Callisto

You were going to die.

Not in battle. Not with honor. No, you were going to die because you couldn’t figure out how to piss standing up without someone noticing you were doing it incorrectly.

The latrines were a communal sack of shit—just a ditch with a plank over it, no privacy with men lined up shoulder to shoulder like cattle in a field. You'd been holding your piss in for hours, long past the point of pain, but eventually instinct would win. You'd have to figure this out or your bladder would burst.

Think. There has to be a way, you dumb idiot.

“You sick, boy?”

You jumped. One of your tent mates—Ser Mace, a loud gloat with a broken nose and crooked teeth—was watching you with sparked amusement.

“No,” you retorted. 

"Then why are you hovering round’ the toilet like you've never seen one before?" He grinned. "Unless you're shy? That it? Shy little Davos doesn't want the other boys to see his tiny cock?"

Heat flooded across your cheeks. Damn him.

“Fuck off, Mace.” Petyr—another tentmate, the one with the thick northern burr—spoke from somewhere to your left.

"Ain't nothing wrong with embarrassing the young ones," Mace said, grinning wider. Then, before you could turn away, the fat bastard shoved his breeches down and revealed the thickest—no, the first cock you'd ever seen.

Oh, Seven Hells. 

Your stomach lurched and before you knew it, you were heaving, bent double at eye-level with Ser Mace's obscenely large, hairy, pale cock, vomiting the last of tonight's supper onto the ground.

"Seven hells, the boy's never seen a cock before! What, did your mother raise you in a sept?"

You spat, trying to clear the taste from your mouth, and didn't answer. 

"Come on." Petyr's hand gripped your shoulder, hauling you upright before Mace had the chance to say anything else. "Let's get you away from this shit before you embarrass yourself further."

You didn't protest, and allowed Petyr to steer you away from the latrines, away from Mace's wheezing laughter and the stink of piss and vomit. Your boots dragged in the mud, and the taste of bile still coated your tongue.

"Boy's got a weak stomach," Petyr called back over his shoulder, loud enough for the others to hear. "Probably ate something that didn't agree with him. You know how it is."

A few men muttered in agreement, some laughed. But Petyr kept walking, kept his grip firm on your shoulder, until you were well away from the crowd. He stopped near the horse lines, far enough from the tents that no one would overhear. Then he let go and turned to face you. The dim light cut shadows across his face—you couldn't tell if he looked concerned or just tired.

"You all right?"

"Fine," you managed, your throat burned as you spoke. "I'm fine."

"You don't look fine. You look like you're about to be sick again."

"I'm not,” You stopped and took a breath. "Thank you. For getting me out of there."

Petyr studied you for a long moment. He was older than you by at least a decade, with a weathered face and pale eyes that looked like they'd far more battle than most. Northern, definitely—you could hear it in his accent, the flat vowels and rolling r's.

"First time away from home?" he asked finally.

"Yes."

"Thought so." He crossed his arms. "Let me give you some advice, boy. Men like Mace, they can smell fear. Uncertainty. And they'll go after it like hounds on a blood trail. You want to survive this, you need to grow a thicker skin."

You swallowed hard and nodded.

"And for the love of the Seven," Petyr added, his tone softening slightly, "stay away from the latrines when Mace is around. Man's got no sense of decency."

Despite everything, you almost smiled. “Aye.”

"Good." Petyr clapped you once on the shoulder—lighter this time, almost friendly. "Now get yourself cleaned up. We've got drills at dawn, and if you show up looking like you've been dragged through the mud, Ser Alyn will have your head."

He started to walk away, then paused and glanced back.

"And Davos? Next time you need to piss, go at night. Find a tree that’s less crowded."

Then he was gone, leaving you standing alone in the dark.

For a moment, you just stood there, caught between shame and something close to gratitude. Petyr's kindness was strange and certainly unearned. You didn't deserve it—not when everything about you was a lie.

Your feet dragged through the mud as you made your way toward the treeline, away from the glow of cookfires and the noise of the camp. You found a sturdy oak set back from the others, glanced left, then right, and only when you were certain no one was watching did you shove your breeches down and squat.

Finally. The relief was immediate, almost painful.

You rested your forehead against the rough bark and let yourself breathe. Out here, alone in the dark with nothing but the sound of your own piss hitting the ground, the reality of what you'd done settled over you like a weight.

This was a mistake. A grave, monumental mistake.

You'd joined the army in your father's place, wearing his name, pretending to be a son who didn't exist. And for what? Your father had been a strong man once—a knight who'd fought at the Redgrass Field, who'd earned his scars defending the Crown. Now he was weak. Brittle. But at least he was honest.

You were neither strong nor honest. Just desperate and stupid enough to think you could pull this off. Oh Seven Hells, you prayed your parents would forgive you. For stealing your fathers armor, for lying, and above all, for saving him from what would be a certain death.            

Dawn arrived too soon, dragging you from fitful sleep with all the gentleness of a boot to the ribs.

Actually, it was a boot to the ribs.

"Up, you lazy cunts!" Ser Alyn's voice cut through the pre-dawn gloom like a blade. "Prince Valarr arrives within the hour, and if any of you look like the sorry sacks of shit you are, I'll have you mucking out the latrines for a fortnight!"

You scrambled upright instantly, heart hammering against your ribs. 

"Move!" Ser Alyn kicked at another prone form—Mace, who cursed and rolled over with a grunt. "Full kit, weapons sharp, armor polished. I want you lot looking like proper soldiers, not hedge knights that crawled out of a ditch."

The tent erupted into instantaneous madness. Men stumbling over each other in the dark, fumbling for boots and belts, cursing as someone stepped on someone else's hand. You pulled on your father's mail shirt—still too big in the shoulders, too long in the sleeves—and tried to ignore the way your hands shook.

A prince. Gods be good, a prince.

"Davos, you look green," Petyr muttered as he shouldered past you, already half-dressed. "Don't tell me you're going to puke again."

"I'm fine."

"You said that last night too."

You had no answer for Petyr. Your fingers fumbled with the buckles of your sword belt, and you had to start over twice before you got it right. Around you, the other men were doing the same—strapping on armor, checking blades, some of them grumbling about the early hour but most of them looked eager.

And why wouldn’t they be? This was a chance to impress a prince. The prince, to catch the eye of Valarr Targaryen himself, heir to the bloody throne was worth more than winning every fucking upcoming battle. 

You, however, just wanted to survive the day without anyone noticing you were a girl.

The drill yard was a mud-churned mess by the time you assembled, boots squelching in the muck as Ser Alyn paced before the ragged line of soldiers. Fifty men, give or take. Some were knights, others common-born soldiers like you were pretending to be. All of them looked rough and tired, though a few had clearly made an effort—armor buffed to a dull shine, beards trimmed, tabards only mostly stained.

"Listen up!" Ser Alyn ordered. "Prince Valarr is inspecting the camp today. That means you stand straight, you keep your mouths shut unless spoken to, and you do not—I repeat, do not—embarrass me or yourselves. Understood?"

"Yes, ser!" The response was uneven, half-hearted.

Ser Alyn's face darkened. "I said, understood, you fucking lump of idiots?”

"YES, SER!"

Better. You shouted along with the rest of them, throat still raw from last night.

"Good. Now we're going to run drills. Formation work, nothing fancy. When the prince arrives, you'll be in the middle of a proper bloody exercise, not standing around with your thumbs up your arses. Got it?"

"Yes, ser!"

And so, the circus began.

Shield wall drills. Over and over, forming up in lines, shields overlapping, holding the formation as Ser Alyn walked the line and kicked at anyone whose stance was too wide or too narrow. Your shield was too heavy, the rim digging into your forearm, and your shoulder already ached from the weight of the mail. But you held on, you had to.

"Tighter!" Ser Alyn roared. "If a man can shove a dagger through that gap, Davos, you're a dead man! Closer!"

You adjusted, pressing your shield against Petyr's on your left. The man on your right—some grizzled old bastard whose name you didn't know—shoved back, and you nearly stumbled.

"Steady, boy," the old man muttered.

You gritted your teeth and held. The sun climbed higher. Sweat trickled down your spine, soaking into the padded gambeson beneath the mail. Your arms burned. Your legs trembled. But you didn't break, you refused, especially not with a prince coming.

And then—

"COMPANY, HALT!"

The entire line went still, shields snapping up, breaths ragged.

Hoofbeats. From the edge of the yard, riders appeared. Three of them. No—four. The first was a Kingsguard knight, white cloak billowing behind him, armor brilliant even in the morning haze. Behind him came a pair of squires, both young and finely dressed.

Then, Prince Valarr.

You'd expected what exactly? A golden god? A dragon in human flesh?

What you saw instead was a man. Handsome, yes—dark-haired with that telltale streak of silver running through it, bright as a banner. He sat his horse, his armor black enameled steel chased with red, the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen emblazoned on his breastplate. Younger than you'd imagined. No more than five and twenty, if even that.

He dismounted and handed his reins to one of the squires, and started toward the formation. You kept your eyes forward, focusing on the back of the man's head in front of you, on the mud, on anything except the prince walking closer. Around you, the other soldiers stood straighter, chests puffed out like roosters.

Valarr walked the line slowly, hands clasped behind his back. You could hear the soft clink of his armor, the squelch of his boots in the mud. He stopped here and there to exchange words with the men—asked their names, where they hailed from, how long they'd been in service. "You're all here because the realm needs you," Valarr said, raising his voice so the whole line could hear.

"Some of you are knights. Some are common-born. That doesn't matter. What matters is whether you can hold a line when steel is singing and men are dying around you. Whether you'll stand for your brothers, for the king, for the realm." He paused, letting the words settle. "Do that, and you'll have my respect. Fail..." He didn't finish the sentence. Didn't need to.

The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the restless stamp of a horse's hoof and the distant clang of a smithy.

"Carry on, Ser Alyn," Valarr said, turning back toward his mount.

"Yes, Your Grace!" Ser Alyn's voice cracked like a whip. "You heard the prince! Back to it! Shield wall, reform!"

The line broke apart and began reassembling, and you moved with it, grateful for something to do with your hands. Your heart was still hammering, your palms slick with sweat inside your gloves. You'd been so certain he would see through you. That those pale blue eyes would land on you and know, somehow, that you didn't belong here. That you were a lie, but he hadn't even looked your way.

"Not so bad, eh?" Petyr muttered as he slotted into place beside you, shield raised. "Thought you were going to piss yourself when he started talking."

"Fuck off," you said, but there was no heat in it.

Petyr snorted. "There's the spirit. Now shut up and hold your shield higher. Ser Alyn's watching."

Supper was a grim affair.

Stew again—watery and flavorless, with chunks of something that might have been turnip or might have been boot leather. You ate it anyway, scooping it up with stale bread and trying not to think about the meals you'd had at home. Around you, the men were louder than usual, their voices carrying over the crackle of the cookfire.

"Three days," Garrett was saying, grinning wide enough to show the gap where he'd lost a tooth. "Heard it from one of the quartermasters. Supply train's coming in three days, and there's a whole wagon of whores with it."

"About fucking time," Mace said, shoving a hunk of bread into his mouth. "Been here two weeks and I haven't had a woman since we left King's Landing. I'm about ready to fuck a knothole in a tree."

Laughter rippled through the group. Even Petyr cracked a smile, though he didn't join in the commentary.

"You think they'll be pretty?" the young one—Benedict—asked. He couldn't have been more than six and ten, all gangly limbs.

"Pretty?" Tym snorted. "Boy, they're camp followers. They're not pretty, they're available. That's all that matters."

More laughter. You kept your eyes on your bowl, chewing mechanically. 

"What about you, Davos?" Mace leaned across the fire, his grin turning sharp. "You ever had a woman? Or are you still a blushing maiden?"

Your face heated. "I've had women."

"Right." Mace laughed. "You probably pissed yourself the first time you saw a pair of tits, same as you did with my cock."

"I didn't piss myself.”

"Close enough!" Mace clapped his hands together, delighted. "The boy's a virgin. I'm calling it now. When those whores get here, we're all chipping in to buy Davos his first fuck."

"Leave him alone," Petyr said mildly, not looking up from his stew.

"C’mon Petyr, I'm not being cruel," Mace spread his hands in mock innocence. "Every boy needs his first. Might as well make it memorable."

You wanted to tell him to fuck off. Wanted to throw your bowl at his smug face. Instead, you forced yourself to take another bite of bread and said nothing. The conversation moved on—speculation about which whores would be prettiest, arguments over pricing, Tym boasting about some woman he'd bedded in Flea Bottom who could allegedly do things with her mouth that defied the laws of gods and men. You let it wash over you, background noise, and focused on finishing your supper.

You were scraping the last of the stew from your bowl when a shadow fell over the fire.

"Davos Stokeworth."

You looked up to see Ser Alyn standing at the edge of the circle, his expression unreadable in the firelight.

Your stomach dropped. "Ser?"

"With me. Now."

The men around the fire went quiet, watching. You set down your bowl and stood, wiping your hands on your breeches. Petyr caught your eye, gave you a small nod—you'll be fine—but it did nothing to settle the dread coiling in your gut. You followed Ser Alyn away from the fire, into the shadows between the tents.

"You're serving wine tonight," he said without preamble. "The prince is hosting his officers for supper. They need someone to pour, and you're,” he looked you up and down, his lip curling slightly. “Well you’re small boy. We need someone who’s obtrusive. So, you'll do just fine.”

"Ser, but, I'm a soldier." You began to protest.

"You're a boy who can barely hold a shield," Ser Alyn cut you off. "This is where you're useful. Now stop arguing and get yourself to the quartermaster. He'll give you something clean to wear. You report to the prince's pavilion at sundown. If you spill so much as a drop on anyone important, I'll have you mucking out the latrines for a month. Understood?"

Your jaw clenched. "Yes, ser."

"Good. Now go."

He turned and walked away, leaving you standing alone in the dark. Behind you, you could hear the men around the fire laughing again, their voices carrying on the night air. Talking about whores. About their women back home. About things you were supposed to want but couldn't even pretend to care about.

You closed your eyes and exhaled slowly. Serving wine to the fucking prince of the realm nonetheless. To a pavilion full of officers who would be looking at you, studying you, waiting for you to make a mistake.

This was going to be a goddamn disaster.

The quartermaster's tent smelled like sweat, leather, and a mix of other shit. You ducked inside, blinking against the sudden brightness. Lanterns hung from the tent poles, casting flickering light over tables piled high with supplies—boots, belts, rolls of cloth, dented helmets waiting to be repaired. At the far end, hunched over a ledger, sat the quartermaster himself.

He was a wiry man, older, with ink-stained fingers eyes that squinted from too much close work. He didn't look up when you entered.

"Name," he said.

"Davos Stokeworth. Ser Alyn sent me. Said I need—"

"I know what you need." He set down his quill and stood, moving to one of the tables. "Serving the officers tonight, are you? Lucky boy."

He didn't sound like he thought you were lucky. The quartermaster pulled a tunic from one of the piles and held it up, and eyed you. "You're a small one. This should fit." He tossed it to you. "Put it on. Let's see."

You caught the tunic and hesitated. It was clean, at least—dark blue wool, simple but well-made. Better than anything you'd worn since arriving at camp.

"Well? I haven't got all night, boy."

You turned your back, fingers fumbling with the laces of your gambeson. The binding beneath was still tight, still holding, but your ribs ached with every breath. You pulled the gambeson over your head as quickly as you could, then shrugged into the tunic.

It fit. Barely. The shoulders were a bit wide, but it would do.

"Turn around."

You obeyed and the quartermaster circled you slowly, tugging at the fabric here and there, making small disapproving noises. 

"You'll pass," he said finally. "Barely. Do you know how to serve wine, or am I going to have to explain that too?"

"I know how."

"Good. Because if you embarrass Ser Alyn, he'll take it out on me, and I'll take it out on you. Understood?"

"Yes, ser."

"I'm not a ser, I'm a quartermaster. Just call me Orys." He moved back to his ledger, already dismissing you. "The prince's pavilion is at the center of camp. Big one, you can't miss it. Be there before sundown, and for the love of the Seven, don't drop anything."

You nodded and turned to leave.

"And boy?"

You stopped, glanced back.

Orys was watching you with an odd expression—something like pity. "Keep your head down. Don't speak unless spoken to. The officers, they like their wine and they like their talk. You do not exist there remember that and you'll be fine."

"Aye," you said quietly.

Then you stepped back out into the evening air and started walking toward the center of camp.

The prince's pavilion was impossible to miss. It stood at the heart of the camp, twice the size of any other tent, pitch black with the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen flying from the peak. Torches burned on either side of the entrance, and two guards in crimson cloaks stood at attention, their hands resting on the pommels of their swords.

You slowed as you approached, your mouth going dry. This was insane. You were about to walk into a tent full of knights and officers and pour their wine like some—like some servant. Like you weren't the daughter of a knight yourself, like you hadn't been raised with tutors and music lessons. 

Stop it. You're not that person anymore. You're Davos. A soldier. A nobody.

"Davos Stokeworth," you said, pitching your voice low. "Ser Alyn sent me. I'm to serve tonight."

One of the guards—a broad-shouldered man with a scar running down his cheek—looked you up and down. "You're late."

"I—"

"Get inside. They're already seated."

He jerked his head toward the entrance. You didn't wait to be told twice.

Inside, the pavilion was warm and bright, lit by what felt like a dozen lanterns hanging from the support beams. A long table dominated the center of the space, and around it sat perhaps a dozen men—knights, officers, all of them older and harder-looking than you'd expected. Their armor was piled near the tent walls, and they'd stripped down to tunics and leather jerkins, sleeves rolled up, looking almost human.

Almost.

At the head of the table sat Prince Valarr.

He was laughing at something one of the other men had said, his head tilted back, that streak of silver in his hair catching the lamplight. He looked different like this. Younger, less a prince and more just a man sharing a meal with his friends.

Then his eyes swept across the room and landed on you and the laughter died.

"Ah," he said, straightening. "You must be the cupbearer Ser Alyn mentioned."

Every head at the table turned to look at you.

Your throat closed up and you managed what would be a very, very, sad, and stiff bow. "Yes, Your Grace. Davos Stokeworth."

"Stokeworth." Valarr's brow furrowed slightly, like he was trying to place the name. Then he nodded. "Well, Davos Stokeworth, welcome. The wine is there—" He gestured to a table set against the side of the pavilion, where several pitchers and flagons waited. "Start with Ser Alyn, if you would. The man looks like he needs it."

A few of the officers chuckled. Ser Alyn, seated near the middle of the table, grunted and held out his cup without looking at you.

"Move, boy," someone muttered. "We're thirsty."

Right. Move. You crossed to the side table, hands trembling as you picked up one of the pitchers. It was heavier than you'd expected, the wine sloshing inside. You carried it carefully to Ser Alyn and poured, focusing on keeping your hands steady, on not spilling a single drop.

The wine filled his cup. You stepped back.

"Next," Ser Alyn said.

You moved down the line. One officer after another, pouring wine, setting down the pitcher, picking up another when the first ran dry. The men barely looked at you. A few muttered thanks. Most ignored you entirely, already deep in conversation.

"—heard Daemon's forces are larger than we thought—"

"—doesn't matter, we've got the numbers—"

"—if it comes to a siege, we're fucked. We don't have the supplies—"

You kept your head down, kept pouring, kept being invisible.

And then you reached the head of the table. Prince Valarr held out his cup, his eyes on one of the other officers as he spoke. "Ser Jorin, you were saying about the Stormlands?"

"Yes, Your Grace." The man—Ser Jorin, apparently—was older, grizzled, with a thick beard gone mostly gray. "Reports say Blackfyre's already taken Bronzegate. If he pushes north—"

You poured the wine. Your hands were steadier now, the repetition helping. The cup filled. You started to step back.

"Careful, boy." Valarr's hand shot out, steadying the pitcher before you could pull it away too quickly. His fingers brushed yours—warm, calloused—and you froze.

He was looking at you now. Truly looking with those blue eyes sharp and curious. Your heart pounded against your chest, and you looked away from the intense gaze.

Seven Hells, get it fucking together. 

"Easy," he said quietly. "No rush."

"Yes, Your Grace," you managed. “My apologies, Your Grace."

He smiled—just a flicker, there and gone. "No harm done." Then he released the pitcher and turned back to Ser Jorin. "Go on."

You stepped back, heart hammering, and moved to the next officer.

He touched you. He looked at you. It's fine. You're fine. He doesn't know. He can't know.

You finished pouring and retreated to the side table, standing with your back to the wall, waiting for someone to need a refill. The conversation at the table continued, voices rising and falling, debates about strategy and supplies and how many men Daemon Blackfyre had really brought with him. You tried to listen, tried to focus on anything other than the way your pulse was still racing.

And then Valarr laughed again, and despite every nerve in your body telling you to do the goddamn opposite, you looked up. He was smiling at something Ser Alyn had said, his whole face transformed by it. He looked, gods, he looked like someone you could actually talk to. 

You forced your eyes back down and prayed for the night to end quickly.

The wine flowed freely.

You'd lost count of how many times you'd circled the table, pitcher in hand, filling cups that never seemed to stay full for long. The officers drank like men who knew tomorrow might be their last day, and the conversation grew louder, looser, as the night wore on.

"—swear to you, she had tits out to here—" Ser Jorin was gesturing wildly, nearly knocking over his cup. You darted forward to steady it, refilled it without a word, stepped back.

"You're full of shit," another officer said, laughing. "No woman in Flea Bottom has tits that big."

"I'm telling you, she did!”

"What about you, Your Grace?" This from a younger knight, his face flushed with drink. "Any ladies caught your eye? Half the realm's probably throwing their daughters at you by now."

Valarr leaned back in his chair, swirling the wine in his cup. His eyes were bright—not quite drunk, but well on his way. "I've had offers."

"Offers!" Ser Alyn barked out a laugh. "The boy's had every lord from here to the Wall trying to marry off their daughters. I've seen the letters."

"And?"

"And nothing." Valarr drank, set his cup down with a soft thunk. "I'm not interested in marrying another lords political ambitions wrapped up in a pretty dress."

"Aye, so you want an ugly wife, then?" Ser Jorin grinned.

"I want a wife I can actually talk to." Valarr's voice was easy, but there was something sharper underneath. "Someone with a mind. Someone who isn't going to smile and nod and bore me to death at the breakfast table."

"Good luck finding that," someone muttered.

"Maybe I'll marry a warrior." Valarr was smiling now, the wine making him reckless. "Someone who can hold a sword. Wouldn't that scandalize the court?"

Laughter rippled around the table. You refilled Ser Alyn's cup, moved to the next man, kept your face blank.

"A warrior wife," Ser Jorin mused. "I'd pay good coin to see that. Can you imagine? Some woman in armor, telling the prince what to do."

"Sounds like a nightmare," another officer said.

"Sounds like a good time," Valarr countered. He drained his cup and held it out. You stepped forward automatically, pitcher raised. His eyes flicked up to yours as you poured—just for a moment—and you felt the weight of it. Your hand trembled, just slightly. The wine splashed against the rim of the cup.

Steady. Steady.

You pulled back before you could spill.

"Thank you," Valarr said quietly.

You nodded, stepped away. Your heart was beating too fast, a sick, fluttering organ trapped behind your ribs. The talk shifted again and someone was telling a story about a brothel in Lys. Another was complaining about his horse. The voices blurred together, and you stood against the wall, hands clasped behind your back, and tried to breathe.

The binding was too tight. Your chest ached, every breath felt like dragging air through wet cloth.

Not now. Not here.

You locked your knees and waited. It was well past midnight when Valarr finally pushed back from the table.

"Enough," he said, standing. The word was slightly softer at the edges, blurred by wine. "We ride at dawn. Get some sleep."

The officers rose—some steadier than others—and began filtering out of the pavilion in twos and threes, clapping each other on the shoulders, still laughing about something. Ser Alyn paused to mutter something to Valarr, too low for you to hear, and then he was gone too. You stayed where you were, back against the wall. You were supposed to wait until the tent cleared. Until someone dismissed you.

And then it was just you and the prince.

Valarr stood by the table, one hand braced against the back of his chair, staring down at the maps spread across the surface. For a long moment, he said nothing. Just stood there, silent, his shoulders tight. Then he spoke without looking up.

"You're dismissed," he said.

You bowed and left, thanking the gods.

You woke to Mace's boot nudging your ribs.

"Up, cupbearer. Can't sleep all day just because you spent the night pouring wine for fancy lords."

You groaned and rolled over, every muscle in your body screaming. The ground beneath your bedroll was hard as stone, and the binding around your chest had left deep aches in your ribs. You'd barely slept three hours.

"Fuck off, Mace," you mumbled.

"Ooh, the boy's got a mouth on him this morning." Mace grinned down at you. "How was it? They treat you nice? Feed you scraps from the prince's table?"

"It was fine." You sat up slowly, rubbing your face. Your head pounded. Around you, the tent was already half-empty. Petyr was gone—probably at the latrines or getting food. Benedict sat in the corner, polishing his sword and looking like someone who had no idea what he was doing. Tym was still asleep, snoring like a dying animal.

"Word is there's archery practice today," Mace said, pulling on his boots. "Ser Alyn wants to see who can actually shoot and who's been lying about it."

Your head snapped up. "Archery?"

"Aye. Apparently we're short on archers, and if Blackfyre's forces have the high ground when we meet them, we're fucked." He stood, stretching. "You know how to shoot, Davos?"

You hesitated. "A bit."

"A bit." Mace snorted. "Well, you'd better pray you're better than 'a bit,' because Ser Alyn's in a foul mood. Anyone who can't hit a target's getting assigned to cleaning shit for a week."

He ducked out of the tent, still laughing. You sat there for a moment, heart pounding.

Archery. Gods.

The range was set up in a wide clearing beyond the horse lines—a dozen straw targets propped against wooden frames, each marked with rough circles of charcoal. Men were already gathering, maybe forty or fifty of them, talking in low voices while Ser Alyn stood at the front with his arms crossed.

You hung back near the edge of the crowd, trying to stay invisible.

"All right, listen up!" Ser Alyn's voice cut through the chatter like a blade. "We need archers. Good ones. If you can shoot, step forward. If you can't, fuck off back to your tents."

A few men stepped forward immediately—older soldiers, veterans with the scarred hands of bowmen. Others hesitated, shuffling their feet.

"Come on, don't be shy!" Ser Alyn barked. "I don't care if you've only shot a bow twice in your life. Get up here."

More men moved forward. You stayed where you were.

"You too, boy."

You looked up. Ser Alyn was staring directly at you.

"Me, ser?"

"Yes, you. You've got the build for it. Small, light. Good for a longbowman." He jerked his chin toward the line forming near the targets. "Get over there."

Your stomach sank. "Ser, I don’t.”

"That wasn't a request, boy.”

You swallowed and stepped forward, joining the ragged line of men. Mace caught your eye from across the clearing and grinned, mouthing good luck. Ser Alyn walked down the line, eyeing each man. When he reached you, he paused.

"You ever shot a bow before, Davos?"

"A few times, ser," you lied. Or—no, it wasn't a lie. You just didn't mention how many times. "My father taught me."

"Good. Let's see what you've got." He moved to the center of the range and raised his voice. "First round! Fifty paces! You'll each get three arrows. Hit the target, you stay. Miss all three, you're done. Understood?"

"Yes, ser!"

One of the soldiers handed you a bow—a simple recurve, nothing fancy, but solid enough. The wood was worn smooth from use. You tested the string, felt the tension. It was heavier than the bow you'd trained with at home, but not by much. Three arrows. You nocked the first one, feeling the familiar weight of it, the way the fletching brushed against your fingers.

The first man stepped up to the line. He drew, aimed, loosed.

The arrow hit the edge of the target. Barely.

"Next!"

Another man. Another shot. This one missed entirely, burying itself in the dirt three feet to the left.

“Fucking pathetic! Next!"

You watched them, one after another. Some hit. Most didn't. Your turn was coming, and your heart was pounding so hard you could feel it in your throat.

"You! Boy! Step up!"

You moved to the line. Fifty paces. The target looked small from here, just a circle of straw and charcoal. You raised the bow, feeling the weight of it settle into your grip and drew the string back. You loosed and the arrow flew straight and true, slamming into the target dead center.

Silence.

You blinked, staring at the target. You hadn't meant to—you'd just shot. Just let your body do what it knew how to do.

"Well, shit," someone muttered behind you.

Ser Alyn was staring at you, his expression unreadable. "Again."

You nocked the second arrow. Drew. Loosed.

It hit an inch from the first.

"Again."

Third arrow. This one split the difference between the first two, all three clustered in the center of the target so close together you could barely see the gaps. The clearing had gone quiet. Every man was staring at you now. Ser Alyn walked over to the target, examined the arrows, then turned back to look at you. His face was hard to read—somewhere between impressed and suspicious.

"Where the fuck did you learn to shoot like that?" he asked.

Your mouth went dry. "My father, ser. He—he was good. Taught me when I was young."

"Your father must've been a gods-damned master archer." Ser Alyn pulled one of the arrows from the target and turned it over in his hands. "I've seen knights who can't shoot this clean."

You didn't know what to say to that. Ser Alyn looked at you for a long moment, then nodded slowly. "You're staying on the line. Let's see if you can do it again."

The next round started. Seventy-five paces this time. You hit the target. So did a handful of others, but most fell away, their shots going wide or falling short. One hundred paces. You hit the center again. Only three other men managed to hit the target at all.

One hundred and fifty paces. The target was barely visible now, just a smudge of straw in the distance.

You drew. Aimed. Felt the wind against your face, adjusted for it without thinking.

Loosed.

The arrow arced high, then dropped, slamming into the target just left of center. When Ser Alyn walked down to check, he stood there for a long moment, hands on his hips, staring at the arrow.

Then he turned and shouted back toward the range: "Someone get the prince. He needs to see this."

Your blood went cold.

No. No no no—

But it was too late. Across the clearing, one of the squires was already running toward the center of camp.

Prince Valarr arrived on horseback, flanked by two of his knights. He dismounted and walked toward the range as you kept your eyes down, your heart hammering so hard you thought it might crack your ribs. This was bad, very fucking bad. 

Ser Alyn met him halfway, speaking too low for you to hear. Valarr listened, his expression unreadable, then his eyes swept across the line of men until they landed on you. He studied you for a moment and then nodded to Ser Alyn.

"Show me," he said.

Ser Alyn gestured you forward. "Davos. One more shot. Two hundred paces."

Two hundred paces. The target was barely a speck at this distance, the wind strong enough that you could feel it pulling at your clothes. You nocked an arrow with hands that wanted to shake, forced them steady. You could feel every eye on you—the soldiers, Ser Alyn, the prince. Especially the prince. You drew the string back until your fingers touched the corner of your mouth, felt the tension singing through the bow, and let everything else fall away. Just you and the target. Just the wind and the weight of the arrow and the moment before release.

You loosed.

The arrow flew in a long, clean arc, cutting through the air like it had been drawn there by an invisible hand. It struck the target high and right, just inside the outer ring. Not perfect. But at two hundred paces, in the wind, it was more than good enough. Valarr walked down to the target himself this time, Ser Alyn trailing behind him. He pulled the arrow free, examined it, then looked back at you across the distance. You couldn't read his expression from here, but the fact that he was looking at all made your stomach clench.

When he returned, he stopped in front of you, turning the arrow over in his hands. "Your father taught you to shoot?" he asked.

“Yes, Your Grace," you said, keeping your voice low and steady.

"He must have been very skilled." Valarr handed the arrow back to you. "Or you're a natural. Either way, I have use for someone who can shoot like that." He glanced at Ser Alyn. "I'll take him."

Ser Alyn's brow furrowed. "Your Grace?"

"Send him to my tent after midday. I want to speak with him privately." Valarr's eyes flicked back to you. "Well done, Davos. It seems you're full of surprises."

Then he turned and walked back to his horse. You stood there, heart in your throat, arrow still clutched in your hand.

What in Seven Hells have you gotten yourself into?

You stood outside the prince's pavilion, trying to steady your breathing.

Midday had come too quickly. You'd spent the morning in a haze of dread, barely hearing the jokes and questions from your tentmates. Mace had clapped you on the shoulder so hard you'd nearly stumbled, crowing about how "little Davos" had shown up half the camp. Petyr had just looked at you with something like concern and said nothing.

Now you were here, and the guards were watching you, and there was no avoiding it.

"The prince is expecting you," one of them said, jerking his head toward the entrance.

You ducked inside. The pavilion was quieter than it had been last night. No crowd of officers, no wine-loosened laughter. Just Valarr, standing at the table with maps spread out before him, still in his riding leathers. He looked up when you entered.

"Davos. Come here."

You crossed to the table, stopped a respectful distance away. Your hands wanted to fidget. You locked them behind your back.

Valarr studied you for a moment, then gestured to the maps. "Do you know what these are?"

You glanced down. Terrain maps, troop movements marked in different colored ink. "Battle plans, Your Grace."

"Close enough." He tapped a spot on the largest map—a river crossing, forests marked on either side. "Daemon Blackfyre's forces are moving north. We know their general direction, but not their numbers. Not their exact position. If we're going to meet them, we need better intelligence."

You nodded, unsure where this was going.

"I need scouts," Valarr continued. "Fast, quiet, with good eyes. Someone who can get close without being seen and get out again without getting killed." His gaze flicked up to you. "You're small and light. And clearly you can shoot well enough to defend yourself if things go wrong. That makes you useful."

Your stomach dropped through the floor. "Your Grace, I'm not—"

"You're not a soldier?" He raised an eyebrow. "You volunteered, didn't you? Came here in your father's place?"

"Yes, Your Grace.”

"Then you're a soldier. And soldiers do what they're told." He straightened, crossing his arms. "I'm assigning you to reconnaissance. You'll ride out tomorrow with two others, get close to Blackfyre's camp, count what you can, and report back. Think you can manage that?"

No. Absolutely fucking not. This was insane.

"Yes, Your Grace," you heard yourself say.

Valarr's expression softened slightly. "You're scared. That's good. Means you're not stupid." He moved around the table, closer now. "The men you're going with are experienced. They'll keep you alive if you listen to them. And if you see something—anything—you come straight back here and tell me. Understood?"

"Yes, Your Grace."

"Good." He held your gaze for a moment longer, and you couldn't look away. His eyes were sharp, assessing, but there was something else there too. "Dismissed. Report to Ser Alyn before dawn. He'll give you the details."

You bowed and turned to leave.

"Davos."

You stopped, glanced back.

"Don't get yourself killed," Valarr said. "I'd hate to lose a decent archer."

You nodded and left before you could say something stupid.

You'd been crouched in the same position for hours, muscles screaming, barely daring to breathe.

The other two scouts—Harwin and a lean, quiet man named Durran—had split off at sunset to circle Blackfyre's camp from different angles. The plan was simple: watch, count, don't get caught. You'd drawn the shortest straw, which meant you got the closest position, tucked behind a fallen log at the edge of the treeline with nothing but darkness and luck to keep you hidden.

Blackfyre's camp sprawled below you, a sea of cookfires and tents that seemed to go on forever. Too many. Far too fucking many. You'd tried to count them at first, but gave up somewhere past three hundred. The prince needed to know this. Needed to know how badly outnumbered you were.

Your shoulder ached from holding still. Your legs had gone numb an hour ago. The night air was cold enough that you could see your breath, and every slight movement made the leaves around you rustle. You'd been here since dusk. It had to be near midnight now.

Then you heard voices.

Close. Too close.

You froze, pressing yourself flatter against the ground. Two men were walking up the hill toward your position, their boots crunching through the underbrush. Blackfyre soldiers, had to be. You could see the dark shapes of them through the trees, close enough that you could hear their conversation.

"—don't see why it matters," one of them was saying. His voice was rough, annoyed. "Just kill him and be done with it."

"Because it has to look right," the other man said. He sounded older, calmer. "The prince dies in battle, fine. The prince dies in his tent with a knife in his back? That raises questions."

Your blood went cold.

"So what, we wait for the fighting to start?"

"We wait for the signal. Martyn's got someone on the inside, close to the prince. When the time comes, it'll look like an accident. Friendly fire, it happens all the time in wars.”

"And we're sure this source is good?"

"Good enough that Daemon's paying him in gold. The Targaryen prince dies, their army falls apart, we win." The older man spat into the dirt. "Just be patient."

They were maybe twenty feet away now. Moving closer. You didn't dare move, didn't dare breathe. Your heart was slamming against your ribs so hard you were sure they'd hear it.

Assassination? Worse, an nside job. This had to be someone close to Valarr.

You had to get back. Had to warn him. Your foot shifted and a branch snapped under your boot. Suddenly, the voices drew to a stop.

"What was that?"

"Over there. By the log."

"Fuck."

You stood at once and ran. Didn't think, didn't plan, just scrambled to your feet and bolted into the trees. Behind you, shouting erupted. Boots pounding. Someone yelled for a bow.

The forest was a blur of shadows and branches tearing at your face. You ran blind, lungs burning, legs pumping. You didn't know where Harwin and Durran were. Didn't know which way was camp. Just ran.

The arrow hit you from behind. It punched into your left shoulder with a force that sent you sprawling forward into the dirt. The pain was white-hot, blinding, and for a moment you couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't do anything but lie there with your face in the leaves and feel the warm spread of blood soaking into your tunic.

Get up. Get up get up get up, you fucking idiot, you have to get up.

You dragged yourself to your feet, gasping. Your left arm hung useless, the arrow shaft jutting from your shoulder like some obscene flag. Blood was running down your back, hot and wet. You could hear them crashing through the brush behind you, closer now.

You ran again.

The world tilted and swayed. Your vision blurred. You tripped over roots, slammed into trees, kept going. The sounds of pursuit faded—or maybe you just couldn't hear them anymore over the roaring in your ears.

You didn't know how long you ran. It felt like hours. It felt like seconds.

When you finally saw the lights of camp through the trees, you nearly sobbed with relief. You stumbled out of the forest and into the outer ring of tents, legs giving out. Someone shouted. Hands caught you before you hit the ground.

"Gods—he's been shot—"

"Wake Ser Alyn and the maester—“

You tried to speak, tried to tell them about the prince, about the assassin, but your mouth wouldn't work. The world was going dark at the edges, folding in on itself.

The last thing you heard before everything went black was someone yelling for Prince Valarr.

Pain woke you. Sharp, burning, radiating from your shoulder down through your ribs like someone was twisting a hot poker into your bones. You tried to move and your body screamed at you—don't, don't, stop—and you froze, gasping.

Something was wrong, really fucking wrong.  Not just the arrow wound. Something else. Something worse.

Your eyes snapped open. Canvas overhead with dim lantern light. The smell of blood and herbs and something medicinal that made your stomach turn. You were lying on a cot, blankets pulled up to your collarbone, and your chest felt wrong—loose, unbound, the pressure gone.

No. No no no.

You tried to sit up. Hands pressed you back down—gentle but firm—and a voice spoke from somewhere above you.

"Don't."

You knew that voice.

Your head turned and there he was. Prince Valarr. Sitting on a low stool beside the cot, close enough to touch, his face drawn and pale in the lamplight. He looked like he hadn't slept. His hair was a mess, the streak of silver falling across his forehead, and his eyes, gods, his eyes were fixed on you. Sharp and watching.

"Your Grace," you managed. Your voice came out rough, cracked, barely audible.

He didn't answer right away. Just kept staring at you, and the silence stretched so long your heart started slamming against your ribs. His jaw was tight. Too tight. "Davos," he said finally. "Or should I say—" He stopped. Jaw working. "What's your real name?"

The world dropped out from under you. You couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Your hand moved without permission—reached for your chest, felt the bandages wrapped around your ribs where the binding should have been gone. It was gone. They'd cut it off.

"I—" You tried to sit up again, panic flooding through you hot and terrible. "Your Grace, I can explain."

"Don't." His hand shot out, pressed against your good shoulder, holding you down. "You'll tear the stitches."

You froze. His palm was warm through the thin blanket. You could feel the calluses on his fingers, the same ones that had brushed yours when he'd steadied the wine pitcher. When he'd looked at you and you'd thought—gods, you'd been so stupid.

"The maester had to cut away your tunic to get to the arrow," Valarr said. His voice was quiet, too quiet. "He found the binding." A pause. "And then he found everything else."

Your throat closed up. You wanted to run. Wanted to bolt upright and sprint for the tent flap and just fucking run until your legs gave out, but you couldn't move. His hand was still on your shoulder and his eyes were still on your face and you were trapped.

"So I'll ask you again." Valarr leaned forward—close enough that you could see the dark smudges under his eyes, the way his jaw was clenched so tight a muscle jumped in his cheek. Close enough that you couldn't look away. "What's your name?"

You opened your mouth and nothing came out.

He waited. In the corner of the tent, an old man sat on a stool—the maester, grey-haired and sharp-eyed, watching the two of you . He'd seen. He knew. "I sent everyone else away," Valarr continued, reading your panic. "As far as the camp knows, you're still just Davos. Wounded, but alive." His eyes flicked toward the maester. "Maester Harrion has agreed to keep silent for now."

For now.

"But I need the truth," Valarr said. His hand was still on your shoulder. You could feel the weight of it, pinning you down, holding you there. "All of it. Starting with your name."

Your shoulder throbbed. Your ribs ached. Blood had soaked through the bandages and you could feel it—warm and sticky against your skin. Everything hurt. Everything was wrong. And Valarr was looking at you like he didn't recognize you anymore.

"It doesn't matter," you heard yourself say. Your voice sounded thin. "Your Grace, my name doesn't matter—you need to listen to me, there's going to be an assassination—"

"Don't."

The word came out sharp. Hard. Valarr's hand tightened on your shoulder—not enough to hurt, but enough to make you flinch. His jaw was clenched, his eyes blazing.

"Don't you dare try to change the subject," he said, and there it was—the anger you'd been waiting for, finally breaking through. "You've been lying to me since the moment I met you. You stood in formation with my men. You poured wine in my tent. You—" He stopped and swallowed. "I touched you."

His hand jerked back like you'd burned him.

The absence of his touch felt worse than the arrow wound. "You let me believe you were someone you're not," Valarr continued, and his voice had gone quiet again. Dangerously quiet. "You lied to Ser Alyn. To the men in your tent. To me." He stood abruptly, the stool scraping against the ground, and turned away from you. "Do you have any idea what you've done? What this means?"

"I didn't have a choice—"

"There's always a choice!" He spun back toward you, and you flinched. "You could have stayed home. You could have let your father answer the call himself. You could have—" He stopped. Dragged both hands through his hair. "Gods. Gods. You're—you're a woman."

He said it like he still couldn't believe it. Like the word didn't fit in his mouth. You wanted to argue. Wanted to scream at him that your father would have died, that you'd saved his life, that you'd done what you had to do. But the words stuck in your throat because Valarr was looking at you like he'd trusted you. And you'd broken that.

"I could have you executed for this," he said finally. "Lying to the Crown. Deceiving the army. and impersonating a soldier." He paused. "Do you understand that?"

"Yes." Your voice was barely a whisper.

"Do you understand that I should have you executed for this?"

"Yes."

Valarr stared at you. His hand moved—unconscious, automatic—toward the hilt of his sword. You watched it happen. Watched his fingers brush the pommel, hover there for a second.

Then drop.

"Fuck," he muttered, turning away again. He paced to the other side of the tent, put his back to you. His shoulders were rigid. You could see the way his hands clenched into fists at his sides.

The silence stretched. Seconds. Minutes. You couldn't tell. Finally, he spoke without turning around.

"Why?"

"My father," you said again. The words came easier this time, like something inside you had cracked open. "He was called to fight. He's—he's old, Your Grace. Wounded. He fought at the Redgrass Field. He gave everything for the Crown. And they—" Your voice broke and you forced it steady. "They were going to send him anyway. Even though he can barely hold a sword anymore. Even though it would have killed him."

Valarr didn't move.

"So I took his armor," you continued. "Cut my hair. Bound my chest and I came here in his place." You swallowed. "I knew it was treason. I knew what would happen if anyone found out. But he's my father, and I couldn't—I couldn't just let him die."

More silence.

Then, quietly he said, "What's your name?"

You told him your real name. The one only your father had called you for the past month. Valarr finally turned around. He looked at you for a long moment, and you couldn't read his expression anymore. Couldn't tell if he was angry or confused or something else entirely.

"You took an arrow for me," he said.

"I—" You blinked. "What?"

"You heard the assassins. You could have run. Could have disappeared into the forest and no one would have known." His eyes were fixed on yours now, searching. "But you came back. You warned me."

"Of course I did." The words came out sharper than you intended. "Your Grace, they're planning to kill you. Someone close to you, someone on the inside—I heard them talking about Martyn, about waiting for a signal."

"I know."

You stopped. Stared at him.

"You—what?"

"You've been unconscious for hours," Valarr said. "Kept mumbling about assassins. About someone close to me." He moved back toward the cot, sat down heavily on the stool. "I've already doubled the guard. Ser Alyn is questioning everyone who has access to my tent."

Relief crashed through you so hard you nearly sobbed. "Then you—you believe me?"

"Why wouldn't I?" Valarr asked quietly. "You got shot trying to warn me. Why would you lie about that?"

You didn't have an answer and he studied you for another long moment. Then, slowly, he reached out—hesitated—and rested his hand on the edge of the cot. Not touching you. But close.

"I don't know what to do with you," he admitted.

Your heart was pounding. "Your Grace."

"You saved my life," Valarr continued. "But you also lied to me. Deceived me. Committed treason." He exhaled. "I should have you executed. I should. But—" He stopped and looked away, his jaw ticking.

"But?" you pressed.

"But you're the best damn archer I've seen in years," Valarr said. "And you took an arrow in the back trying to save me." He dragged a hand down his face. "And I—" He stopped again. Shook his head.

"I can't execute you," he finished quietly. "I should. But I can't."

The tent was too small. Too hot. You could feel your pulse in your throat, your shoulder, everywhere.

"So what happens now?" you asked.

You’ve continued to think that in intervals since: when he wakes up next to you in the morning with the white streak at his temple sleep-mussed, when he comes out of his shower with nothing but a towel slung around his hips, when he laughs without performing it. He is, you have come to accept, simply a beautiful problem you’ve been living with for thirty-six months.

In the lamp light, he’s at his worst. The silver at his temple catches the dimmed bulb. The dark of the rest of his hair has gone floppy at the edges. His nose is long and elegant in shadow. The line between his brows surfaces when he reads. His lower lip is bitten where he’s been worrying it for the last forty seconds, and his eyelashes are long and dark. The long, elegant fingers of his left hand are tapping, faintly, at the edge of the page in a rhythm you don’t think he’s fully aware of.

He’s in a thin grey t-shirt and the loose dark linen pyjama bottoms you bought him for Christmas. The flat of his toned stomach pillows your cheek. A muted warmth comes up through the cotton when Valarr breathes. You can feel his pulse faintly against the corner of your jaw. A slow, steady, easy rhythm of him. The resting heart of a man who is, on every measurable metric, content.

You think, then, about the thing beneath the gold.

Even when you first met Valarr, he wasn’t all gold. You had thought he was, in October of year one. Through the flowers and the careful kisses and the can I. You had braced for the patient lesson plan, assuming the iron would have to come from you.

And then, at the edges, you had begun to find something else in your Valarr. 

The fixed, immortalising quality of his attention across rooms in those early weeks, which was not the gaze of a charming boy at all. The cufflinks lined up no matter how desperate he was. The phone call about the man at the bar.

You never shamed him for it. You had nurtured that dark edge in him, quietly, inch by inch. You were, after all, the one who taught him to bite in March of year two. The one who taught him to hold you down. To say mine, and good girl, and the unhurried narrating filth Valarr hadn’t known was in him. Each thing you had asked of him, he had folded into himself with the relief of a man being told that the dark thing behind his teeth was, in fact, allowed to exist. 

But he’s never fully taken. Not without you partially holding the leash. He’s always been asking.

You let the paperback fall closed.

“Val.”

He makes a small sound at the back of his throat.

“You haven’t turned that page.”

His stomach contracts under your cheek. A laugh, embarrassed.

“No,” he says in agreement. “I haven’t.”

“Where'd you go?” you ask.

He sets the memo on the nightstand with a papery whisper as it lands on the wood. His hand returns to your hair, brushing a strand off your temple with his knuckle.

“Work,” he replies, “Sorry, my love.”

You gaze up at him.

He looks down at you. Warm. A little tired. The crease between his brows softens as he meets your gaze. He does this when you look up at him. Three years, every time, the same expression: a man who can’t quite believe what he's been allowed to keep you.

“What's wrong?” he asks softly.

“Nothing.”

“You've got a face on,” he informs you sagely. 

Your eyes narrow, albeit playfully. “I haven't got a face on.”

“You've got the face on, my love.” His thumb traces the arc of your eyebrow fondly. “The thinking face. Tell me.”

You push up off his stomach, rolling onto your side. Prop on one elbow. You bend and press your mouth to the cotton over his sternum. Valarr’s heart picks up under your lips. 

“My love?”

You kiss him again, higher this time. The soft hollow at the base of his throat where his pulse drums. The clean baseline of his soap and the warmer chemistry of his skin underneath. You drag your mouth, unhurried, along the underside of his jaw, where the faint trace of his evening stubble drags lightly against your lip.

“Just thinking about you,” you tell him.

Valarr’s hand goes flat against your back, fingers spreading, settling. 

“Yeah?”

You hear the quiet pleasure in that. 

“Yeah.”

“What about me?”

You set your chin on his chest.

“That I love you,” you tell him frankly. 

Valarr’s face folds, the corner of his eyes tightening. His other hand comes up at once to find the side of your face, his thumb sweeping along your cheekbone.

“My love,” he says gently, fondly.

You lean into his touch. “That you're a wonderful lover.”

He looks down with a wry chuckle. “Where is this going?”

You hum, a slight twitch at the corner of your mouth. “Somewhere good. Promise.”

“You're making me nervous.”

“I know I am,” you breathe against his skin. “Stay with me.”

“Mm.”

“You are, Val. You're attentive. Patient. You read me better than anyone ever has. You know my body, and you treat it like—” You pause, stroking the silver at his temple with your fingertip. The white hairs are coarser than the dark; you’ve always found, slightly wirier, a small tactile pleasure you’re routinely smug about being the only woman in the world to know. “You’re stupidly, ridiculously, unfairly handsome. And the way you look at me. The way you have always looked at me, from the first time. As though I might dissolve under your hand.”

Valarr’s expression softens further. “Because I always think you might.”

“I know.”

“Three years and I still can't believe I get to have you.”

“I know, Val.”

He turns his face into your palm, shutting his eyes for half a beat. You feel the small grain of his stubble against your wrist. The warm press of his cheek into your hand.

“My golden Val,” you whisper lovingly. 

His mouth goes slack, pressing closer. “Yours.”

There’s a lull between you, and you let it sit for a while.

“There's an edge to you, though,” you remark carefully after several minutes. 

His eyes crack open. Valarr doesn’t flinch, but you watch his focus sharpen, his thumb stop moving on your cheekbone. He has gone, in the space of a breath, utterly quiet.

You examine him. “Don't go away from me.”

“I'm not,” he answers smoothly.

“You are,” you say. “A little. I can feel you leaving. Come back to me.”

He breathes out, his hand drifting down to rest at your jaw. The slow, careful press of his palm there follows, the heel of his hand against the side of your throat.

“I'm here.”

“Valarr.”

“I'm here, my love,” he repeats, but you hear the caution in his voice.

“Look at me.”

He looks at you.

“Don't be ashamed,” you tell him.

He works to swallow. “I'm not ashamed.”

Your eyes narrow slightly. “Val.”

His jaw moves, rippling once as his eyes drop. “A little ashamed.”

“I know.”

His brows furrow. “You shouldn't have to—”

“Stop.”

You take his face in both hands. You tip it down to you, setting your mouth on his. A sustained press, closed-mouthed. The kind of kiss whose only purpose is to tell him you’re not leaving, that you’re right here, his.

Valarr kisses you back with a low, throaty sound. His hand proceeds to the side of your throat, fingers gentle. You break the kiss with your forehead against his.

“I like that side of you,” you breathe against his mouth.

He stills.

“Do you hear me?” you pose. “I like that side of you.”

Valarr opens his eyes, searching your face. You’ve seen this expression perhaps eight times in three years.

“You like—”

You press your forehead closer against his. “I’ve always liked it, pretty thing. It’s part of you, Val. I've known about it since month four. I'm not afraid of it, or put off by it. I've been quietly encouraging it for two and a half years, and I want you to know I've been doing it on purpose."

He stares.

“On purpose.”

“Of course, on purpose,” you tell him, almost insulted by the disbelief in his voice. “I don't do anything by accident. Not with you.”

Valarr goes quiet, then. A stillness that tells you he’s processing something you’re not privy to just yet, an internal mechanism of him moving. Memory by memory works through the beautiful slopes of his face. Those times you’ve coaxed that silky, dark edge out of him or driven him to the edge where it would slip out, how you’ve never once pulled back, encouraging it in your own subtle way. 

“Do you prefer it?” he asks lastly, his voice pitched low. 

You stare. “What?”

“That side of me,” he clarifies cautiously. “Do you prefer it?”

You shake your head. “No.”

“My love—”

“No. Listen to me very carefully.” You hold his eyes. Neither of you blinks. “I like both. Equally. Completely. I love Valarr who brings me tea with honey when my sinuses hurt. I love Valarr who knows my body better than anyone has ever known it and treats it like a fucking cathedral. Because you do. I feel adored with you. I love Valarr who’s in this bed right now with his hand in my hair, looking at me like he can't believe I'm real.” His throat works, softening, almost bashful. Your voice pitches lower. “And I love Valarr who will fuck me hard when I ask him to. Who bites and grips and holds me down. Who comes inside me with his hand on my throat and tells me I'm his. That man is also you. That man has always been you, Val.”

He’s quiet.

A muscle moves in his jaw. Valarr looks shy, you realise. He does the wry duck of the head you used to get from him in year one when you'd catch him watching you across rooms. The boyish, unstudied embarrassment of a man who’s spent his entire life in front of cameras and is, only in this bed, only with you, occasionally caught.

You laugh gently. “Oh, come here.”

You pull him in. Wrap your arms around his neck, tug him down so his face is pressed into the side of your throat, and you can hold the back of his head.

Valarr folds into you without hesitation. His arms come around your waist. His face presses into the curve of your neck, and you register the unsteady breath he releases there. A long, quiet thing. One of those deep breaths he saves for the rare moments he is being held instead of holding.

You stroke through his hair, waiting until he steadies. Then you press your mouth to his ear.

“I want to try something.”

He shifts against you.

“What?” he wonders quietly.

You thread your fingers through his soft hair, caressing the silver streak. “I want you to use me, Val.”

The whole of him goes utterly, painfully still.

It takes over a minute for him to find his voice again. “Love—”

“Just listen,” you say with soft urgency, holding him to you. “I want you to use me. Fuck me raw and mean. Take complete control. Do all the things you've been thinking about and not allowed yourself to do. Every dark thought, the ones you think you can't ask me for.”

He doesn't speak.

“If you're not comfortable, that's the end of it,” you say softly. “I’ll never bring it up again. Not once. We continue exactly as we are. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

You kiss his hair. “Say it back to me, pretty thing.”

“You'll never bring it up again,” he says quietly, almost dazed. “If I'm not comfortable.”

“Right. But if you wanted to. If you wanted to indulge that side, explore it… Then I want to as well. You have permission, Val. You’ve always had permission because I trust you.”

A long quiet.

“My love.”

You press your mouth to his hair again. “Yes?”

“I don’t know what to—”

“Don't say anything yet,” you cut in gently. “Think about it. You have all the time you need. No pressure. None. Ever.”

He nods against your skin.

You tip his face up and kiss him. With a hand at the side of his face, the way you've been kissing him since year one. Valarr’s mouth is warm, familiar. His lower lip catches against yours, and you taste the faint chemistry of his evening. The espresso he had after dinner, the trace of mint at the corner of his mouth from his toothpaste.

“I love you, sweet girl,” he whispers against your mouth with quiet desperation.

“I know,” you reassure him.

“More than—”

You press another urgent kiss to his mouth. “I know, Val.”

You kiss the corner of his mouth. His temple. You let him pull you in and fold you against his chest in the careful, absorbed manner he’s always used, and you let him reach over and turn off the lamp without untangling himself from you.

He sleeps with his arms locked around you.

You feel him settle. The drawn breath of him against the crown of your hair. His hand at the small of your back has gone heavy. The smell of his skin warms against your face—Bergamot, cedar, and the warmer animal note that lives at the base of his throat.

But you can feel Valarr thinking. It hums in the faint tension that never quite leaves the muscle of his arm. His pulse, when you set your fingertips to the inside of his wrist, hasn’t eased all the way down for sleep.

You smile in the dark, turning your face into his throat and let him think.

He thinks for a long, long time.

You drift off before he does.

The week that passes is, on the surface, ordinary. 

Valarr goes to work. You go to work. He calls you on Tuesday on his way out of an offsite, and you talk for forty minutes about nothing. He brings flowers on Wednesday. Purple anemones, the ones you said you liked, and he enjoys giving you things you like. He kisses you Friday morning on the temple before leaving for the gym, attentive, fond, the warm press of his mouth in your sleep-tangled hair.

Throughout, you note the weight of his thinking.

He’s doing it under everything, a background hum. He’s even more attentive than usual. The hyper-focused warmth of a man who’s been given a piece of homework he intends to do well on.

You don’t bring up your late-night conversation once.

Saturday night, you’re out. A dinner with your old roommate and her husband. The dinner runs long. You drink more chianti than you planned. It’s nearly midnight when the cab finally pulls up to the building, and you let yourself in with your own penthouse key, calling out an automatic I'm home. You’re slipping out of your coat in the foyer when—

Wrong.

No. Not wrong. Different.

You pause with one arm half out of the sleeve.

The penthouse is dark. The lamps are turned down to the lowest setting, almost theatrical. The city is laid out in the long glass at the far end of the living room, golden but cold at this distance. The air carries him faintly. The woody base of his soap, something close to bergamot, at the base of his throat.

You finish slipping out of the coat, holding it on your arm. Then you step carefully into the doorway of the living room.

Valarr is on the couch.

Not in the centre. Off to one end, in the long shadow where the lamp light doesn't quite reach. Bare feet on the rug, one ankle crossed over the opposite knee. A glass of bourbon held loose between two fingers—index and middle, the others curled toward his palm—resting on his thigh. 

He wears a black shirt, barely buttoned, the collar open well past the second button so you can see the hollow at the base of his throat and the faint blue-shadowed line of his collarbones under the fine cotton. The sleeves are rolled, neatly, to mid-forearm, exactly the way you like on him. The rolled cuffs sit just below his elbow, exposing the long cut tendons of his inner forearm and the soft veins along the underside of his wrist where they vanish into his palm. Hair damp. Recently showered. The pale streak at his temple dark with it, plastered slightly to the side of his head, the rest of his hair falling forward over his brow in that loose post-shower way that you have, if you’re truthful, never been entirely able to look at without losing a small portion of your composure.

His face, when it turns to you, is—

You stop.

His gaze is not warm. It’s not the tired warmth of a man waiting up to ask you about your night. There’s something fixed about it. Steady. Dark in a particular register you’ve seen flicker, briefly, two or three times in three years, and have never, before tonight, seen settle for longer than a glimpse.

Less golden. More predator, more dragon.

Valarr doesn’t speak, and he doesn’t stand.

A tingling, cold shiver ripples the length of your spine.

In a quiet, private corner of yourself, you observe the following: your boyfriend has been thinking intently for six days. Your boyfriend has, in your absence, showered, drunk a few mouthfuls of bourbon, dimmed the lamps, and arranged himself on a couch in a half-buttoned black shirt with his sleeves pushed up. Your boyfriend has put a stage together for you, and your boyfriend has placed himself at the centre of it. When he turns his head to look at you, his face has a dark, collected quality to it.

In an even smaller, quieter corner of yourself, you observe: he’s so beautiful you can’t look at him directly. You have to look at him in pieces. The line of his throat first. Then the line of his sleeve. Then that veiny hand on the glass. Then his mouth.

You wet your lips.

“Hi,” you call out, testing.

Valarr doesn’t answer.

“You waited up.”

“I did,” he agrees, voice low.

His voice has gone smoky. Not the smooth, charming Valarr voice. Not the rawer, boyish one underneath when you take him apart. Something further down than both. The voice of a man who’s been sitting alone in the half-dark with a glass of bourbon and a thought, and has worked the thought through to its end.

“Valarr.”

“Come here.”

You hesitate.

A brief thing, but you hesitate. Not from fear. From a bright, unsettled curiosity that wants to test the boundary. You’ve been in charge of this room for three years. Even the few times he’s had you against a wall, even the few times he’s bent you over a counter and fucked you into it, you’ve been holding the reins.

You set your coat down on the bench. This is a test. You want to see him do it again, want to see if he can commit. 

“How was—”

“Come here.”

Sharper. The smoky voice has acquired an edge, an edge that lives just under the golden surface, and your breath catches before you have time to be embarrassed about it.

You go.

You walk across the rug. Stop in front of him. Valarr sits looking up at you, the bourbon set aside on the side table without a sound. He hasn’t put his hands on you yet. He drags his eyes over you instead. Leisurely, no apology, drinking in every line shamelessly, possessively. From the heels you haven’t stepped out of, up the dark stockings, the hem of the dress where the wool has ridden up an inch from the cab, the swell of your hips, your waist, your throat above the collar, your parted mouth.

The look lands as if it were a hand.

He stands. One motion. Suddenly too close. Valarr’s hands come up and take your face. Both of them. The long, elegant fingers along your jaw, his thumbs at your cheekbones, gentle in their hold but absolutely settled. He tilts your face up to him.

For the first time in three years, Valarr doesn’t ask.

He looks at you.

He looks at you for a long beat. You wait for the kiss he usually gives you, but it doesn’t come. He doesn’t speak. Only gazes at you the way he’s looked at you a thousand times—the immortalising look, the focused-fascinated drink—except now there’s something underneath it, something darker, and the reverent question that’s always lived at the bottom of that look is gone. The look is, for the first time, the look of a man who’s stopped asking.

This close, you can see his eyelashes. The long dark fan of them. The brown eye now almost black, the blue one bright under the lamp light. The faint shadow under his cheekbone where he’s been clenching his jaw for an hour. The slight parting of his lips. The fine bone at the bridge of his nose, half a centimetre from yours.

Your breath hitches.

Valarr hears it. His mouth moves. Just slightly. Not a smile, that dark corner tug again.

“Val—”

“Be quiet, my love.”

It comes out low, almost gentle. The endearment lands in its usual place. The instruction does not.

A bright shock runs through you. Valarr has never once told you to be quiet. You open your mouth, then let it close.

You decide—in the half-second of his thumb stroking once along your cheekbone—that you’ve asked him for this. That you’ve given him every key. That if you’re going to feel the edge of him, you have to let him hold it, fully, and he can’t hold it fully if you keep your hand on it too. You decide to let him have the reins for once. You decide to feel it.

You stay quiet.

His thumb strokes again. A pleased sound escapes him at the back of his throat. Valarr’s palm sets against the side of your jaw, the heel of it under your ear, his fingers spread back into the small, fine hairs at your nape. He turns your face, fractionally, the way a man might turn an art piece he’s examining in good light.

“Look at you,” he murmurs.

His voice has a brow furrow in it. You can hear it without looking. The line between his brows that’s been there all week, the same line that was there over the memo Wednesday, working a problem.

“Look at you in this dress. Out at dinner. Laughing. Drinking. With your friends. While I sat here for three hours thinking about you.”

You start to speak. He sets his thumb, gently, against your lower lip.

“No.”

You swallow.

A small, pleased sound hums at the back of his throat. “Good girl.”

His other hand drops to the buttons of your dress.

He undoes the first. Then the second. The cool air of the apartment reaches your sternum. Valarr doesn't look down at his hands. He keeps his eyes on you the entire time. The act of undressing you is a thing he’s set himself, tonight, to enjoy. You feel the faint warm brush of his knuckle against the bare skin of your stomach as the third button gives, and the fourth, and the fifth.

You watch his face the entire time.

You watch the small absorbed concentration in his expression. The faint line returns between his brows. His eyes follow the line of skin he’s uncovering, then return to your face, then back. His mouth has parted wider. The pink swell of his bitten lower lip is faintly damp now. He’s breathing through it, shallow, the long line of his throat working when he swallows.

He undoes the last button at your hip.

He sets his palms flat on your shoulders and draws the dress carefully off you. The wool slides down your arms, pools at your feet.

“Out of the heels.”

You step out. The world shrinks down by three inches. The weight of the room shifts around the lost height, and shifts again when Valarr steps in closer. He’s now noticeably taller than he was a moment ago, and the long line of his chest in the half-buttoned black shirt is at the level of your eyes.

“Valarr—”

“Quiet, my love.”

His hands find your waist, turning you. Controlled. Deliberate. He draws you back against him. Your spine to the front of his black shirt, and through the fine cotton, you register the solid line of his chest at your back. Through the linen of his pyjamas, you register that Valarr is hard. Has been. Possibly for the entire hour he’s been waiting for you.

His mouth comes down to the side of your throat. He breathes against you without kissing. The heat of his exhale at the hinge of your jaw burns. The faint grain of his stubble against the soft skin under your ear scratches.

His hands come up. Take hold of the front of your bra with both hands. Pull. The clasp is at the back, but Valarr isn’t interested in the clasp.

The seam at the front gives. The sharp tear of fine fabric tears through the room. The bra comes away in Valarr’s hand. You gasp before you can catch it. He sets the ruined thing aside on the side table without looking. His palms return, flat, to cup your breasts. The cool air of the apartment brushes against the bare skin of your chest, and you swallow down a gasp when Valarr rolls your breasts thoughtfully in his palms. 

He laughs. Once, low and dark. Right at your ear.

“You're going to talk back, aren't you, my love? You always do. You don't know how to be quiet. Such a difficult woman. Such a hard, beautiful, difficult woman.”

One hand drops down the line of your stomach. The other stays cupped over your left breast, his thumb working a slow drag across your nipple that pulls a faint, involuntary noise out of your throat.

“All week I've been thinking about you. Did you know? Of course, you knew. You always know.” You hear a silky, affectionate chuckle behind you. “You set it on me Wednesday night, and you went back to sleep. You knew I'd think about it. You knew I wouldn't sleep properly until I had an answer for you.”

His hand finds the top of your stockings.

“I have an answer for you, sweet girl.”

Valarr sets two fingers under the lace edge. The fine fibres go taut against his hand. Then—

He rips.

You gasp. The bright sound of stockings tearing reaches you. The lace at the top gives way, the long ladder running down the inside of your thigh, and his hand spreads flat against the bare skin of your thigh through the rip. Hot. Purposeful.

“Val—”

“I told you to be quiet, love.”

He rips the other side. The same gripping, unapologetic pull. The same brilliant sound of fabric giving up. The second stocking comes apart along the inside of your other thigh, and Valarr’s hand splays there too, and the cool air of the apartment finds the bare skin of your thighs through the shredded mess of what had been, two minutes ago, a hundred-and-forty pair of stockings.

You register, low and immediate, that you’re very wet.

So does Valarr. 

His hand has come up, exploratory, two fingers pressing flat over the thin silk of your underwear, and he goes still for half a second. A pleased hum comes out of him that you haven’t heard before in three years.

“Oh, my love,” he says fondly. “You're soaked.”

Silence. He has told you to be quiet. You bite your own cheek. 

“Look at you. I haven't done a single thing yet. I've torn a bra and a pair of stockings, and you're already —” His fingers press against the silk. “Were you wet in the cab? You knew what you were coming home to.”

Valarr hooks both thumbs in the silk at your hips. Pulls. The underwear gives at the side seam. He has to pull harder this time, and then it gives entirely. Valarr draws the ruined silk away from you and sets it on the side table on top of the ruined bra.

You stand naked in the half-light of the living room with Valarr Targaryen, fully clothed, pressed against your back.

“Down,” he says. “On your knees.”

His hand presses, low, between your shoulder blades, and you go.

You go forward awkwardly, your bare heels coming up off the rug, and you go down onto your knees on the heavy wool. The immediate roughness of the weave registers on the bare skin of your kneecaps, the dense pile against your shins. He follows you down. Not all the way. Valarr kneels behind you, and the linen of his pyjama bottoms is at the backs of your thighs, the fine cotton of his shirt at your spine, and the hard line of him, still clothed, against your bare lower back.

Both his hands come around. One settles flat and claiming on your stomach. The other goes up to your throat. Not gripping, his fingers are too loose, but the heel of his palm settles at your collarbone. The way you’ve set your hand on him a thousand times.

The way he has not, before tonight, set his on you.

“You like this so much,” he murmurs in your ear. “Don't you?”

You don't answer. You’ve been told twice now to be quiet.

A hum. “You can answer.”

“Yes,” you rasp.

Another hum. “Yes, what?”

“Yes, Val.”

A pleased chuckle. The hand at your throat strokes once with the long line of his fingers.

“You set this on me Wednesday night, and you went out for chianti tonight,” he says quietly. “You let me sit here and think about it for six days. You knew exactly how I'd be when you walked in. You wanted me like this.”

He nips lightly at the lobe of your ear.

“You think I haven't been hard for a week, my love. You think I haven't been on calls, in meetings, in the back of cars, thinking about every single thing I'd never let myself do to you. I've been picturing this. You. Naked. On my floor. Soaked through. Quiet, for once in your life, because I told you to be.”

His thumb drags over the centre of you, over the tight peak. You breathe out, unsteady.

“Don't be angry,” you whisper.

“I'm not angry.”

“You sound—”

“I'm not angry,” Valarr interrupts quietly. “I'm thinking. I've been thinking all night about you. Be quiet, my love. Listen."

His hand at your stomach drops, sliding deliberately between your hips. Valarr pushes your knees further apart on the rug, gently but purposefully. He arranges your hips at an angle he wants them. His other hand spreads at your nape. You feel, distantly, the warning of the carpet under your knees, the way it’s going to burn in the morning.

“Lean forward.”

He pushes. The flat of his hand at your nape, the gentle, insistent press that puts you down onto your forearms on the rug. Your back arches. Your hips rise. The cool air of the apartment hits the bare wetness of your cunt.

Behind you, the whisper of linen fills the air as Valarr undresses. The clean thud of cotton landing on the side of the couch sounds. He’s thrown the shirt. Valarr has never once thrown a piece of clothing in three years you’ve been together, and you file it; you file it; you’ll think about it later.

His hand returns to your nape.

He drags the head of his cock, leisurely, through the wet of you, and you suck in a breath. He doesn’t push in. Not yet. There’s only the unhurried drag, the burning heat of him along the slick of you. You bite the inside of your cheek. Hard. You’re not allowed to speak, and you’re not allowed to take the way you usually do. You’re forgetting how not to.

“My love.”

You try to find your voice as Valarr drags his cock between your folds again, coating himself in you. “Yes?”

“Tell me what you wanted,” he says calmly.

“I—Val, please—”

“Tell me.”

He drags the head of him through you again, using his thumb to part your folds, opening the slick of you against him. Valarr looks down. You can't see him, but you can feel the angle of his attention, the exact spot where he’s rubbing himself against you, at the slick mess of you against him.

“Use me,” you breathe.

A low, curious sound rumbles in his chest. 

You swallow over your dry tongue, tingling all over. “You… Use me. I asked you to use me.”

“You did, my love,” he agrees, almost lazily. 

“Please, Val. Need you.”

A pleased, dark sound builds at the back of his throat.

“I'm going to use you,” he confirms gently, the swollen head of his cock, dragging back and forth. You can feel his pre-cum mixing with your arousal, your pelvic tightening around the emptiness inside you. “I've been thinking about it for a week. I'm going to use you exactly the way I've been thinking about, sweet girl. I'm going to wreck you on this rug, my love, and I'm going to enjoy it.”

He pushes in.

To the hilt. One fluid stroke. No pause. No asking. No half-second of letting you adjust. The sound that tears out of you is loud, choked. Valarr doesn't soften for it. His hand at your nape holds you down where he wants you. His other hand finds the curve of your hip, fingers spread, and he stays in you. The deep stretch of him against the inside of you is shocking, the thick heat splitting you apart, the pulse of him against the tender walls. 

Valarr breathes out slowly through his teeth. A sound of pure, masculine satisfaction. 

“Oh,” he breathes. The half-word cracks.

He pulls out. Almost all the way, then pushes back in. Hard. Again. Harder. The slap of his hips against the back of your thighs echoes through the room. The drag of him through you leaves a trail of fire; the wet, slick sounds of how ready you are unmistakable, too loud. You try to focus on the cool stretch of your spine. The dense burn of wool under your forearms. 

Valarr fucks you the way a man fucks a thing he’s been told he’s allowed to wreck completely.

“Look at you taking it,” he drawls behind you, his voice silky, faint breathlessness catching the syllables. “Filthy thing. Greedy thing. You wanted this, didn't you? Tell me how long.”

“Months, Val—”

“Months. My pretty, polite, perfect girl. Sitting across from me at dinners, thinking about being on her knees on my carpet. All those nights I was being good to you, my love. Gentle. Patient. Asking. Were you wanting this then, too?”

“Yes—”

“Were you lying in our bed waiting for me to stop being so fucking gentle and just take you?”

You muffle a moan against your forearm when he thrusts into you at a particularly shallow angle. “Val—”

“Tell me.”

“Yes, I was—”

“Good girl. Look at how honest you are when I've got you like this,” he says, breathless, his fingers tightening at your hip, holding you in position. “Look at how truthful my good girl gets with my cock inside her. You're a different creature down here, aren't you, my love? All that steely composure. All that poise. And here you are with your face on a rug and your knees apart and your cunt dripping for me. What would anyone say if they could see you right now? They'd never believe you. They'd never believe what a filthy, desperate, greedy thing you are for me.”

Valarr’s hand at your hip slides up your back, across the wing of your shoulder, and grips at the back of your neck like the scruff of a creature he means to hold. His palm spreads. His fingers press into the muscle on either side of your spine. Holding.

He pulls out. Stops himself, catches the edge of his own discipline, and pushes back in with a slower, purposeful slip. He leans forward over you. His mouth comes down to the long curve at the back of your neck, and Valarr sinks his teeth in.

Just hard enough that you feel his teeth in your flesh. Hard enough that the sound you make is half a yelp.

He sucks the bite afterwards.

“All week, my love,” he says conversationally. “Do you want to know what I've been thinking about?”

“Yes, yes.”

“That’s my good girl.”

His hand, the one that had been at your hip, slides down between your bodies and finds the clenched, weeping centre of you. His finger works you with the precise, dedicated focus, exactly at the spot where his cock keeps pushing into you. A wrecked sound escapes you at the dual sensation. Valarr’s voice fills your ear. 

Low, smoky, silken, every consonant placed with the same patient attention he's giving the centre of you.

“I've been thinking about all the things I'd never let myself say to you. Filthy, ugly things, my love. The kind of things polite men aren't supposed to think. I've been thinking about you bent over my desk in the office.” He pauses at the hungry sound you let rip and huffs, low and fond. “About how I've watched men look at you for three years and sat there and smiled. About every time I touch you, I have to count the seconds before I'm allowed to move. About everything I could do to you if I just stopped counting."

A wet sound bubbles at the back of your throat between every lazy, rolling thrust. “Val—”

“I've been thinking about your mouth, sweet girl. About how it looks when you're talking to my mother at brunch. About how my mother thinks you're a perfect girl. The perfect heiress. The most well-mannered young woman she has ever met, she said that to me in October. Did I ever tell you?”

A laugh, soft, dark, genuinely amused.

“And here you are,” he coos. “On a Saturday night with your face on a rug and your perfect mouth on my floor. What would she say? What would anyone say, hm? They'd never believe what a filthy thing you are for me.”

“Val, please, Val—”

“I've been thinking about how good you'd look, anywhere, with my hand at your throat,” he goes on pleasantly.

His hand drops back to your hip. He pulls almost out. Slams in. The heat of him hammers through you, sending you forward by several inches. Your breath comes in punched pieces, your heart tripping over itself. The carpet burns, rough wool rubbing against your forearms and knees. The bone at the side of your hip, where it’s closest to the floor, aches pleasantly, mixing with blinding pleasure between your thighs where Valarr fucks into you. His chest is sweat-slick where it brushes your back when he leans in. The long damp line of him is hot, the smell of him gone fully animal now, the bergamot warmed by the salt of him. The hot, heavy musk of a man who’s been hard for an hour and is only now being permitted to claim what he wants.

Valarr’s hand slides up, splaying low on your stomach. He flattens his palm there under your navel. The heel of it pressed in. Then he stops moving—fully seated, deep—and holds.

You feel him through every inch of yourself. 

Through your own body, against his hand. The hot thick line of him deep inside you, pulsing. The insistent throb of him against your soft inner walls. His palm pressed flat on the outside. The impossible faint pulse of yourself between the two. Like he’s holding himself in his own hand through you, like your body is the thinnest possible distance between his cock and his hand. 

You’re aware, suddenly, of how full you are. Of how thoroughly Valarr has nestled himself inside you. Of the warm, wet stretch of yourself open around him, sucking him in deeper, of the slick of you running down the inside of your thigh, of the slow, constant clench of yourself trying to hold him deeper without your permission. Your back arches slightly, instinctively. Your hips lift the fractional hopeful inch.

“Feel that?” he breathes against the shell of your ear.

“Yes, I, Val—”

He kisses your damp skin. “Feel where I am. Feel how deep, my love. Feel my hand.”

He presses. Ever so slightly. The pressure makes you gasp, clawed hand tearing at the rug beneath you.

“That's me,” he rasps, his hot breath burning against your neck. “That's where I am inside you. Right there. Right under my hand.”

He starts moving again. Slower, more punishing this time. Each thrust drags the long, thick length of Valarr’s cock through you and presses you down against his hand again. His palm stays flat on your stomach the whole time so that you can feel him from inside and outside at once. 

The pulse of him against your inner wall washes away all else. You register the faint slick of his sweat against your belly under that hand. The unhurried withdraw—the sudden ache of emptiness, the rim of you fluttering helplessly around the head of him before he mercifully sinks in again, like he can’t be parted from you too long—and the slide back. The wet sound of him entering you fills your ears, over and over. Followed by a strangled, involuntary noise that escapes you each time.

“I've been thinking about you carrying my child.”

You go still, your breath catching.

Valarr doesn't stop.

He fucks into you on the word child—once, firm, deep, the head of him reaching the high pulse of you in a way that makes your toes curl on the rug—and his hand presses harder against your belly. His other hand at the back of your neck tightens. His voice has gone lower. Silken. The quiet register of a man who has, for six days, been thinking about nothing but this.

“I couldn't stop thinking about it,” he goes on, words turning more ragged. “I'd be on a call, I'd be in a meeting, and I'd be thinking about putting a child in you, sweet girl."

Another thrust. Deeper, all the way to the bottom. The press of his palm into your belly. A small wet whimper slips past your clenched teeth.

“About filling you up.”

A thrust. Valarr’s hand spreads wider. His long, careful fingers rubbing across the soft of your stomach. The head of him bumps that high, impossible place inside you that makes your spine arch and your hips push back into Valarr’s thrust, seeking more.

“About watching it take.”

A sound, maybe half sob, bubbles past your lips. Valarr pushes back into you. The wet smack of his hips against the back of your thighs making him sigh. A bead of his sweat drops between your shoulder blades, sliding into the dip of your spine.

“About your belly going round under my hand. Just like this. The same hand. Right here.”

Valarr drags his palm, flat, in a slow circle low across your stomach. His thumb traces the small soft rise where, in some imagined version of this, his child would be growing under his hand. Your hips give a small involuntary roll up into the press of his palm, seeking more pressure.

He registers it.

“Oh, my love.”

He presses harder, so hard your vision nearly blacks out, his cock pulsing inside you so hard that Valarr hisses behind you. He doesn’t stop thrusting into you despite it, going shallow and deep, so deep you could feel him at the back of your throat. 

“I want to spread you open, my love,” he gasps. “I want to spread you open and watch myself go into you. I want to do it again and again until your body learns. I want to make a habit of it. Every night. Every morning. I want to put myself inside you and not stop until you take. Until it takes."

He pulls out almost all the way, the long drag of him through your swollen cunt, and sinks back in to the hilt. He stays there.

“Look at how you open for me. Every. Single. Time. Look at how easy it is. Look at how your body knows me. Like we were made for each other.”

Valarr drags out again. Slower. Sinks back in. Even slower, gliding past every inflamed nerve. The deliberate watching cadence of a man who’s doing this so you can feel each individual stroke. So you can feel each filling. So you can register, in its leisurely deliberatness, that he’s taking you and giving you back to yourself, emptier, and then taking you again.

“I want to see you swollen with it, my love.” His voice is unravelling. The smooth, controlled Valarr is gone. This, you realise through your pleasure haze, is Valarr undone, speaking of his darkest, most private fantasies. “Heavy. I want my hand here for nine months, love. I want every man who looks at you to know what I am to you, what I've done. What you let me do. Every time I see you in a dress in a room of three hundred people, I want them to know that you go home with me, and you let me put myself inside you, and you let me keep me there until it takes.”

He fucks you harder. His hand presses hard against your stomach with each thrust now. Palm flat, the heel of his hand pressing the soft swell of you down onto the next slide of him.

“I want to keep you. I want to keep all of you. Every soft place. Every secret place. Every place a man would never see. I want all of it. I want to mark every inch of you I'm allowed to, and a few I'm not. I want my hand on your stomach in restaurants when you're eight months along, and I want everyone in the goddamn room to see it."

“Fuck, Val, Val—” 

Your voice cracks.

“Some day, my love,” he hisses. “I'm going to breed you exactly like this. I'm going to put a baby in you with my hand here and your face on the floor and your cunt clenching around me, and I'm going to keep you full until it takes, and then I'm going to do it again. Again. Again."

A strained, dazed noise comes out of you. Not a word. Your whole body has gone hot. Liquid. You can feel your face burning into the rug, your nipples burning against the wool, the bright wet ache between your thighs going molten, the absurd impossible pulse of want at the place where his palm is pressed flat to your stomach.

“Not tonight. I'm not going to tonight. I know. But I'm going to think about it. The entire time. Every time I'm inside you tonight. Every time I come in you. I want you to know that, my love. I want you to know what I'm thinking when I finish."

“Yes, yes.”

“Tell me you want me to think about it.”

You squirm, your whole body one massive coil of pleasure. “I want you to think about it, Val—”

He laughs softly, relieved. “My good, beautiful, ruined girl. My wolf.”

He fucks you harder.

His hand returns to your throat, his fingers loose. Valarr leans over you now, the length of his strong body along the length of yours, his mouth at your ear. His hips work in deliberate strokes. The burn of the carpet is getting worse. Your forearms feel like they’re on fire, your knees beginning to ache. Each thrust sends your nipples dragging on the rough wool of the rug, a bright burn that threads all the way down into the heat of your stomach and joins, somehow, to the place where his palm stays pressed. To the place where he’s just been telling you he wants to put a child.

You come.

You come with your face turned into the rug and Valarr’s teeth at the back of your shoulder, his hand at your throat. You come hard—a long shuddering ache of it, your whole body locking almost painfully around him, your spine arching up into the long warm pin of his weight—and Valarr fucks you through it without slowing, and his voice, in your ear:

“That's it. There's my filthy, perfect girl. Come on. All of it. Take it. Keep taking it.”

You moan weakly. “Val.”

“My greedy, perfect, filthy girl. Look at you,” he whispers, dazed. “Listen to you. I haven't even properly started, my love."

You’re still pulsing around him, the aftershocks, when his hand at your throat tightens fractionally, and he says—

“Not done. Stay open for me.”

You shudder. Valarr keeps going.

Valarr fucks you through the over-sensitive aftermath. Slower now but not gentler. His hand stays at your throat, his other hand splayed flat under your stomach to keep your hips up at the angle he wants. Dazed, reflexive sounds leave you. The drag of him inside you feels almost torturous when you’re still soft and pulsing. The bright unbearable —

You come again. Shorter, sharper, less prepared. You sob, faintly, against the rug.

“There we go,” he pants. “Look at how greedy you are for me. So greedy for my cock, sweet girl. Such a greedy, beautiful girl.”

Your tongue feels too heavy in your mouth, tied up by sheer pleasure pulsing through your limbs. 

“You can take more,” Valarr declares silkily. 

It’s not a question.

He pulls out, flipping you. The world spins, briefly—your back is on the rug now, the rough wool against your shoulder blades—nd he’s over you, his eyes black, the streak in his hair gone fully damp at the temple. His bitten mouth shines,  aflush high on his cheekbones, and Valarr is peering down at you with the fixed dark focus.

You drink him in.

You take him in for the first time tonight from this angle, and he’s…

He’s unfair, practically impossible. The most beautiful thing your eye has settled on in three years and possibly your life. The flushed, gleaming line of him in the lamplight fills your sight. The white streak, bitten swell of his lower lip where his own teeth have been. The long rope of muscle along the inside of his arm, where he braces by your head. The narrow cut of his hip. The long, lean torso slick with sweat. The wide spread of his shoulders bracing over you.

You make a sound. A small, hungry, appreciative noise. Valarr hears it, and the corner of his mouth crooks.

“Look at you looking at me,” he murmurs lovingly. Almost amused. “My perfect love. Look at you.”

He hooks one of your knees up. Sets it over his shoulder. Drives back in.

You arch, gasping, your mouth staying open.

He fucks you on your back with your knee at his shoulder, the angle deeper, the wool of the rug burning the bare skin of your back and the curve of your other thigh. Your breasts are exposed to him now. Valarr's mouth comes down. He bites—once, hard, on the upper swell—and sucks the bruise after, the long drag of tongue you taught him, then licks across to the centre of you and closes his mouth around a nipple. The shocked noise you make is all impulse.

“Val.”

“Mm.”

“I can't, I can’t, t’much—”

A gentle little hum, considering, then, “You can.”

“I—I’m… much—”

“Mm. I know, my love. I know.”

He lifts his mouth. Looks at you. Something patient, watching. Almost cruel. The boyish wonder is gone, replaced with something more predatory.

“Take it, sweet girl,” he says, a low order.

His pace picks up again, harder, deeper. 

You take it. You take it because there’s nothing else to do. You take it because everything in your body has reached the point of no resistance. You take it because somewhere underneath the oversensitive blinding burn of it, you’re coming again, coming a third time, smaller, longer, the rolling thing of having been used past your own sense of yourself, and Valarr—

Valarr keeps fucking you through it, and his voice, wrecked above you, the flush spreading down his throat, the long lean line of him gleaming, the streak in his hair black with sweat. He bows his forehead to yours.

He hasn’t finished.

He’s been holding off the whole time. The iron self-discipline of three years is now applied in the service of taking you for as long as he wants.

“Val—please—come—”

“Soon,” he drawls, almost dismissively. “You don't decide that anymore. Not tonight. I do.”

He flips you again. You go limp, let him handle your body. You’re entirely his to position by now. Your body gone soft and used, the distant remove of being fucked into the floor by a man who has, finally, stopped asking. Valarr puts you back on your knees, your forearms. His hand slots at your nape. He pushes back in, the wet sound of him sliding into swollen cunt you the loudest thing in the room.

“Stay there for me.”

You stay.

For a count.

You stay through ten thrusts. Twenty. You stay through the burn in your shoulders, the deeper ache in your hips—

And then your arms go.

The tremor at the elbow. The loss of feeling at the wrist. The bright fizz of overworked muscle, and your forearms simply slide forward on the rug. Your cheek hits the wool. Your shoulders come down. Your hips drop a degree—

And then your knees give. They simply quit. Both of them. You collapse forward onto your stomach on the rug with a muffled noise.

Valarr doesn’t stop.

He follows you down. His weight comes with you—the powerful, damp heavy length of him along your spine, his cock still buried in you, his hand still fisted at your nape—and he braces his other hand flat beside your head on the wool, and he—

He doesn’t pull out, doesn’t withdraw to thrust again.

Valarr sinks himself inside to the hilt and stays.

He grinds.

His pelvis presses flush against the curve of your ass. The bone of his hip against the soft of you. His cock buries as deep as he can put it, deeper than he has ever taken you, and he doesn't pull back. He doesn't stroke. He doesn't fuck. He works himself in short, blunt grinds and twitches—the unrelenting, slow press of a man who’s no longer interested in motion, only in depth, in trying with the entire animal focus of his body to push that impossible additional inch into you, to bury himself further than the biology of bodies allows.

The carefully articulate man is gone. There’s only silence behind you, only animal focus. 

What's left underneath is the instinct of a creature trying to put itself into another creature in a way that takes.

He grinds. He stays. He presses.

Valarr’s sweat slicks the long line of your back where his chest has come down on you. Another bead of it rolls between your shoulder blades slowly, and he doesn't notice; he’s somewhere deeper than awareness, the hot ragged broken pant of his breath at the back of your neck, the salt of him heavy in the air. His hand fists tight in your hair. The bone of his hip drives against the soft of your ass—again, again, again—in the constant ungovernable rhythm of a man trying to plant himself.

You can’t move.

You’re pinned. Hips flat to the wool. Knees splayed loose where they had given. Cheek pressed to the carpet. Valarr is heavy. He’s so heavy. The full damp warm crushing weight of him on you, his teeth set against the place where your neck meets your shoulder, and the impossible deep blunt pressure of his cock somewhere high inside you that you’ve not, in three years of being fucked by him, ever felt him reach. He’s not in motion.  There’s only pressure and depth. He’s sheer weight. The warm, wet impossibility of a man trying to get further inside you than he’s ever been.

You feel him through every inch of you.

Through your stomach against the rug, where his hand had been splayed. Through your hips against the floor. The high pulse where the head of him is grinding against the inner wall of you, the small, impossible spot that makes your toes curl. The angle that makes your eyes go wet against the wool, that makes you helplessly clench and flutter around him each time he presses deeper. Through the pulse of yourself between his cock and the rug, between his weight and the floor, the tight pulse of being completely and entirely held in place.

You sob into the wool.

You’re not in pain, you’re not scared, there’s only pleasure so consuming, your entire body has gone numb. Valarr opened your body past where you can hold any logic. There’s only the deep, blunt grinding pressure of him at a place you had not known existed. You’re going to come from this, you realise distantly, from being held down and pressed open and used like a thing that exists only to be filled by him.

The dark hunger gathers low in your stomach, where his hand is no longer splayed because his hand is at the back of your neck again, because he’s no longer narrating, no longer praising, no longer checking. He has, finally, stopped checking.

You are a thing he’s using.

You let yourself be it.

You make a wrecked, broken sound into the rug.

Valarr answers with a groan of his own. Half a word, half a growl, all of it animal. His grind goes harder, the tiny, frantic pressure of him going tighter against you, his hips driving forward in shorter and shorter pulses, and you feel him stutter.

His pace breaks. His rhythm fractures.

“Going to come,” he gasps. “Going to come, my love—inside—tell me—”

“Inside, Val—”

He groans deeply, and it sounds animal. “All of it —”

“All of it—”

Valarr finally breaks.

Teeth at the back of your neck. Weight pressing you flat. A ruined, broken sound at your ear that’s not a word, but instead something older than words. The helpless, drawn-out moan of a man whose body has given itself over to something deeper than reason. He holds inside you. Pulses. The long shuddering release into you, the hot spill of his cum going deep, his hips still working in those compact, relentless grinds long after he should be still. Pressing, pressing, pressing, the unconscious instinct to work himself further, to make sure of it, to push every drop into the impossible space he’s been trying to reach. You feel each pulse of him as a separate event. The shudder runs all the way down the length of his back, where your hand can’t reach.

Valarr stays.

His weight folds on you, his mouth hot at your nape. His pelvis presses flush against your ass, his cock buried to the hilt and softening but not yet leaving. His sweat-slick chest presses against your back, breath ragged in your ear.

He stays for a long time.

You can hear him come back to himself.

The breath against your neck slows. Gradually. The fist in your hair loosens. The hot, tight blind grip of Valarr at your nape unfists, his fingers spreading instead. That diligent, slow spread of a hand that’s remembered, somewhere, that it belongs to a man who loves you. The ragged, animal pant goes quiet. The grinding presses of his hips ease. Valarr sets his forehead down against the back of your shoulder. He breathes.

The shift is total.

You feel it in his body. In the room. In the air over you. The animal that had been pinning you to the floor—the heavy rutting pressing crushing thing that had been working itself deeper into you for the last however-many-minutes—is, all at once, gone. In its place: Valarr. Your golden Val. The attentive, tender man who’s spent three years asking before each thing returned to you between one breath and the next. 

The warm weight of him is a different creature entirely from the heavy, primal grinding thing of two minutes ago.

His hand, the one that had been fisted in your hair, opens. The long fingers spread, gentle, against the side of your skull. He strokes once, soft, behind your ear. His other hand slides off the rug from where it had been braced beside your head and settles, palm-flat and tender, at the curve of your hip. A possessive, soothing weight.

“Oh, my love,” he breathes. His voice has gone soft, frayed. Not a hint in it of the smoky predator from before. “Oh, my love. Look at what you let me do.”

He pulls out carefully. Cool air bites into your flushed skin. You whimper at the loss. He hushes you, soft, his palm flat at the small of your back. You can already feel him dripping out of you, streaking down your inner thigh in thick gushes. 

He kneels behind you.

His thumbs come to either side of you, and he spreads you. Gently. Both hands drawing you apart, and you feel the cool air between your stinging thighs. You feel Valarr looking. Examining. The slow leaking warmth of his cum, beginning to slip free of you, your cunt unable to hold everything he’s put in you inside.

A sound comes out of him. A low, drawn, broken breath. 

“Look at that.” His voice cracks, shaky. “Oh, look at that. Look at you. Look at what I've done to you. Look at how full you are of me, sweet girl.”

He keeps you spread. Scrutinising his work. His thumb rests—not pressing in, just resting—at the rim of where he just spent god knows how many minutes fucking you like an animal. What follows is long focused quiet of him drinking the sight of his own mess leaking out of you down the inside of your thigh.

“Mine,” he says, low, silky. “Mine. Mine.”

He lets it leak. He watches for a long time.

Then his hands ease. Valarr lets you close. He sets his palm flat on the curve of your hip. Smoothing. He drags his thumb tenderly through the wet on the inside of your thigh, lifting the thumb and pressing the warm wet print against the small of your back and marking you with the mess of yourself. He sets his mouth, after, against the place he has marked with his cum. Kisses it. A soft, loving, closed-mouthed press, almost reverent. The kind of kiss he gave you on the temple this morning before the gym.

The kiss undoes you.

You make a sound. A tiny, low wet sound. Not under your control.

He hears it. The whole quality of him changes like a switch.

“My love.”

He’s back.

Golden Valarr is back, returned, the soft, attentive boyish warmth of him flooding into the room as if it had only been waiting for permission. You feel, through the shift of his body over you, through the change in his breathing, that the dark thing he’s been holding for an hour has, at last, completed its work and stepped aside.

“My love. Hey. Hey.”

His hand comes up to cup the side of your face, where it’s still turned against the wool. His thumb strokes your cheekbone. His other hand settles, possessive but soft, low at your hip.

“Hey. Sweet girl. Look at me,” he urges. “Look at me, sweet girl.”

You make another sound.

“Oh, no," he breathes. “Oh, no, sweet girl. Oh—look at you. Please.”

His voice has gone high and concerned, the voice he uses in the rare instances you’re properly hurt. When you twisted your ankle last winter at Winterfell, when you cut your hand on a glass last summer.

“My love. Talk to me. Please. Are you all right?”

You try to find your voice, and it takes several attempts. “I'm—I'm fine.”

You hear the rush of breath leave him. “Yeah?”

“More than fine,” you whisper weakly.

“Are you sure?” he demands urgently, and you hear the fear in his voice. 

“Val.”

“Please tell me,” he chokes out. “I need you to tell me.”

“I'm sure,” you reassure him softly, your voice a croak. “I'm—Val, I'm more than sure. Come here, pretty thing.”

He gathers you at once.

He moves fully onto the rug and draws you into his lap. Both arms careful, the long careful arrangement of your limbs against his chest. Your head settles into the warm hollow under Valarr’s jaw. The strong, damp line of his chest is against your side. His arm under your knees. His other arm around your back.

You burrow.

You burrow the way you do not, ordinarily, burrow. You press your face into the warmth of his throat, set your fingers weakly into the fine hair at the base of his neck, and stay there. He smells like himself. The salt of his sweat. The clean baseline of his soap underneath. You inhale all of it. You inhale him.

Your eyes prickle.

You’re not a woman who cries easily. You’re a Stark; the cool one; the one who does the holding. You feel a small warm tear leak out of the corner of your eye anyway, run slowly into the fine hair of his throat where your face is pressed, and you feel Valarr’s whole body register it.

He freezes like someone’s struck him.

For one half-beat. Then—

“Oh, my love.”

His arms tighten around you. The hand at your back spreads, drawing you in tighter to his body. His mouth comes down to your hair, and he’s kissing the crown of your head with the small, frantic kisses.

“Oh, sweet girl. Sweet girl. Come here. Let me hold you, let me love you.”

“Val.” His name comes out soft, needy in a way it never is coming from your mouth.

“I've got you,” he whispers fiercely into your skin, glueing you to his body. “I'm right here. I'm right here, sweet girl.”

He rocks you. Faintly. Not a sway you’re sure he’s conscious of. This is the instinct of a man holding a precious thing, the small back-and-forth of his weight on the rug, his arms locked around you, his mouth pressed to your hair.

“My love. My sweet, brave, beautiful, perfect wolf.”

You don't speak. You can't, quite. Not yet. Everything is too big, too loud, and you’re floating in your own body. You make a muffled sound into his throat instead, and Valarr makes one back, low, almost a coo. The smallest endearing wordless noise, a sound you’ve never heard from him before in three years.

You hum into his throat.

The hum vibrates against his pulse. You feel—under your mouth, against his skin—his pulse jump. You feel his arms tighten another fraction, hear his breath catch in his chest.

Valarr kisses your temple. Once. Closed-mouthed. The press of his lips into the fine hair at your hairline.

You sigh. A long unguarded sigh, the kind you would never permit yourself in Valarr’s presence on any ordinary night. The kind he’s been waiting three years to hear.

He kisses your eyebrow.

Then the corner of your eye where the tear had been. Then the bridge of your nose, the small bone there. Each kiss is gentler than the last. You tilt your face into him, blindly, seeking each peck.

“Oh, sweet girl,” he breathes, sounding awestruck. “Oh, you sweet, sweet thing.”

You nuzzle.

You press your face deeper into his throat. You drag your nose unhurriedly along the line of his throat from the line of his jaw to the hollow at the base, and the slight grain of his stubble catches against your cheek, and you make another throaty sound. He shudders faintly. His hand at your back goes flat, those long fingers spread, holding more of you against him.

“Sweet girl.”

Your answering sound is lost in his throat.

“Look at you with me,” he whispers tenderly, pressing a chaste kiss to your skin. 

You drag your mouth slowly across the line of Valarr’s throat. The faintest closed-mouthed press, the slightest open of your lips against his pulse. He breathes out, ragged.

“My love—”

“Mm.”

“You're undoing me,” he jokes quietly, but it comes out strangled. 

You hum. Pleased. The low sound vibrates against the warm hollow at the base of Valarr’s throat, and Valarr—Valarr makes the smallest sound in answer, something low and destroyed that lives somewhere between a laugh and a moan, and his hand at your hip slides up your back and finds the back of your head and holds you there.

“My love. Christ. Look at you.”

You lift your face from his throat and stare at him.

Valarr peers down at you with an expression you’ve not, in three years, seen settle on his face this fully. His eyes are wet. The brown one is almost black, the blue one almost glowing. The white streak at his temple is sweat-darkened still. His mouth is bitten and pink and parted, breathing through it. His cheekbones are flushed. The frenzied colour has gone soft at the edges, less feverish than during the sex, more open, more raw, the high colour of a man whose careful interior fortifications have come down.

You set your hand on the side of Valarr’s face, stroking your thumb along his cheekbone. The way he’s done to you a thousand times in three years, drinking in the faintest tremor under his skin.

He shuts his eyes, turning his face into your palm. 

“Val.”

“Yes, love?”

“You’re so beautiful,” you tell him, and mean it.

His eyes snap open. Valarr laughs. Soft. Surprised. A startled wet laugh, the laugh of a man who’s not, on this evening, expected to be told that.

“Thank you, love,” he says.

“You are,” you insist, drinking his flushed, sweaty appearance. Golden, so golden. “Look at you. Just look at you.”

“I'm a wreck.”

“You're beautiful. My beautiful, golden Val.”

His entire body responds to those words, breath hitching. “You can’t say that to me.”

“Be quiet, Val,” you say sternly, kissing his pulse once. “You don't get to argue with me. Not about this.”

He smiles. The corner of his mouth tugs up. He bows his head, briefly, that wry duck that you’ve always loved on him, the small, modest gesture of a man being told a thing he doesn't quite know what to do with.

You stroke your thumb along the line of his lower lip.

He makes a quiet sound. He turns his face fractionally and catches your thumb with the smallest closed-mouthed kiss. Then he holds it there. His mouth pressed to the pad of your thumb. Eyes shut.

You watch him.

The long lashes lying against his cheekbone. The cut of his jaw under your wrist. The small private pleasure on his face that he is, for once in his life, allowed to be tender out loud. You’re so attracted to him that you almost cannot stand it. He has, in this state, all the careful, gilded beauty he has when he’s in front of a camera, but stripped of the polish.

You bend your face. You kiss his temple where the white streak begins.

Valarr’s breath catches.

You kiss the line of his eyebrow. The corner of his eye. The bridge of his nose. The bone of his cheekbone. You are doing back to him, in slow, exact echo, the kisses he’s been giving you. He registers it. His breath comes faster, his hand at your back tightening.

His mouth opens, but you beat him to it.

“Hush.”

You catch the corner of his mouth.

The faintest closed-mouthed press. Valarr turns his face in. He chases it. A small, unsteady noise comes out of him, not a word, and he kisses you properly. This time it’s soft, tender, his hand cradling the back of your head, his mouth pressing yours open just a fraction. You hum into the kiss.

He breaks. His hand has come up to cup the side of your face, thumb sweeping once along your cheekbone. 

“Sweet girl?”

“Yes, Val?”

“I want to take you to the bath.”

You feel yourself nod slightly. “All right.”

“May I?” he questions. 

“Yes, pretty thing.”

A small wet laugh rumbles in his chest, and he kisses the bridge of your nose.

“Good girl.”

He shifts, gathering you up off the rug, and stands. He stands with you in his arms naked, the firm line of him pressed against the long warm line of you, and you make a small sound and curl your face into his throat.

He laughs again. Full of wonder.

“Don't let me go,” you say faintly, barely audible. 

His arms tighten around you. “Never.”

“Promise.”

“I promise, my love,” he whispers fiercely into your damp hair. “I have you. Always. I'm not letting you out of my sight."

He pauses, briefly, at the linen closet, and somehow, without letting you go, he extracts the cashmere blanket and wraps it around your shoulders one-handed. Then he half-carries you toward the back of the apartment, the murmur of him in your hair the entire way: there we go, sweet girl, there, almost there, that's right.

The bathroom is warm.

Steam sits thick in the air. He’s put your bath salts in. The eucalyptus and the lavender one he buys for you specifically and pretends not to know the name of. The mirror is fogged. The lamps are low. He’s lit two of the candles you keep on the long marble shelf, the small flicker of flame doubled in the steam.

“You ran a bath,” you say, muffled against his throat.

“I did,” he says.

“For after.”

“For after,” he confirms.

You smile, pressing your forehead to him. “I love you, Val.”

A press of his mouth to your temple. “I love you. I love you. I love you, sweet girl.”

Valarr sets you gently on the wide, flat ledge of the tub. He kneels on the warm stone in front of you. He takes both your hands in his, kisses each of your knuckles in order, one to ten, and turns one of your hands over to look at the rug burn on the inside of your wrist, the crape down the underside of your forearm. He kisses it, kisses the next mark. Kisses each one. 

“Look at you,” he says after a beat, staring up at you, eyes hooded. “You’re so beautiful."

“Val.”

“Hold on. Don't move.”

He gets up, retrieving the small jar of cyclist's cream and a soft white washcloth. There’s a glass of water with a slice of lemon in his other hand.

He slots the glass into your hand.

“Drink, love.”

You drink greedily, mouth full of zingy lemon. You hadn't realised how thirsty you were until the water touched your throat. You drink half the glass without lifting your face from the air over it. Valarr watches you.

He takes the glass when you’re done and sets it down. He kneels again on the stone.

“Up, my love,” he instructs patiently. “Just for a moment.”

He stands you, keeping one hand at the small of your back, steadying. He bends slightly and draws the cashmere blanket off you, then sets it aside on the warm towel rack. Then Valarr lifts you into the water.

You sigh.

The heat hits the back of your knees, the rug burns, the stinging places along your ribs and your shoulders and the bone of your hip. The eucalyptus soaks into your skin. Valarr steadies you with one hand at your shoulder, one at your hip, and lowers you all the way down until you’re sitting in the warmth of the water with your back against the curved porcelain of the tub.

You groan, slumping at once into the steaming water. 

“Yeah?” Valarr murmurs, stroking your neck. 

“That's perfect,” you tell him. “Thank you.”

A slight smile twitches Valarr’s mouth, and he climbs in behind you. Naked and sculpted still. He lowers himself slowly, his body settling, his toned legs framing yours, and draws you back against his chest. His arms come around you, and you let yourself to fall back.

For a few minutes, neither of you says anything. 

“This is perfect.”

Valarr chuckles at your pleased little sigh. “You said that.”

“I'm saying it again,” you snark, relaxing fully into his solid chest. 

Valarr laughs quietly against your ear, followed by a kiss on your temple.

He scoops water in his cupped palm. Pours it over the line of your shoulder, where the wool of the rug burned you. Pours it over your collarbone next. Scoops more. Runs his hand, long-fingered and strong, along the bone of your hip. Works the warmth into the marks. 

He sets his palm flat over your sternum.

“Look at you.”

“You keep saying that,” you tease, repeating his earlier words. 

“Because look at you.”

This time you’re the one laughing softly. Tired. He kisses the side of your hair.

Valarr works methodically. He presses his fingers gently into every tight muscle at the side of your neck where they’ve gone tense from holding your head down on the rug. You groan again, shivering. He hums, pleased, at the back of his throat, and works the muscle out. Focused circles of his thumb, the warm spread of his palm against the side of your throat. He does this for a while. Down to the curve of your shoulder. The long line at the back of your neck where his teeth had bitten.

He talks to you. Quietly. Through it.

“You did so well, my love. I'm so proud of you. You did so well. I’ve never… oh, love that was… it was everything. What it felt like…” He laughs under his breath. “You were so beautiful, so perfect. I couldn’t stop, love. My beautiful, brave girl. Look at you."

You breathe through your nose. Your eyes prickle again, and you grind your jaw, annoyed now.

“Oh,” he exhales behind you, hearing it. He turns your face gently so he can see. “Oh, sweet girl.”

He sets his thumb at the corner of your eye. Soothes the small wet glaze of it away. Kisses the place his thumb’s just been. Kisses the bridge of your nose lightly. Valarr’s forehead rests against yours for a long count, the warm steam billowing between you, his breath against your mouth.

“Love?”

“Yeah?”

There’s slight hesitation. “Can I say something?"

“Of course.”

Valarr loosens a breath, like he’s afraid to speak. “You've never been like this with me.”

“Like what?” you ask, your nape prickling. 

“Like—this,” Valarr says softly, squeezing you close, and he sounds almost dizzy with happiness. “Tucked in. Needy. Letting me hold you. You're always the one who holds. Always the steady one. And right now you're—”

He pauses. You feel him searching for the word.

“Undefended,” he says, finally, his voice quiet, happy. “You're undefended.”

You’re quiet.

“It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen,” he adds quietly. 

“Val—”

“Listen,” he cuts in. “Please. Let me say this.”

You close your mouth. You wait. His arms tighten around you in the warm water. His chin rests against the side of your hair. When he speaks, his voice is mild, careful, stripped of any performance.

“You told me not to be ashamed,” he begins. “Of the dark thing. Of whatever this is in me. You told me you'd been nurturing it on purpose. And tonight I—I held it. I held it in my hands, and I used it, and I didn't—I didn't feel ashamed. For the first time in my life, I didn't feel like there was something wrong with me for wanting what I want because you trusted me. And I… I knew I was safe with you.”

He breathes.

“And now I'm looking at you, my love,” he goes on. “I'm looking at you crying in my lap on a bathroom floor. I'm watching you be vulnerable and needy in a way I’ve never, ever been allowed to see from you, and I—”

His voice cracks.

“I think you were teaching us both something. I think you were teaching me that I don't have to be ashamed of the dark. And I think you were teaching yourself that you don't have to be afraid of the soft. And I think those are the same lessons.”

You’re quiet for a long time. The water laps against the porcelain, steam kissing against your sensitive skin.

“When did you get this smart?” you mumble, your chin partially in the water and your chest full. 

He laughs. A warm, startled, relieved laugh. It comes up out of his chest behind you, his arms tightening around you again, the press of his grin against the side of your hair.

“I've been doing homework, my love,” he answers promptly. 

“I noticed.”

“Did I pass?” he asks, and you hear the boyish grin in his voice. 

You lace your fingers through his under the water. Bring his hand up. Set it, palm flat, over your sternum, where your heart is. Hold it there.

“You passed, Val.”

You turn your face into his throat, where you can reach. You set your mouth against the place just under his jaw and kiss it. You drag your nose along the line of his throat. His hand at your sternum closes over yours.

You smile against his throat, kissing the line of his jaw. You kiss the corner of Valarr’s mouth where the angle lets you reach, and his head turns, blindly, seeking more. He kisses you back—soft, the warm, reverent press of his mouth, the ragged, wobbling breath he releases between kisses.

Valarr works methodically through the rest of the aftercare while you do this. He scoops warm water over each mark. Opens the cyclist's cream and works it into the rug burn at your hip with careful circles of his thumb, kissing each spot before he doses it. 

You hum at each kiss. He breathes out, frayed, at each hum.

Each time you make a thin, needing sound, Valarr answers with a softer one. Each time he kisses a place, you nuzzle into him a fraction further. The two of you build, in the warm quiet of the bath, an entire small private vocabulary of pleased noises and answering kisses. His hand strokes up and down the bare line of your arm under the water. Your fingers thread through his.

“Does that hurt?”

“A little,” you reply honestly.

He sighs. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. I’m happy.”

“I'm still a little sorry,” he says

You stroke his forearm underwater, feeling the muscle relax at once. “Hush, pretty thing.”

“All right.”

He kisses the place again. Without apology this time. Claiming, approving. 

When the water cools, he nudges the warm tap with his toe—a manoeuvre you would, on any other evening, have laughed at, the small domestic competence of a man who’s done this for you before—and the warmth comes back. Valarr hushes you when you stir, pressing you back against his chest.

“Stay a little longer.”

You can hear the need in his voice. The desperation to keep you like this a little longer before your steel comes back again. 

“I'm staying,” you reassure him, lacing your fingers again.

“Good.”

You lace both your hands in his, setting them together, low on your stomach. Valarr stills. You feel him remembering. His thumb strokes, once, the curve of skin below your navel.

“Some day,” he murmurs.

“Some day,” you agree softly. 

He presses his face into the side of your hair. You feel the breath leave him. A long, shaky, unburdened breath, the breath of a man who’s been carrying something for a long time and has, tonight, been allowed to set it down.

“My love.”

“Mm.”

“I'm so happy.”

You smile. “I know, Val.”

“I’ve never been this happy. In my entire life."

You tilt your face up, and he bends his down. You kiss the corner of his mouth, his cheekbone, the bone of his jaw. Valarr kisses your hairline, your temple, your eyebrow, the corner of your eye. You kiss his mouth, and he kisses yours back. The unhurried kisses of two people who have, tonight, found something neither of them had quite known existed in the other.

“I was looking for you at the feast,” Valarr says as he enters your chambers. You can hear the frown in his voice as he shrugs off his cloak and tosses it on the chair on the opposite side of the room. “Why is it that I had to hear from my cousin that my wife left early because she was feeling unwell?”

You press your lips together, not answering him as you stare out the window—east, to the Blackwater, the Narrow Sea, and beyond. Far, far beyond. Your jaw is tight, and your throat is tight, and your chest is tight, and your eyes already sting—you have been here for two hours already, and he has only just returned. Did he only just realize you were missing?

The irritation drains from his voice as he pauses, looking in your direction and catching the tension in your shoulders. He says quietly, “You are upset with me.”

You stiffen when you hear him make his way over to you, raising your chin when you feel the cushions dip behind you. You exhale hard through your nose as his fingers ghost the nape of your neck, brushing your hair over one shoulder so that he can press his lips there. 

You bristle instantly.

“Oh my,” Valarr murmurs—he has the nerve to sound amused, you can picture the boyish grin curling at his lips, and it enrages you. The nerve. “You are very upset with me.”

“Unhand me, you lecherous cur,” you snap, shifting further away. “I shall catch the pox if your touch lingers too long.”

You hear the smile in his voice as he asks, “And what have I done to deserve such a vicious accusation, ñuha jorrāelagon?”

My love.

His High Valyrian is honeyed as ever, soft and sweet to your ears, the endearment enough to make lesser women melt, but you are not lesser women, so you only toss him a furious look, because how dare he play the fool as though he doesn’t know what he’s done? How dare he try to abate your anger with sweet nothings?

“What have you done?” you echo furiously, gaze cutting as you whirl around to face him. Loathsome man—you hate that he is beautiful, and you hate that even in the face of your rage, his eyes are soft and adoring. “You shame me, that is what you have done.”

Valarr tilts his head to the side slightly, a glimmer of calculation and confusion in his mismatched eyes as he searches your face—as though he does not know what he has done, how he has shamed you. You detest him. 

“Tell me how I have shamed you,” he says softly, shifting closer still. Loathsome, loathsome, loathsome—he lifts his hand to brush the pads of his fingers against your cheekbone, and when you try to pull away, he holds your chin lightly, keeping you in place, forcing you to look at him. “Tell me, so that I may fix it.”

You almost bite him for that—for the softness in his voice and the fondness in the eyes, the way he looks at you as though you are something precious to him when he has spent the better part of the evening making a spectacle of you before half of the court, letting that Lannister woman parade around on his arm.

“You should know already,” you hiss.

“I do not,” he says, and he sounds earnest. You despise him. Loathsome man. His thumb glides over your lower lip, free hand coming up so that he can cradle your face between them both. “If I have wronged you, I would hear it from your lips.”

You think to spurn him some more, to press your hands to his chest and shove him away, to leave your chambers and go seek out—seek out who? You have no one in this wretched keep. Your brothers are all back home, six thousand miles away, because your wretched father sold you to the Targaryens for trade. And your wretched friends—who were never truly your friends, clearly—abandoned you the moment they realized you would no longer be able to bolster their standing when you are three seas away. 

You are alone. All you have is a wretched husband—a man you were promised would be gallant and charming and respectful, only for him to spend the evening smiling at another woman while the court watched to see how his foreign bride would react. 

They hate you—they have hated you since the moment you arrived on your father’s gilded ships, smiling to your face and scorning you the second your back is turned. They pray for illness and poor health, that an accident would befall you, so that Valarr might take one of their Andal daughters to wife instead, and—

—and the cruelest part of it all is that, in this wretched court with these wretched people, the only person who has ever made you feel wanted is your wretched husband. 

Valarr leans in to press his lips against yours when you do not immediately respond, soft and gentle as he always is, trying to ease the answer out of you.

A wavering sigh escapes you before you can stop it, and you melt into him far too easily, because Valarr is loathsome and wretched. You detest him, and you despise him, but he is—he is insufferably good to you. Has been since the moment the two of you were introduced, in spite of the fact that he was as forced into this marriage as you. He is as gallant and charming as you were promised, much as you wish him to be otherwise, and he treats you as though you are not some foreign prize ferried across three seas to warm his bed and strengthen alliances, but someone he chooses and wants.

It is the worst part of it, because if he were cruel and disrespectful, you think you could hate him properly.

“You are wretched,” you whisper against his mouth, voice unsteady with the remnants of your anger. “You stand there all evening with that woman draped upon your arm, smiling at her as though she were the Sun Maiden herself, and then you come here and kiss me as though I am meant to simply forgive you.”

Valarr draws back only enough to look at you, brows knitting together slightly.

“The Lannister girl?”

You glare at him. “Yes, the Lannister girl, you witless dragon.”

To your mounting fury, understanding finally flashes across his face, and then amusement follows close behind it.

You shove at his chest immediately. “Do not laugh at me.”

Valarr catches your wrists before you can shove him too far, laughter warm and breathless as he presses a quick kiss to the inside of your palm. He pulls you closer to him, one hand sliding around your lower back to drag you into his lap, and you hate that your arms instinctively slink around his shoulders. You hate that your anger dissipates, and you hate that the fury on your face drains into a pout, that you have to chew the inside of your cheek to stop the tears from building in your eyes.

You hate everything about this. You are not so weak, but weeks of suffering through this snake pit have taken their toll on you.

The amusement fades from his expression when he sees yours, one hand lifting to caress your cheek gently. 

“I was alone,” you say, grateful that your voice doesn’t break. “I am always alone in this awful place. You are the only person I have, and you abandoned me to let that girl cling to you. If you wish to take a proper Westerosi wife, you are free to do so, but divorce me and let me return home. Do not force me to endure such humiliation.”

“Now, that is a bit drastic,” Valarr murmurs, and your lashes flutter as his fingers drag lightly along the nape of your neck, tangling in your hair to pull your head down so that he might ghost his lips against your forehead. “Why ever would I divorce you when I have only just managed to convince you to tolerate me?”

You make a soft, offended sound that he swallows with another lingering kiss to your lips. He tastes of honey and wine; you let out a breath that is far too shaky as his arms tighten around you, one hand soothing up and down your back.

“I am serious,” you mutter. “You make light of everything.”

“Only because you speak as though I have cast you aside for a girl I scarcely noticed.” His thumb rubs small circles into the small of your back. “Look at me, wife.”

You do not wish to. You fear if you do, he will see the tears that have started to gather in your eyes, and your pride has suffered enough tonight. You meant to stay angry and silent, but it is hard to do so when Valarr is—well, Valarr.

He waits anyway, because he always does, and when you still refuse to do as he says, he hooks two fingers beneath your chin, and tilts your face upward so gently that you barely bite back a whine. There’s a softness in his face, an undeniable fondness that makes your heart ache. 

“I did not abandon you,” he tells you quietly. “I left your side because Lord Lannister cornered me to speak of the new trade agreements with Qarth and his daughter decided to preen while doing so.” His thumb brushes beneath your eye to catch a tear before it can fall. “Had I known you were miserable, I would have returned immediately. I thought my cousins were taking care to ensure you were not alone.”

“You should have known,” you say, spiteful, voice sullen.

“Yes,” he agrees easily, without argument. “I should have. Forgive me.”

You falter, because you prepared yourself for his infuriating charm and smooth talk, not for an apology—especially not one so genuine.

Valarr exhales softly through his nose, gaze roaming over your face before he rests his forehead down on your shoulder, arms curling a bit tighter around your waist until your bodies are flush. You let out a shaky breath before burying your face in his soft hair, eyes sliding shut. 

“The Lannister girl is not what really upset you,” Valarr says quietly after a moment—it is a question, but it is not phrased as one, and you stiffen. You do not respond, but you do not need to. He knows the answer already. He admits reluctantly, as though the realization pains him to speak aloud, “I do not know how to make you happy here.”

“I am happy,” you say immediately, an instinctive, courtly answer, a lie that tastes like poison on your tongue.

“Do not lie to me,” he tells you, and then he lets out another heavy breath. You see his jaw tighten slightly before he speaks again. “I…” He hesitates, trying to find the words. “I thought if I loved you enough, the rest would matter less.”

You inhale at his words, watching as he pulls back to look at you again. The grief in his eyes makes your stomach turn. 

“It is not you who makes me unhappy,” you say, because guilt eats at you. Valarr is the only person trying to make you feel comfortable in this wretched place—he goes out of his way to ensure you are included, to make you feel wanted and welcome, and you—you what? You turn on him the moment he glances away? As though none of the rest matters? You feel embarrassed suddenly, mortification rolling waves in your stomach and chest, because Valarr has tried. He has tried so hard, so desperately, and here you are making a mess of everything, because of a tantrum over something beyond his control. “Valarr, I—”

“Hush,” he chides, leaning in to swallow your words with another kiss. “I understand. You do not need to explain yourself to me.”

The tears fall in earnest at that, rolling over your cheeks silently as you stare at him. You are the wretched one—wretched and miserable, you have been blessed with a marriage to a man most women would kill for, and you ruin it with your gloom. Love from Valarr should be enough to outweigh the rest, so why isn’t it?

Valarr clicks his tongue lightly, lifting his hands so his thumbs can wipe your tears as they fall. 

“None of that,” he murmurs. “I do not know what is running through that beautiful mind of yours right now, but enough of it. I know this is not an easy transition for you—you are six thousand miles away from your home and family, in a strange place with stranger people. I do not begrudge you for struggling to find your place here, nor for being upset when alone. I should not have left you.”

“I want you to be enough,” you say, and you mean it. You mean it so desperately—you need him to understand. This is not—it is not of your choosing; if you had it your way, this would be enough. “I want to be happy here.”

“I know,” he says gently, holding the weight of your head in the palm of his hand as you lean into him. “I know, ñuha jorrāelagon.”

“They all hate me,” you tell him. When his brows furrow and lips part to deny it, you continue before he can, “I can tell. Do not deny it.”

Valarr doesn’t respond for a long time, and then he says quietly, “You are beautiful, and you are my wife, and their daughters are not. You arrived on gilded ships with enough wealth to shame the majority of lords in Westeros, and then had the audacity to capture the affection of a prince they had long hoped to claim for themselves. They would have hated you even if I did not adore you so openly. They hate men for much, much less.”

“It is not fair,” you say, voice weak and childish. “I have given up so much for their favor. I dress how they expect. I speak how they expect. I act how they expect. I celebrate their holy days with them, and I go to the temples of their gods, and—”

“I know,” Valarr cuts in gently again, stroking your hair. 

“Then why? What more must I do for them to accept me?”

Valarr doesn’t reply for a long while, an unreadable expression on his face. “Do not give up anything more for them,” he says. Your face twists, but before you can rebuke his words, he continues, “I mean it. The only thing that will help is time—I do not want you to cut away parts of yourself to satisfy the likes of vultures who would strip you of everything if given the chance.”

“It is easy for you to say,” you scoff bitterly. “You do not have half of the lords in this keep praying for your ill health and accidents to befall you. It is only a matter of time before their prayers turn to action.”

Valarr goes very still and very quiet. For a moment, the only sound in the room is the crackling of the fireplace, and you realize you have made a terrible mistake.

His hand slides from your cheek to your hair, holding you close as something cold flickers briefly through his eyes—your husband is gallant and charming, and he loves you despite the circumstances. Your husband is also a Targaryen, and the blood of the dragon runs hot through his veins; madness and greatness are always one flip away from the other. It is tamer in Valarr compared to his cousins, but it is there nonetheless.

“Who?” he asks softly. The quietness of it chills you more than shouting would have.

You shake your head immediately, burying your face in the crook of his neck. He lets you, but his fingers remain stiff in your hair, body tense and coiled against yours. 

“It does not matter.”

“It does to me,” he says. “You think someone in this keep means you harm. You think they pray for your death so openly that you have come to expect attempts on your life—and you would have me ignore it?”

You shouldn’t have said anything. You know this court better now than you did when you first arrived; you know how quickly whispers become accusations, and how quickly accusations become bloodshed when dragons are involved. Valarr has always seemed gentler than the rest of his kin—arrogant, maybe, but what prince is not? He is easy laughter and soft smiles, and it lulls you into a false sense of security, because you forget he is still a prince of House Targaryen. Still fire and blood. 

“It was only a figure of speech,” you murmur, another lie.

“You do not speak carelessly, wife.”

You fall silent at that, because he is right—you do not. 

Valarr exhales hard through his nose. “Who has threatened you?”

“No one.”

“Who has frightened you, then?”

You do not answer, looking away. “I do not want to talk about this anymore.”

Valarr’s jaw tightens, frustration flashing across his face briefly. For a moment, he looks as though he wants to fight, but then he concedes, “Very well. But this will not be the last we speak on this.” 

His hands slide under your thighs, and your eyes slide shut, arms tightening around his shoulders as he rises to his feet with your body wrapped around his, carrying you over to the bed and laying you back gently on it. He slips out of his tunic and leathers before joining you beneath the covers.

You immediately curl into his side, pressing your face into the warm skin of his shoulder, sliding one leg between his to be as close to him as possible. His arms wrap tight around you, holding you impossibly closer.

“You are wrong,” he says after a moment, and your brows furrow. “Not everyone dislikes you in this keep. My family adores you, and that, I fear, is one of the greatest accomplishments a person can claim, considering most of them can barely tolerate each other.”

“That is not true,” you say immediately, lips pursed.

“It is,” Valarr insists. “My father and brother love you. They cherish the mornings you join them in the library. They like hearing your stories of Qartheen culture and the Far East. My father wishes to broach the subject of you joining them more often, but he does not want you to feel obligated to come.”

“Oh,” you say, voice wobbly again, eyes suddenly very wet.

“And the twins adore you,” he continues. “Aelora gave quite the verbal lashing to a Marcher lord who spoke poorly of our union—” Of you, he means, because no one in this keep would speak poorly of Valarr, the perfect prince. “—and Aelor threatened to have him whipped if he ever repeated such a thing again. They do not forget the day you found Uncle Rhaegel teetering on the edge of a balcony in the west tower and looked after him until they were able to come and retrieve him.”

“I did not know that,” you whisper.

“And gods know how you managed to gain the affection of Uncle Maekar’s sons—”

“Affection is a stretch,” you disagree.

“You do not know my cousins like I do, wife,” Valarr says with a wry smile. “It is affection, I must insist. I have never seen Aerion so captivated when someone speaks the way he is when you do.”

Your face feels hot. “It is only because he is interested in Qartheen magic and our warlocks. He wants to visit the House of the Undying.”

“I digress, both Aunt Shiera and Uncle Brynden are well-versed in magic, and Aerion is hardly so starry-eyed when he badgers them for information,” Valarr counters dryly, though there is something pinched in his voice that piques your curiosity. “And even you cannot deny that Daeron is enamored by you—I have caught him reciting poetry for you in his drunken ramblings. You have thoroughly charmed him, that is clear.”

This time, there is no denying the bitterness in his voice. You smile against his skin.

“Are you jealous, husband?” you ask, peeking up from his shoulder to look at the way his jaw is tight.

“In truth, I have contemplated tossing them both into the Blackwater a concerning number of times this past week,” he admits flatly.

A laugh startles out of you before you can stop it, and the flat line of his mouth softens at the sound. He leans down to press his lips to your forehead, long and lingering.

“Daeron cornered me for an hour last week to ask whether you prefer sweet wines or dry ones,” he continues after a moment, bitter. “Claimed he wished to ‘better understand Qartheen tastes’ as though I am foolish enough to not realize what he is really doing.”

Your eyes crinkle. “That explains the odd assortment of wines he brought to the gardens when I was there reading, then.”

Valarr lets out an exasperated sigh. “To think my own cousin is trying to woo my wife away from me,” he mutters, “and so shamelessly at that. To think he has the nerve to ask my advice on how to go about it.”

You find yourself giggling despite yourself. “He is sweet,” you say at last. “Harmless.”

“He is a Targaryen prince,” Valarr says dryly. “We are very rarely harmless.”

You are smiling openly now, warmth spreading through your chest as the void of loneliness is filled little by little. You had thought yourself so isolated here, so painfully unwanted, that you never considered anyone beyond Valarr might genuinely care for you.

The realization leaves your throat terribly tight.

Valarr notices at once, expression softening as he tilts your face up toward him to brush his lips against yours gently. Once. Twice. Three times. You think you could lose yourself in the taste and feel of him.

“My brother is to be married soon,” Valarr says after a moment, fingers stroking your hair absently. “To the daughter of the Tyroshi Archon—my father finalized the betrothal this morning. I hope, perhaps, the two of you will get along, since she will also be far from home. It may make court easier for you, to have someone who understands what it is to arrive here alone in a foreign land—a companion.”

You peek up at him again, blinking once. Tyrosh. He presses his lips to your forehead. You say, voice small, “The Tyroshi like dyes and hats. I am not versed in them. What if we cannot find common ground?” 

Valarr pauses, and then says, far too amused, “I think you will have enough common ground that you need not be familiar with dyes and hats.”

“Do not mock me,” you mutter.

“I am trying very hard not to.”

“You are failing.”

“Terribly,” he admits.

You make a wounded sound and attempt to bury your face back against his shoulder, but Valarr catches your chin before you can escape, smiling as he brushes his thumb along your cheek.

“Wife,” he says gently, “I promise you the Tyroshi girl will not arrive here expecting expertise in dyes and hats.”

“Perhaps I should read up on them just in case,” you say, gaze flitting away briefly. “Qarth is—it is a far cry from any of the Free Cities. Very different… very far. She might think me strange, and if I am strange, then everyone here will be strange to her. It would be good to have common ground in interests, so that she can keep some of home with her at least with me. I think it would make her more comfortable, don’t you?”

Valarr’s expression changes at once, and there is something devastating in the way he looks at you now—so warm and tender, so sickeningly fond that it makes heat creep up the back of your neck. Valarr loves you; he loves you so deeply and so openly that it is impossible for anyone to deny, not with the way he looks at you as though you are the most precious thing in the world. You gnaw at your bottom lip, unable to hold his gaze when he looks at you like this. He kisses your temple again, long and lingering, and then sighs against your skin.

“You are worried about making her comfortable,” he realizes quietly.

You blink. “Well, yes.”

You remember too vividly what it felt like to arrive here alone, standing in a hall full of people smiling at you with teeth instead of warmth. If the Tyroshi girl is lonely, if she looks around this court and feels swallowed whole by it, you do not want her to feel the way you did.

“You are extraordinary,” he murmurs. “I do not know how I got so lucky.”

Heat floods your face immediately. “I am speaking about dyes and hats, Valarr. Do not be ridiculous.”

“You are speaking about a girl you have never met and worrying over how to make her feel welcomed in a foreign court despite the fact that you yourself are still struggling here.” His mouth curves softly. “You do not even realize how lovely you are, do you?”

You scowl weakly. “You are biased.”

“Hopelessly,” he agrees, so sincerely that it makes you embarrassed. He adds after a moment, “You know what I think will happen?” 

You eye him warily. “What?”

“I think the Tyroshi girl will arrive terrified.”

Your brows knit slightly. You know this. That is exactly what you are trying to prepare for.

“I think she will spend the voyage rehearsing how she ought to speak and smile,” Valarr continues, voice soft. Yes, she will, you agree, because that is what you did, too. “I think she will step into court and immediately realize she is being examined like a prized horse at market.” His thumb strokes slowly along your cheekbone. “And then I think she will meet you.” 

Something in your chest twists painfully.

“She will see another woman who crossed the world alone,” he says. “Another woman who survived it, and learned this court well enough to navigate it gracefully despite how cruel it can be.” His lips curve faintly. “And then she will cling to you desperately for guidance while you panic over whether or not you understand hats sufficiently.”

You let out a startled laugh despite yourself. Valarr smiles at the sound instantly, gaze unbearably warm.

“There she is,” he murmurs quietly. “You look less like you wish to flee back across the seas now.”

“You make it very difficult to remain angry with you.”

“That is because I am devastatingly charming,” he says, ghosting his lips against your nose, over your eyelids, your forehead, settling on the top of your head. “Ask anyone.” 

“You are insufferable, is what you are.”

He hums in agreement. “And yet, you cling to me still. I cannot be so insufferable then, can I?”

“I told you not to mock me, husband. My homeland is fond of its poisons—you might find sweet death laced in your wine should you push too far,” you threaten, but there is a smile in your voice, hidden against his shoulder, and his chest rumbles as he huffs out a laugh.

“I will endure the risk if it means I get to have you curled in my arms like this, ñuha jorrāelagon,” he murmurs, all warmth and devotion as he tucks you closer into his chest.

You lay like that with him for a long while, basking in his warmth and the comfort of his arms, eyes sliding shut as the drowsiness finally hits you, all of the day's stress and excitement sinking in.

You murmur at last, “You smiled at her too much,” before you can stop yourself. Then you add for clarification, “The Lannister woman.”

He vows, “I shall never smile at anyone besides you again.”

“I will poison you if you do.” 

His fingers trail up and down your side, gentle and adoring, lulling you to sleep. “A just punishment, certainly. I should expect nothing less from my fearsome wife.”

You make a soft, sleepy sound at that, too exhausted to muster another threat, and Valarr smiles faintly against your hair.

Valarr’s fingers continue their slow path along your side, absent and affectionate. You think he believes you are half asleep already by the way he presses another kiss to your temple, lingering there for a moment too long.

“You frightened me tonight,” Valarr admits quietly after a while.

Your lashes flutter slightly, but your eyes do not open. Your words are half slurred together as you ask sleepily, “I frightened you?”

“You spoke as though you truly believed I would cast you aside,” he murmurs. “That you were unwanted by me.”

You do not know how to reply to that, because a part of you had believed it, for a moment. You were forced upon him through politics and trade, and the rest of the court has made its opinions clear on you. You had let the insecurities get the best of you, with people around you whispering poison so sweetly it began to sound like truth.

“I choose you,” he says when you do not respond, fingers stroking your side again. “Not for your father’s ship and your family’s wealth. Not for trade with Qarth and access to the Jade Gates. You—because you do not look down on my brother for not taking to the sword the way everyone else expects him to, because my father’s eyes light up every time the two of you speak, because you ease the burden that weighs on my shoulder just by being in the same room as me. Because you are good and kind and worry about making sure another girl is comfortable here, when you still struggle yourself. Given the chance and opportunity to pick any woman in Westeros or Essos, I will always pick you—and anyone in this court who is bold enough to try to harm you will find themselves begging the gods for mercy before I am through with them.”

“You are very foolish,” you whisper weakly, barely awake.

Valarr’s lips curve. “Desperately so.”

“There are easier women,” you say quietly. “Women who your court would accept, who—”

“I do not want easier women,” he cuts in immediately. “I want you, and only you. I try very hard to be a good man—to follow in my father’s footsteps—but I would do terrible things to anyone who dared try to take you from me.”

Your chest aches. Loathsome man.

“I love you,” you say quietly, eyes heavy and voice slow, the steady beat of his heart and strokes of his fingers still doing quick work at ensuring you are half to sleep already.