long stairs and towards the tallest floor. 

“This is the most important floor anyways”, Lyonel said when you asked him about the others. “This is where the rooms of the Lord and Lady of Storm’s End are”, he said with a cheeky smile. 

“This will be yours”, he opened this set of double doors, the first thing you noticed was the incredible view, the second, the mess.

“I will not go!”, someone screeched, you jumped in your place, but Lyonel was quick to surround your waist with his arm. And from some other doors at the other side of the room, appeared a woman with clothes in her hands. She was older, maybe fifty name days on her, she had incredible hair yet grayish by the years, she had a set of sharp blue eyes, she only stopped when she found the both of you standing on the doorway, “These are MY ROOMS!”, she continued to press on, “I am the lady of Storm’s End!”, she said firmly, you looked at Lyonel, your stomach sinking.

You walked around slowly, carefully touching his belongings perfectly sorted on his desk and repositioning them in the same position. You could only pray the Seven to save you if he had found something out of place, until your eyes landed on his precious box, where he stocked the herbs for the pomander.

And so, the idea came to your mind. It was led by boredom mostly, but an eventual punishment from your husband tickled your senses enough to proceed.

You didn’t really know what you were carrying on your way back from the kitchen, but the cook gave you what you were asking for, something that smelled bad. Very, very bad. And the poor cook also minced it in small pieces, easy to mix with Ormund’s herbs. Your stomach was asking for mercy, but it wasn’t the bad smell; the aroused nervousness your body was feeling couldn’t be compared to any strong sensation you ever felt in your life, except when you shared the bed with Ormund. Those nights were aphrodisiac.

Your hands were still in his box when you heard his voice down the hall. Your heart sped up instantly, and you rushed to complete the prank. When your husband entered boldly into the room, followed by four servants, you were standing still next to his desk, with your hands behind your back.

“Welcome back, my love.” You said with a sweet smile.

Ormund looked you up and down, leaving the surprise of finding you there to the pleasure of having you there. “My Life…” He slightly nodded and smirked as he moved toward you for a kiss.

“Nothing is better than the flavour of your lips after a long journey.” He complimented.

“Nothing is better than the idea of having you in my bed after a long journey.” You suggested.

“Forgive me, My Life, but as far as my limbs burn with desire to make you mine, I don’t want to torture you with the smell of days of riding without even the chance to use a river to wash my face.”

“It is only your problem, husband. You know, I find it attractive.”

The effort you made to hold the laugh stuck in your throat was indescribable when you saw his face contorting with disgust. The prank started.

“Is everything alright, my love?” You faked concern.

He nodded again, licking his lips and looking around with a frown. “Leave us, please.” He ordered the servants.

“My Lord, what about the bath you requested?”

“Yes, yes… proceed to prepare it.” He dismissed them with a distracted wave of his hand and started to pace around the room. He sniffed everything he could reach, moving objects, smelling the bed sheets and the pillows.

“Are you looking for something?”

“Do you smell that too?” He asked, frowning at you for a brief moment.

“No, I don’t. What is it?”

“I don’t know, but it’s terrible.” He made a disgusted noise as the obsession increased. “Like rotten meat or something.”

“I can open the windows, I’m sure the…”

“Fresh air doesn’t solve the problem!” He raised his voice in turmoil. “Help me find what’s smelling so bad.”

“Alright.” You casually moved around the room, pretending to smell objects and, from time to time, looking at him to enjoy the view of your restless husband. How cruel you were in torturing him so badly, but how exciting was the thought of the consequences.

“It must be a rat. I can’t think otherwise. Did you eat in here while I was away?”

“No, My Love. Your requests are clear; no one is allowed to introduce food into your solar. I made sure the servants fulfilled your orders as well.”

“Very well…” He said without real satisfaction, proceeding in emptying the library with the intent to find the imaginary rat on the shelves.

Someone knocked at the door.

“NOT NOW!” He yelled.

“Ormund…”

“I’m sorry, my dear wife.” He apologised immediately, hardly finding his composure. “Fuck, I need my herbs; this smell is causing me a headache.”

He reached his desk in long strides, opening his box without ceremony but freezing immediately after. You knew that face. The silent, serious frown that could only erupt into uncontrollable rage. The idea of the punishment tickled your sense shamefully. The warm sensation that grew from your stomach worked along with the wetness of your pussy, as he slowly looked in your direction.

“My Love.” He said solemnly.

“Yes, husband?”

“My herbs have been sabotaged.”

The calmness with which he said it made your skin curl, and your not-surprised “Oh?” that followed made everything clear. Ormund’s gaze darkened as he pursed his lips and looked back at his herbs' box.

“Do you know something about it?” He asked even if he already knew the answer. He knew you liked doing things that bothered him only to catch his attention. But his box, his inestimable herbs treasure… that was a serious matter.

You looked around, pretending to think about it and shaking your head. There was an endless pause before he stood up from his desk and threw away everything that was on the desk with a hand stroke. That sudden action made you jump in fright, but caused a shiver of pure arousal through your body.

“What did I say about my herbs' box, My Love?” He asked calmly as he slowly walked toward you.

“No one can even look at it.”

“Correct.” He nodded, maintaining eye contact. “Then why did you play with it?”

You shrugged and shook your head once again, your gaze still glued to his. Every fibre of you was asking to be punished, and he felt it. His most precious thing, spoiled in every way possible, made him furious on purpose. He hardened instantly, and he felt it was better than usual because the anger he felt was real.

“You disobeyed me.”

“I did, my dear husband.” You said as you slowly moved toward the bed.

“Are you going to apologise for it?”

You didn’t answer immediately because it would have upset him even more, and it worked.

“ANSWER ME!”

“No! I’m not going to apologise!” You yelled back.

Ormund’s jaw tightened as he reached you quickly, tearing apart your beautiful green and gold dress and pulled it down from the neckline. You gasped in surprise since it was the first time he was so disrespectful. Under similar circumstances, he would have ordered you to undress slowly or to touch yourself in front of him. Sometimes he ordered you to take a bath while he jerked off but now, it was violent.

The firm grip around your hair kept you in position as his other hand wrapped half of your face completely. “You crossed the line, My Life. I feel forced to do this the hard way.” He pushed you down on your knees, and unbuttoned his trousers, dropping them to the floor unceremoniously. His cock finally free, erected in all its glory right in front of your face.

You admired it for a while and then looked up, silently waiting for his order. There was something extremely hot in what was happening, and you both were tasting the waters.

“You said it before, you don’t have a problem with my bad smell. So, suck it.”

When your fingertips brushed its tip and gently slipped to the base, Ormund breathed out a delighted sigh. Your tongue licked the sour precum then, and your doe eyes moved to his face as you proceeded in taking it inch by inch.

“May the Seven forgive me, you’re the most beautiful thing I have laid my eyes on in a while.” His low voice reached your core, making your pussy clench in anticipation.

The movements of your mouth and your hand were controlled, an agonising slowness only to prolong the ecstasy. Every time you tried to reach his crotch, gagging from time to time, but never stopped. The confirmation of your good job came with his guttural noises, deep, and sinful, and the automatic spasm of his pelvis to sink into your mouth more and more.

A trembling hand grasped your hair once again, and you felt his struggle in holding back from forcing you to speed up. “Wife, let me stain your pretty face, please…” He was asking nicely because he was fully aware of how gross that request was, but he needed to fulfil that filthy desire.

When you suddenly stopped to suck, but held his cock firmly in your hand, he gritted his teeth and gave you the most miserable glance he could. You were the one kneeling, but you were the one in charge.

“Will my dear husband forgive me for my mean actions?” You cooed.

“You did something serious.” He gasped out, and you replied with a couple of strokes, making him groan against his will. “Yes, My Life… I…fuck, I forgive you.”

His cock was leaking already into your hand, and your smirk vanished only when you resumed your blow job, this time, increasing your speed and making him reach the peak in a few moments. “Fuck!” He groaned as he pulled your face off and came all over your face. You let him dirt you, giving him the illusion you were even.

“Look at you…” He panted. “Beautiful.” He pulled up his trousers and knelt in front of you, taking his green velvet cloth hanging from his shoulder to clean your face. His gestures were delicate and tender.

“I used a small part of your herbs to prank you, My Love. The rest is safe in my silk pouch in your drawer.” You confessed.

“You’re a little minx.” He smirked in sheer joy.

Someone knocked again, but this time, Ormund let them in.

“My Lord, the bath is ready.”

“Thank you.”

When you two remained alone again, he helped you to stand up and kissed your hand. “Will you join me, My Life?”

“Of course, My Love.”

✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: :･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: :･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:

ormund knows his feelings for you are inappropriate, although you have been separated from him for a few years, he raised you at old town. but his moral compass doesn’t work exactly right, he sees the difference between right and wrong but he was the eldest son of a lord, raised to be so, things constantly handed to him. he’s spoiled, and entitled. and you are in the midst of a war, these are terrifying times. upon your return to him at old town, his desires for you stir something dark in him and he knows being a married man, he can’t just take you as his wife, even though he knows how much easier it would be to get you to bend to his will.

drugging its an easy solution. filling you with tea that clouds your mind and sets your body on over drive. it makes your body yearn for something, to be touched all over. at night it’ll leave you writhing on the bed, skin drenched in sweat and thighs sticky with your slick. you don’t care what gives you pleasure, your body just needs it. he doesn’t listen to the maesters about the dosage, he just keeps giving it to you and enjoying the way you cling onto him whenever he visits. or watching you in secret at night, stirring on your bed, thighs rubbing together to ease the aching sensation between your legs. you don't want to touch yourself, you've been told it's wrong by the septas, so you try your hardest to fight against it.

manipulation comes next and he’s so happy to help, telling you that your body is sick from its own blood, that by not living how your ancestors have always lived, you’re dying. an awful fate but he can help you survive it. you are blood related and your blood craves to be with its own. it's not as barbaric as your ancestors but it surely should help.

cumming. ormund genuinely makes you believe that giving you his seed is the ultimate cure, he prefers to spill deep inside of you and to keep fucking it into you after. but sometimes there are other ways he likes to give you his seed.

ormund never stops giving you the tea, it lessens at times but he's tactical with it. when you're away from each other for some time, he makes sure the maids feed you it, putting in your soup and drinks. he wants you to think that you need him to make it better. he also likes the idea of you being needy for him, having someone call upon him when he's busy because you're writhing in your bed. he'll have you brought to him and he'll tell you he's too busy to bed you, but he knows another way that'll help you.

you'll be knelt in front of him, hands wrapped around his thick thighs and nails digging into his skin. your mouth is wrapped around his cock, and he's deep in your throat, his hands on the back of your head to keep control and he doesn't let up for a moment. throatfucking should keep you sedated for long enough, or that's what he tells you. but its completely for his pleasure, seeing you like this, tears streaming down your cheeks and saliva dripping out your mouth, it stirs something primal in him.

he thoroughly enjoys corrupting you, having you question him because of your teachings from your faith. but you always please him, lying in your bed completely naked and with your legs open, waiting and ready for him. telling him that you're leaking all over the bed, that you've been aching for him. he's happy to watch you writhe on the bed while he stands beside you, hand just stroking his cock and tutting at you and warning you when your hands go between your legs.

ormund is a selfish lover. he enjoys watching you orgasm but it's for his pleasure, watching the confusion on your face as you come undone. but he doesn't really care about giving you oral, the only times he does is because of the tea. it does things to your body, makes you smell heavenly all over and especially in between your thighs. he realises it by accident one day, when his fingers are prepping you and he's mocking how soaked you are, that he tastes it and it's the best thing he's ever tasted. he'll find himself addicted to it and he'll forget himself and you as he begins to eat you out.

you'll eventually be crying and shoving his head away with your hands because of how overstimulated you are. but that doesn't stop him and he'll only come off you when he's exhausted and your legs are shaking. he'd have to comfort you after, holding you to his chest as you cry into his chest. but ormund will remember that and will give you tea just so he can taste you again.

gwayne is different, his moral compass works just fine. he's not entitled or spoiled, he believes in his virtues. his desires for you make him keep his distance from you. he's disgusted by them. he raised you, has taken care of you, and to see you as a grown woman seems to stir something deep inside of him that he can't deny.

when he comes to tumbleton, he'll avoid you and it'll be you who comes to him. you tell him how you miss him, sit by his feet and place your head in his lap. he'll forget himself for a moment, hold your face with his hand, let his thumb run along your lips and then his thumb will breach your lips, and he'll let it sink into your mouth. you aren't certain what he's doing, but you don't fight it either and eventually he stops realising and snaps out of it. but that's where his oral fixation begins with you, it then becomes constant watching you eat and drink, offering you food off a spoon or his fingers, and enjoying the way your tongue swirls around his fingers. he'll place the same spoon or fingers in his mouth after.

gwayne will eventually convince himself that he's not doing anything wrong, as your steward he was meant to protect you and take care of you. there is no one that can look after you the way he does, he wouldn't trust them. but how to convince you that you're made for each other, that you should marry? you aren't easy to convince, it goes against everything him and the faith taught you. incest is forbidden, it's savage that your own family practices it. he's your uncle, it's the same thing his family looks down on.

the betrothal is kept quiet, and against your wishes, you are forced to agree. gwayne becomes over protective, jealous and obsessive. you don't realise what you've done until that night when you're called to his chambers, next thing you know your over his knees, ass up in the air for him and night dress up around your waist. you're exposed to him, air touching your folds and you can't stop crying. you're so confused but gwayne explains it to you, each and every indiscretion that he's seen so far with another man. nothing short of innocence in your eyes but you're betrothed to him and you should act with more grace. his hands are bruising when they come down on your cheeks, and you wake up the next day red and after a few nights bruising. every time he'll remind you that it hurts him more to do this, that he doesn't want to hurt you like this and yet you can feel his cock hard against your stomach.

your wedding night comes fast, mainly because he knows he'll never get approval from his sister or the faith. he doesn't need it. he'll wait till after the war, makes his plea to whoever sits the iron throne. but for now you're his, cloaked in the most beautiful green dress and crying at the altar. then you're crying in his chambers, dress unlaced and pooling at your feet as he gropes you, hands on your breasts and then between your thighs. you've been so well behaved the last few days that there are only faint bruises on your cheeks but it still stings when he touches them.

gwayne enjoys endlessly toying with you. he wants you to find pleasure in this as he does, mouth of around your nipples, licking and sucking. his fingers between your thighs, he'll just be playing with your cunt, fingers rubbing soothing circles on your sensitive nub and pushing a finger into your hole. he'll tease you till you're dripping on the floor, his fingers drenched and you clinging onto him because of your trembling legs. he'll have to carry your body to the bed, place you down before he pushes inside of you.

kissing you might be one of gwayne's favourite acts, he can claim you with a kiss, in front of everyone. but he also enjoys kissing you and just getting lost in it, feeling you up and leaving you breathless. you'll never know if a kiss will be something more, or if he'll leave you after. he'll press you up at times to the nearest wall and even though he should be busy with duties, it'll take another person to break him off you. half the time he'll just enjoy pressing his breaches into you and showing you how hard he is because of you.

another act is cockwarming, being buried deep inside of you and just kissing you. you can't deny him like this, you're soaked and the gentle grind of his cock against your walls makes you needy. he could make you orgasm so many times just like this, or he'll deny you completely, still your hips against him and thrust upwards every so often. he'll tell you that it's okay, you can touch yourself and he'll lean back and watch your fingers rub against your sensitive nub like his have or start moving up and down on his cock. he'll observe and eagerly eat up all of those expressions you make.