MJ, 26, She/Hers - MDNI! Just woke up from an 11-year coma (AKA deleted my Tumblr account when 1D broke up and came out of retirement specifically for AKOTSK). Treat me like I was born yesterday, please
// A HOTD X AKOTSK AU // BAELOR TARGARYEN X OFC //
SUMMARY: The realm of men is younger than anyone remembers. Long before the Doom, before kingdoms, before the realm of men imagined itself alone, the world belonged to gods. Their descendants still rule it. They call themselves Targaryens, Velaryons, Lannisters, Starks, Arryns, and dozens of other ancient names, carrying the last diluted fragments of divinity in blood that still remembers gods, dragons, prophecy, madness, impossible hungers, and refusing ordinary death.
Every ancient house carries a fragment of the old world. Aeleanora Targaryen carries far too much of it. With a face fit for worship and a dragon's appetite, Aeleanora has spent her life discovering that almost everything worth having belongs to someone else first.
Baelor Targaryen has spent centuries making a sacrament of starvation. Aeleanora reminds him that dragons were never made for fasting.
Their first mistake is recognizing themselves in one another. Their second is looking back.
☙──────────✧──────────❧
AU Premise: Divine blood-line Westeros (not standard canon rules).
Themes: Control vs. hunger, divinity, power, restraint, inevitability.
Tone: Dark, psychological, slow-burn tension.
Relationships: Prince Baelor "Breakspear" Targaryen x Targaryen OC {Aeleanora is for my fellow oddballs, weirdos, pretty and off putting girls! weird girls i love u}
[MASTER LIST] || WIP - WC: 424K and counting :) || I update 1-2x weekly!
Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3A // Part 3B // Part 3C // Part 4 // Part 5 // Part 6A // Part 6B // Part 7 // Part 8 // Part 9A // Part 9B // Part 9C // Part 10 // Part 11 // Part 12A // Part 12B // Part 13 // Part 14 // Part 15A // Part 15B // Part 15C // Part 16 // Part 17 // Part 18A // Part 18B // Part 19 // Part 20 // Part 21
⚔︎Read it on: AO3 ⚔︎ || ⚔︎Read it On: Wattpad⚔︎
CONTENT WARNINGS [PLEASE READ]: 18+ // MINORS DO NOT INTERACT (MDNI); Dark/mature themes; Explicit sexual content; very soft Dom/sub undertones; Power imbalance dynamics; Age gap relationship; Targcest (I couldn't bring myself to do full blooded niece and uncle so these two are technically distant cousins by blood); Possessive romantic dynamics; Trauma, implied & discussed; Non-graphic references to sexual assault; Blood, violence, and political coercion; Run-on sentences; Themes of Self-hatred; Adultery (dw Jena has a ReachDaddy rearranging her spine every night); Infertility; Its just a litttleeee psychosexual horror in here sorry; Lil bit of breeding kink.
NOTE: This fic contains HEAVY OC WORLDBUILDING AND ORIGINAL(ISH) MYTHOLOGY. A reader guide is provided below for clarity + context <3
READER GUIDE + AU Summary:
Relationship Vibe Note: This is a secret romance between two people who are entirely too good at lying in public and entirely too bad at staying away from each other in private. Baelor is not here to tame Aeleanora into sweetness, and Aeleanora is not here to be handed to him like a prize mare with a crown. She is his political equal, his sanctuary, his worst headache, and the bratty little godling testing every inch of his restraint. He is her safest place in a world that keeps trying to make a weapon of her, which naturally means she spends half her time trying to bite the walls of that safety to see if they hold. Secret meetings, council work, stress relief, dangerous tenderness, and a very exclusive dirty mistresses club <3
[Setting]
Takes place in a canon-divergent Westeros. Magic flourishes throughout the realm.
Dragons still exist and are central to power. Since no Aegon/Rhaenyra/Alicent I made it so the Blackfyre rebellion happened earlier and served as the Dance but a few adult dragons survived and were able to replenish a bit of the population.
The ruling class are immortal, magical beings that were the result of generations of gods and demigods breeding with humans called Valyrians. (Was originally a vampire AU!! but i needed the divinity element to be huge and didn't want to incorrectly execute fae or vampire rules so hence odd immortal species is born. I couldnt come up with a good original name even though I tried.)
The realm operates under both political and unseen divine systems.
Dragonstone remains the seat of power instead of Kings Landing. I fucking hate the Red Keep for some reason I need them to be able to get to their dragons the same way I can get to my car in the driveway. They also have magical infrastructure so like, terraforming. The Red Keep still exists, but Kings Landing crawls with humans and they use it for dealings with mortals. They're still blood magickers and tyrants who stole lands and enslaved people. The immortal/mortal divide plays a big role in unrest.
[Core Power Structure]:
The Crown → External authority, rule of the realm.
The Hand → Strategy, governance, internal control.
The Council → Specialized power (coins, ships, whispers, etc.)
Aeleanora's Role → Intermediary authority (petitions, envoys, internal disputes)
**This becomes important very quickly in the story.
[Religion & the Divine]:
The Seven are real, but they are not as mortals understand them. They operate within the divine realms, separated from the realm of men by the Veil.
Most religious knowledge in this AU consists of incomplete and distorted versions of ancient history. The Faith remembers the gods through softened symbols, moral lessons, and thousands of years of mistranslation. The beings behind those symbols are older, stranger, and far less benevolent.
The Seven, very briefly:
The Father governs judgement, law, lineage, and the keeping of the dead. He is less a kindly patriarch than the divine principle that everything must possess a proper place.
The Mother governs life, healing, creation, and continuance. She is not simply maternal mercy. Life can be generous, possessive, ravenous, and willing to preserve itself at any cost.
The Maiden governs love, beauty, sex, desire, and obsession. Mortal doctrine remembers innocence because mortals found the truth considerably less comfortable.
The Crone governs fate, foresight, consequence, and the paths by which one moment becomes another. She carries a lantern because someone must see where every road ends.
The Warrior governs courage, conquest, violence, and conflict. He represents both the strength that defends civilization and the appetite that repeatedly destroys it.
The Smith governs creation, craftsmanship, structure, and transformation. He gives form to possibility, though even the gods cannot always control what becomes of the things they make.
The Stranger governs death, endings, passage, and the unknown. The Faith depicts the Stranger without a face because there are some truths even worshippers know better than to look upon directly.
These descriptions are still only mortal approximations. The Seven are not neatly divided into good and evil, nor are they distant embodiments of virtue. They are coded more like the gods of Greek mythology: cruel, fickle, petty, passionate, extreme, and capable of loving something so fiercely that entire realms suffer for it.
Some divine forces still influence the mortal world directly, and the boundary between gods and mortals is…unstable.
Different gods once ruled the creatures and peoples of different lands, but what if the Seven Who Are One were themselves responsible for a war among the gods that ended in the Doom of Valyria? What if it was not merely their followers who carried the Faith into Westeros? What if the Seven Heavens and Seven Hells were created so they could govern the divine, the living, and the dead?
[The Order of the Veiled Hand]: A hidden order within the Faith. Lead by the Lady Mysaria, Master of Whispers. (aka AU in which I give the Targs an intelligence agency like B613 from Scandal and Mysaria is Command).
Publicly: Silent sisters, Septas, Scullery maids, Ladies maids, Whores, handmaids, Ladies, governesses. You would never, ever know.
Privately: assassins, spies, thieves; huntresses and keepers of dangerous knowledge.
They serve as a covert extension of both religion and state power. Think like female version of the Faceless Men and Sorrowful Men but ran in Westeros by The Crown. Immortality of the ruling houses lessen the gap between Gods, Targaryens, and Men. Ruling the realm through secrets where the dragons are the decoy.
[Tone & Themes]:
Political control vs. personal autonomy.
Power as structure, not spectacle.
Grief, restraint, and inherited responsibility.
Divine systems operating beneath mortal ones.
The Gods are coded like Greek Mythology, they're cruel, fickle, petty, extreme.
Women as controlled power, and what happens when that control shifts.
OC/AU CHARACTER GUIDE
❥Princess Aeleanora Targaryen "The Dragonheart" (OFC)
*Daughter of: Queen Aemma Targaryen [deceased]; King Viserys I Targaryen [deceased].
*Sister of: King Jacaerys Targaryen.
Role: Princess of Dragonstone, Heir to the iron throne, Emerging political intermediary, Cosmic anomaly.
Rider Of: Dreamfyre. She also has a cradle egg that has not hatched.
Weilder Of: Aeleanora's abilities are unknown to the public. Many presume her abilities are intangible, nothing of consequence.
Notable Traits: Aeleanora is a winter-bright blade left in sunlight, but when she goes cold, she does so completely, leaving nothing behind that resembles warmth.
Physical Description: Aeleanora’s beauty is too deliberate and too precise to be entirely natural, even here. All sharp lines and soft contradictions, with feline eyes and a mouth made to unmake restraint. Pale hair falls in long, silken waves, her silver-blue gaze heavy-lidded and quietly knowing. Her skin catches light too easily, holding it a fraction too long, as though it does not pass through her the way it should. She moves with a predator’s grace, all control and intent, as if nothing around her happens without her allowing it.
❥Prince Baelor "Breakspear" Targaryen (AKA: The Hammer)
Son Of: King Daeron II Targaryen [Deceased]; and Queen Myriah Martell [Deceased].
Brother Of: King Viserys Targaryen [Deceased]; Prince Aerys Targaryen; Prince Rhaegal Targaryen; Prince Maekar Targaryen.
Husband of: Lady Jena Dondarrion.
Father of: Prince Valarr Targaryen; Prince Matarys Targaryen.
Role: Hand of the King.
Rider of: Vermithor "The Bronze Fury"
Weilder Of: Storm.
Notable Traits: Disciplined; Politically intelligent; Dryly affectionate; Deeply dutiful; Emotionally self-denying; Stabilizing presence; Capable of immense tenderness buried under control; Frightening when he finally chooses selfishness. He does not break easily, but when he does, it is not quietly.
Biography:
King Daeron II Targaryen and Queen Myriah Martell always wished that their second son, Baelor, had been born first. Their firstborn, Viserys, would be more content traveling the realm and poring over his Old Valyrian and Westerosi histories. Baelor understood duty, responsibility, discipline, and restraint far more than Viserys ever could.
It was because of this that he never even thought of pushing his brother to abdicate; instead, he pushed his brother to be a better King. Why? Because someone believed that if the two worked together, Westeros would reach new heights that Old Valryia ever could, even when the gods lived among them.
That someone was right. As his brother's Hand and Heir, Baelor had singlehandedly brought Westeros to its height as a civilization, with 300 years passing since the last hint of conflict (i.e, an uprising that resulted in the loss of King Daeron and the ascencion of Viserys as king). However, as the years passed, his shoulders became heavier and heavier with the weight of expectation. He soon realized that while he excelled at ruling, he hated the external pressure that came along with it. The hand pin he wore on his shoulder weighed nothing compared to the weight of the crown looming over his head, should anything happen to his brother. When the opportunity came to abdicate under the guise of love and honor, he made a selfish decision for the first time in his immortal life.
Physical Description: Canon - Bertie Carvel as Baelor Targaryen in AKOTSK.
❥King Jacaerys Targaryen "The Young King" (OC)
Son Of: Queen Aemma Targaryen [deceased]; King Viserys I Targaryen [deceased]
*Brother Of: Princess Aeleanora Targaryen.
Husband Of: Queen Laena Velaryon.
Role: King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm.
Rider Of: Silverwing "The Lady of the Sky"
Weilder Of: Ice
Notable Traits: He is a whimsical king in the Old Valyrian sense: artistic, thoughtful, dreamy, prone to beauty, ideas, and symbols. But beneath that softness lies the potential for genuine strength. He was crowned too young and burdened too early, and much of his early reign is defined not by a lack of ability but by the simple fact that he has not yet lived long enough to grow into his immense potential.
Biography:
His uncle, Prince Baelor, passed his claim to the Iron Throne to Jacaerys after the birth of Princess Aeleanora. Jacaerys was crowned the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms shortly after his parents were killed after his 16th nameday. The youngest king to ever sit the throne.
Jacaerys swore an oath to love and protect his younger sister in the wake of the loss of their parents. He named her the heir apparent to the Iron Throne right before her 9th nameday.
With the help of the remainder of his parents' inner circle (especially his uncle), The Young King quickly rose to the occasion in filling his father's shoes, soon to outgrow them.
For reasons even Baelor does not fully understand, his uncle finds shaping Jacaerys into a king far more rewarding than propping up his elder brother ever was. Viserys had to be carried; Jacaerys can be taught. He wants to be worthy and has what it takes to do so. To his uncle, that makes him easier to love and far more painful to watch struggle.
Physical Description: I’ve always had such a thing for Harry Lloyd as Viserys Targaryen in GOT like hes SUCH a cutie so this is what I imagine Jacaerys looking like. Also he has violet eyes.
❥Princess Rhaenys Targaryen
Daughter Of: Lady Jocelyn Baratheon [Deceased]; Prince Aemon Targaryen [Deceased].
Wife Of: Lord Corlys Velaryon.
Mother Of: Leanor Velaryon; Queen Laena Velaryon.
Role: Matriarch of House Targaryen.
Rider Of: Meleys "The Red Queen"
Weilder Of: A form of spatial manipulation often mistaken for movement. Rhaenys does not simply cross distance, she folds it. To those who witness it, she appears to vanish and reappear in a single breath, as though space has yieled to her will.
Notable Traits: Composed, calculating, and immovable. Rhaenys does not raise her voice to command or attention. Where others rule through presence, she rules through inevitability.
Biography: Rhaenys has outlived kings, wars, and expectations. She understands power as something to endure. In a court that bends toward spectacle and volatility, she remains constant in watching, measuring, and ensuring the survival of her bloodline at any cost.
Physical Description: Canon (book/tv mashup) - Eve Best as Rhaenys Targaryen in HOTD but with the ASOIAF dark hair and violet eyes.
❥Queen Laena Velaryon
Daughter of: Lord Corlys Velaryon; Princess Rhaenys Targaryen.
Wife of: King Jacaerys Targaryen.
Role: Queen of the Seven Kingdoms; emotional and social counterbalance to the Crown.
Rider of: Vhagar
Wielder of: Water.
Notable Traits: Effortless, perceptive, and dangerously intuitive. Laena understands people in ways that cannot be taught. What they want, what they hide, and what they refuse to name. She moves through the world as though it belongs to her, and more often than not, it does.
Function in Story: Laena acts as both mirror and catalyst to Aeleanora. Where Aeleanora is controlled, Laena is instinctual. Where Aeleanora resists desire, Laena recognizes it immediately.
Physical Description: Canon - Nanna Blondell as Laena Velaryon in HOTD (with the violet eyes bc lets match with mama).
❥Lady Mysaria "The White Worm"
Daughter Of: Bastard born to a Valyrian lord and sold in a land she didn't get a chance to learn the name of before she was sold off to the slave trade.
Role: Master of Whispers; Leader of the Order of the Veiled Hand.
Weilder Of: Cerebromancy. Mysaria can see into anyone's mind, and can rearrange it accordingly, to her will.
Notable Traits: Omniscient in practice, if not in truth. Mysaria does not need to be seen to exert control. She exists in information, in secrets, in the unseen currents of power. Nothing moves in the realm without her knowing why.
Function: The bridge between divine knowledge and mortal manipulation.
Biography:
At 20 years old, Mysaria was bought in Essos by a Westerosi lord who wanted her company on his sail home. She ventured into his mind one night and found that him and his house were planning an attack in protest of a new tax allowed by the crown for houses that hold important crossings.
When she arrived in Westeros, she knew of nothing, and did not even speak the common tongue, but she remembered venturing into the mind of her madame one night when she was a teen and learned the truth of the Silent Sisters. She was instantly enamored by them. When the lord who bought her brought her back to Westeros was asleep one night, she slipped out of the keep and escaped with the help of a stable boy and scullery maid that she had befriended when they helped her learn some words in the common tongue.
After weeks and weeks of travel by foot and slipping into the minds of others to compel them to do her bidding, she made it to the citadel and sought out the Silent Sisters and presented herself as a widow. After years of working as handmaiden of death, she wondered if what she saw in the mind of her madame was only a fever dream or a story the woman had made up.
Throughout this time, she tried to slip into the minds of her fellow sisters and her elders, but for the first time in her life she couldn't breach their mental barriers. Out of frustrating, she tried slamming into the mind of one of her elders after she was punished for something Mysaria couldn't bring herself to care about. Mysaria thought the elder was going to dispose of her, but instead, she was offered the blood oath and initiated into the secret order of Silent Sisters, where she met Princess Seraphyra.
They quickly became eachothers dearest friends, and upon their initiation and completion of their training, Sera brought Mysaria back to court with her and told her lord father, King Daeron, about Mysarias telepathic nature. King Daeron agreed that she was too powerful to pass over when she showed him what she could do. Mysaria was taken under the wing of King Daeron's Master of Whispers and trained to serve him and the king.
After the death of the Master of Whispers, who served King Daeron's grandfather, his father, and then King Daeron, Mysaria was initiated as King Daeron's new Master of Whispers towards the end of his reign. At this point, Mysaria was running a world wide network of whores, spies, assassins, urchins, merchants, servants, etc.; a major information market that some of the histories argue was where the true power of the Targaryen dynasty lay.
Lady Mysaria feels personally that she now owes her life both to the Silent Sisters and to Seraphyra, and to the family that took her in and treated her like she was a part of it. She pays this debt through her service to King Jacaerys and her love for her dear friend Sera by proxy of her daughter.
Physical Description: Canon - Sonoya Mizuno as Mysaria in HOTD
❥King Viserys I Targaryen [deceased] - (OOC-ish)
Son of: King Daeron II Targaryen [deceased]; Queen Myriah Martell [deceased].
Brother Of: Prince Baelor Targaryen; Prince Aerys I Targaryen; Prince Rhaegal Targaryen; Maekar I Targaryen.
Husband Of: Queen Aemma Targaryen [deceased].
*Father Of: King Jacaerys Targaryen; *Princess Aeleanora Targaryen.
Rider Of: Meraxes [Deceased].
Weilder Of: Wind.
Biography:
Viserys never wanted to be king. He would, however, go down as one of the greatest Kings in history due to the help of his beloved Hand and younger brother, Prince Baelor "Breakspear" Targaryen.
He and his lady wife Aemma died dragon riders' deaths in a battle in Essos, where divine influence put their daughter's identity and life at risk.
❥Queen Aemma Targaryen [deceased] - (OOC-ish)
Daughter of: Daella Targaryen [deceased]; Rodrick Arryn [deceased]. I'm making it so royal children are named for the royal house instead of taking the fathers name.
Mother Of: King Jacaerys Targaryen; *Princess Aeleanora Targaryen.
Rider Of: Dreamfyre
Weilder Of: Dreamwalker. She did not have Dragon Dreams, but she could manipulate the dream realm and was a huge part of the Targaryens' coming out on top in the rebellion. Despite losing many dragons, the information she plucked from the heads of lord commanders while she slept was what ultimately won them the war, sending the realm into an era of peace.
Biography:
At the time of her birth, there was a human uprising that led to her parents sequestering themselves in the Vale. Shortly after the birth of her and her twin sister, the Vale was stormed by rebels, which resulted in the death of their parents. The pair of Targaryen princesses, twin sisters, were brought safely back to Dragonstone, where King Daeron and Myriah Martell raised them like they were their very own daughters.
Died a dragon rider's death with her Lord Husband, Viserys, and Meraxes, in a battle that occured 9 years before the beginning of the story. The realm thanks The Seven. for blessing her with an immortal heir and an immortal spare before her death.
She and her husband raised her neice, Aeleanora Targaryen, as their beloved daughter and second child; however, no one outside of their inner circle knows this.
By the time the babe was born, the story had already prepared itself for the realm: Queen Aemma had suffered a difficult confinement, but both mother and child survived. No one looked twice. A royal pregnancy hidden behind closed doors was ordinary, but a god-born child hidden in the cradle of a queen was not, which is precisely why the deception worked.
It helped that Aeleanora was born with eyes that could easily be read as kin to Aemma's Arryn coloring, especially by those who saw only what they expected to see. It also helped that, in childhood, she appeared to possess no remarkable power beyond a princess's rank, a dragon's favor, and the ordinary strangeness of the blood of Old Valryia. Hidden in plain sight, she became invisible in an impenetrable fortress
Queen Aemma discovered that divine influence put her daughter at risk when she was manipulating the dream realm, causing her death shortly after her and her husband neutralized the threat in ambush disguised as a meeting of the minds.
Wife Of: Seraphyra has never been married, according to public knowledge…
Mother Of: Princess Aeleanora Targaryen.
Rider Of: Balerion, The Black Dread [presumed deceased]
Weilder Of: Healing magic. One of the most powerful the world has ever seen.
Role: Haunting the narrative.
Biography: Seraphyra is assumed to be deceased by the realm. During the reign of King Daeron II, the legends say she dismounted The Black Dread during an old uprising to heal her favorite cousin, Prince Baelor, who was crushed under his own mount when the dragon was struck out of the air by a scorpion. Baelor and his dragon both should've died that day, but Seraphyra was able to bring them both back at the cost of her own life. So filled with rage and grief, Balerion brought Seraphyra's body back to his homeland, Valyria, to grieve. No one has heard his song in the wind or seen his giant shadow across the horizon since.
Seraphyra does not leave the story when she disappears from it. She lingers in every chamber she once brightened, every grief she left behind, and every person forced to go on loving a woman memory has made even more dangerous than life did.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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i love you gothic literature. i love you gothic romance. i love you vampires and blood. i love you ghosts and phantoms. i love you unsettling themes. i love you fangs in the neck. i love you religious imagery. i love you manors and crypts. i love you cemeteries and haunts. i love you doomed narratives. i love you rot and decay. i love you centuries-long yearning. i love you all consuming love. i love you hunger as desire. i love you monstrous intimacy. i love you cynicism of the human experience. i love you monsters unaware of their horrors until confronted with them.
I've been planning a modern AU for 3 months now and I was supposed to be editing OOTVH Part 15B yesterday but I spent half the day finally fleshing out the modern AU and figuring out what should happen and I think I'm going to do it.......but I'm going to write the whole thing strictly from Baelor's third person limited POV hehe.
She's a dance influencer and one day Maekar texts Baelor and asks if he can get him tickets to see the production of Don Quixote the school is putting on bc "Rhae wants to see some girl she watches on the clock app" and Baelor chokes on his tea when he reads the text knowing said girl and her addictive legs just left his townhouse 3 hours ago.....
I've been planning a modern AU for 3 months now and I was supposed to be editing OOTVH Part 15B yesterday but I spent half the day finally fleshing out the modern AU and figuring out what should happen and I think I'm going to do it.......but I'm going to write the whole thing strictly from Baelor's third person limited POV hehe.
Aeleanora and Baelor walking in the dragon yard and they turn and see Vermithor fussing over Silverwing. Aeleanora covers her hand with her mouth and starts fucking dying laughing bc Baelor and his dragon are literally the same. Baelor's like "omg shut your mouthhhhhh I know exactly what you're about to say right now" and she's like "I see the resemblance :)" and he's like like lmao you're not funny and she's like "He might as well be force feeding her water and smothering her with blankets rn. You are kindered spirits."
He looks around to make sure no one else is watching, pulls her into a little rock alcove and has to bury his laughter in her hair. The wind gusts and he automatically fixes her hair and wraps her cloak tighter around her and she just looks up at him trying SO hard to hold her laughter back and he just glares at her and is like "shut up rn" and she just starts fucking cackling.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
I've been planning a modern AU for 3 months now and I was supposed to be editing OOTVH Part 15B yesterday but I spent half the day finally fleshing out the modern AU and figuring out what should happen and I think I'm going to do it.......but I'm going to write the whole thing strictly from Baelor's third person limited POV hehe.
// A HOTD X AKOTSK AU // BAELOR TARGARYEN X OFC //
SUMMARY: The realm of men is younger than anyone remembers. Long before the Doom, before kingdoms, before the realm of men imagined itself alone, the world belonged to gods. Their descendants still rule it. They call themselves Targaryens, Velaryons, Lannisters, Starks, Arryns, and dozens of other ancient names, carrying the last diluted fragments of divinity in blood that still remembers gods, dragons, prophecy, madness, impossible hungers, and refusing ordinary death.
Every ancient house carries a fragment of the old world. Aeleanora Targaryen carries far too much of it. With a face fit for worship and a dragon's appetite, Aeleanora has spent her life discovering that almost everything worth having belongs to someone else first.
Baelor Targaryen has spent centuries making a sacrament of starvation. Aeleanora reminds him that dragons were never made for fasting.
Their first mistake is recognizing themselves in one another. Their second is looking back.
☙──────────✧──────────❧
AU Premise: Divine blood-line Westeros (not standard canon rules).
Themes: Control vs. hunger, divinity, power, restraint, inevitability.
Tone: Dark, psychological, slow-burn tension.
Relationships: Prince Baelor "Breakspear" Targaryen x Targaryen OC {Aeleanora is for my fellow oddballs, weirdos, pretty and off putting girls! weird girls i love u}
[MASTER LIST] || WIP - WC: 424K and counting :) || I update 1-2x weekly!
Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3A // Part 3B // Part 3C // Part 4 // Part 5 // Part 6A // Part 6B // Part 7 // Part 8 // Part 9A // Part 9B // Part 9C // Part 10 // Part 11 // Part 12A // Part 12B // Part 13 // Part 14 // Part 15A // Part 15B // Part 15C // Part 16 // Part 17 // Part 18A // Part 18B // Part 19 // Part 20 // Part 21
⚔︎Read it on: AO3 ⚔︎ || ⚔︎Read it On: Wattpad⚔︎
CONTENT WARNINGS [PLEASE READ]: 18+ // MINORS DO NOT INTERACT (MDNI); Dark/mature themes; Explicit sexual content; very soft Dom/sub undertones; Power imbalance dynamics; Age gap relationship; Targcest (I couldn't bring myself to do full blooded niece and uncle so these two are technically distant cousins by blood); Possessive romantic dynamics; Trauma, implied & discussed; Non-graphic references to sexual assault; Blood, violence, and political coercion; Run-on sentences; Themes of Self-hatred; Adultery (dw Jena has a ReachDaddy rearranging her spine every night); Infertility; Its just a litttleeee psychosexual horror in here sorry; Lil bit of breeding kink.
NOTE: This fic contains HEAVY OC WORLDBUILDING AND ORIGINAL(ISH) MYTHOLOGY. A reader guide is provided below for clarity + context <3
READER GUIDE + AU Summary:
Relationship Vibe Note: This is a secret romance between two people who are entirely too good at lying in public and entirely too bad at staying away from each other in private. Baelor is not here to tame Aeleanora into sweetness, and Aeleanora is not here to be handed to him like a prize mare with a crown. She is his political equal, his sanctuary, his worst headache, and the bratty little godling testing every inch of his restraint. He is her safest place in a world that keeps trying to make a weapon of her, which naturally means she spends half her time trying to bite the walls of that safety to see if they hold. Secret meetings, council work, stress relief, dangerous tenderness, and a very exclusive dirty mistresses club <3
[Setting]
Takes place in a canon-divergent Westeros. Magic flourishes throughout the realm.
Dragons still exist and are central to power. Since no Aegon/Rhaenyra/Alicent I made it so the Blackfyre rebellion happened earlier and served as the Dance but a few adult dragons survived and were able to replenish a bit of the population.
The ruling class are immortal, magical beings that were the result of generations of gods and demigods breeding with humans called Valyrians. (Was originally a vampire AU!! but i needed the divinity element to be huge and didn't want to incorrectly execute fae or vampire rules so hence odd immortal species is born. I couldnt come up with a good original name even though I tried.)
The realm operates under both political and unseen divine systems.
Dragonstone remains the seat of power instead of Kings Landing. I fucking hate the Red Keep for some reason I need them to be able to get to their dragons the same way I can get to my car in the driveway. They also have magical infrastructure so like, terraforming. The Red Keep still exists, but Kings Landing crawls with humans and they use it for dealings with mortals. They're still blood magickers and tyrants who stole lands and enslaved people. The immortal/mortal divide plays a big role in unrest.
[Core Power Structure]:
The Crown → External authority, rule of the realm.
The Hand → Strategy, governance, internal control.
The Council → Specialized power (coins, ships, whispers, etc.)
Aeleanora's Role → Intermediary authority (petitions, envoys, internal disputes)
**This becomes important very quickly in the story.
[Religion & the Divine]:
The Seven are real, but they are not as mortals understand them. They operate within the divine realms, separated from the realm of men by the Veil.
Most religious knowledge in this AU consists of incomplete and distorted versions of ancient history. The Faith remembers the gods through softened symbols, moral lessons, and thousands of years of mistranslation. The beings behind those symbols are older, stranger, and far less benevolent.
The Seven, very briefly:
The Father governs judgement, law, lineage, and the keeping of the dead. He is less a kindly patriarch than the divine principle that everything must possess a proper place.
The Mother governs life, healing, creation, and continuance. She is not simply maternal mercy. Life can be generous, possessive, ravenous, and willing to preserve itself at any cost.
The Maiden governs love, beauty, sex, desire, and obsession. Mortal doctrine remembers innocence because mortals found the truth considerably less comfortable.
The Crone governs fate, foresight, consequence, and the paths by which one moment becomes another. She carries a lantern because someone must see where every road ends.
The Warrior governs courage, conquest, violence, and conflict. He represents both the strength that defends civilization and the appetite that repeatedly destroys it.
The Smith governs creation, craftsmanship, structure, and transformation. He gives form to possibility, though even the gods cannot always control what becomes of the things they make.
The Stranger governs death, endings, passage, and the unknown. The Faith depicts the Stranger without a face because there are some truths even worshippers know better than to look upon directly.
These descriptions are still only mortal approximations. The Seven are not neatly divided into good and evil, nor are they distant embodiments of virtue. They are coded more like the gods of Greek mythology: cruel, fickle, petty, passionate, extreme, and capable of loving something so fiercely that entire realms suffer for it.
Some divine forces still influence the mortal world directly, and the boundary between gods and mortals is…unstable.
Different gods once ruled the creatures and peoples of different lands, but what if the Seven Who Are One were themselves responsible for a war among the gods that ended in the Doom of Valyria? What if it was not merely their followers who carried the Faith into Westeros? What if the Seven Heavens and Seven Hells were created so they could govern the divine, the living, and the dead?
[The Order of the Veiled Hand]: A hidden order within the Faith. Lead by the Lady Mysaria, Master of Whispers. (aka AU in which I give the Targs an intelligence agency like B613 from Scandal and Mysaria is Command).
Publicly: Silent sisters, Septas, Scullery maids, Ladies maids, Whores, handmaids, Ladies, governesses. You would never, ever know.
Privately: assassins, spies, thieves; huntresses and keepers of dangerous knowledge.
They serve as a covert extension of both religion and state power. Think like female version of the Faceless Men and Sorrowful Men but ran in Westeros by The Crown. Immortality of the ruling houses lessen the gap between Gods, Targaryens, and Men. Ruling the realm through secrets where the dragons are the decoy.
[Tone & Themes]:
Political control vs. personal autonomy.
Power as structure, not spectacle.
Grief, restraint, and inherited responsibility.
Divine systems operating beneath mortal ones.
The Gods are coded like Greek Mythology, they're cruel, fickle, petty, extreme.
Women as controlled power, and what happens when that control shifts.
OC/AU CHARACTER GUIDE
❥Princess Aeleanora Targaryen "The Dragonheart" (OFC)
*Daughter of: Queen Aemma Targaryen [deceased]; King Viserys I Targaryen [deceased].
*Sister of: King Jacaerys Targaryen.
Role: Princess of Dragonstone, Heir to the iron throne, Emerging political intermediary, Cosmic anomaly.
Rider Of: Dreamfyre. She also has a cradle egg that has not hatched.
Weilder Of: Aeleanora's abilities are unknown to the public. Many presume her abilities are intangible, nothing of consequence.
Notable Traits: Aeleanora is a winter-bright blade left in sunlight, but when she goes cold, she does so completely, leaving nothing behind that resembles warmth.
Physical Description: Aeleanora’s beauty is too deliberate and too precise to be entirely natural, even here. All sharp lines and soft contradictions, with feline eyes and a mouth made to unmake restraint. Pale hair falls in long, silken waves, her silver-blue gaze heavy-lidded and quietly knowing. Her skin catches light too easily, holding it a fraction too long, as though it does not pass through her the way it should. She moves with a predator’s grace, all control and intent, as if nothing around her happens without her allowing it.
❥Prince Baelor "Breakspear" Targaryen (AKA: The Hammer)
Son Of: King Daeron II Targaryen [Deceased]; and Queen Myriah Martell [Deceased].
Brother Of: King Viserys Targaryen [Deceased]; Prince Aerys Targaryen; Prince Rhaegal Targaryen; Prince Maekar Targaryen.
Husband of: Lady Jena Dondarrion.
Father of: Prince Valarr Targaryen; Prince Matarys Targaryen.
Role: Hand of the King.
Rider of: Vermithor "The Bronze Fury"
Weilder Of: Storm.
Notable Traits: Disciplined; Politically intelligent; Dryly affectionate; Deeply dutiful; Emotionally self-denying; Stabilizing presence; Capable of immense tenderness buried under control; Frightening when he finally chooses selfishness. He does not break easily, but when he does, it is not quietly.
Biography:
King Daeron II Targaryen and Queen Myriah Martell always wished that their second son, Baelor, had been born first. Their firstborn, Viserys, would be more content traveling the realm and poring over his Old Valyrian and Westerosi histories. Baelor understood duty, responsibility, discipline, and restraint far more than Viserys ever could.
It was because of this that he never even thought of pushing his brother to abdicate; instead, he pushed his brother to be a better King. Why? Because someone believed that if the two worked together, Westeros would reach new heights that Old Valryia ever could, even when the gods lived among them.
That someone was right. As his brother's Hand and Heir, Baelor had singlehandedly brought Westeros to its height as a civilization, with 300 years passing since the last hint of conflict (i.e, an uprising that resulted in the loss of King Daeron and the ascencion of Viserys as king). However, as the years passed, his shoulders became heavier and heavier with the weight of expectation. He soon realized that while he excelled at ruling, he hated the external pressure that came along with it. The hand pin he wore on his shoulder weighed nothing compared to the weight of the crown looming over his head, should anything happen to his brother. When the opportunity came to abdicate under the guise of love and honor, he made a selfish decision for the first time in his immortal life.
Physical Description: Canon - Bertie Carvel as Baelor Targaryen in AKOTSK.
❥King Jacaerys Targaryen "The Young King" (OC)
Son Of: Queen Aemma Targaryen [deceased]; King Viserys I Targaryen [deceased]
*Brother Of: Princess Aeleanora Targaryen.
Husband Of: Queen Laena Velaryon.
Role: King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm.
Rider Of: Silverwing "The Lady of the Sky"
Weilder Of: Ice
Notable Traits: He is a whimsical king in the Old Valyrian sense: artistic, thoughtful, dreamy, prone to beauty, ideas, and symbols. But beneath that softness lies the potential for genuine strength. He was crowned too young and burdened too early, and much of his early reign is defined not by a lack of ability but by the simple fact that he has not yet lived long enough to grow into his immense potential.
Biography:
His uncle, Prince Baelor, passed his claim to the Iron Throne to Jacaerys after the birth of Princess Aeleanora. Jacaerys was crowned the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms shortly after his parents were killed after his 16th nameday. The youngest king to ever sit the throne.
Jacaerys swore an oath to love and protect his younger sister in the wake of the loss of their parents. He named her the heir apparent to the Iron Throne right before her 9th nameday.
With the help of the remainder of his parents' inner circle (especially his uncle), The Young King quickly rose to the occasion in filling his father's shoes, soon to outgrow them.
For reasons even Baelor does not fully understand, his uncle finds shaping Jacaerys into a king far more rewarding than propping up his elder brother ever was. Viserys had to be carried; Jacaerys can be taught. He wants to be worthy and has what it takes to do so. To his uncle, that makes him easier to love and far more painful to watch struggle.
Physical Description: I’ve always had such a thing for Harry Lloyd as Viserys Targaryen in GOT like hes SUCH a cutie so this is what I imagine Jacaerys looking like. Also he has violet eyes.
❥Princess Rhaenys Targaryen
Daughter Of: Lady Jocelyn Baratheon [Deceased]; Prince Aemon Targaryen [Deceased].
Wife Of: Lord Corlys Velaryon.
Mother Of: Leanor Velaryon; Queen Laena Velaryon.
Role: Matriarch of House Targaryen.
Rider Of: Meleys "The Red Queen"
Weilder Of: A form of spatial manipulation often mistaken for movement. Rhaenys does not simply cross distance, she folds it. To those who witness it, she appears to vanish and reappear in a single breath, as though space has yieled to her will.
Notable Traits: Composed, calculating, and immovable. Rhaenys does not raise her voice to command or attention. Where others rule through presence, she rules through inevitability.
Biography: Rhaenys has outlived kings, wars, and expectations. She understands power as something to endure. In a court that bends toward spectacle and volatility, she remains constant in watching, measuring, and ensuring the survival of her bloodline at any cost.
Physical Description: Canon (book/tv mashup) - Eve Best as Rhaenys Targaryen in HOTD but with the ASOIAF dark hair and violet eyes.
❥Queen Laena Velaryon
Daughter of: Lord Corlys Velaryon; Princess Rhaenys Targaryen.
Wife of: King Jacaerys Targaryen.
Role: Queen of the Seven Kingdoms; emotional and social counterbalance to the Crown.
Rider of: Vhagar
Wielder of: Water.
Notable Traits: Effortless, perceptive, and dangerously intuitive. Laena understands people in ways that cannot be taught. What they want, what they hide, and what they refuse to name. She moves through the world as though it belongs to her, and more often than not, it does.
Function in Story: Laena acts as both mirror and catalyst to Aeleanora. Where Aeleanora is controlled, Laena is instinctual. Where Aeleanora resists desire, Laena recognizes it immediately.
Physical Description: Canon - Nanna Blondell as Laena Velaryon in HOTD (with the violet eyes bc lets match with mama).
❥Lady Mysaria "The White Worm"
Daughter Of: Bastard born to a Valyrian lord and sold in a land she didn't get a chance to learn the name of before she was sold off to the slave trade.
Role: Master of Whispers; Leader of the Order of the Veiled Hand.
Weilder Of: Cerebromancy. Mysaria can see into anyone's mind, and can rearrange it accordingly, to her will.
Notable Traits: Omniscient in practice, if not in truth. Mysaria does not need to be seen to exert control. She exists in information, in secrets, in the unseen currents of power. Nothing moves in the realm without her knowing why.
Function: The bridge between divine knowledge and mortal manipulation.
Biography:
At 20 years old, Mysaria was bought in Essos by a Westerosi lord who wanted her company on his sail home. She ventured into his mind one night and found that him and his house were planning an attack in protest of a new tax allowed by the crown for houses that hold important crossings.
When she arrived in Westeros, she knew of nothing, and did not even speak the common tongue, but she remembered venturing into the mind of her madame one night when she was a teen and learned the truth of the Silent Sisters. She was instantly enamored by them. When the lord who bought her brought her back to Westeros was asleep one night, she slipped out of the keep and escaped with the help of a stable boy and scullery maid that she had befriended when they helped her learn some words in the common tongue.
After weeks and weeks of travel by foot and slipping into the minds of others to compel them to do her bidding, she made it to the citadel and sought out the Silent Sisters and presented herself as a widow. After years of working as handmaiden of death, she wondered if what she saw in the mind of her madame was only a fever dream or a story the woman had made up.
Throughout this time, she tried to slip into the minds of her fellow sisters and her elders, but for the first time in her life she couldn't breach their mental barriers. Out of frustrating, she tried slamming into the mind of one of her elders after she was punished for something Mysaria couldn't bring herself to care about. Mysaria thought the elder was going to dispose of her, but instead, she was offered the blood oath and initiated into the secret order of Silent Sisters, where she met Princess Seraphyra.
They quickly became eachothers dearest friends, and upon their initiation and completion of their training, Sera brought Mysaria back to court with her and told her lord father, King Daeron, about Mysarias telepathic nature. King Daeron agreed that she was too powerful to pass over when she showed him what she could do. Mysaria was taken under the wing of King Daeron's Master of Whispers and trained to serve him and the king.
After the death of the Master of Whispers, who served King Daeron's grandfather, his father, and then King Daeron, Mysaria was initiated as King Daeron's new Master of Whispers towards the end of his reign. At this point, Mysaria was running a world wide network of whores, spies, assassins, urchins, merchants, servants, etc.; a major information market that some of the histories argue was where the true power of the Targaryen dynasty lay.
Lady Mysaria feels personally that she now owes her life both to the Silent Sisters and to Seraphyra, and to the family that took her in and treated her like she was a part of it. She pays this debt through her service to King Jacaerys and her love for her dear friend Sera by proxy of her daughter.
Physical Description: Canon - Sonoya Mizuno as Mysaria in HOTD
❥King Viserys I Targaryen [deceased] - (OOC-ish)
Son of: King Daeron II Targaryen [deceased]; Queen Myriah Martell [deceased].
Brother Of: Prince Baelor Targaryen; Prince Aerys I Targaryen; Prince Rhaegal Targaryen; Maekar I Targaryen.
Husband Of: Queen Aemma Targaryen [deceased].
*Father Of: King Jacaerys Targaryen; *Princess Aeleanora Targaryen.
Rider Of: Meraxes [Deceased].
Weilder Of: Wind.
Biography:
Viserys never wanted to be king. He would, however, go down as one of the greatest Kings in history due to the help of his beloved Hand and younger brother, Prince Baelor "Breakspear" Targaryen.
He and his lady wife Aemma died dragon riders' deaths in a battle in Essos, where divine influence put their daughter's identity and life at risk.
❥Queen Aemma Targaryen [deceased] - (OOC-ish)
Daughter of: Daella Targaryen [deceased]; Rodrick Arryn [deceased]. I'm making it so royal children are named for the royal house instead of taking the fathers name.
Mother Of: King Jacaerys Targaryen; *Princess Aeleanora Targaryen.
Rider Of: Dreamfyre
Weilder Of: Dreamwalker. She did not have Dragon Dreams, but she could manipulate the dream realm and was a huge part of the Targaryens' coming out on top in the rebellion. Despite losing many dragons, the information she plucked from the heads of lord commanders while she slept was what ultimately won them the war, sending the realm into an era of peace.
Biography:
At the time of her birth, there was a human uprising that led to her parents sequestering themselves in the Vale. Shortly after the birth of her and her twin sister, the Vale was stormed by rebels, which resulted in the death of their parents. The pair of Targaryen princesses, twin sisters, were brought safely back to Dragonstone, where King Daeron and Myriah Martell raised them like they were their very own daughters.
Died a dragon rider's death with her Lord Husband, Viserys, and Meraxes, in a battle that occured 9 years before the beginning of the story. The realm thanks The Seven. for blessing her with an immortal heir and an immortal spare before her death.
She and her husband raised her neice, Aeleanora Targaryen, as their beloved daughter and second child; however, no one outside of their inner circle knows this.
By the time the babe was born, the story had already prepared itself for the realm: Queen Aemma had suffered a difficult confinement, but both mother and child survived. No one looked twice. A royal pregnancy hidden behind closed doors was ordinary, but a god-born child hidden in the cradle of a queen was not, which is precisely why the deception worked.
It helped that Aeleanora was born with eyes that could easily be read as kin to Aemma's Arryn coloring, especially by those who saw only what they expected to see. It also helped that, in childhood, she appeared to possess no remarkable power beyond a princess's rank, a dragon's favor, and the ordinary strangeness of the blood of Old Valryia. Hidden in plain sight, she became invisible in an impenetrable fortress
Queen Aemma discovered that divine influence put her daughter at risk when she was manipulating the dream realm, causing her death shortly after her and her husband neutralized the threat in ambush disguised as a meeting of the minds.
Wife Of: Seraphyra has never been married, according to public knowledge…
Mother Of: Princess Aeleanora Targaryen.
Rider Of: Balerion, The Black Dread [presumed deceased]
Weilder Of: Healing magic. One of the most powerful the world has ever seen.
Role: Haunting the narrative.
Biography: Seraphyra is assumed to be deceased by the realm. During the reign of King Daeron II, the legends say she dismounted The Black Dread during an old uprising to heal her favorite cousin, Prince Baelor, who was crushed under his own mount when the dragon was struck out of the air by a scorpion. Baelor and his dragon both should've died that day, but Seraphyra was able to bring them both back at the cost of her own life. So filled with rage and grief, Balerion brought Seraphyra's body back to his homeland, Valyria, to grieve. No one has heard his song in the wind or seen his giant shadow across the horizon since.
Seraphyra does not leave the story when she disappears from it. She lingers in every chamber she once brightened, every grief she left behind, and every person forced to go on loving a woman memory has made even more dangerous than life did.
// A HOTD X AKOTSK AU // BAELOR TARGARYEN X OFC //
SUMMARY: The realm of men is younger than anyone remembers. Long before the Doom, before kingdoms, before the realm of men imagined itself alone, the world belonged to gods. Their descendants still rule it. They call themselves Targaryens, Velaryons, Lannisters, Starks, Arryns, and dozens of other ancient names, carrying the last diluted fragments of divinity in blood that still remembers gods, dragons, prophecy, madness, impossible hungers, and refusing ordinary death.
Every ancient house carries a fragment of the old world. Aeleanora Targaryen carries far too much of it. With a face fit for worship and a dragon's appetite, Aeleanora has spent her life discovering that almost everything worth having belongs to someone else first.
Baelor Targaryen has spent centuries making a sacrament of starvation. Aeleanora reminds him that dragons were never made for fasting.
Their first mistake is recognizing themselves in one another. Their second is looking back.
☙──────────✧──────────❧
AU Premise: Divine blood-line Westeros (not standard canon rules).
Themes: Control vs. hunger, divinity, power, restraint, inevitability.
Tone: Dark, psychological, slow-burn tension.
Relationships: Prince Baelor "Breakspear" Targaryen x Targaryen OC {Aeleanora is for my fellow oddballs, weirdos, pretty and off putting girls! weird girls i love u}
[MASTER LIST] || WIP - WC: 424K and counting :) || I update 1-2x weekly!
Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3A // Part 3B // Part 3C // Part 4 // Part 5 // Part 6A // Part 6B // Part 7 // Part 8 // Part 9A // Part 9B // Part 9C // Part 10 // Part 11 // Part 12A // Part 12B // Part 13 // Part 14 // Part 15A // Part 15B // Part 15C // Part 16 // Part 17 // Part 18A // Part 18B // Part 19 // Part 20 // Part 21
⚔︎Read it on: AO3 ⚔︎ || ⚔︎Read it On: Wattpad⚔︎
CONTENT WARNINGS [PLEASE READ]: 18+ // MINORS DO NOT INTERACT (MDNI); Dark/mature themes; Explicit sexual content; very soft Dom/sub undertones; Power imbalance dynamics; Age gap relationship; Targcest (I couldn't bring myself to do full blooded niece and uncle so these two are technically distant cousins by blood); Possessive romantic dynamics; Trauma, implied & discussed; Non-graphic references to sexual assault; Blood, violence, and political coercion; Run-on sentences; Themes of Self-hatred; Adultery (dw Jena has a ReachDaddy rearranging her spine every night); Infertility; Its just a litttleeee psychosexual horror in here sorry; Lil bit of breeding kink.
NOTE: This fic contains HEAVY OC WORLDBUILDING AND ORIGINAL(ISH) MYTHOLOGY. A reader guide is provided below for clarity + context <3
READER GUIDE + AU Summary:
Relationship Vibe Note: This is a secret romance between two people who are entirely too good at lying in public and entirely too bad at staying away from each other in private. Baelor is not here to tame Aeleanora into sweetness, and Aeleanora is not here to be handed to him like a prize mare with a crown. She is his political equal, his sanctuary, his worst headache, and the bratty little godling testing every inch of his restraint. He is her safest place in a world that keeps trying to make a weapon of her, which naturally means she spends half her time trying to bite the walls of that safety to see if they hold. Secret meetings, council work, stress relief, dangerous tenderness, and a very exclusive dirty mistresses club <3
[Setting]
Takes place in a canon-divergent Westeros. Magic flourishes throughout the realm.
Dragons still exist and are central to power. Since no Aegon/Rhaenyra/Alicent I made it so the Blackfyre rebellion happened earlier and served as the Dance but a few adult dragons survived and were able to replenish a bit of the population.
The ruling class are immortal, magical beings that were the result of generations of gods and demigods breeding with humans called Valyrians. (Was originally a vampire AU!! but i needed the divinity element to be huge and didn't want to incorrectly execute fae or vampire rules so hence odd immortal species is born. I couldnt come up with a good original name even though I tried.)
The realm operates under both political and unseen divine systems.
Dragonstone remains the seat of power instead of Kings Landing. I fucking hate the Red Keep for some reason I need them to be able to get to their dragons the same way I can get to my car in the driveway. They also have magical infrastructure so like, terraforming. The Red Keep still exists, but Kings Landing crawls with humans and they use it for dealings with mortals. They're still blood magickers and tyrants who stole lands and enslaved people. The immortal/mortal divide plays a big role in unrest.
[Core Power Structure]:
The Crown → External authority, rule of the realm.
The Hand → Strategy, governance, internal control.
The Council → Specialized power (coins, ships, whispers, etc.)
Aeleanora's Role → Intermediary authority (petitions, envoys, internal disputes)
**This becomes important very quickly in the story.
[Religion & the Divine]:
The Seven are real, but they are not as mortals understand them. They operate within the divine realms, separated from the realm of men by the Veil.
Most religious knowledge in this AU consists of incomplete and distorted versions of ancient history. The Faith remembers the gods through softened symbols, moral lessons, and thousands of years of mistranslation. The beings behind those symbols are older, stranger, and far less benevolent.
The Seven, very briefly:
The Father governs judgement, law, lineage, and the keeping of the dead. He is less a kindly patriarch than the divine principle that everything must possess a proper place.
The Mother governs life, healing, creation, and continuance. She is not simply maternal mercy. Life can be generous, possessive, ravenous, and willing to preserve itself at any cost.
The Maiden governs love, beauty, sex, desire, and obsession. Mortal doctrine remembers innocence because mortals found the truth considerably less comfortable.
The Crone governs fate, foresight, consequence, and the paths by which one moment becomes another. She carries a lantern because someone must see where every road ends.
The Warrior governs courage, conquest, violence, and conflict. He represents both the strength that defends civilization and the appetite that repeatedly destroys it.
The Smith governs creation, craftsmanship, structure, and transformation. He gives form to possibility, though even the gods cannot always control what becomes of the things they make.
The Stranger governs death, endings, passage, and the unknown. The Faith depicts the Stranger without a face because there are some truths even worshippers know better than to look upon directly.
These descriptions are still only mortal approximations. The Seven are not neatly divided into good and evil, nor are they distant embodiments of virtue. They are coded more like the gods of Greek mythology: cruel, fickle, petty, passionate, extreme, and capable of loving something so fiercely that entire realms suffer for it.
Some divine forces still influence the mortal world directly, and the boundary between gods and mortals is…unstable.
Different gods once ruled the creatures and peoples of different lands, but what if the Seven Who Are One were themselves responsible for a war among the gods that ended in the Doom of Valyria? What if it was not merely their followers who carried the Faith into Westeros? What if the Seven Heavens and Seven Hells were created so they could govern the divine, the living, and the dead?
[The Order of the Veiled Hand]: A hidden order within the Faith. Lead by the Lady Mysaria, Master of Whispers. (aka AU in which I give the Targs an intelligence agency like B613 from Scandal and Mysaria is Command).
Publicly: Silent sisters, Septas, Scullery maids, Ladies maids, Whores, handmaids, Ladies, governesses. You would never, ever know.
Privately: assassins, spies, thieves; huntresses and keepers of dangerous knowledge.
They serve as a covert extension of both religion and state power. Think like female version of the Faceless Men and Sorrowful Men but ran in Westeros by The Crown. Immortality of the ruling houses lessen the gap between Gods, Targaryens, and Men. Ruling the realm through secrets where the dragons are the decoy.
[Tone & Themes]:
Political control vs. personal autonomy.
Power as structure, not spectacle.
Grief, restraint, and inherited responsibility.
Divine systems operating beneath mortal ones.
The Gods are coded like Greek Mythology, they're cruel, fickle, petty, extreme.
Women as controlled power, and what happens when that control shifts.
OC/AU CHARACTER GUIDE
❥Princess Aeleanora Targaryen "The Dragonheart" (OFC)
*Daughter of: Queen Aemma Targaryen [deceased]; King Viserys I Targaryen [deceased].
*Sister of: King Jacaerys Targaryen.
Role: Princess of Dragonstone, Heir to the iron throne, Emerging political intermediary, Cosmic anomaly.
Rider Of: Dreamfyre. She also has a cradle egg that has not hatched.
Weilder Of: Aeleanora's abilities are unknown to the public. Many presume her abilities are intangible, nothing of consequence.
Notable Traits: Aeleanora is a winter-bright blade left in sunlight, but when she goes cold, she does so completely, leaving nothing behind that resembles warmth.
Physical Description: Aeleanora’s beauty is too deliberate and too precise to be entirely natural, even here. All sharp lines and soft contradictions, with feline eyes and a mouth made to unmake restraint. Pale hair falls in long, silken waves, her silver-blue gaze heavy-lidded and quietly knowing. Her skin catches light too easily, holding it a fraction too long, as though it does not pass through her the way it should. She moves with a predator’s grace, all control and intent, as if nothing around her happens without her allowing it.
❥Prince Baelor "Breakspear" Targaryen (AKA: The Hammer)
Son Of: King Daeron II Targaryen [Deceased]; and Queen Myriah Martell [Deceased].
Brother Of: King Viserys Targaryen [Deceased]; Prince Aerys Targaryen; Prince Rhaegal Targaryen; Prince Maekar Targaryen.
Husband of: Lady Jena Dondarrion.
Father of: Prince Valarr Targaryen; Prince Matarys Targaryen.
Role: Hand of the King.
Rider of: Vermithor "The Bronze Fury"
Weilder Of: Storm.
Notable Traits: Disciplined; Politically intelligent; Dryly affectionate; Deeply dutiful; Emotionally self-denying; Stabilizing presence; Capable of immense tenderness buried under control; Frightening when he finally chooses selfishness. He does not break easily, but when he does, it is not quietly.
Biography:
King Daeron II Targaryen and Queen Myriah Martell always wished that their second son, Baelor, had been born first. Their firstborn, Viserys, would be more content traveling the realm and poring over his Old Valyrian and Westerosi histories. Baelor understood duty, responsibility, discipline, and restraint far more than Viserys ever could.
It was because of this that he never even thought of pushing his brother to abdicate; instead, he pushed his brother to be a better King. Why? Because someone believed that if the two worked together, Westeros would reach new heights that Old Valryia ever could, even when the gods lived among them.
That someone was right. As his brother's Hand and Heir, Baelor had singlehandedly brought Westeros to its height as a civilization, with 300 years passing since the last hint of conflict (i.e, an uprising that resulted in the loss of King Daeron and the ascencion of Viserys as king). However, as the years passed, his shoulders became heavier and heavier with the weight of expectation. He soon realized that while he excelled at ruling, he hated the external pressure that came along with it. The hand pin he wore on his shoulder weighed nothing compared to the weight of the crown looming over his head, should anything happen to his brother. When the opportunity came to abdicate under the guise of love and honor, he made a selfish decision for the first time in his immortal life.
Physical Description: Canon - Bertie Carvel as Baelor Targaryen in AKOTSK.
❥King Jacaerys Targaryen "The Young King" (OC)
Son Of: Queen Aemma Targaryen [deceased]; King Viserys I Targaryen [deceased]
*Brother Of: Princess Aeleanora Targaryen.
Husband Of: Queen Laena Velaryon.
Role: King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm.
Rider Of: Silverwing "The Lady of the Sky"
Weilder Of: Ice
Notable Traits: He is a whimsical king in the Old Valyrian sense: artistic, thoughtful, dreamy, prone to beauty, ideas, and symbols. But beneath that softness lies the potential for genuine strength. He was crowned too young and burdened too early, and much of his early reign is defined not by a lack of ability but by the simple fact that he has not yet lived long enough to grow into his immense potential.
Biography:
His uncle, Prince Baelor, passed his claim to the Iron Throne to Jacaerys after the birth of Princess Aeleanora. Jacaerys was crowned the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms shortly after his parents were killed after his 16th nameday. The youngest king to ever sit the throne.
Jacaerys swore an oath to love and protect his younger sister in the wake of the loss of their parents. He named her the heir apparent to the Iron Throne right before her 9th nameday.
With the help of the remainder of his parents' inner circle (especially his uncle), The Young King quickly rose to the occasion in filling his father's shoes, soon to outgrow them.
For reasons even Baelor does not fully understand, his uncle finds shaping Jacaerys into a king far more rewarding than propping up his elder brother ever was. Viserys had to be carried; Jacaerys can be taught. He wants to be worthy and has what it takes to do so. To his uncle, that makes him easier to love and far more painful to watch struggle.
Physical Description: I’ve always had such a thing for Harry Lloyd as Viserys Targaryen in GOT like hes SUCH a cutie so this is what I imagine Jacaerys looking like. Also he has violet eyes.
❥Princess Rhaenys Targaryen
Daughter Of: Lady Jocelyn Baratheon [Deceased]; Prince Aemon Targaryen [Deceased].
Wife Of: Lord Corlys Velaryon.
Mother Of: Leanor Velaryon; Queen Laena Velaryon.
Role: Matriarch of House Targaryen.
Rider Of: Meleys "The Red Queen"
Weilder Of: A form of spatial manipulation often mistaken for movement. Rhaenys does not simply cross distance, she folds it. To those who witness it, she appears to vanish and reappear in a single breath, as though space has yieled to her will.
Notable Traits: Composed, calculating, and immovable. Rhaenys does not raise her voice to command or attention. Where others rule through presence, she rules through inevitability.
Biography: Rhaenys has outlived kings, wars, and expectations. She understands power as something to endure. In a court that bends toward spectacle and volatility, she remains constant in watching, measuring, and ensuring the survival of her bloodline at any cost.
Physical Description: Canon (book/tv mashup) - Eve Best as Rhaenys Targaryen in HOTD but with the ASOIAF dark hair and violet eyes.
❥Queen Laena Velaryon
Daughter of: Lord Corlys Velaryon; Princess Rhaenys Targaryen.
Wife of: King Jacaerys Targaryen.
Role: Queen of the Seven Kingdoms; emotional and social counterbalance to the Crown.
Rider of: Vhagar
Wielder of: Water.
Notable Traits: Effortless, perceptive, and dangerously intuitive. Laena understands people in ways that cannot be taught. What they want, what they hide, and what they refuse to name. She moves through the world as though it belongs to her, and more often than not, it does.
Function in Story: Laena acts as both mirror and catalyst to Aeleanora. Where Aeleanora is controlled, Laena is instinctual. Where Aeleanora resists desire, Laena recognizes it immediately.
Physical Description: Canon - Nanna Blondell as Laena Velaryon in HOTD (with the violet eyes bc lets match with mama).
❥Lady Mysaria "The White Worm"
Daughter Of: Bastard born to a Valyrian lord and sold in a land she didn't get a chance to learn the name of before she was sold off to the slave trade.
Role: Master of Whispers; Leader of the Order of the Veiled Hand.
Weilder Of: Cerebromancy. Mysaria can see into anyone's mind, and can rearrange it accordingly, to her will.
Notable Traits: Omniscient in practice, if not in truth. Mysaria does not need to be seen to exert control. She exists in information, in secrets, in the unseen currents of power. Nothing moves in the realm without her knowing why.
Function: The bridge between divine knowledge and mortal manipulation.
Biography:
At 20 years old, Mysaria was bought in Essos by a Westerosi lord who wanted her company on his sail home. She ventured into his mind one night and found that him and his house were planning an attack in protest of a new tax allowed by the crown for houses that hold important crossings.
When she arrived in Westeros, she knew of nothing, and did not even speak the common tongue, but she remembered venturing into the mind of her madame one night when she was a teen and learned the truth of the Silent Sisters. She was instantly enamored by them. When the lord who bought her brought her back to Westeros was asleep one night, she slipped out of the keep and escaped with the help of a stable boy and scullery maid that she had befriended when they helped her learn some words in the common tongue.
After weeks and weeks of travel by foot and slipping into the minds of others to compel them to do her bidding, she made it to the citadel and sought out the Silent Sisters and presented herself as a widow. After years of working as handmaiden of death, she wondered if what she saw in the mind of her madame was only a fever dream or a story the woman had made up.
Throughout this time, she tried to slip into the minds of her fellow sisters and her elders, but for the first time in her life she couldn't breach their mental barriers. Out of frustrating, she tried slamming into the mind of one of her elders after she was punished for something Mysaria couldn't bring herself to care about. Mysaria thought the elder was going to dispose of her, but instead, she was offered the blood oath and initiated into the secret order of Silent Sisters, where she met Princess Seraphyra.
They quickly became eachothers dearest friends, and upon their initiation and completion of their training, Sera brought Mysaria back to court with her and told her lord father, King Daeron, about Mysarias telepathic nature. King Daeron agreed that she was too powerful to pass over when she showed him what she could do. Mysaria was taken under the wing of King Daeron's Master of Whispers and trained to serve him and the king.
After the death of the Master of Whispers, who served King Daeron's grandfather, his father, and then King Daeron, Mysaria was initiated as King Daeron's new Master of Whispers towards the end of his reign. At this point, Mysaria was running a world wide network of whores, spies, assassins, urchins, merchants, servants, etc.; a major information market that some of the histories argue was where the true power of the Targaryen dynasty lay.
Lady Mysaria feels personally that she now owes her life both to the Silent Sisters and to Seraphyra, and to the family that took her in and treated her like she was a part of it. She pays this debt through her service to King Jacaerys and her love for her dear friend Sera by proxy of her daughter.
Physical Description: Canon - Sonoya Mizuno as Mysaria in HOTD
❥King Viserys I Targaryen [deceased] - (OOC-ish)
Son of: King Daeron II Targaryen [deceased]; Queen Myriah Martell [deceased].
Brother Of: Prince Baelor Targaryen; Prince Aerys I Targaryen; Prince Rhaegal Targaryen; Maekar I Targaryen.
Husband Of: Queen Aemma Targaryen [deceased].
*Father Of: King Jacaerys Targaryen; *Princess Aeleanora Targaryen.
Rider Of: Meraxes [Deceased].
Weilder Of: Wind.
Biography:
Viserys never wanted to be king. He would, however, go down as one of the greatest Kings in history due to the help of his beloved Hand and younger brother, Prince Baelor "Breakspear" Targaryen.
He and his lady wife Aemma died dragon riders' deaths in a battle in Essos, where divine influence put their daughter's identity and life at risk.
❥Queen Aemma Targaryen [deceased] - (OOC-ish)
Daughter of: Daella Targaryen [deceased]; Rodrick Arryn [deceased]. I'm making it so royal children are named for the royal house instead of taking the fathers name.
Mother Of: King Jacaerys Targaryen; *Princess Aeleanora Targaryen.
Rider Of: Dreamfyre
Weilder Of: Dreamwalker. She did not have Dragon Dreams, but she could manipulate the dream realm and was a huge part of the Targaryens' coming out on top in the rebellion. Despite losing many dragons, the information she plucked from the heads of lord commanders while she slept was what ultimately won them the war, sending the realm into an era of peace.
Biography:
At the time of her birth, there was a human uprising that led to her parents sequestering themselves in the Vale. Shortly after the birth of her and her twin sister, the Vale was stormed by rebels, which resulted in the death of their parents. The pair of Targaryen princesses, twin sisters, were brought safely back to Dragonstone, where King Daeron and Myriah Martell raised them like they were their very own daughters.
Died a dragon rider's death with her Lord Husband, Viserys, and Meraxes, in a battle that occured 9 years before the beginning of the story. The realm thanks The Seven. for blessing her with an immortal heir and an immortal spare before her death.
She and her husband raised her neice, Aeleanora Targaryen, as their beloved daughter and second child; however, no one outside of their inner circle knows this.
By the time the babe was born, the story had already prepared itself for the realm: Queen Aemma had suffered a difficult confinement, but both mother and child survived. No one looked twice. A royal pregnancy hidden behind closed doors was ordinary, but a god-born child hidden in the cradle of a queen was not, which is precisely why the deception worked.
It helped that Aeleanora was born with eyes that could easily be read as kin to Aemma's Arryn coloring, especially by those who saw only what they expected to see. It also helped that, in childhood, she appeared to possess no remarkable power beyond a princess's rank, a dragon's favor, and the ordinary strangeness of the blood of Old Valryia. Hidden in plain sight, she became invisible in an impenetrable fortress
Queen Aemma discovered that divine influence put her daughter at risk when she was manipulating the dream realm, causing her death shortly after her and her husband neutralized the threat in ambush disguised as a meeting of the minds.
Wife Of: Seraphyra has never been married, according to public knowledge…
Mother Of: Princess Aeleanora Targaryen.
Rider Of: Balerion, The Black Dread [presumed deceased]
Weilder Of: Healing magic. One of the most powerful the world has ever seen.
Role: Haunting the narrative.
Biography: Seraphyra is assumed to be deceased by the realm. During the reign of King Daeron II, the legends say she dismounted The Black Dread during an old uprising to heal her favorite cousin, Prince Baelor, who was crushed under his own mount when the dragon was struck out of the air by a scorpion. Baelor and his dragon both should've died that day, but Seraphyra was able to bring them both back at the cost of her own life. So filled with rage and grief, Balerion brought Seraphyra's body back to his homeland, Valyria, to grieve. No one has heard his song in the wind or seen his giant shadow across the horizon since.
Seraphyra does not leave the story when she disappears from it. She lingers in every chamber she once brightened, every grief she left behind, and every person forced to go on loving a woman memory has made even more dangerous than life did.
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I've been spending so much time trying to practice writing in a medieval/Westerosi style that I accidentally caught myself signing off on a case note this morning saying "Provider shall..." instead of "Provider will..." smh
// A HOTD X AKOTSK AU // BAELOR TARGARYEN X OFC //
Warnings: References to violence; See masterlist for specific content warnings, and leave me a comment if I am missing any. I will add them!
[MASTERLIST]: AU + OC Content Heavy - Please see masterlist to avoid confusion <3.
WC: 18.1K
AN: Sorry this took so long!
☙──────────✧──────────❧
He left the corner bent where she had put it. Aeleanora watched that tiny surrender with more interest than a folded scrap of parchment deserved. “You came to inspect me more closely.”
Baelor took the wine cup from beside her elbow and drank from the place her mouth had left damp. “I came because Jacaerys sent a page.”
“Poor lie.”
“He did send one.”
“And you wrestled it from a child out of devotion to correspondence.”
Baelor regarded her with the patience he reserved for petitions founded upon obvious nonsense. “The boy surrendered without a struggle.”
Aeleanora folded Jacaerys’s questions and tucked them beneath the edge of the black-glass weight. “You have now discharged the king’s business. Yet you remain beside the trout you rescued.”
“You did well.” Baelor returned her cup to the same damp ring upon the table, though his thumb stayed against the rim.
☙──────────✧──────────❧
Two and a half weeks after the nameday feast, Dragonstone returned to its ordinary cruelties, which were smaller than feasts and therefore harder to escape. The extra banners came down and visiting perfumes thinned from the galleries. In the kitchens, cooks returned to counting household loaves instead of sugared excess. Guards and clerks reclaimed the corridors while petitioners waited with grievances the celebration had left untouched. Aeleanora found the castle’s relief insulting.
The mornings belonged to council work, or to the share Jacaerys judged unlikely to draw blood. Corlys and Cerion had already stripped each harbour dispute down to figures and names before the papers reached her, while Sylas’s road reports arrived with the offending reeves reduced to initials. Lesser houses sent old grievances beneath fresh wax. The Faith complained in a hand so careful Aeleanora suspected the ink itself had been instructed to kneel.
She read them because refusal would have pleased everyone too much, and she answered every one. She returned two suggested replies to Lord Bar Emmon’s steward and, with perfect courtesy, asked why his master required forty-three words to confess that six barrels of salted fish were missing. Sweat gathered at his temples before she reached the end.The work could be finished before luncheon and forgotten before supper. At eight, a wine pitcher in her hands had taught her that lords forgot to lower their voices while a child filled their cups. Here, the choice had already been made before her fingers touched the wax.
By the third week, she had begun listening for a mistake she could punish. At council, she listened with her chin propped on two fingers and her eyes lowered just enough to appear dutiful. Baelor had learned to look up whenever she went very still, because her silence usually meant the page before her had omitted something expensive. Once he caught her watching him and gave the smallest shake of his head. She waited until Jacaerys reached for the next paper before asking the question anyway, and a dry smile appeared beneath Baelor’s beard.
In her solar, she finished the correspondence before midday and left the quills sharpened beside an offensively neat desk.She had begun lingering at the training yard, watching pages drill until one of them dropped his practice sword twice in the same pass. Once she asked, very sweetly, whether his weapon had betrayed him or whether the fault lay in his hands. The master-at-arms pretended not to hear, which proved he had some instinct for survival. Jacaerys did not find it amusing when he heard. He had the weary look of a man who knew exactly what happened when his sister had too much mind and too little sanctioned ruin to spend it on.
The nights had made daylight harder to endure. In the firelight, Baelor let her pull apart every decision she had been expected to accept in silence. He argued when she was wrong, and when words ran out he took her to bed. By morning he wore the Hand’s black wool and addressed her across the council table while her harmless letters waited beside his ledgers. When he passed close, she caught clean wool and smoke at his collar, and once the dark red cloth beneath it hid the mark of her teeth. She kept both hands folded before witnesses. At night she could put her mouth against his throat and make the realm wait outside the door.
That afternoon, the sea had gone iron-grey beneath a low sky, and cold entered the castle through every seam in the stone. Aeleanora left the council chamber with Baelor beside her and a stack of folded notes in her hand, each one tied with thread and marked for someone dull enough to deserve parchment. He had said very little during the last hour, which meant he had listened too well and probably found three weak joints in the harbour accounts. His black sleeve brushed hers once as they turned down the corridor towards the western stair. The wool caught against her cuff, tugged, then slid free. Heat ran up her arm beneath the silk while Baelor continued at the same measured pace, a public act of innocence from a man privately guilty of much better things.
“Jacaerys sighed at me four times.”
“You counted?”
“I am a devoted sister.”
Baelor gave her the narrowest smile and lost it before anyone else could see. It was the sort of smile he gave in corridors, small enough to deny and still large enough to ruin her afternoon. Aeleanora saw it, of course, because she was cursed with excellent eyes and no useful shame where his face was concerned.
They passed beneath narrow windows where winter light lay thin across the flagstones. Near the turn towards Mysaria’s wing, two girls carried folded linen behind a clerk with a leather tube beneath his arm. A red-faced matron followed, her rings declaring enough minor nobility to make every servant clear her path. Half a pace behind her walked a young woman in brown wool, veiled like a lady’s companion and carrying a basket against one hip. Nesta had shortened her stride and rounded her shoulders until the matron seemed to pull her along by rank alone.
Aeleanora knew her before thought caught up. Nesta had cut her hair. The veil concealed most of it, though one black-brown curl had escaped near her ear. The years had narrowed her face and sharpened her brow, while the old mouth remained flat and unimpressed, made for refusing orders in three languages. A common guard would have seen another attendant. Aeleanora saw the girl who had once stepped through the shadow behind a rain barrel, appeared upon the wrong roof, and vomited into a flowerpot before continuing the climb.
Nesta at Dragonstone meant a raven had failed. Nesta in disguise meant the message had left Crown roads. Nesta walking towards Mysaria’s rooms with her eyes lowered meant someone elsewhere had already paid for the warning, and everyone had taken care to keep Aeleanora from learning the cost. Women had crossed water under borrowed names. They had carried messages and risked their throats through her own castle while she had been given parchment.
She did not stop, as it would have given Nesta the trouble of pretending not to know her. She let her eyes pass over the little party with the lazy indifference of a princess who had never been trained to notice how a false servant carried weight on the wrong hip so her knife hand stayed free. Nesta’s gaze lifted once, met hers, and dropped before the matron beside her could notice. Aeleanora’s pulse struck hard at her throat.
Baelor, cursed by every god who had ever taken an interest in inconvenient men, noticed. His attention remained on the corridor ahead, his hand loose at his side, his pace unchanged beside hers, and that was how Aeleanora knew he had seen what he needed and would become troublesome. She waited until Nesta and the red-faced matron had turned towards Mysaria’s wing before speaking. “What is Mysaria doing?”
Baelor’s eyes moved to her face. “That depends on why you are asking.”
“I am asking because my sister has just walked past us dressed as a lady’s companion, carrying an empty basket badly enough to offend me and well enough to fool half the castle.”
His brow lowered slightly. “You know her.”
“Nesta.”
He missed half a step before recovering it. “The Dornish girl?”
“House Wyl,” Aeleanora said, watching the name strike whatever ledger he kept behind his eyes. “So you do know what Mysaria is doing.”
“I know only that she needed haste.”
Aeleanora stopped beside the nearest window and faced him. The dull light deepened the shadows beneath his eyes and caught the first silver at his temples. “Nesta does not come for speed unless a raven has become a liability. She does not wear that face unless a room contains one servant too many. And she does not carry an empty basket through my castle unless someone intends me to notice how thoroughly I am being excluded.”
“Likely.”
“How generous. I had feared you might waste my afternoon with comfort.”
“I would not insult you so badly.”
“No, you prefer accuracy. A crueler hobby.”
His eyes flicked once towards Mysaria’s corridor, then back to her. “If you go to her angry, she will give you less.”
“Then I shall go charming.”
“That would alarm her more.”
Aeleanora smiled because he was right, an offence she preferred to nurse. “You may inform the king I have gone to ask after women’s work.”
Baelor’s mouth nearly gave her amusement and then thought better of it. “That phrase has ended wars.”
“Good,” she said. “Then it has been blooded.” She turned towards the corridor. The threads around the folded notes no longer pressed into her palm. Baelor did not call her back, though his steps ceased behind her for one beat before continuing towards the stair. Mysaria’s door stood at the end of the passage, its dark wood banded with iron. Aeleanora struck it twice with her knuckles, hard enough to make the latch jump.
“Enter,” Mysaria called.
Aeleanora opened the door. Nesta stood beside the far wall with her veil already unpinned and her cropped hair tucked behind one ear. The empty basket rested upon Mysaria’s table beside a sealed packet. Mysaria sat by the map table, one candle burning at her elbow, and no surprise on her face at all. Surprise would have been insulting. Aeleanora shut the door behind her. “It appears that my invitation has been misplaced.”
Mysaria’s eyes moved over Aeleanora once, from her unruffled hair to the notes still tucked in her hand, and then returned to the sealed packet beneath her palm. “You were walking with the Hand.”
“I was,” Aeleanora said. “A dreadful practice. One becomes accustomed to competent company and then must spend the rest of the afternoon among furniture with opinions.”
Nesta smothered a snort and bent over the basket to hide it. Aeleanora’s mouth almost answered before she remembered she was currently offended. She had not heard Nesta laugh in nearly a year. For an instant she saw wet roof tiles again and Nesta crouched beside her with a stolen kitchen knife.
Mysaria did not look at Nesta. “Did he send you?”
“No,” Aeleanora said, and set the folded notes on the edge of the map table well away from the sealed packet. “He warned me against it.”
Mysaria’s fingers rested on the sealed packet. The candlelight made the ruby in her ring look like a blood clot held under glass. “Then you came with his warning still warm in your ear.”
“I have survived warmer threats.”
“The latch.”
Aeleanora turned and slid the bolt into place. Iron scraped against iron, and the sound pleased her more than it ought. When she faced the room again, Nesta had stopped pretending to fuss with the basket. Mysaria had drawn the packet closer, and the candle lit the broken wax and cord between them. “There,” Aeleanora said. “Now explain why Nesta has crossed half the world dressed like a widow’s spare sleeve.”
“Only half?” Nesta asked.
“You were always vain about distance.”
“You were always vain about being watched.”
“Yes, well. We each serve our gifts.”
Nesta’s flat mouth twitched and returned at once to its former line. She looked older than Aeleanora remembered in the strange way immortals sometimes did, all the years gathered in the eyes while the face refused to surrender its youth. She was a useful and impossible girl. Mysaria did not send her unless written words had become dangerous.
Mysaria broke the seal with her thumbnail. “Lady Morya of House Sunglass is dead.”
Aeleanora looked at her. “Dead women do not bring Nesta across the water.”
“Her body lies in the mourning chamber,” Mysaria said. “The Silent Sisters have prepared her, the septa keeps the prayers, and Lord Edric’s family has arranged a household shrine beside the bier. Someone in that house did not want the first warning to leave Sweetport Sound.”
“Sweetport Sound is a morning’s flight,” Aeleanora said. “Old septons and little ships. What did they put beside the corpse?”
Nesta leaned one hip against the table. “A sister inside the household tried to send a list by raven. The bird was found in the rookery with its neck broken and the message gone.”
“Grief does not break ravens’ necks.”
“The second warning came inside a fishwife’s sleeve,” Nesta said. “The message was stitched beneath her cuff. Salt opened the skin beneath the thread before she reached Duskendale.”
“And by the afternoon you were offending flower pots across the Crownlands?”
“I was doing well until a princess took offence at a corridor.”
Aeleanora’s smile vanished when Mysaria laid a narrow slip of parchment upon the table. The cramped writing belonged to a woman accustomed to fitting danger into whatever space men left her. A mother’s comb headed the list, followed by amber beads and a knife for cutting funeral herbs. Below them sat a silver spoon with a split fruit worked upon the handle, then a cracked green cup and two children’s shoes. The objects had passed through women’s hands before they reached the page.
Aeleanora read it twice, then tilted the parchment towards the candle. The writer had buried the one thing that did not belong among the household keepsakes instead of marking it apart. One of Mysaria’s sisters, then, and one who expected the page to be searched. “What did she see?”
“The spoon was brought out from a locked nursery chest before the mourning display was arranged,” Mysaria said. “Lord Edric’s eldest daughter ordered it polished and set beside the household shrine. One old servant wept when she saw it. Another traced the seven-pointed star over her breast, then rubbed two fingers over the inside of her wrist. The septa sent the nurse away and ordered the other woman back to her work.”
“The Faith improving a room by teaching frightened women to hold their tongues. A faithful tradition,” Aeleanora said. “The spoon matters.”
Mysaria slid the broken wax aside. “It may.”
“That means ‘yes’ in your voice.”
“It means I cannot give you a cleaner answer yet.”
Aeleanora pushed her folded notes farther from the packet, clearing the table as if Mysaria had set a body between them.“Then give me the dirty one.”
Mysaria laid a second sheet beside the list. Nesta had drawn the mourning chamber in hard strokes, with the servant at the linen press darkened twice. A small spoon-mark sat near the shrine lamp. The women’s stair had been pressed deep enough into the parchment to show upon its back. “The septa objected when Lord Edric’s daughters brought it from the chest. She sent the old nurse away. After speaking privately with the younger daughter, she returned the key and let the spoon remain beside the bier.”
Aeleanora looked from the chamber sketch to the list. “Then the septa knows it.”
“She fears what it may do in the wrong hand.”
“And she sent the old nurse away before questions began.” Aeleanora’s gaze returned to the spoon-mark. “You knew what it was before Nesta brought you this.”
Nesta looked down at the basket. Wise girl. Mysaria turned the ruby ring once with her thumb until the stone faced inward against her palm. “I had half a page in an old inventory, two dead women’s accounts, and a price paid in Lys for a spoon no buyer admitted owning. I knew the name. I had too little to put before your brother until I knew it had left the chest.”
Aeleanora smiled. It was a beautiful smile, because beauty made a fine sheath for a knife. “You waited for a warning to survive the road before remembering I would have gone while the raven was still warm.”
“I remembered precisely what you could do from the first warning,” Mysaria said. “I waited until I had a warning in hand because one careless inquiry from Dragonstone would have sent the household through every servant’s bed and laundry chest before sunset.”
“How sweet. Everyone else may have the knives and ravens while Dragonstone keeps me polished for supper. Then, once the danger has been trimmed into something my brother can bear, you remember I was trained for it.”
Mysaria’s eyes lifted, dark and flat in the candlelight. “Aeleanora.”
“No.” Aeleanora set her thumbnail beside the spoon-mark and pressed until the parchment bowed. “You have sent women into worse rooms for less.”
“Women who could be denied at the gate and buried under false names.”
Aeleanora kept smiling until the muscles beside her mouth began to ache. She looked down at the parchment and its stupid little sketch. Her fingers closed around the chair until the carved edge pressed into the old callus beneath her palm, and her pulse beat hard against the wood. Under her ribs, a lock began picking itself from the inside. “Is it a relic?”
“Yes,” Mysaria said. “Gods-touched. Banked, if the house has been lucky. The Pomegranate Spoon, in one list. The child’s spoon, in another.”
“I knew of it. I knew what it was made to do. I did not know where it had been kept.”
Aeleanora’s eyes lowered to the little mark beside the shrine. “And what was it made to do?”
“A child was fed milk and honey from it while the house words were spoken,” Mysaria said. “The blessing entered before the child understood the words. Years later, the phrase turned one fosterling back from the gate. A servant who meant to accuse his master swallowed the first word. One wet nurse lifted a cup after she had refused it.”
“For children?”
“For human fosterlings,” Mysaria said. “Servants sworn young. Hostage pages, and household girls taken in before they were old enough to understand the blessing. The wet nurses heard the phrase before they carried another woman’s babe to breast.”
Aeleanora raised a brow. “House Sunglass kept that under blankets and prayers.”
“House Sunglass kept what it was given,” Mysaria said. “That is how lesser houses survive serving greater ones.”
“Given by whom?”
Mysaria stepped away from the table and went to the narrow shelf behind her chair. She drew out a thin black ledger, no longer than her hand, and opened it by a ribbon gone brown with age. “The first certain note places it in Lys, in a nursery chest belonging to a Valyrian merchant’s manse. It appears twice in marriage goods, once as a silver feeding spoon and once as a Mother’s mercy relic. Then it disappears until one of mine names it in Sweetport.”
Aeleanora gave a small, pretty hum that held no pleasure. “A gods-touched spoon hidden under the Mother’s skirts. Neat work.”
For half a breath, the room held the Mother carved above mortal cradles and the other Mother whose blood neither woman would name before Nesta. Mysaria shut the ledger before that silence could become a question. “I have wanted it found for years. Now I know where it is, and I do not know what the mourning rites have done to it.”
Aeleanora pressed her tongue once against the roof of her mouth. “You need someone to look at it.”
“I need you before the shrine while every woman in the chamber watches where a princess looks,” Mysaria said. “You may ask after old nursery relics without sounding like a thief. The women of House Sunglass will try to impress and flatter you while they fear and resent you. Every one of them will remember where you looked.”
“How fortunate for you that I am so burdensomely memorable.”
“Fortunate for the Crown.”
“Do not put a crown on theft. It makes the thing gaudy,” Aeleanora said.
They spent the next quarter hour arranging the packet for the two men upstairs. The account of the raven’s broken neck went first, because Jacaerys would ask whose neck came next. Mysaria laid Nesta’s drawing beneath it and marked the idle servant beside the linen press. She set the second warning beside the route, its corner still pierced by the coarse thread that had cut the fishwife beneath her cuff, so Baelor would see the price of a failed raven before he read a single safeguard. By the time Mysaria had ordered the papers, the visit wore royal condolence upon its face and left House Sunglass watching Aeleanora while Nesta carried the spoon out beneath their noses.
Mysaria drew the packet towards her. “I will bring the matter to the king tonight.”
Aeleanora’s hand stopped over the cord. “No.”
Mysaria did not blink. “Yes.”
“You brought Nesta here and laid the list before me. You admitted the object is a relic, and now you intend to march upstairs and ask my brother whether I may do the thing you already know requires me.”
“I intend to make him say yes before you force him to say no.”
Aeleanora closed her fingers around the cord before Mysaria could take it. The rough twist crossed the same callus her knife drills had left years ago. “Then ask quickly.”
Mysaria looked at the fist wrapped around her packet. “And if he refuses?”
Aeleanora smiled again, softer this time. “Then I shall be wounded beyond measure.”
Nesta made a faint sound into her sleeve. Mysaria folded the list around the broken wax and tucked both back into the packet. “Good. Wear that face when we go to him. It will frighten the king more than anger.”
Aeleanora released the cord. Mysaria wound it around the packet and tucked the bundle beneath one arm. “Excellent,” Aeleanora said. “I have missed honest work.”
By the time they reached the king’s solar, Aeleanora wore injured sweetness so perfectly that Mysaria looked at her once and chose silence. Mysaria walked ahead with the packet beneath one arm. Nesta had vanished by the turn of the stair, which was wise, because Jacaerys in a mood could fill a room with brotherly concern until even the windows began considering the drop to the sea.
Jacaerys was standing when they entered. That was the first offence. He had been seated behind the wide blackwood table when some page or guard warned him Mysaria was coming, and now he stood with both hands braced upon its edge. Baelor waited near the hearth with one hand against the mantel, still as a man who had already counted three bad endings and disliked them all. Rhaenys sat by the window in a dark blue gown, one silver brow raised slightly, serene as a storm seen from very far away by sailors too stupid to read the horizon.
“You brought Aeleanora with you,” Jacaerys said.
“How observant,” Aeleanora said. “The king remains a jewel of the age.”
Jacaerys did not look away from Mysaria. “I was told you had an urgent matter out of Sweetport Sound.”
“You do,” Mysaria said, and placed the packet on the table. “Lady Morya of House Sunglass is dead. Lord Edric’s household has brought a gods-touched relic out of storage for the mourning rites. A spoon, likely older than the Conquest. One of my women sent warning from inside the house. Her first raven was killed and searched.”
Jacaerys dragged two fingers across his brow. The motion left a pale mark above his eye before the blood returned. “Gods. That is why she is here.”
“Yes,” Mysaria said.
Aeleanora glanced at Baelor. “Such warmth. I begin to feel cherished.”
Baelor did not take the bait. His eyes rested on the packet, then on Mysaria. “Say plainly what you need from her.”
“I need the princess to pay royal condolence to Lord Sunglass’s household,” Mysaria said. “She enters as herself, in black silk and beneath the king’s seal. Every eye will follow her. The women of House Sunglass will show her the shrine because refusing a princess before the bier would shame them.”
“A relic?” Rhaenys asked.
“The Pomegranate Spoon,” Mysaria said. “It was taken from a locked nursery chest. Servants wept when they saw it. One made an old sign under her sleeve before the septa silenced her.”
Jacaerys lowered himself into the chair as if sitting might keep him from saying something foolish. A poor defence. “And you need her to tell whether someone has used it again.”
Baelor left the hearth. “You have no other who can do this?”
“No one with the same certainty.”
Baelor’s attention settled upon Mysaria. “What account have you given Nesta and Ysabel for why she can feel a relic before anyone else?”
“That the gift runs crooked through her family,” Mysaria said. “Daeron dreams of what has yet to happen. Aemma could enter another person’s sleep. I told them Dreamfyre’s bond pulled Aeleanora’s gift across the border between sleep and waking, so certain gods-touched things press upon her senses before she lays a hand on them.”
Jacaerys’s fingers tightened their hold on the table’s edge. “They believed that?”
“They have both watched her know a relic was wrong before anyone uncovered it,” Mysaria said. “They needed an answer that agreed with what they had seen.”
Baelor looked towards Aeleanora. “Do they suspect more?”
“Nesta suspects I have kept part of the answer. Ysabel thinks the dragon bond altered the gift. Neither knows there is another question beneath it. To them, the matter begins with Aemma and ends with Dreamfyre.”
“See that they do not,” Jacaerys said.
“I have.”
“You have called her necessary twice,” Baelor said. “Tell me why one of your women cannot take the spoon and bring it here.”
“The raven was killed in the Sunglass rookery before it could leave. The second warning came through a fishwife with the message sewn beneath her cuff. The spoon went from a locked nursery chest to the bier-side shrine, and one servant wept while another made an old sign before the septa sent them apart.” Mysaria set one finger beside the spoon on the list. “House Sunglass was already marrying human houses when the spoon first appears in the records. Most fosterlings, wet nurses, hostage pages, and girls sworn into their service were human. The spoon kept those closest to the family from speaking or acting against it.”
“The septa silenced them before either could explain herself,” Rhaenys said. “She knew what the sight would do to them.”
Mysaria moved the household list into the centre of the table. “Someone inside House Sunglass knows to guard the spoon and kill a raven. I will not send a woman to lift it blind while the mourning rites may already have stirred it.”
Aeleanora’s eyes moved to the map painted beneath glass on the table. There was Sweetport Sound, a little curl of coast north of Dragonstone, smug in its nearness, behaving as if it had not just become the subject of everyone’s suffocating concern. “The mourning chamber gives us one day before the household scatters. After the burial, the daughters divide the keepsakes and the servants return to their usual rooms. Whoever killed the raven will have time to move the spoon or find the woman who sent the warning.”
“I hated you doing this work to begin with.” Jacaerys’s fingers pressed into the table edge. “I hated sending you to it. I hated needing Mysaria to teach you how to survive the world we had already failed to keep from you.” His gaze moved to Rhaenys, then Mysaria, and finally Baelor. “If you are hurt under my leave, I lose my sister and the realm loses its heir. Which of you means to tell Seraphyra that I sent her daughter into a house already killing messengers? Or Aelorion? Seraphyra gave me a sweet for promising to protect Aeleanora when I was eight. You were all adults.”
Rhaenys lowered her eyes to the map. Mysaria’s thumb stopped against the ruby turned inward in her palm, while Baelor’s hand curled once at his side. None of them answered. Mysaria drew breath first. “You are not wrong. She—”
Aeleanora cut her off. “So Dragonstone yields to cutlery because the gods were careless with my blood?”
Baelor’s eyes came to her then, flat and dark. “It has killed one raven and frightened a room full of servants. Call it cutlery once more, and I will assume you are courting danger because you like how it looks.” He swallowed once, and the tendons stood hard beneath his collar. “The more surely you can find such things, the sooner someone will set one where they want you to stand.”
Aeleanora turned to him then, and the softness she had worn into the room vanished before she could preserve it. A cheaper woman might have felt exposed. Aeleanora felt inconvenienced by the speed with which her own blood rose to answer him. “You all sent me away because none of you knew what else to do with me.” Her gaze went to Mysaria. “You told me this was Seraphyra’s will for me. I was ten-and-four and begging to come home. You put her wishes between us. I wrote to Jacaerys until I learned to stop asking when I would be allowed back.”
Mysaria’s hand closed over the packet. Aeleanora returned to her brother before Mysaria could answer. “Once I had made a place among them, you forced me home,” Aeleanora said. “You brought me back to be dressed for lords who argued over me, then gave me harmless parchment whenever I grew restless.” She looked at Baelor last. “You told me I would need sharper eyes and steadier hands because the world would not grow kind merely because I was loved. If that was true, do not send me back to salted fish the moment those lessons become inconvenient.”
Jacaerys sighed. He looked tired in a way that made her want to be kinder for half a breath, which was intolerable. His hair had been pulled back too tightly at the nape, and one silver strand had escaped near his temple, making him look less like the king and more like the boy who used to follow her down corridors after nightmares because neither of them wanted to admit who was following whom. “I thought bringing you home was the promise I had finally kept. For two years, every letter asked me to send for you. Then you stopped asking, and I thought you had only learned to bear it.”
“You never asked why I stopped.”
Jacaerys’s mouth opened, then closed again. His fingers curled against the table until his signet rasped softly over the blackwood. Baelor’s hand left the chair back. Baelor watched Aeleanora for one beat, then looked to Jacaerys. His thumb ground over the scar across his knuckle until the skin blanched. He drew the route sheet from beneath the packet, knocking the broken wax aside, and set it square before him. “What is the route?”
Mysaria answered without looking at her notes. “Dragonback at first light. Dreamfyre lands openly. Ser Roric stays within call until the women’s chamber. Two royal guards wait at the inner gate, no more. Nesta will already be inside under mourning service. One of mine carries the herb water. Nesta handles the mourning linen. Aeleanora enters as princess, stands near the shrine, identifies the spoon if she can do so naturally, and leaves the taking to Nesta.”
“If access is refused?” Baelor asked.
“She does not force it.”
Baelor braced one hand flat on the table beside the route sheet. “If the spoon is moved before she reaches it?”
“She does not pursue.”
“If the house moves against them?”
Mysaria looked at him across the table. “Then we use the way out I had in place before I came upstairs to be asked whether one existed. If every woman inside the house fails us, Dreamfyre will have the roof open before Sunglass steel reaches Aeleanora.”
Baelor’s hand came down over the route sheet. The broken wax jumped against the blackwood. “Explain precisely what Aeleanora must do.”
“She enters the mourning chamber and stands near enough to taste the spoon’s influence,” Mysaria said. “If she tastes nothing, the spoon has lain quiet. If the taste comes strong, someone has been fed from it recently. Aeleanora tells Nesta what she finds. She touches nothing upon the shrine. Nesta takes the spoon.”
Aeleanora gave a small laugh. “You have made a campaign of standing beside a shrine.”
Rhaenys’s eyes cut to her. “No one here doubts you can reach the shrine. We are deciding whether you will leave it if Nesta commands.”
Aeleanora disliked being corrected by Rhaenys most of all. It gave every rebuke the quality of a jewel thrown directly at one’s forehead. “I know the difference,” Aeleanora said.
“No,” Baelor said. Her head turned before she could stop it. He had spoken without raising his voice, but the word cut across the table and pinned every eye to him. His face was calm, which was how Aeleanora knew he was furious. His mouth had lost every trace of humour, and his hand rested on the back of a chair without gripping it. “You know when to come back. Usually after you have turned one task into four.”
Jacaerys looked at him with a miserable flash of gratitude, which Aeleanora found traitorous even by brotherly standards. “Baelor is right.”
She turned on him. “I have spent weeks answering letters from men who think ink becomes important if they use enough of it. I have smiled at ledgers and nodded at petitions while every real matter arrived in my chambers already gutted for safety. Then Nesta walks past me in my own castle with the face she wears when the Order has found something worth knowing, and all of you expect me to wait politely while she does the work you made me leave home to learn.”
Rhaenys rose from the window chair and placed two fingers over Sweetport Sound beneath the glass. “Look at what Mysaria is offering you, Jacaerys. Aeleanora has met relics with less warning than this. Tomorrow she enters in daylight beneath your seal, with Nesta already inside the chamber. Refuse her, and by burial the spoon will be hidden again. The next relic will not care that you once kept her home.”
Jacaerys pressed his thumbnail into the wax until the crescent broke. A red fragment lodged beneath the nail while he studied the route sheet. Aeleanora let him think because she had already wounded him once and apparently possessed limits after all. A regrettable discovery.
“I will not keep you here with harmless papers while Mysaria sends your sisters to do the work you were trained for,” Jacaerys said. He raised his head and looked directly at her. “You may go, but once you enter that chamber, Nesta commands the visit. If she ends it, you leave the house and return to Dreamfyre.”
Aeleanora’s chin rose. She lowered it before Jacaerys mistook delight for recklessness and Baelor found another condition to add. “I had hoped for a kingdom, but the spoon will serve.”
“Aeleanora.”
“I will leave when Nesta commands.”
Jacaerys’s eyes searched hers, waiting for the smile that would turn the promise into another game. Aeleanora gave him none. His thumb came away from the broken wax stained red, and the breath left him slowly enough to stir the loose silver strand at his temple. For one ugly little instant he looked like her brother again, and she turned towards Mysaria before kindness made a public nuisance of her.
Mysaria drew the packet closer. “I will take the widow Harra’s upper room across the lane. Nesta knows the door. Ysabel will wait there with me.”
“Ysabel?” The name escaped before she could temper it. Aeleanora came half a step nearer the table before rank caught her by the shoulders, bright-eyed as a girl promised some forbidden delight.
Mysaria cut her a look. “Yes. Keep your delight under command. Lady Sunglass is holding a mourning rite, not a reunion.”
“I can grieve and be glad in the same gown.”
“See that Lady Sunglass notices only the grief.”
Baelor glanced between them. “Who is Ysabel?”
“One of mine,” Mysaria said. “Her mother is a healer, but she is unsure of her father. Ysabel can make a heart labour by forcing too much blood through it to fell him, or keep blood from spilling through a cut, though she cannot mend flesh itself.” Jacaerys looked at Aeleanora. She held his gaze until Mysaria went on. “She will wait across the lane with me. One raven has already been killed, and the house is full of servants who have learned to lower their voices. I would sooner waste Ysabel’s morning than learn too late that someone means to bar our way out.”
Baelor drew the chair opposite Jacaerys away from the table. Its legs scraped across the rushes, and Aeleanora looked round before he spoke. He placed the route sheet before the empty seat and turned it until the mourning chamber faced her, resting his hand upon the back of the chair. “Who has command once they pass into the women’s chamber?”
Nesta, Aeleanora thought, and did not say it because the room might choke. “Nesta,” Mysaria said. “Aeleanora keeps Lady Helicent and her daughters occupied. Nesta watches the servants and chooses when they leave.”
Aeleanora laid one hand against her breast. “Then I smile at Lady Sunglass while Nesta decides when I may leave.”
“Do not pout over being used well,” Mysaria said. “You have spent years making every eye in a room follow you.”
Baelor tipped his chin towards the waiting chair. “Sit.”
Aeleanora looked at the chair, then at his hand upon its carved back. He had drawn it out and left himself standing beside it, so refusal would require her to shove the chair away before half the family. Irritatingly clever. She lowered herself with sufficient grace to shame the command that had put her there, drew the route sheet closer, and set her right hand beside it. Her index finger found the edge of her thumb ring before she made it stop.
“When Nesta says the visit is ended?”
“I leave the chamber and return to Dreamfyre.”
“If the spoon has been moved?” His hand still rested upon the carved back of her chair, the heel of his palm level with her shoulder. He had left it there after she sat.
“I admire the empty shrine and depart with all the sorrow expected of a princess.”
Baelor kept his hand upon the carved chair-back and set the forefinger of his other hand beside the nursery stair drawn upon the route sheet. “You do not search the nursery chest.”
“I do not search the nursery chest.”
“Nor follow whoever carried it away.”
Aeleanora looked up at him. “You have already won the condition. Must you parade it around the table?”
“I have seen you obey every word and make a mockery of what was asked.”
Aeleanora opened her mouth. Baelor waited without blinking. She decided the answer was beneath her, which was fortunate because none had come, and drew the route sheet a finger’s width away from his hand. He let her have it.
Rhaenys came around the table to Aeleanora’s side, the hem of her dark blue gown whispering across the rushes as she stopped beside the painted coast. “When you return, you will tell Mysaria everything that happened beside that shrine. You will leave nothing out because you judged it too small to matter.”
Aeleanora tilted her face towards her. “I am unlikely to forget what it does to me.”
“You are very likely to decide which part Jacaerys may hear.”
Aeleanora’s forefinger pressed harder against the edge of her thumb ring. “Mysaria asked for an account, not a confession.”
“Then give her the account before you begin protecting him from it,” Rhaenys said. “Exact words.”
“Exact words,” Aeleanora agreed.
Jacaerys drew a fresh sheet of parchment from beneath the packet and reached for the quill. He tested the nib against the margin, found it split, and cast it aside with enough force to send it rolling towards Baelor. The second quill served him better. He began the letter in his own hand. Each time he wrote Aeleanora’s title, the nib cut deeper into the parchment.
Aeleanora watched the quill travel across the page. Her brother’s hair had loosened further at the nape, and the skin above his signet bore a red stain from the broken wax. He looked young while writing the condolence and older whenever he paused to choose the next word. The sight made kindness rise again, vulgar creature, and Aeleanora bent over the route sheet before it could show upon her face.
Mysaria came around the table and placed a narrow strip of parchment beside Aeleanora’s wrist. She had written four names upon it, each paired with a place in the mourning chamber. “Lord Edric’s eldest daughter will stand at the bier. Her younger sister keeps the shrine key. The septa who silenced the servants is called Meredyth.”
Aeleanora read the names once. “And the woman who sent the warning?”
“Lysa Waters. She will be carrying warmed herb water. You do not acknowledge her.”
“She has seen me before?”
“Once, in Pentos. You wore brown hair and lied about being a wool factor’s daughter.”
“That narrows nothing. I was excellent.”
“You complained about the dye for six days.”
“It had no respect for beauty.” Aeleanora caught a silver lock between two fingers and held it beside her cheek, brows raised as though the offence required no further defence.
Mysaria took the strip back before Aeleanora could fold it into her sleeve. “Lysa will know you. Do not look at her long enough to make her prove it.”
Baelor caught the discarded quill before it rolled from the table. He examined the split nib, set it beside Jacaerys’s inkpot, and drew the Sunglass household list towards him. His attention moved down the page without haste, pausing at the septa’s name and again at Lysa Waters. “How many in the women’s chamber know Nesta?”
“Two,” Mysaria said. “Both believe she entered service after Lady Morya took ill.”
“And Lysa?”
“Lysa knows her.”
Baelor lifted his head. “Then Lysa does not look at Nesta unless she must.”
“She knows that.”
“I would hear her say it before dawn.”
Mysaria’s ruby clicked softly against the table when she turned her hand. “You may hear every woman in the house swear her own name if it pleases you. Nesta will still command once the chamber closes.”
Aeleanora glanced between them. Mysaria had begun answering Baelor with the patient malice she reserved for men who asked sensible questions past the hour when sense became irritating. Baelor received it without offence, which made the exchange disappointingly bloodless. Jacaerys finished the letter and scattered sand across the wet ink. “Black silk,” he said without looking up. “Nothing so bright that it turns the mourning into a court appearance.”
Aeleanora stared at him. “You have given me a cursed spoon and taken away my sapphires in the same breath.”
“Lady Sunglass has buried her mother.”
“I had gathered as much from the bier.”
Mysaria lifted the sanded letter and tipped the excess back into its dish. “Black silk. Silver at the throat, if you must have something.”
“I must.”
“You would survive without it.”
“Survival is a low standard for dress.”
Jacaerys drew the signet from his finger and held it above the fresh wax. His hand stopped there. A drop fell from the taper and spread slowly across the fold, red and glossy, while he looked at Aeleanora over the little pool.
“You come home before the evening bells,” he said.
Aeleanora’s right index finger pressed against her thumb ring. He had already won her promise to leave with Nesta, yet this was different. Evening bells belonged to childhood, when a missed meal sent Jacaerys searching the corridors by torchlight. He would find her on some parapet and pretend he had only come for the view. “I will be back before the bells,” she said.
Jacaerys pressed the dragon into the wax. When he lifted the seal, his shoulders sank a little inside his doublet, enough for the cloth at his back to loosen where it had pulled tight since her arrival. “Baelor will read the final plan,” he said.
Aeleanora sighed towards the painted ceiling. “Naturally. Let the Hand inspect the hem of my adventure.”
“Gladly,” Baelor said.
She turned in the chair to look at him. “You might sound burdened for courtesy’s sake.”
“That would waste time.”
Only then did Baelor look down at the carved rail beneath his palm. Rhaenys stood close enough to see it, and Mysaria had made a life’s work of looking elsewhere while missing nothing. His fingers loosened once against the wood, then stayed. When Jacaerys rose, Baelor stepped away from the chair to make room for him, taking his hand with him as though he had only meant to clear the king’s path. Aeleanora disliked owing her brother gratitude for so small and treasonous a mercy.
Jacaerys came around the table at last, slow enough to be king, close enough to be brother. He stopped beside Aeleanora’s chair with his hands hanging uselessly at his sides. His left hand opened once near her hair, the old habit from when they were children and comfort had been easier. “I cannot lose you to a spoon.”
Aeleanora’s lips parted. The clever answer had fled, cowardly little creature. Jacaerys’s hand remained beside her temple, close enough that the warmth of his palm reached her skin. She leaned the crown of her head beneath it before pride recovered its footing.
His palm came down over her hair, clumsy with the years since he had last touched her so before witnesses. His thumb brushed once above her ear and stopped. Baelor lowered his eyes to the route sheet and squared it beneath his hand, granting them the only privacy a crowded solar could offer. Jacaerys gave a broken laugh through his nose. “You think that helps.”
“It helped me.”
Mysaria wound the cord around the packet and tucked the sealed condolence letter beneath it. Rhaenys bent over the painted coast, measuring the brief flight across the Sound with two fingers. Jacaerys lifted his hand from Aeleanora’s hair, though the loose silver strand he had disturbed remained caught against her cheek. “Go before I think of another condition,” he said.
“You sealed the letter. A king ought not quarrel with his own wax.”
“Out.”
Aeleanora rose. One fold of her skirt caught beneath the carved arm of the chair, and Baelor turned it before she could tug herself free. He did it with the same absent ease he used when her gown caught beneath his chair in her chambers. His hand remained upon the wood for one beat before his eyes went to Rhaenys, whose eyes were still on the map.
Mysaria’s ruby clicked once against the packet cord. Jacaerys was still watching Aeleanora. Baelor released the chair and returned his attention to the household list. Mysaria crossed the solar and lifted the latch. Aeleanora followed her into the passage, keeping a princess’s pace until the oak closed behind them and Jacaerys’s voice disappeared beneath the sea wind moving through the stairwell.
“Your mouth,” Mysaria said.
Aeleanora touched two fingers to it. “What has it done now?”
“It is smiling.”
“Then walk faster before Jacaerys sees and recalls his leave.”
Mysaria took the sea stair without slowing. Aeleanora followed, already choosing which black silk would mourn best and which clasp would offend Mysaria least. At first light Dreamfyre would cross the Sound. Behind the closed oak, Jacaerys’s broken wax remained upon the blackwood, and Baelor had not turned the route sheet from the same line. The harmless petitions in Aeleanora’s chamber could sour unopened until evening.
Later that afternoon, they gathered in Mysaria’s private workroom, two passages below the rooms shown to petitioners. The walls stood close, and the ceiling was low enough to punish a tall man who forgot himself. Wax clogged the seams of the central table, and vinegar had bleached one corner. Knife marks crossed the wood near a dark stain Aeleanora had once been forbidden to question. Nesta’s drawing of the mourning chamber lay open with black linen, a silver copy of the pomegranate spoon, and a packet of names. Jacaerys stood near the door as if keeping himself between Aeleanora and the whole trade in secrets might help him sleep. Baelor had taken the place by the shelves with the route sheet in hand, while Rhaenys stood opposite Mysaria, studying every mark upon the drawing as though Laena’s old training might be hidden among the ink.
Laena had arrived ahead of them because Aeleanora had sent for her the moment she escaped Jacaerys’s solar. She wore dark green silk cut low across the shoulders, the fitted bodice worked with bronze thread that curled over her ribs like the ridges of Vhagar’s wings. Her heavy silver braid fell nearly to her waist, though she had drawn the end over one arm and begun plaiting the last few inches anew without need. Aeleanora stood beside her pretending to read the packet of names, while Laena pretended to ask whether silver or jet would better suit a mourning clasp. Each fell silent whenever footsteps passed outside and began speaking again the moment they continued down the passage.
“You told me Ysabel was coming and then made me wait,” Laena grumbled.
“You are queen,” Aeleanora said. “Endure with grandeur.”
“I have endured three petitions and a fitting today. My grandeur has done enough.”
Rhaenys looked from one of them to the other. “You were sent away to become less troublesome.”
Laena smiled at her mother. “Was that the purpose? I must have missed that lesson.” She turned towards Aeleanora. “Do you remember it?”
Aeleanora flicked the end of Laena’s braid from her arm and watched it fall behind her. “Vaguely. I believe we were upon a roof that morning.”
The latch lifted before Rhaenys could answer. Nesta entered with her cropped hair uncovered and a deep yellow gown buttoned to the throat, dipping in a brief bow to Jacaerys. She crossed directly to the table, pulled a folded strip from her sleeve, and set it beside the drawing. Laena made a sound wholly unworthy of a queen and crossed the room before Nesta had taken three steps. Aeleanora reached her a heartbeat later, rank alone keeping her from running before Jacaerys.
“If either of you shrieks, I am leaving,” Nesta said.
Laena caught her by both shoulders. “You cut your hair.”
“It was in the way.”
“It was beautiful.”
“It was in the way beautifully,” Nesta said. Laena pulled her into an embrace regardless. Nesta suffered it with her arms pinned at her sides, though one hand closed briefly against the back of Laena’s cloak before she pushed free. Aeleanora was waiting when she turned, which gave Nesta time to look her over from crown to hem with old and merciless care. “You were less affectionate earlier.”
“I was being excluded earlier.” Aeleanora caught her by the forearm and drew her close before Nesta could avoid a second embrace. It lasted only a breath. Nesta smelled of wet wool and horse. Beneath both lingered the bitter soap Mysaria’s women used to strip dye from their hands. Aeleanora released her first, because Jacaerys was watching with an expression she had no wish to examine. Nesta put the folded parchment on the table at once.
“The western passage is watched. Mortal man, red hands, no proper work near the linen press. We leave by the women’s stair unless the prayers close it,” Nesta said.
Laena came to the drawing beside her. “Cruel of you to leave me behind. The herb water will pass that stair more often than the linen. Keep Ysabel with the pitchers and no one will question why she crosses twice.”
“Ysabel waits across the lane unless blood begins,” Nesta said. “Lysa carries the herb water. She knows the stair.”
“Then the second daughter is the difficulty,” Aeleanora said. “She watches the servants more closely than the bier.”
“Keep her watching you.”
“A rare burden.”
Nesta ignored her. “If the spoon has been moved, we do not search the nursery chest. If the septa closes the stair, we leave through the hall. If anyone names me, the visit ends.”
“Yes, Mother,” Aeleanora said.
“You only call me that when you mean to disobey.”
“Then be grateful I have warned you,” Aeleanora returned. Laena lowered her head towards the map to hide her smile. Baelor’s gaze remained upon Aeleanora until she bent over the route beside them.
Laena and Aeleanora turned towards it together with such naked anticipation that Nesta sighed. “Try to behave as if you have seen a woman before,” she said.
“We have not seen this one in too long,” Laena said.
Ysabel entered carrying a rolled leather satchel under one arm. She was dressed in a smoke-grey kirtle with sleeves mended in thread a shade too dark, the hem brushed clean but worn thin where boot heels had worried it for years. Her sandy-brown hair was drawn into a hard knot, leaving bare the strong western cheekbones of a father who had given her his face, some magic, and little else. Her hands were scrubbed clean, though old cracks remained across the knuckles and vinegar had reddened the skin around her nails.
Ysabel stopped just inside the threshold when a deep tremor passed through the floor beneath her boots. Somewhere below, a dragon settled against stone. Her eyes rose to the carved ribs overhead, caught upon the black dragon worked into the lintel, then travelled across the room and found the king, the Hand, Rhaenys, and Laena, who was not her queen the last time Ysabel had seen her. By the time they reached Aeleanora, her grip had closed hard around the leather satchel beneath her arm.
Aeleanora knew those hands. They had corrected her knife grip, bound Laena’s split knuckles, and shoved Nesta back onto a roof after she swore the distance could not be crossed twice. Ysabel had once needed only to point at a stair for all three of them to run it again. Now she stood beneath Dragonstone’s vaulted stone with mud drying at her hem, trying to remember how deeply a bastard healer ought to bow before girls who had grown into a crown princess and a queen. Aeleanora wanted, with immediate violence, to make every polished stone in the keep apologise.
Laena reached her first. “Do that with your knees and I shall knock you over.”
Ysabel stared at her. “You are the queen.”
“Only when someone wishes to spoil my day.”
Ysabel’s eyes travelled over the dark green silk and bronze embroidery. “You used to arrive covered in mud.”
“Silk conceals a great many sins,” Laena said with a smile.
“It has failed to conceal you.”
Aeleanora came to Ysabel’s other side and took her free hand before she could attempt the bow again. Ysabel’s rough palm rasped against her rings. Aeleanora closed her fingers over it and held on until Ysabel finally looked at her rather than the crowned dragon embroidered across her breast.
“And you,” Ysabel said quietly.
“Still dreadful.”
“Much more silk.” Another low scrape moved through the stone underfoot. Ysabel’s gaze dropped towards the floor before she could stop it.
“Just Dreamfyre,” Aeleanora said. She moved closer, keeping Ysabel’s hand within hers. “She is beneath the eastern side of the mountain. Laena’s girl is in the sea cavern.”
Ysabel looked at her with naked horror. “That was meant to comfort me?”
“She has always been poor at comfort,” Nesta said.
“I told her what made the noise.”
“You told me there were two dragons beneath my feet,” Ysabel replied. “That is a tally of dangers.”
Laena laughed and caught Ysabel around the shoulders. Aeleanora joined her from the other side before dignity could interfere, leaving Ysabel trapped between two silver-haired women who had once been thin-kneed girls under her instruction. Ysabel endured them for one breath, then another. Her arm came around Laena’s back while her fingers closed briefly against Aeleanora’s sleeve, creasing the silk.
“Release me,” she said. “You are both too large now.”
“You have grown frail,” Aeleanora said.
“You have grown heavy with silk.”
“Blame Dragonstone.”
Nesta watched them with her arms folded, her flat mouth betraying a trace of pleasure. “She crossed half the realm to be crushed by royalty.”
“They were cheaper when they came with torn hems,” Ysabel said.
“They still do,” Nesta replied. “The maids mend them before anyone important sees.”
They let her go at last. Ysabel took Laena by the wrist and turned her hand palm-up, then ran one thumb over the knuckles that had once split beneath her wrappings. Aeleanora received the same inspection without being asked, chin high while Ysabel pressed the old knife callus at the base of her fingers. Laena stood still. Aeleanora did as well. Neither of them moved until Ysabel released their hands.
Ysabel pointed at the table. “Move. All three of you are standing in my light.” Aeleanora stepped aside before the last word left her mouth. Laena followed, and Nesta rescued the inkstone from Ysabel’s sleeve. Jacaerys straightened from the doorpost and watched his queen and heir obey before the command had finished leaving Ysabel’s mouth. His eyes moved to Mysaria for an explanation. Mysaria kept her attention upon the drawing.
Rhaenys looked from Ysabel’s patched cuffs to her daughter, who had already yielded the better place at the table. Baelor raised one brow above the route sheet. Ysabel set her satchel at her feet and bent over the mourning-room drawing, one rough fingertip finding the shrine. “Is taste still the first warning?”
“Usually,” Aeleanora answered.
“How close before it begins?”
“I will know when I am there.”
“Then remember where you are standing when it begins. Tonight you take no wine, honey, milk, cloves, mint, or poppy. Plain bread and water before you fly.”
Aeleanora stared at her. “You have murdered breakfast.”
“I have forbidden six things that might leave a taste in your mouth before the spoon does.” Ysabel looked down at Aeleanora’s right hand. “Give me that.” Aeleanora placed her hand in Ysabel’s. Ysabel caught the thumb ring between two fingers and turned it until the little dragon engraved upon it faced inward against Aeleanora’s palm. “When the taste begins, turn the dragon so and leave it,” Ysabel said. “Nesta will see.”
Aeleanora glanced down at the ring. “I turn it whenever a man speaks beyond his point.”
“You worry it,” Nesta said. “You do not turn it halfway and leave it.”
Laena glanced at the ring. “And the man usually knows he has displeased you long before your hand moves.”
“Then confusion appears unlikely.”
Ysabel released her. “The ring is the only answer you give. Once the dragon turns, your part with the spoon is finished.”
“I heard Mysaria.”
“You said that at Tanner’s Fold.”
Aeleanora narrowed her eyes. “That roof was wet.”
“That roof was flat,” Ysabel said.
“The chickens were dry until you arrived,” Nesta added.
“They had chosen a poor place to stand.”
Laena’s laughter escaped before she could cover it. Aeleanora followed a breath later, bright and helpless, remembering feathers caught beneath her collar and Ysabel standing over the pen with both hands upon her hips. Jacaerys released the doorpost. Baelor looked up from the route sheet and remained looking until Ysabel tapped the shrine again.
“Say it,” Ysabel ordered.
Aeleanora sighed. “When the taste begins, I turn the dragon towards my palm and leave it there. I touch nothing upon the shrine.”
“Well done, little magpie.”
Aeleanora’s fingers stopped against the ring. Laena’s delight appeared at once, while Nesta folded her arms and waited for the inevitable offence. Across the table, Rhaenys looked from Ysabel to her daughter and found Laena grinning as though the name belonged to her memories as well. Aeleanora swatted the back of Ysabel’s hand. “Do not call me that before kings,” Aeleanora said.
Jacaerys frowned and looked towards Mysaria. “You let them call her ‘little magpie’?”
Mysaria drew the packet of names closer. “She earned worse.”
Baelor’s forefinger remained beneath the same line of the route sheet. His eyes were on Aeleanora, and when she caught him at it, he returned to the page one beat too late. “Mistress Ysabel,” Jacaerys began, “if she is hurt inside the keep—”
“No mistress.” The correction escaped before Ysabel remembered who had spoken. Her shoulders drew inward again, and her eyes dropped to the drawing. “Your Grace. Ysabel will do.”
Aeleanora slid the packet beneath Ysabel’s waiting hand. “Ysabel will do.”
Jacaerys looked at her, then at the patched grey sleeves and vinegar-reddened hands resting upon his sister’s route. “Ysabel, then. If she is hurt?”
Ysabel’s grip steadied around the packet. “The visit ends. Nesta gets her across the lane. I can hold blood inside a cut long enough to bring her home. Steel through the heart or throat leaves me almost nothing.”
“And if she refuses to leave?” Baelor asked.
“Nesta removes her.”
Aeleanora lifted her brows. “With what army?”
“The same one that pulled you from the dyer’s yard in Lys,” Nesta said.
“You had two dockwomen.”
“They disliked you.” Ysabel fixed Aeleanora with a level look. “You will leave.”
“I know.”
Mysaria placed two more markers upon the drawing. “Again from the outer gate.”
Nesta began with the household welcome. When she placed Lysa beside the linen press, Laena reached across and moved the marker nearer the women’s stair. “She carries hot water,” Laena said. “Keep her moving. A servant standing still with a steaming pitcher gives everyone cause to ask why.”
Nesta considered the change, then left the marker where Laena had put it. Rhaenys watched her daughter withdraw her hand from the drawing. Jacaerys remained by the door, though his shoulders had eased away from the wood. Aeleanora gave the route back exactly. Ysabel interrupted twice, once when she failed to name the western passage and again when she said she would leave after confirming the spoon.
“You leave when Nesta says,” Ysabel corrected.
“Even if I have not confirmed it?” Aeleanora asked.
“Especially then.”
Aeleanora repeated the answer without protest. When she glanced towards Baelor again, the route sheet had lowered in his hands. He watched Ysabel move Aeleanora away from the drawing, then watched Aeleanora obey without lifting a brow. Mysaria gathered the markers once they had completed the route twice. “Enough. Nesta leaves before dawn. Ysabel takes the upper room across the lane. Aeleanora enters beneath the king’s seal and comes out when Nesta commands.”
Laena folded her arms. “And I remain here.”
“Half the keep would follow you to learn why a queen had come,” Nesta said.
“They will follow Aeleanora.”
“They are meant to,” Ysabel answered.
Laena looked at Aeleanora with open betrayal. “Bring me something.”
“A grieving septa, perhaps?” Aeleanora asked.
“Something useful.”
Aeleanora lifted her chin. “Then I shall bring the spoon.”
Ysabel bent to retrieve her satchel. Another low rumble travelled beneath the floor, and her fingers closed on the strap.Aeleanora took it up before she could. “You will sleep in my rooms tonight.” Ysabel looked instinctively towards Jacaerys. “Do stop asking the king with your eyes,” Aeleanora said. “He has granted me leave once today and will grow drunk upon it.”
Jacaerys met her gaze, and one corner of his mouth gave way. “She may stay with you.”
Aeleanora gave Ysabel a look of wounded vindication. “See what you have done? He believes himself consulted.”
Ysabel took the satchel from her, though she did not release Aeleanora’s hand at once. “I remember why they sent you away.”
“And yet you crossed half the realm to find me.”
“Someone had to discover whether you remained trainable.”
Laena slipped her arm through Ysabel’s other one. “She does not.”
Nesta collected the route drawing and joined them. Aeleanora went between Ysabel and Laena, her hand still caught in Ysabel’s rougher fingers and Laena’s sleeve warm against her other arm. Neither woman bowed, and neither asked leave to take her. When Aeleanora looked back, Rhaenys was studying the correction Laena had made beside the women’s stair. Jacaerys watched from the doorway, while Baelor held the route sheet open to the same unread line.
☙──────────✧──────────❧
At first light, Dreamfyre carried Aeleanora over the black water beneath a sky the colour of old iron. Her black silk surcoat covered ceremonial riding leathers, silver fastened at her throat and nowhere else, which ought to satisfy Jacaerys’s sudden authority over mourning clothes. Far below, Ser Roric and the condolence party crossed under a single dark sail, the boat leaning into the chop while Dreamfyre passed over it in three beats of her wings. The brief flight should have made the whole affair seem modest. A dead raven and a frightened household had persuaded Dragonstone to treat a gods-touched spoon like enemy ground.
The Sunglass seat rose above the harbour through the mist, its salt-whitened walls narrow and devout, with black mourning cloth hanging from the inner gate. Dreamfyre circled until Ser Roric’s dark sail reached the quay. When she turned towards the yard, Aeleanora felt her count the ground beneath them: armed men by the steps, horses pulling against their ties, servants drawn into rows too orderly to have formed without shouting.
Aeleanora stroked the scale before her saddle. “Mind the walls. They have made such an effort to appear holy.” Dreamfyre landed, rattling the gate fittings, and kept the stone beneath her claws intact by what Aeleanora considered extravagant mercy.
Lord Edric Sunglass met her at the steps with Lady Helicent beside him and his daughters arrayed behind them in mourning grey. The eldest, Lady Sabitha, pressed her thumb against the side of her forefinger until both had gone pale. Septa Meredyth stood close behind her shoulder, her prayer beads looped twice around one hand. “House Sunglass is honoured beyond measure by your kindness, Princess,” Lord Edric said. His collar had darkened with sweat before he finished speaking. Ser Roric stepped forward and placed Jacaerys’s sealed condolence in Lord Edric’s hands.
“You have the Crown’s sorrow,” Aeleanora said. “Lady Morya served her house through more years than most lords give honest service.”
“My mother held Dragonstone in constant devotion.”
Sabitha lowered her eyes. The movement lasted only a breath, though the septa saw it and drew the prayer beads more tightly through her fingers. Aeleanora allowed the silence to make Lord Edric uneasy before turning towards his daughters. “I should like to pay my respects beside her household shrine, with their leave.” Sabitha glanced towards Meredyth before answering, as Mysaria had warned she would.
“Of course, Princess. Her dearest things have been laid beside her.”
They led Aeleanora through the hall with Ser Roric two paces behind and the royal guards left at the inner gate. Salt damp lined the tapestries, and perhaps the bloodline itself. Nesta stood near the passage to the women’s stair with folded linen over one arm, head covered and face emptied of every memory they shared. Her eyes remained upon the floor as Aeleanora passed. The western passage beyond her held the red-handed servant from Nesta’s drawing, stationed beside a linen press with no cloth in his hands and no honest reason to be there. Ser Roric stopped outside the mourning chamber.
The chamber had once been a solar. Pale walls and narrow windows left little space around Lady Morya’s covered body, while carved screens concealed the women’s stair and the herb-water table from the bier. At her feet stood seven crystal figures beside a salt dish, a mended bone comb, two children’s shoes, and a cracked green cup. The spoon lay nearest the widow’s lamp. Its bowl had been worn thin by mouths, and the handle ended in a silver pomegranate split around seeds of dark garnet.
Aeleanora bowed beside the bier and tasted honey before she raised her head. Her throat worked around a swallow she had never chosen. At six paces, the roots of her teeth began to ache although no hand had touched the spoon. Near the screen, a mortal woman rubbed two fingers over the inside of her wrist while Lady Helicent watched the pomegranate handle with the fond solemnity of a family keepsake.
Aeleanora let her right hand fall beside the black leather at her hip. Her forefinger caught the dragon engraved upon her thumb ring and turned its head inward until the metal pressed against her palm. Beyond the carved screen, Nesta passed the folded linen from one arm to the other. Aeleanora looked towards the little shoes. “Were these Lady Morya’s?”
Lady Helicent stepped nearer, pleased by Aeleanora’s attention to the shrine. “My good-mother chose each piece herself. The shoes were hers as a babe, and the spoon was dear to her.” Aeleanora kept her eyes upon the worn leather toes. The honey under her tongue thickened until the roots of her teeth complained. “Every child fostered beneath this roof was welcomed with it,” Lady Helicent continued. “Milk and honey, given before the household and the Mother.”
Septa Meredyth’s beads clicked once against her ring. Lady Sabitha looked towards her before pressing her thumb harder against her forefinger. “My mother never permitted the old words to be altered.”
“‘The house remembers what held it together,’” Lady Helicent said, with the solemn pride of a woman reciting an honour earned in battle.
The taste of hot milk flooded Aeleanora’s tongue though her mouth remained empty. Poppy followed, bitter and softbeneath the honey. Her tongue flattened and her throat worked around a swallow again. The second swallow came upon the final word. Someone had used it recently. Beside the screen, the mortal woman’s fingers dug harder into her wrist, while Sabitha’s nail blanched against her forefinger. Aeleanora kept her attention upon the little shoes.
“Remarkable. Most household prayers acquire a grandmother’s amendment every generation.” Aeleanora warmed the first word for Sabitha and clipped the last for Meredyth.
“My mother said the words were older than this sept,” Sabitha said.
“Lady Morya spoke from family memory,” Meredyth cut in. “The Faith has guided the custom for generations.”
“Then House Sunglass has a longer memory than most old houses.” Aeleanora smiled at Meredyth. “Will you give me the prayer that follows the house words, Septa? I have never heard the Sunglass form.”
Meredyth glanced at Lady Helicent and Lord Edric’s daughters. Refusal would have required an explanation before them all. She straightened and began the prayer. Her voice steadied once every face near the bier turned towards her. The newer blessing enclosed the older command without a seam, asking the Mother to sweeten what was given and keep the child beneath her hand. By the time Meredyth reached the final words, no one was watching the women carrying linen and hot water.
Nesta entered behind the woman Aeleanora took for Lysa Waters while Meredyth spoke. Lysa carried a shallow basin of steaming herb water, forcing the watcher near the screen to step aside. Nesta followed with the folded mourning linen against her breast, knelt beside the shrine, and reached to straighten the black cloth.
The linen covered the spoon for the breadth of one prayer. Nesta’s left hand drew the true silver beneath the fold while her right placed the copy beside the widow’s lamp. Lysa shifted the steaming basin, and the vapour briefly clouded the lower part of the screen. When Nesta rose, the false spoon caught the lamplight among the household treasures. The hidden weight pulled one corner of the mourning linen lower against her wrist. Aeleanora held Meredyth’s eyes until Nesta passed into the women’s stair.
Aeleanora inclined her head when the prayer ended, granting Meredyth praise while the old silver left beneath a servant’s linen. “Beautifully remembered,” Aeleanora said.
Meredyth accepted the praise with a stiffness that made it worth giving. The servant kept his eyes on the women’s stair, pressing both palms against his thighs as though the stains there might begin speaking in front of the Crown. Lady Helicent gathered her skirts and glanced towards the door. “Princess, refreshments have been laid in the hall. My good-mother would have wished you to take wine beneath her roof.”
“How kind,” Aeleanora said.
Ser Roric opened the chamber door while Lysa lifted the basin. Lady Helicent drew her younger daughters towards the passage, and Meredyth turned back to inspect the shrine. Aeleanora took Sabitha’s hand between both of hers, gentle as Aemma had always been before saying something a child would carry for years. To every watching eye, the princess was offering a bereaved daughter one final private condolence.
“Your warning reached Dragonstone,” Aeleanora whispered. Sabitha’s nails pressed through Aeleanora’s glove. Her eyes tried to turn towards the shrine. “Keep looking at me.”
Sabitha obeyed. “Meredyth watches it.”
“Let her watch you receive comfort,” she whispered, then raised her voice as Lady Helicent glanced back from the doorway. “Your mother will be remembered.”
Sabitha’s throat worked once. “Thank you, Princess.”
Aeleanora released her and followed the others into the passage. The false spoon remained beside the widow’s lamp, innocent as porridge and twice as dull. Meredyth stood over it with her beads trapped inside one fist. Her eyes moved from the spoon to the doorway and then to Sabitha. Aeleanora approved. If Meredyth meant to guard the rite, she might at least lose sleep over it.
The hall offered watered wine and clove cakes stamped with seven-pointed stars. Even grief had been forced to observe doctrine. Aeleanora accepted a cup and left it untouched while Lady Helicent spoke of Lady Morya’s needlework. Lord Edric praised his mother’s devotion until Aeleanora began to wonder what the word was meant to cover.
In the polished silver dish upon the sideboard, Aeleanora watched the room behind her. Meredyth drew the watcher near, spoke against his ear, and pressed a small object into his palm beneath the cover of his sleeve. He left through the western door without collecting his cloak. There, little mouse. Run, she thought. Nesta would have him before the lane’s second turning and his answers before the keep noticed his absence.
Lord Edric rubbed his thumb along the stem of his cup before setting it down. “Forgive me, Princess. We had expected a septon from Dragonstone, perhaps one of the king’s household. My mother would have treasured so great an honour, yet I confess I do not know why His Grace sent his heir herself.”
Aeleanora turned the untouched cup once between her palms. His courtesy did little to conceal the question: why had the dragon come sniffing about his mother’s bier? “Lady Morya gave the Crownlands more years than most lords give honest service. My brother thought red wax and a hired prayer a poor return.”
“His Grace is generous,” Meredyth said. Her prayer beads remained trapped inside one fist. “Such honours are seldom bestowed without some greater cause.”
Aeleanora looked at her over the rim of the wine. “Death is cause enough, Septa. Or has the Faith begun charging extra when a princess comes to pay her respects?”
Lady Helicent’s hand caught against the edge of the sideboard, making the silver dish tremble upon its stand. Lord Edric gave Meredyth a quick look before recovering his courtesy. Sabitha lowered her face, though Aeleanora saw the brief pull beside one corner of her lips. Poor girl. Laughter during mourning was frowned upon, especially when a septa had earned it.
“My meaning was only that we were surprised,” Lord Edric said.
“Surprise has harmed no one beneath this roof.” Aeleanora set the cup down without drinking. “Thus far.”
A servant appeared at the end of the hall, bowed, and announced that the princess’s escort waited. Lord Edric rose at once, while Lady Helicent began gathering daughters and cousins into the proper order for farewell. Meredyth glanced towards the western door before following, her beads wound tightly around her hand. Her warning was already in the lane. Nesta would be there first.
Aeleanora received Lord Edric’s bow and allowed Lady Helicent to thank the Crown until gratitude began resembling a punishment. The younger daughters curtseyed in turn. Sabitha came last and took Aeleanora’s gloved hand between both of hers, lowering her head while a folded scrap slid beneath the cuff.
Sabitha’s grip closed briefly around her hand. “She raised frightened ones.”
Aeleanora pressed the scrap flat against her wrist. “Frightened women still find ink.”
Lord Edric led them back through the black-draped hall, with Lady Helicent beside him and Meredyth keeping close to the daughters. Ser Roric reclaimed his place at Aeleanora’s shoulder while servants hurried ahead to open the outer doors. The procession descended the narrow stair and entered the yard to another round of bows and thanks. Salt wind caught the black silk surcoat around Aeleanora’s legs, carrying the harbour stink beneath the sweeter trace of funeral herbs clinging to her sleeves.
Ser Roric offered his arm at the steps, and she accepted because the man had earned one public kindness and because knights deprived of purpose frequently resorted to speeches. Dreamfyre lowered her head when Aeleanora approached. One pale blue eye fixed upon the Sunglass household behind her, and the nearest horse hauled at its tether until the hitching rail dragged through the mud. Aeleanora placed her palm against the warm scale beside Dreamfyre’s jaw. The last bitterness from the spoon had faded from her tongue, though the memory of honey remained lodged behind her teeth like a sweetmeat served by an enemy.
Aeleanora mounted before House Sunglass discovered another farewell. Dreamfyre rose with a great snap of her wings, sending black veils streaming and forcing Meredyth to seize her skirts with both hands. The keep dwindled beneath them while Ser Roric’s dark sail waited below the harbour wall for the slower journey home. Men did adore travelling by sea when a dragon had already demonstrated the superior arrangement. Only when the coast had become a pale line did Aeleanora pull off her right glove and open Sabitha’s note. Three words crowded the cramped scrap.
Septa knows more.
Aeleanora read it twice, tucked it inside her surcoat, and pulled her glove back over her hand. Meredyth had watched her request the house words before the spoon disappeared. That was the detail Sabitha feared, more dangerous than the missing silver itself. By nightfall, someone beyond Sweetport would hear that the princess had known which prayer to ask for.
Dragonstone rose ahead, its black towers cutting into the low cloud. Every term Jacaerys had laid upon her remained unbroken, and the spoon was theirs without bloodshed in the chamber. Somewhere behind her, Nesta was teaching a fleeing servant the cost of haste. A frightened septa was also deciding whom to tell about the king’s sister. Salt wind entered Aeleanora’s collar, and she sat a little taller in the saddle. Let Jacaerys explain why a princess who had kept every term and stolen a cursed spoon before breakfast required less freedom.
Ser Roric’s boat reached Dragonstone well after Dreamfyre. By then, salt had dried white along the seams of Aeleanora’s riding gloves and the sea wind had pulled half her hair loose from its braid. She met the returning party in the yard and went with them directly to Mysaria’s workroom, surrendering her cloak to a maid while her boots were still damp at the heel. The spoon lay upon black cloth inside a narrow square of black salt. Sweetness gathered at the back of Aeleanora’s tongue whenever she looked directly at it, faint and unwelcome. Its silver pomegranate held dark garnets between the split halves of the fruit, while the bowl had been worn thin by generations of mouths that never knew what their feeding and polishing preserved.
Nesta stood near the wall in her servant’s gown with the coif removed and her cropped hair flattened on one side. Ysabel washed her hands at the basin, rubbing soap beneath her nails before rinsing them in water gone grey with harbour grit. Mysaria sat opposite Aeleanora with the Sunglass packet open before her. Lady Sabitha’s note lay beside the stitched warning and a fresh sheet of parchment, while a covered plate of bread and white cheese waited near Mysaria’s elbow. Mysaria had yet to set down a word.
“Well?” Aeleanora asked.
“You have been inside the room for less than a breath,” Mysaria said.
“Enough time for praise.”
“You kept the terms,” Nesta said.
Aeleanora looked towards her. “All of them?”
“All of them,” Ysabel answered as she dried her hands. “Have that carved over your bed if you require witnesses.”
“Parchment will serve. Stone invites pilgrims.”
Mysaria drew the blank sheet nearer. “Exact words.”
Aeleanora pulled off her right glove and set it beside the packet. She turned the little dragon upon her thumb ring outward again, setting it right with one push of her forefinger. Rhaenys’s demand had pursued her home and taken a chair beside Mysaria in spirit. The realm persecuted beauty in very small ways.
“Honey before I raised my head from the bier,” Aeleanora said. “Milk came when Lady Helicent spoke of the nursery welcome. Poppy followed beneath it once she gave the house words.”
“The words exactly,” Mysaria said.
“The house remembers what held it together.” Aeleanora looked at the spoon as she said it. The taste of honey thickened slightly. One garnet caught the candlelight and kept it after Aeleanora turned her head, a dull red point between grains of black salt. “It liked being remembered. Vain little thing.”
Ysabel drew the empty chair away from the table and sat astride it, her forearms resting across the carved back. “What did the words do?”
“My throat worked as though I had taken a mouthful and needed to swallow it.” Aeleanora glanced towards the spoon. The taste of honey strengthened by one spiteful degree. “The swallow came with the last word. Before that, the honey had stayed upon my tongue and behind my teeth.”
Mysaria’s quill began moving. “How far were you from it?”
“Six paces when the honey began. I was nearer when Lady Helicent spoke. The taste weakened beneath Nesta’s linen and disappeared once she passed through the women’s stair.” Aeleanora touched her tongue to the back of one tooth. “The roots of my teeth ached before the house words.”
“And the servants?” Mysaria asked.
“One woman near the screen rubbed two fingers over the inside of her wrist before the house words. She stopped when the spoon left the chamber.” Aeleanora glanced towards the black salt. “Disappointing, I know. No flames, and unfortunately the septa did not drop dead.”
“I will set down the honey, the ache in your teeth, the woman’s wrist, and when each ceased.” Mysaria turned the sheet beneath her hand. “The king shall hear no more than we can swear to.”
Ysabel studied the black cloth. “Then begin with the house words while the spoon remains covered.”
“For now,” Mysaria said, and set the quill to the next line. “Lady Sabitha?”
“She looked to Meredyth before granting me entrance and again when the house words were spoken,” Aeleanora said. “She passed the warning into my hand before I left. She has watched Meredyth’s face so long that she checks it before she answers anyone.”
“The septa saw the switch too late,” Nesta said. “She returned to the mourning chamber after the princess departed and touched the false spoon through her sleeve. Her mouth went flat and her face flushed.”
“Anger,” Aeleanora said.
Nesta nodded. “Anger.”
“Then she felt robbed.”
“She knew enough to remain alive,” Mysaria replied.
“Must every pleasing thought be assigned a keeper?”
“When it belongs to you, yes.”
Nesta unwrapped a copper ring from a small cloth and set it beside the spoon and the black salt. Green had gathered where the metal had rested against skin. A pomegranate had been pressed into its face so crudely that only someone expecting the mark would have recognised it. “His name is Tommen,” Nesta said. “Kitchen-born and mortal. His mother served Lady Morya until her hands stiffened. He left through the western door and ran to the old salting shed. There he gave this ring to a fishmonger who meant to put him aboard a crabber bound for Sharp Point.”
“Did he reach the boat?” Aeleanora asked.
“No.”
“How much of him remains?”
“All his teeth,” Ysabel said. “His courage has suffered worse.”
Mysaria lifted the ring by its edge and studied the mark. “What did he know?”
“Meredyth told him the nursery silver must remain beneath the Sunglass roof,” Nesta said. “A woman from Sharp Point had promised coin if the spoon was moved. He had watched Lady Sabitha since she wept over the list. He knew no reason for any of it.”
“He also knew where to run,” Mysaria said. “That is enough for tonight.” She placed the ring beside Tommen’s name and added Sharp Point beneath it. One pomegranate had been worked in silver for the house. The other had been stamped into cheap copper for the servant ordered to warn it.
“Meredyth will send another warning,” Mysaria said. “By sunset, someone will know that the king’s sister came to Sweetport, asked to hear an old nursery prayer, and left before the spoon was found missing.”
“How much will she know?” Aeleanora asked.
“That the spoon vanished while the Crown occupied her hall,” Nesta said. “The copy leaves her to wonder who betrayed her and when.”
“Then her warning carries suspicion rather than proof.”
“She will question every servant who stood near the shrine before she trusts another messenger,” Mysaria said. “That buys us time.”
Aeleanora looked from the crude copper ring to the spoon within the black salt. Meredyth would spend the evening recounting every bowed head and lowered sleeve in the mourning chamber. By midnight, she would have half the household frightened of the other half. Aeleanora hoped she began with the servants who had watched her pray. The Faith had taught her to govern women through fear. It seemed only courteous to let the lesson turn upon her.
Mysaria followed her gaze. “Do you want to taste it again?”
Aeleanora faced her. “You make curiosity sound indecent.”
“Answer.”
“Yes.” The answer came at once. Aeleanora bent towards the black salt, her eyes fixed upon the buried silver. “Speak the house words with no child present. I want to hear it search for a mouth and find only us.” Her nail scored a pale line across the tabletop. “Then uncover it. I want to see whether it turns towards the hand, the voice, or the strongest blood in the room. And if it turns towards me, no one touches it first.”
Ysabel’s thumb rubbed once across the scar at the base of her palm. “You will remain beyond the salt.”
“I recall the rule.”
“You recalled it this morning and obeyed it. I am rewarding success with repetition.”
“How lavish.”
“We speak the words with every witness present,” Mysaria said. “You remain beyond the salt. The spoon stays covered between trials.”
Aeleanora leaned back in her chair. “And will I be present?”
“Yes.”
The knot between Aeleanora’s shoulders eased, and she smiled before she could hide it. Nesta saw it. Ysabel did as well. Old sisters were a plague because they remembered every face one had worn before learning to lie beautifully. “Would you send me again?” Aeleanora asked.
Mysaria held her gaze across the spoon. “I would.” Aeleanora’s smile widened. Mysaria let her have it for half a breath before lowering the quill to the page. “Do not make a feast of one answer,” she said.
“You have kept me hungry.”
Nesta picked up Lady Sabitha’s note and slid it beside Aeleanora’s glove. “You also left the cakes untouched.”
“They were shaped like seven-pointed stars. I have spent enough of my life being swallowed by the Faith. I decline to return the courtesy.”
Mysaria raised her eyes and gave Aeleanora a long, flat look. Her thumb turned the ruby inward against her palm, warning enough from the only other woman at the table who knew precisely which two gods the princess had inherited her insolence from.
“You drank nothing,” Ysabel said.
“I accepted wine.”
“You carried it from shrine to hall and set it down full.”
“Poison remains the easiest way to kill a dragonrider.”
Ysabel pushed the covered plate across the table. “Bread.”
Aeleanora looked at her, then uncovered the plate. The bread was coarse and still faintly warm at its centre. She tore off a piece and ate it. Refusal would only give Ysabel another reason to watch her. Mysaria folded the first sheet over the second. “The king shall have every word concerning the taste, the servant, and Meredyth’s warning. He shall also hear that no blood was drawn and every term was kept.”
“Do linger over that last part. Jacaerys has invested heavily in conditions.”
“He will read it in the order it happened.”
“Then use darker ink,” Aeleanora said.
Mysaria regarded her for a breath before reaching for the black cloth. She spread it over her fingers, caught the spoon by the handle through the fabric, and folded the loose end across the bowl. The ash-lined box waited open beside the salt, its warding marks cut shallow beneath the rim. Mysaria lowered the wrapped silver inside and closed the lid. The key scraped once, and the honey vanished from Aeleanora’s tongue before the lock stopped turning.
“That is mine,” Aeleanora said.
“A raven died before you knew its name,” Mysaria replied. “Sabitha risked her throat. Nesta carried it out while Meredyth prayed over her shoulder.”
Aeleanora bit into the bread and considered the correction. “Ours, then. How pious.”
“You will see it tomorrow.”
“Morning?”
“After you eat.”
“Cruelty has made you petty.”
“Hunger has made you foolish before.”
A low tremor travelled through the floor and set the basin water trembling against its rim. Nesta looked down. Aeleanora knew the scrape that followed: Dreamfyre lifting her head below the eastern side of the mountain, one horn grazing stone. The dragon’s unease gathered beneath Aeleanora’s breastbone and eased when the water went still.
Mysaria dipped her quill and wrote to the bottom of the page. “The king will read that you held the cover until Nesta cleared the room. He will read that you came home when ordered.”
“Put the second sentence in larger letters.”
“He can read.”
“Fear makes men overlook proof laid before them,” Aeleanora said.
Mysaria scattered sand across the final lines and waited until the wet shine disappeared. She folded the account once, pressing the crease beneath her thumbnail before setting it aside. Jacaerys would have the truth before supper, the unlikely portion in which his sister had kept every precious condition. Aeleanora hoped the darker ink soothed him.
Aeleanora tore another piece from the bread and watched the locked box. Deep in the mountain, Dreamfyre dragged one claw across stone, a slow scrape that stopped when Aeleanora swallowed. The plain grain tasted offensively mortal after sweetness that had crossed a mourning chamber to find her. Before dawn, Jacaerys had given her terms sharp enough to cut pride. By midday, she had returned with every term unbroken and the relic sealed inside Dragonstone’s wards. Let him spend the evening deciding which fact frightened him more.
By early evening, Dragonstone had begun closing its doors against the cold. Aeleanora had refused the family supper and accepted a tray in her solar after the third maid began looking personally wounded by starvation she had neither caused nor been permitted to cure. A half-drunk cup of wine stood beside the bread and stewed onions at her elbow, while a trout lay beneath lemon slices with all the appeal of a septon bathing in perfume. Lady Sabitha’s note rested under a black-glass weight near the Tyrell rose pin Aeleanora had pulled from her shelf. The spoon remained locked inside Mysaria’s ash-lined box two passages below, a theft from Aeleanora that everyone insisted upon calling safekeeping.
She had changed into loose black silk and abandoned her braid after the sea wind left half of it hanging around her face. One long lock circled her forefinger while she stared at Sabitha’s cramped warning and replayed the morning for the pleasure of finding no mistake in it. The knock came at the outer door, firm with rank and restrained enough to irritate. A guard spoke softly beyond the oak. Aeleanora released her hair and sat straighter, because victory had apparently failed to exempt her from visitors.
“Enter,” she called.
Baelor came through the front door alone. The corridor remained busy behind him with pages and servants, though the oak cut them away once he closed it. He wore black court clothes with dark red beneath the collar, every fastening still in place despite an entire day spent governing people a hammer might have ruled more profitably. His eyes went first to her face and stayed there. The folded page in his hand lowered by an inch before he looked towards the untouched tray on the table beside her chair. Aeleanora approved of the order. The Hand had remembered his errand only after the man had finished looking.
“You have chosen the lawful entrance,” Aeleanora said. “Shall I summon witnesses?”
“Jacaerys wants your account after breakfast,” Baelor replied.
“He sent the Hand to carry one sentence?”
Baelor laid the folded paper beneath the lower edge of the black-glass weight, careful to leave Sabitha’s warning uncovered. “He sent a page. I relieved him of it.”
“How transparent.”
“I used the front door.” Baelor drew the nearer chair towards her table with one hand and sat beside her. “The deceit was slight.”
The answer pleased her and therefore required immediate punishment. Aeleanora tucked one bare foot under her skirts and left the trout untouched. He read Sabitha’s three cramped words beneath the black-glass weight, then lifted the lemon slices from the fish and laid them along the rim of the dish. His knee came near the fall of her black silk when he set the serving knife down with its handle towards her. The man had entered through the lawful door and immediately begun taking liberties with supper.
“You have come to govern my fish.”
“It had been badly governed.” Baelor looked at the loose silver waves around her face. “How late did Nesta and Ysabel keep you?”
Aeleanora’s right forefinger left her thumb ring. The question carried none of Jacaerys’s solemn concern, which usually arrived wearing boots and meant to trample every private thing beneath them. Baelor speared one of the stewed onions and ate it while he waited, turning the inquiry into something asked across a shared supper rather than a reckoning. The Hand knew how to hide curiosity inside theft from her plate. Aeleanora approved of the method and resented its success.
“Until the second candle drowned,” she said. “Nesta took the cushion nearest the fire and denied the theft while sitting upon it. Ysabel found sugared ginger in my sweets and declared that Dragonstone has made me soft again, then could not bring herself to stop eating it once she tried it.”
A small smile showed at one corner of Baelor’s mouth. He chose another onion, though he had already shown an appetite she could use against him. “Did she condemn the whole dish before finishing it?”
“Naturally. Ysabel has standards. She merely refuses to let them obstruct sweets.” Aeleanora nudged the onion dish nearer him. “Laena sat behind her upon the hearthrug and combed out her hair while Nesta searched my ribbon box for the ugliest colours she could find. Ysabel endured silver ribbons at both temples. Nesta laughed once too often and found three narrow braids pinned over one ear.”
“And you?”
“They denied me the comb on account of several ancient accusations.”
Baelor rested his fork against the edge of the dish. “Sound judgment.”
“I had committed no fresh offence.” Aeleanora took the onion from his fork before he could eat it and bit into it.
Baelor looked from the empty fork to her mouth, a dry smile showing beneath his beard. “Little magpie?”
Aeleanora gave him a smile sweet enough to absolve considerably worse thefts. “Do you not find me covetous and meddlesome?”
Baelor laughed, low and warm. “Daily. I have the marks to prove it.”
Aeleanora finished the onion with a smug smile and let her eyes fall to the dark red cloth hiding his throat. “Later Laena ordered all of us into my bed because the hearthrug had grown cold. Nesta took my side, Ysabel claimed the middle, and Laena stretched herself across our feet as though a queen’s title included ownership of every mattress beneath the Crown.”
Baelor set the empty fork beside the dish. “Which part of your own bed did they grant you?”
“The edge. I had half a coverlet and Laena’s heel against my calf. Nesta woke with one hand knotted in my hair and accused me of moving.”
His smile deepened into a soft, fond laugh. “The Queen Consort at the foot and the Princess of Dragonstone at the edge, both defeated by Nesta and Ysabel.”
“Rank has little force against women who know where one keeps the extra blankets. I had only ordered Ysabel into my rooms. Laena made a campaign of it.” Aeleanora nudged the dish back towards him. “I did think it discourteous of them to occupy an evening I had already made a habit of stealing from you.”
His smile lingered as he reclaimed his fork. “The theft was noticed.”
“Do not sound wounded. I was the one exiled to the foot of my own bed. Tonight I have arranged the household more wisely.”
Baelor’s fork stopped above the onion dish. He glanced towards the inner arch leading to her bedchamber and then back to her. “Ysabel has been given chambers?”
“The eastern guest chamber. Nesta chose the little room across the stair before I could assign it.” Aeleanora drew the onion dish back towards herself when he reached for it. “My bed has ceased serving as an inn for armed women.”
Baelor caught the opposite rim of the dish, holding it between them. “A prudent arrangement.”
“I awoke beneath Laena’s ankle. Prudence was forced upon me.” She surrendered the dish after stealing one last onion. “Tonight I expect to be crowded more pleasantly.”
Baelor breathed once through his nose and turned Jacaerys’s folded page beneath his palm. The small restraint pleased her obscenely. A man who had spent all day governing the realm had been reduced to pressing parchment flat because she had mentioned an empty bed. The Crown ought to issue her a second seal.
“Your brother wrote seven questions,” he said.
Aeleanora stared at the page. “Seven?”
“He began with eleven.”
“You struck four?”
“Three repeated themselves. One accused the spoon of choosing you.”
Her hand paused before the wine cup. “And what did you tell him?”
Baelor released the paper and sat back to study her without the tray obscuring anything. “That it answered the words spoken over it. You merely had the ill manners to listen.”
Aeleanora let a smile show as she met his eyes across the tray. “How comforting.”
“He did not find it so.”
Aeleanora took the page and unfolded it. Jacaerys’s strokes cut deeply into the parchment wherever his hand had pressed too hard. The first question concerned the taste. The second asked when Meredyth had sent her servant running. By the fifth, he had abandoned any pretence that the king was speaking and demanded to know whether Aeleanora had felt pain at any point after leaving the mourning chamber.
“He might have saved ink and written, ‘Did the terrible spoon eat my sister?’”
“That was the first version.”
Her laugh escaped before she could make it suitably regal. Baelor reached across and drew the page lower when it threatened to hide her face, keeping two fingers against its upper edge. “Mysaria’s account answered all of this,” she said.
“He wants your voice attached to the answers.”
“He knows my voice. He has objected to it for years.” Aeleanora folded the lower corner of the page over Baelor’s fingers, trapping them beneath the parchment.
Baelor drew his hand free and flattened the fold with his thumb. “He wants to hear whether you are frightened.”
Aeleanora lowered the parchment. “I am not.”
“I know.”
He left the corner bent where she had put it. Aeleanora watched that tiny surrender with more interest than a folded scrap of parchment deserved. “You came to inspect me more closely.”
Baelor took the wine cup from beside her elbow and drank from the place her mouth had left damp. “I came because Jacaerys sent a page.”
“Poor lie.”
“He did send one.”
“And you wrestled it from a child out of devotion to correspondence.”
Baelor regarded her with the patience he reserved for petitions founded upon obvious nonsense. “The boy surrendered without a struggle.”
Aeleanora folded Jacaerys’s questions and tucked them beneath the edge of the black-glass weight. “You have now discharged the king’s business. Yet you remain beside the trout you rescued.”
“You did well.” Baelor returned her cup to the same damp ring upon the table, though his thumb stayed against the rim.
His attention remained upon her, and heat gathered beneath the collar of her black silk. Aeleanora turned the cup once between her fingers before trusting her face. “You say that as though it pains you,” she said.
“It does.”
“Then perhaps you would prefer me less good at it.”
“I do not want you less good.”
The cup stopped beneath her hand. For one rude heartbeat, she had no answer at all. Aeleanora raised one brow before the silence could become public knowledge. “That is a very inconvenient distinction.”
He reached for the serving knife and cut a small piece from the trout where he had stripped away the lemon. “I want you to remember that skill cannot bargain with every blade.”
“There. You have spoiled it with wisdom.”
“Eat before I add more.”
Aeleanora accepted the piece because refusal would make the fish important. Without lemon, it proved better, a fact that would die unrecorded and unmourned. Baelor cut another before she had finished the first and placed it upon her trencher. The set of his shoulders eased when she ate it, a ridiculous reward for obedience which she accepted because even princesses must sometimes profit from men’s weaknesses. “Satisfied?” she asked.
“With the fish.”
“Coward.”
“You know my answer concerning you.”
Aeleanora set down the fork. Black silk hid the narrow space between their knees. She placed her palm upon his thigh and leaned nearer. His leg opened beneath her touch, and the dark wool over his lap drew taut. “I know very little,” she said. “You have hidden behind my brother’s parchment for half an evening. The trout has done the rest.”
Baelor covered her hand with his and pressed her palm higher against the half-hard length beneath his clothes. “The trout has told you all it knows.”
Aeleanora’s smile arrived with considerably less innocence than the supper deserved. “Then I shall question the more interesting witness.”
Baelor closed his fingers around her wrist before her thumb could reach the laces of his breeches and drew her out of the chair until she stood between his knees. Black silk brushed his boots, and one bare foot found the cold stone. Aeleanora planted her free hand upon his shoulder and looked down at him, pleased that a single touch had finally persuaded the Hand to abandon trout as a defensive position. His palm remained wrapped around her wrist to keep her where he wanted.
Aeleanora tested his hold with a small turn of her wrist. “You have stopped me at the interesting part.”
“You may finish tonight.” Baelor’s thumb pressed into the pulse beneath her palm. “After I have made you forget why you reached for the laces.”
Her smile widened. “You have grown ambitious.”
“Familiar,” he corrected.
He kissed her before she could invent terms. One hand caught the back of her neck while the other drew her closer by the waist, pressing her belly tight against his hips. His cock had hardened fully now, and his tongue met hers with little of the patience he had granted Jacaerys’s page. Aeleanora slid her hand into his hair above the ear and pulled until he groaned against her mouth. The table edge pressed into the back of her thighs, with Sabitha’s warning and her brother’s seven questions still within reach of either hip, both suddenly much less compelling than the man between them.
Boots crossed the corridor beyond the oak, followed by the low murmur of a page speaking to one of her guards. Baelor ended the kiss with his hand still firm at her nape. His breathing had roughened, though his eyes returned to hers with all their usual discipline, which seemed an extravagant insult after what his body had confessed beneath her palm. Anyone outside could have heard the chair scrape. Aeleanora blamed him entirely.
“You chose the door,” she whispered.
“I wanted to see you before the castle slept,” he murmured.
Heat climbed beneath her collar. Aeleanora caught the dark red cloth at his throat between two fingers and tugged it crooked. Baelor looked down at it and left it so. “When you come through the wall tonight,” she said, “put your mouth between my thighs before you say another sensible thing.”
He tightened his grip on her waist. “That is your answer to praise?”
Aeleanora kissed the corner of his mouth, letting her lips linger against the rough edge of his beard. “It is your reward.”
“Arrogant girl.”
She smiled against his skin. “Good. You were listening.”
Baelor drew her nearer until the silk gathered between his knees and her breasts pressed against his chest. Aeleanora’s right hand slid from his hair to the back of his neck as his beard grazed her cheek. “Tonight I mean to hear how long you keep that tone with my tongue inside you.”
Her inner lip met her teeth before pride could forbid the betrayal. Baelor drew back far enough to see it, and the satisfaction beneath his lowered brow made her want to climb into his lap and test the threat before the corridor emptied. She pressed her palm against him again instead, dragging it once over the hard length beneath the cloth. His fingers closed more firmly around her waist.
“Longer than you hope,” she said.
Baelor gathered the silk higher along the back of her thigh. “I hope you keep that tone until I have both your legs over my shoulders.”
Aeleanora’s nails traced the nape of his neck. “Then kneel properly when you come back.”
Baelor kissed her once more, bruising the insult from her mouth, then broke away before judgement failed him entirely. He released her wrist and rose, leaving Aeleanora trapped between his body and the table until he chose to step back. The dark red at his collar remained crooked beneath his black doublet. His hair above one ear had suffered worse, a small victory she intended to let him carry into the corridor.
“Leave the silk on,” he said.
Aeleanora looked down at the loose black folds before returning her eyes to him. “How imperious.”
“I want it bunched in your fists while my mouth is between your thighs.”
She slipped one finger beneath the dark red cloth at his collar and pulled it crooked again. “You presume upon one bitten lip.”
“And an excellent memory,” Baelor said, his attention resting upon her mouth.
Aeleanora let her fingertip trace the edge of his collar. “Then remember where I like your hand when you make me come.”
Baelor pressed his thumb once against the bitten place on her lower lip. Her toes curled against the cold floor. He took Jacaerys’s page from under the black-glass weight and folded it once more, then returned it beneath the weight with the corner she had bent still untouched. After correcting his collar, he started towards the door.
At the threshold, his eyes dropped once to the black silk settling around her bare feet before the oak closed behind him. Aeleanora waited until his steps passed the guards, then carried the cup he had used into the bedchamber. She set it beside her hairpins near the hidden panel. The silver rim caught the candlelight as though it had always belonged among her things, and the sight drew a smile she would have denied beneath torture.
// A HOTD X AKOTSK AU // BAELOR TARGARYEN X OFC //
Warnings: References to violence; See masterlist for specific content warnings, and leave me a comment if I am missing any. I will add them!
[MASTERLIST]: AU + OC Content Heavy - Please see masterlist to avoid confusion <3.
WC: 18.1K
AN: Sorry this took so long!
☙──────────✧──────────❧
He left the corner bent where she had put it. Aeleanora watched that tiny surrender with more interest than a folded scrap of parchment deserved. “You came to inspect me more closely.”
Baelor took the wine cup from beside her elbow and drank from the place her mouth had left damp. “I came because Jacaerys sent a page.”
“Poor lie.”
“He did send one.”
“And you wrestled it from a child out of devotion to correspondence.”
Baelor regarded her with the patience he reserved for petitions founded upon obvious nonsense. “The boy surrendered without a struggle.”
Aeleanora folded Jacaerys’s questions and tucked them beneath the edge of the black-glass weight. “You have now discharged the king’s business. Yet you remain beside the trout you rescued.”
“You did well.” Baelor returned her cup to the same damp ring upon the table, though his thumb stayed against the rim.
☙──────────✧──────────❧
Two and a half weeks after the nameday feast, Dragonstone returned to its ordinary cruelties, which were smaller than feasts and therefore harder to escape. The extra banners came down and visiting perfumes thinned from the galleries. In the kitchens, cooks returned to counting household loaves instead of sugared excess. Guards and clerks reclaimed the corridors while petitioners waited with grievances the celebration had left untouched. Aeleanora found the castle’s relief insulting.
The mornings belonged to council work, or to the share Jacaerys judged unlikely to draw blood. Corlys and Cerion had already stripped each harbour dispute down to figures and names before the papers reached her, while Sylas’s road reports arrived with the offending reeves reduced to initials. Lesser houses sent old grievances beneath fresh wax. The Faith complained in a hand so careful Aeleanora suspected the ink itself had been instructed to kneel.
She read them because refusal would have pleased everyone too much, and she answered every one. She returned two suggested replies to Lord Bar Emmon’s steward and, with perfect courtesy, asked why his master required forty-three words to confess that six barrels of salted fish were missing. Sweat gathered at his temples before she reached the end.The work could be finished before luncheon and forgotten before supper. At eight, a wine pitcher in her hands had taught her that lords forgot to lower their voices while a child filled their cups. Here, the choice had already been made before her fingers touched the wax.
By the third week, she had begun listening for a mistake she could punish. At council, she listened with her chin propped on two fingers and her eyes lowered just enough to appear dutiful. Baelor had learned to look up whenever she went very still, because her silence usually meant the page before her had omitted something expensive. Once he caught her watching him and gave the smallest shake of his head. She waited until Jacaerys reached for the next paper before asking the question anyway, and a dry smile appeared beneath Baelor’s beard.
In her solar, she finished the correspondence before midday and left the quills sharpened beside an offensively neat desk.She had begun lingering at the training yard, watching pages drill until one of them dropped his practice sword twice in the same pass. Once she asked, very sweetly, whether his weapon had betrayed him or whether the fault lay in his hands. The master-at-arms pretended not to hear, which proved he had some instinct for survival. Jacaerys did not find it amusing when he heard. He had the weary look of a man who knew exactly what happened when his sister had too much mind and too little sanctioned ruin to spend it on.
The nights had made daylight harder to endure. In the firelight, Baelor let her pull apart every decision she had been expected to accept in silence. He argued when she was wrong, and when words ran out he took her to bed. By morning he wore the Hand’s black wool and addressed her across the council table while her harmless letters waited beside his ledgers. When he passed close, she caught clean wool and smoke at his collar, and once the dark red cloth beneath it hid the mark of her teeth. She kept both hands folded before witnesses. At night she could put her mouth against his throat and make the realm wait outside the door.
That afternoon, the sea had gone iron-grey beneath a low sky, and cold entered the castle through every seam in the stone. Aeleanora left the council chamber with Baelor beside her and a stack of folded notes in her hand, each one tied with thread and marked for someone dull enough to deserve parchment. He had said very little during the last hour, which meant he had listened too well and probably found three weak joints in the harbour accounts. His black sleeve brushed hers once as they turned down the corridor towards the western stair. The wool caught against her cuff, tugged, then slid free. Heat ran up her arm beneath the silk while Baelor continued at the same measured pace, a public act of innocence from a man privately guilty of much better things.
“Jacaerys sighed at me four times.”
“You counted?”
“I am a devoted sister.”
Baelor gave her the narrowest smile and lost it before anyone else could see. It was the sort of smile he gave in corridors, small enough to deny and still large enough to ruin her afternoon. Aeleanora saw it, of course, because she was cursed with excellent eyes and no useful shame where his face was concerned.
They passed beneath narrow windows where winter light lay thin across the flagstones. Near the turn towards Mysaria’s wing, two girls carried folded linen behind a clerk with a leather tube beneath his arm. A red-faced matron followed, her rings declaring enough minor nobility to make every servant clear her path. Half a pace behind her walked a young woman in brown wool, veiled like a lady’s companion and carrying a basket against one hip. Nesta had shortened her stride and rounded her shoulders until the matron seemed to pull her along by rank alone.
Aeleanora knew her before thought caught up. Nesta had cut her hair. The veil concealed most of it, though one black-brown curl had escaped near her ear. The years had narrowed her face and sharpened her brow, while the old mouth remained flat and unimpressed, made for refusing orders in three languages. A common guard would have seen another attendant. Aeleanora saw the girl who had once stepped through the shadow behind a rain barrel, appeared upon the wrong roof, and vomited into a flowerpot before continuing the climb.
Nesta at Dragonstone meant a raven had failed. Nesta in disguise meant the message had left Crown roads. Nesta walking towards Mysaria’s rooms with her eyes lowered meant someone elsewhere had already paid for the warning, and everyone had taken care to keep Aeleanora from learning the cost. Women had crossed water under borrowed names. They had carried messages and risked their throats through her own castle while she had been given parchment.
She did not stop, as it would have given Nesta the trouble of pretending not to know her. She let her eyes pass over the little party with the lazy indifference of a princess who had never been trained to notice how a false servant carried weight on the wrong hip so her knife hand stayed free. Nesta’s gaze lifted once, met hers, and dropped before the matron beside her could notice. Aeleanora’s pulse struck hard at her throat.
Baelor, cursed by every god who had ever taken an interest in inconvenient men, noticed. His attention remained on the corridor ahead, his hand loose at his side, his pace unchanged beside hers, and that was how Aeleanora knew he had seen what he needed and would become troublesome. She waited until Nesta and the red-faced matron had turned towards Mysaria’s wing before speaking. “What is Mysaria doing?”
Baelor’s eyes moved to her face. “That depends on why you are asking.”
“I am asking because my sister has just walked past us dressed as a lady’s companion, carrying an empty basket badly enough to offend me and well enough to fool half the castle.”
His brow lowered slightly. “You know her.”
“Nesta.”
He missed half a step before recovering it. “The Dornish girl?”
“House Wyl,” Aeleanora said, watching the name strike whatever ledger he kept behind his eyes. “So you do know what Mysaria is doing.”
“I know only that she needed haste.”
Aeleanora stopped beside the nearest window and faced him. The dull light deepened the shadows beneath his eyes and caught the first silver at his temples. “Nesta does not come for speed unless a raven has become a liability. She does not wear that face unless a room contains one servant too many. And she does not carry an empty basket through my castle unless someone intends me to notice how thoroughly I am being excluded.”
“Likely.”
“How generous. I had feared you might waste my afternoon with comfort.”
“I would not insult you so badly.”
“No, you prefer accuracy. A crueler hobby.”
His eyes flicked once towards Mysaria’s corridor, then back to her. “If you go to her angry, she will give you less.”
“Then I shall go charming.”
“That would alarm her more.”
Aeleanora smiled because he was right, an offence she preferred to nurse. “You may inform the king I have gone to ask after women’s work.”
Baelor’s mouth nearly gave her amusement and then thought better of it. “That phrase has ended wars.”
“Good,” she said. “Then it has been blooded.” She turned towards the corridor. The threads around the folded notes no longer pressed into her palm. Baelor did not call her back, though his steps ceased behind her for one beat before continuing towards the stair. Mysaria’s door stood at the end of the passage, its dark wood banded with iron. Aeleanora struck it twice with her knuckles, hard enough to make the latch jump.
“Enter,” Mysaria called.
Aeleanora opened the door. Nesta stood beside the far wall with her veil already unpinned and her cropped hair tucked behind one ear. The empty basket rested upon Mysaria’s table beside a sealed packet. Mysaria sat by the map table, one candle burning at her elbow, and no surprise on her face at all. Surprise would have been insulting. Aeleanora shut the door behind her. “It appears that my invitation has been misplaced.”
Mysaria’s eyes moved over Aeleanora once, from her unruffled hair to the notes still tucked in her hand, and then returned to the sealed packet beneath her palm. “You were walking with the Hand.”
“I was,” Aeleanora said. “A dreadful practice. One becomes accustomed to competent company and then must spend the rest of the afternoon among furniture with opinions.”
Nesta smothered a snort and bent over the basket to hide it. Aeleanora’s mouth almost answered before she remembered she was currently offended. She had not heard Nesta laugh in nearly a year. For an instant she saw wet roof tiles again and Nesta crouched beside her with a stolen kitchen knife.
Mysaria did not look at Nesta. “Did he send you?”
“No,” Aeleanora said, and set the folded notes on the edge of the map table well away from the sealed packet. “He warned me against it.”
Mysaria’s fingers rested on the sealed packet. The candlelight made the ruby in her ring look like a blood clot held under glass. “Then you came with his warning still warm in your ear.”
“I have survived warmer threats.”
“The latch.”
Aeleanora turned and slid the bolt into place. Iron scraped against iron, and the sound pleased her more than it ought. When she faced the room again, Nesta had stopped pretending to fuss with the basket. Mysaria had drawn the packet closer, and the candle lit the broken wax and cord between them. “There,” Aeleanora said. “Now explain why Nesta has crossed half the world dressed like a widow’s spare sleeve.”
“Only half?” Nesta asked.
“You were always vain about distance.”
“You were always vain about being watched.”
“Yes, well. We each serve our gifts.”
Nesta’s flat mouth twitched and returned at once to its former line. She looked older than Aeleanora remembered in the strange way immortals sometimes did, all the years gathered in the eyes while the face refused to surrender its youth. She was a useful and impossible girl. Mysaria did not send her unless written words had become dangerous.
Mysaria broke the seal with her thumbnail. “Lady Morya of House Sunglass is dead.”
Aeleanora looked at her. “Dead women do not bring Nesta across the water.”
“Her body lies in the mourning chamber,” Mysaria said. “The Silent Sisters have prepared her, the septa keeps the prayers, and Lord Edric’s family has arranged a household shrine beside the bier. Someone in that house did not want the first warning to leave Sweetport Sound.”
“Sweetport Sound is a morning’s flight,” Aeleanora said. “Old septons and little ships. What did they put beside the corpse?”
Nesta leaned one hip against the table. “A sister inside the household tried to send a list by raven. The bird was found in the rookery with its neck broken and the message gone.”
“Grief does not break ravens’ necks.”
“The second warning came inside a fishwife’s sleeve,” Nesta said. “The message was stitched beneath her cuff. Salt opened the skin beneath the thread before she reached Duskendale.”
“And by the afternoon you were offending flower pots across the Crownlands?”
“I was doing well until a princess took offence at a corridor.”
Aeleanora’s smile vanished when Mysaria laid a narrow slip of parchment upon the table. The cramped writing belonged to a woman accustomed to fitting danger into whatever space men left her. A mother’s comb headed the list, followed by amber beads and a knife for cutting funeral herbs. Below them sat a silver spoon with a split fruit worked upon the handle, then a cracked green cup and two children’s shoes. The objects had passed through women’s hands before they reached the page.
Aeleanora read it twice, then tilted the parchment towards the candle. The writer had buried the one thing that did not belong among the household keepsakes instead of marking it apart. One of Mysaria’s sisters, then, and one who expected the page to be searched. “What did she see?”
“The spoon was brought out from a locked nursery chest before the mourning display was arranged,” Mysaria said. “Lord Edric’s eldest daughter ordered it polished and set beside the household shrine. One old servant wept when she saw it. Another traced the seven-pointed star over her breast, then rubbed two fingers over the inside of her wrist. The septa sent the nurse away and ordered the other woman back to her work.”
“The Faith improving a room by teaching frightened women to hold their tongues. A faithful tradition,” Aeleanora said. “The spoon matters.”
Mysaria slid the broken wax aside. “It may.”
“That means ‘yes’ in your voice.”
“It means I cannot give you a cleaner answer yet.”
Aeleanora pushed her folded notes farther from the packet, clearing the table as if Mysaria had set a body between them.“Then give me the dirty one.”
Mysaria laid a second sheet beside the list. Nesta had drawn the mourning chamber in hard strokes, with the servant at the linen press darkened twice. A small spoon-mark sat near the shrine lamp. The women’s stair had been pressed deep enough into the parchment to show upon its back. “The septa objected when Lord Edric’s daughters brought it from the chest. She sent the old nurse away. After speaking privately with the younger daughter, she returned the key and let the spoon remain beside the bier.”
Aeleanora looked from the chamber sketch to the list. “Then the septa knows it.”
“She fears what it may do in the wrong hand.”
“And she sent the old nurse away before questions began.” Aeleanora’s gaze returned to the spoon-mark. “You knew what it was before Nesta brought you this.”
Nesta looked down at the basket. Wise girl. Mysaria turned the ruby ring once with her thumb until the stone faced inward against her palm. “I had half a page in an old inventory, two dead women’s accounts, and a price paid in Lys for a spoon no buyer admitted owning. I knew the name. I had too little to put before your brother until I knew it had left the chest.”
Aeleanora smiled. It was a beautiful smile, because beauty made a fine sheath for a knife. “You waited for a warning to survive the road before remembering I would have gone while the raven was still warm.”
“I remembered precisely what you could do from the first warning,” Mysaria said. “I waited until I had a warning in hand because one careless inquiry from Dragonstone would have sent the household through every servant’s bed and laundry chest before sunset.”
“How sweet. Everyone else may have the knives and ravens while Dragonstone keeps me polished for supper. Then, once the danger has been trimmed into something my brother can bear, you remember I was trained for it.”
Mysaria’s eyes lifted, dark and flat in the candlelight. “Aeleanora.”
“No.” Aeleanora set her thumbnail beside the spoon-mark and pressed until the parchment bowed. “You have sent women into worse rooms for less.”
“Women who could be denied at the gate and buried under false names.”
Aeleanora kept smiling until the muscles beside her mouth began to ache. She looked down at the parchment and its stupid little sketch. Her fingers closed around the chair until the carved edge pressed into the old callus beneath her palm, and her pulse beat hard against the wood. Under her ribs, a lock began picking itself from the inside. “Is it a relic?”
“Yes,” Mysaria said. “Gods-touched. Banked, if the house has been lucky. The Pomegranate Spoon, in one list. The child’s spoon, in another.”
“I knew of it. I knew what it was made to do. I did not know where it had been kept.”
Aeleanora’s eyes lowered to the little mark beside the shrine. “And what was it made to do?”
“A child was fed milk and honey from it while the house words were spoken,” Mysaria said. “The blessing entered before the child understood the words. Years later, the phrase turned one fosterling back from the gate. A servant who meant to accuse his master swallowed the first word. One wet nurse lifted a cup after she had refused it.”
“For children?”
“For human fosterlings,” Mysaria said. “Servants sworn young. Hostage pages, and household girls taken in before they were old enough to understand the blessing. The wet nurses heard the phrase before they carried another woman’s babe to breast.”
Aeleanora raised a brow. “House Sunglass kept that under blankets and prayers.”
“House Sunglass kept what it was given,” Mysaria said. “That is how lesser houses survive serving greater ones.”
“Given by whom?”
Mysaria stepped away from the table and went to the narrow shelf behind her chair. She drew out a thin black ledger, no longer than her hand, and opened it by a ribbon gone brown with age. “The first certain note places it in Lys, in a nursery chest belonging to a Valyrian merchant’s manse. It appears twice in marriage goods, once as a silver feeding spoon and once as a Mother’s mercy relic. Then it disappears until one of mine names it in Sweetport.”
Aeleanora gave a small, pretty hum that held no pleasure. “A gods-touched spoon hidden under the Mother’s skirts. Neat work.”
For half a breath, the room held the Mother carved above mortal cradles and the other Mother whose blood neither woman would name before Nesta. Mysaria shut the ledger before that silence could become a question. “I have wanted it found for years. Now I know where it is, and I do not know what the mourning rites have done to it.”
Aeleanora pressed her tongue once against the roof of her mouth. “You need someone to look at it.”
“I need you before the shrine while every woman in the chamber watches where a princess looks,” Mysaria said. “You may ask after old nursery relics without sounding like a thief. The women of House Sunglass will try to impress and flatter you while they fear and resent you. Every one of them will remember where you looked.”
“How fortunate for you that I am so burdensomely memorable.”
“Fortunate for the Crown.”
“Do not put a crown on theft. It makes the thing gaudy,” Aeleanora said.
They spent the next quarter hour arranging the packet for the two men upstairs. The account of the raven’s broken neck went first, because Jacaerys would ask whose neck came next. Mysaria laid Nesta’s drawing beneath it and marked the idle servant beside the linen press. She set the second warning beside the route, its corner still pierced by the coarse thread that had cut the fishwife beneath her cuff, so Baelor would see the price of a failed raven before he read a single safeguard. By the time Mysaria had ordered the papers, the visit wore royal condolence upon its face and left House Sunglass watching Aeleanora while Nesta carried the spoon out beneath their noses.
Mysaria drew the packet towards her. “I will bring the matter to the king tonight.”
Aeleanora’s hand stopped over the cord. “No.”
Mysaria did not blink. “Yes.”
“You brought Nesta here and laid the list before me. You admitted the object is a relic, and now you intend to march upstairs and ask my brother whether I may do the thing you already know requires me.”
“I intend to make him say yes before you force him to say no.”
Aeleanora closed her fingers around the cord before Mysaria could take it. The rough twist crossed the same callus her knife drills had left years ago. “Then ask quickly.”
Mysaria looked at the fist wrapped around her packet. “And if he refuses?”
Aeleanora smiled again, softer this time. “Then I shall be wounded beyond measure.”
Nesta made a faint sound into her sleeve. Mysaria folded the list around the broken wax and tucked both back into the packet. “Good. Wear that face when we go to him. It will frighten the king more than anger.”
Aeleanora released the cord. Mysaria wound it around the packet and tucked the bundle beneath one arm. “Excellent,” Aeleanora said. “I have missed honest work.”
By the time they reached the king’s solar, Aeleanora wore injured sweetness so perfectly that Mysaria looked at her once and chose silence. Mysaria walked ahead with the packet beneath one arm. Nesta had vanished by the turn of the stair, which was wise, because Jacaerys in a mood could fill a room with brotherly concern until even the windows began considering the drop to the sea.
Jacaerys was standing when they entered. That was the first offence. He had been seated behind the wide blackwood table when some page or guard warned him Mysaria was coming, and now he stood with both hands braced upon its edge. Baelor waited near the hearth with one hand against the mantel, still as a man who had already counted three bad endings and disliked them all. Rhaenys sat by the window in a dark blue gown, one silver brow raised slightly, serene as a storm seen from very far away by sailors too stupid to read the horizon.
“You brought Aeleanora with you,” Jacaerys said.
“How observant,” Aeleanora said. “The king remains a jewel of the age.”
Jacaerys did not look away from Mysaria. “I was told you had an urgent matter out of Sweetport Sound.”
“You do,” Mysaria said, and placed the packet on the table. “Lady Morya of House Sunglass is dead. Lord Edric’s household has brought a gods-touched relic out of storage for the mourning rites. A spoon, likely older than the Conquest. One of my women sent warning from inside the house. Her first raven was killed and searched.”
Jacaerys dragged two fingers across his brow. The motion left a pale mark above his eye before the blood returned. “Gods. That is why she is here.”
“Yes,” Mysaria said.
Aeleanora glanced at Baelor. “Such warmth. I begin to feel cherished.”
Baelor did not take the bait. His eyes rested on the packet, then on Mysaria. “Say plainly what you need from her.”
“I need the princess to pay royal condolence to Lord Sunglass’s household,” Mysaria said. “She enters as herself, in black silk and beneath the king’s seal. Every eye will follow her. The women of House Sunglass will show her the shrine because refusing a princess before the bier would shame them.”
“A relic?” Rhaenys asked.
“The Pomegranate Spoon,” Mysaria said. “It was taken from a locked nursery chest. Servants wept when they saw it. One made an old sign under her sleeve before the septa silenced her.”
Jacaerys lowered himself into the chair as if sitting might keep him from saying something foolish. A poor defence. “And you need her to tell whether someone has used it again.”
Baelor left the hearth. “You have no other who can do this?”
“No one with the same certainty.”
Baelor’s attention settled upon Mysaria. “What account have you given Nesta and Ysabel for why she can feel a relic before anyone else?”
“That the gift runs crooked through her family,” Mysaria said. “Daeron dreams of what has yet to happen. Aemma could enter another person’s sleep. I told them Dreamfyre’s bond pulled Aeleanora’s gift across the border between sleep and waking, so certain gods-touched things press upon her senses before she lays a hand on them.”
Jacaerys’s fingers tightened their hold on the table’s edge. “They believed that?”
“They have both watched her know a relic was wrong before anyone uncovered it,” Mysaria said. “They needed an answer that agreed with what they had seen.”
Baelor looked towards Aeleanora. “Do they suspect more?”
“Nesta suspects I have kept part of the answer. Ysabel thinks the dragon bond altered the gift. Neither knows there is another question beneath it. To them, the matter begins with Aemma and ends with Dreamfyre.”
“See that they do not,” Jacaerys said.
“I have.”
“You have called her necessary twice,” Baelor said. “Tell me why one of your women cannot take the spoon and bring it here.”
“The raven was killed in the Sunglass rookery before it could leave. The second warning came through a fishwife with the message sewn beneath her cuff. The spoon went from a locked nursery chest to the bier-side shrine, and one servant wept while another made an old sign before the septa sent them apart.” Mysaria set one finger beside the spoon on the list. “House Sunglass was already marrying human houses when the spoon first appears in the records. Most fosterlings, wet nurses, hostage pages, and girls sworn into their service were human. The spoon kept those closest to the family from speaking or acting against it.”
“The septa silenced them before either could explain herself,” Rhaenys said. “She knew what the sight would do to them.”
Mysaria moved the household list into the centre of the table. “Someone inside House Sunglass knows to guard the spoon and kill a raven. I will not send a woman to lift it blind while the mourning rites may already have stirred it.”
Aeleanora’s eyes moved to the map painted beneath glass on the table. There was Sweetport Sound, a little curl of coast north of Dragonstone, smug in its nearness, behaving as if it had not just become the subject of everyone’s suffocating concern. “The mourning chamber gives us one day before the household scatters. After the burial, the daughters divide the keepsakes and the servants return to their usual rooms. Whoever killed the raven will have time to move the spoon or find the woman who sent the warning.”
“I hated you doing this work to begin with.” Jacaerys’s fingers pressed into the table edge. “I hated sending you to it. I hated needing Mysaria to teach you how to survive the world we had already failed to keep from you.” His gaze moved to Rhaenys, then Mysaria, and finally Baelor. “If you are hurt under my leave, I lose my sister and the realm loses its heir. Which of you means to tell Seraphyra that I sent her daughter into a house already killing messengers? Or Aelorion? Seraphyra gave me a sweet for promising to protect Aeleanora when I was eight. You were all adults.”
Rhaenys lowered her eyes to the map. Mysaria’s thumb stopped against the ruby turned inward in her palm, while Baelor’s hand curled once at his side. None of them answered. Mysaria drew breath first. “You are not wrong. She—”
Aeleanora cut her off. “So Dragonstone yields to cutlery because the gods were careless with my blood?”
Baelor’s eyes came to her then, flat and dark. “It has killed one raven and frightened a room full of servants. Call it cutlery once more, and I will assume you are courting danger because you like how it looks.” He swallowed once, and the tendons stood hard beneath his collar. “The more surely you can find such things, the sooner someone will set one where they want you to stand.”
Aeleanora turned to him then, and the softness she had worn into the room vanished before she could preserve it. A cheaper woman might have felt exposed. Aeleanora felt inconvenienced by the speed with which her own blood rose to answer him. “You all sent me away because none of you knew what else to do with me.” Her gaze went to Mysaria. “You told me this was Seraphyra’s will for me. I was ten-and-four and begging to come home. You put her wishes between us. I wrote to Jacaerys until I learned to stop asking when I would be allowed back.”
Mysaria’s hand closed over the packet. Aeleanora returned to her brother before Mysaria could answer. “Once I had made a place among them, you forced me home,” Aeleanora said. “You brought me back to be dressed for lords who argued over me, then gave me harmless parchment whenever I grew restless.” She looked at Baelor last. “You told me I would need sharper eyes and steadier hands because the world would not grow kind merely because I was loved. If that was true, do not send me back to salted fish the moment those lessons become inconvenient.”
Jacaerys sighed. He looked tired in a way that made her want to be kinder for half a breath, which was intolerable. His hair had been pulled back too tightly at the nape, and one silver strand had escaped near his temple, making him look less like the king and more like the boy who used to follow her down corridors after nightmares because neither of them wanted to admit who was following whom. “I thought bringing you home was the promise I had finally kept. For two years, every letter asked me to send for you. Then you stopped asking, and I thought you had only learned to bear it.”
“You never asked why I stopped.”
Jacaerys’s mouth opened, then closed again. His fingers curled against the table until his signet rasped softly over the blackwood. Baelor’s hand left the chair back. Baelor watched Aeleanora for one beat, then looked to Jacaerys. His thumb ground over the scar across his knuckle until the skin blanched. He drew the route sheet from beneath the packet, knocking the broken wax aside, and set it square before him. “What is the route?”
Mysaria answered without looking at her notes. “Dragonback at first light. Dreamfyre lands openly. Ser Roric stays within call until the women’s chamber. Two royal guards wait at the inner gate, no more. Nesta will already be inside under mourning service. One of mine carries the herb water. Nesta handles the mourning linen. Aeleanora enters as princess, stands near the shrine, identifies the spoon if she can do so naturally, and leaves the taking to Nesta.”
“If access is refused?” Baelor asked.
“She does not force it.”
Baelor braced one hand flat on the table beside the route sheet. “If the spoon is moved before she reaches it?”
“She does not pursue.”
“If the house moves against them?”
Mysaria looked at him across the table. “Then we use the way out I had in place before I came upstairs to be asked whether one existed. If every woman inside the house fails us, Dreamfyre will have the roof open before Sunglass steel reaches Aeleanora.”
Baelor’s hand came down over the route sheet. The broken wax jumped against the blackwood. “Explain precisely what Aeleanora must do.”
“She enters the mourning chamber and stands near enough to taste the spoon’s influence,” Mysaria said. “If she tastes nothing, the spoon has lain quiet. If the taste comes strong, someone has been fed from it recently. Aeleanora tells Nesta what she finds. She touches nothing upon the shrine. Nesta takes the spoon.”
Aeleanora gave a small laugh. “You have made a campaign of standing beside a shrine.”
Rhaenys’s eyes cut to her. “No one here doubts you can reach the shrine. We are deciding whether you will leave it if Nesta commands.”
Aeleanora disliked being corrected by Rhaenys most of all. It gave every rebuke the quality of a jewel thrown directly at one’s forehead. “I know the difference,” Aeleanora said.
“No,” Baelor said. Her head turned before she could stop it. He had spoken without raising his voice, but the word cut across the table and pinned every eye to him. His face was calm, which was how Aeleanora knew he was furious. His mouth had lost every trace of humour, and his hand rested on the back of a chair without gripping it. “You know when to come back. Usually after you have turned one task into four.”
Jacaerys looked at him with a miserable flash of gratitude, which Aeleanora found traitorous even by brotherly standards. “Baelor is right.”
She turned on him. “I have spent weeks answering letters from men who think ink becomes important if they use enough of it. I have smiled at ledgers and nodded at petitions while every real matter arrived in my chambers already gutted for safety. Then Nesta walks past me in my own castle with the face she wears when the Order has found something worth knowing, and all of you expect me to wait politely while she does the work you made me leave home to learn.”
Rhaenys rose from the window chair and placed two fingers over Sweetport Sound beneath the glass. “Look at what Mysaria is offering you, Jacaerys. Aeleanora has met relics with less warning than this. Tomorrow she enters in daylight beneath your seal, with Nesta already inside the chamber. Refuse her, and by burial the spoon will be hidden again. The next relic will not care that you once kept her home.”
Jacaerys pressed his thumbnail into the wax until the crescent broke. A red fragment lodged beneath the nail while he studied the route sheet. Aeleanora let him think because she had already wounded him once and apparently possessed limits after all. A regrettable discovery.
“I will not keep you here with harmless papers while Mysaria sends your sisters to do the work you were trained for,” Jacaerys said. He raised his head and looked directly at her. “You may go, but once you enter that chamber, Nesta commands the visit. If she ends it, you leave the house and return to Dreamfyre.”
Aeleanora’s chin rose. She lowered it before Jacaerys mistook delight for recklessness and Baelor found another condition to add. “I had hoped for a kingdom, but the spoon will serve.”
“Aeleanora.”
“I will leave when Nesta commands.”
Jacaerys’s eyes searched hers, waiting for the smile that would turn the promise into another game. Aeleanora gave him none. His thumb came away from the broken wax stained red, and the breath left him slowly enough to stir the loose silver strand at his temple. For one ugly little instant he looked like her brother again, and she turned towards Mysaria before kindness made a public nuisance of her.
Mysaria drew the packet closer. “I will take the widow Harra’s upper room across the lane. Nesta knows the door. Ysabel will wait there with me.”
“Ysabel?” The name escaped before she could temper it. Aeleanora came half a step nearer the table before rank caught her by the shoulders, bright-eyed as a girl promised some forbidden delight.
Mysaria cut her a look. “Yes. Keep your delight under command. Lady Sunglass is holding a mourning rite, not a reunion.”
“I can grieve and be glad in the same gown.”
“See that Lady Sunglass notices only the grief.”
Baelor glanced between them. “Who is Ysabel?”
“One of mine,” Mysaria said. “Her mother is a healer, but she is unsure of her father. Ysabel can make a heart labour by forcing too much blood through it to fell him, or keep blood from spilling through a cut, though she cannot mend flesh itself.” Jacaerys looked at Aeleanora. She held his gaze until Mysaria went on. “She will wait across the lane with me. One raven has already been killed, and the house is full of servants who have learned to lower their voices. I would sooner waste Ysabel’s morning than learn too late that someone means to bar our way out.”
Baelor drew the chair opposite Jacaerys away from the table. Its legs scraped across the rushes, and Aeleanora looked round before he spoke. He placed the route sheet before the empty seat and turned it until the mourning chamber faced her, resting his hand upon the back of the chair. “Who has command once they pass into the women’s chamber?”
Nesta, Aeleanora thought, and did not say it because the room might choke. “Nesta,” Mysaria said. “Aeleanora keeps Lady Helicent and her daughters occupied. Nesta watches the servants and chooses when they leave.”
Aeleanora laid one hand against her breast. “Then I smile at Lady Sunglass while Nesta decides when I may leave.”
“Do not pout over being used well,” Mysaria said. “You have spent years making every eye in a room follow you.”
Baelor tipped his chin towards the waiting chair. “Sit.”
Aeleanora looked at the chair, then at his hand upon its carved back. He had drawn it out and left himself standing beside it, so refusal would require her to shove the chair away before half the family. Irritatingly clever. She lowered herself with sufficient grace to shame the command that had put her there, drew the route sheet closer, and set her right hand beside it. Her index finger found the edge of her thumb ring before she made it stop.
“When Nesta says the visit is ended?”
“I leave the chamber and return to Dreamfyre.”
“If the spoon has been moved?” His hand still rested upon the carved back of her chair, the heel of his palm level with her shoulder. He had left it there after she sat.
“I admire the empty shrine and depart with all the sorrow expected of a princess.”
Baelor kept his hand upon the carved chair-back and set the forefinger of his other hand beside the nursery stair drawn upon the route sheet. “You do not search the nursery chest.”
“I do not search the nursery chest.”
“Nor follow whoever carried it away.”
Aeleanora looked up at him. “You have already won the condition. Must you parade it around the table?”
“I have seen you obey every word and make a mockery of what was asked.”
Aeleanora opened her mouth. Baelor waited without blinking. She decided the answer was beneath her, which was fortunate because none had come, and drew the route sheet a finger’s width away from his hand. He let her have it.
Rhaenys came around the table to Aeleanora’s side, the hem of her dark blue gown whispering across the rushes as she stopped beside the painted coast. “When you return, you will tell Mysaria everything that happened beside that shrine. You will leave nothing out because you judged it too small to matter.”
Aeleanora tilted her face towards her. “I am unlikely to forget what it does to me.”
“You are very likely to decide which part Jacaerys may hear.”
Aeleanora’s forefinger pressed harder against the edge of her thumb ring. “Mysaria asked for an account, not a confession.”
“Then give her the account before you begin protecting him from it,” Rhaenys said. “Exact words.”
“Exact words,” Aeleanora agreed.
Jacaerys drew a fresh sheet of parchment from beneath the packet and reached for the quill. He tested the nib against the margin, found it split, and cast it aside with enough force to send it rolling towards Baelor. The second quill served him better. He began the letter in his own hand. Each time he wrote Aeleanora’s title, the nib cut deeper into the parchment.
Aeleanora watched the quill travel across the page. Her brother’s hair had loosened further at the nape, and the skin above his signet bore a red stain from the broken wax. He looked young while writing the condolence and older whenever he paused to choose the next word. The sight made kindness rise again, vulgar creature, and Aeleanora bent over the route sheet before it could show upon her face.
Mysaria came around the table and placed a narrow strip of parchment beside Aeleanora’s wrist. She had written four names upon it, each paired with a place in the mourning chamber. “Lord Edric’s eldest daughter will stand at the bier. Her younger sister keeps the shrine key. The septa who silenced the servants is called Meredyth.”
Aeleanora read the names once. “And the woman who sent the warning?”
“Lysa Waters. She will be carrying warmed herb water. You do not acknowledge her.”
“She has seen me before?”
“Once, in Pentos. You wore brown hair and lied about being a wool factor’s daughter.”
“That narrows nothing. I was excellent.”
“You complained about the dye for six days.”
“It had no respect for beauty.” Aeleanora caught a silver lock between two fingers and held it beside her cheek, brows raised as though the offence required no further defence.
Mysaria took the strip back before Aeleanora could fold it into her sleeve. “Lysa will know you. Do not look at her long enough to make her prove it.”
Baelor caught the discarded quill before it rolled from the table. He examined the split nib, set it beside Jacaerys’s inkpot, and drew the Sunglass household list towards him. His attention moved down the page without haste, pausing at the septa’s name and again at Lysa Waters. “How many in the women’s chamber know Nesta?”
“Two,” Mysaria said. “Both believe she entered service after Lady Morya took ill.”
“And Lysa?”
“Lysa knows her.”
Baelor lifted his head. “Then Lysa does not look at Nesta unless she must.”
“She knows that.”
“I would hear her say it before dawn.”
Mysaria’s ruby clicked softly against the table when she turned her hand. “You may hear every woman in the house swear her own name if it pleases you. Nesta will still command once the chamber closes.”
Aeleanora glanced between them. Mysaria had begun answering Baelor with the patient malice she reserved for men who asked sensible questions past the hour when sense became irritating. Baelor received it without offence, which made the exchange disappointingly bloodless. Jacaerys finished the letter and scattered sand across the wet ink. “Black silk,” he said without looking up. “Nothing so bright that it turns the mourning into a court appearance.”
Aeleanora stared at him. “You have given me a cursed spoon and taken away my sapphires in the same breath.”
“Lady Sunglass has buried her mother.”
“I had gathered as much from the bier.”
Mysaria lifted the sanded letter and tipped the excess back into its dish. “Black silk. Silver at the throat, if you must have something.”
“I must.”
“You would survive without it.”
“Survival is a low standard for dress.”
Jacaerys drew the signet from his finger and held it above the fresh wax. His hand stopped there. A drop fell from the taper and spread slowly across the fold, red and glossy, while he looked at Aeleanora over the little pool.
“You come home before the evening bells,” he said.
Aeleanora’s right index finger pressed against her thumb ring. He had already won her promise to leave with Nesta, yet this was different. Evening bells belonged to childhood, when a missed meal sent Jacaerys searching the corridors by torchlight. He would find her on some parapet and pretend he had only come for the view. “I will be back before the bells,” she said.
Jacaerys pressed the dragon into the wax. When he lifted the seal, his shoulders sank a little inside his doublet, enough for the cloth at his back to loosen where it had pulled tight since her arrival. “Baelor will read the final plan,” he said.
Aeleanora sighed towards the painted ceiling. “Naturally. Let the Hand inspect the hem of my adventure.”
“Gladly,” Baelor said.
She turned in the chair to look at him. “You might sound burdened for courtesy’s sake.”
“That would waste time.”
Only then did Baelor look down at the carved rail beneath his palm. Rhaenys stood close enough to see it, and Mysaria had made a life’s work of looking elsewhere while missing nothing. His fingers loosened once against the wood, then stayed. When Jacaerys rose, Baelor stepped away from the chair to make room for him, taking his hand with him as though he had only meant to clear the king’s path. Aeleanora disliked owing her brother gratitude for so small and treasonous a mercy.
Jacaerys came around the table at last, slow enough to be king, close enough to be brother. He stopped beside Aeleanora’s chair with his hands hanging uselessly at his sides. His left hand opened once near her hair, the old habit from when they were children and comfort had been easier. “I cannot lose you to a spoon.”
Aeleanora’s lips parted. The clever answer had fled, cowardly little creature. Jacaerys’s hand remained beside her temple, close enough that the warmth of his palm reached her skin. She leaned the crown of her head beneath it before pride recovered its footing.
His palm came down over her hair, clumsy with the years since he had last touched her so before witnesses. His thumb brushed once above her ear and stopped. Baelor lowered his eyes to the route sheet and squared it beneath his hand, granting them the only privacy a crowded solar could offer. Jacaerys gave a broken laugh through his nose. “You think that helps.”
“It helped me.”
Mysaria wound the cord around the packet and tucked the sealed condolence letter beneath it. Rhaenys bent over the painted coast, measuring the brief flight across the Sound with two fingers. Jacaerys lifted his hand from Aeleanora’s hair, though the loose silver strand he had disturbed remained caught against her cheek. “Go before I think of another condition,” he said.
“You sealed the letter. A king ought not quarrel with his own wax.”
“Out.”
Aeleanora rose. One fold of her skirt caught beneath the carved arm of the chair, and Baelor turned it before she could tug herself free. He did it with the same absent ease he used when her gown caught beneath his chair in her chambers. His hand remained upon the wood for one beat before his eyes went to Rhaenys, whose eyes were still on the map.
Mysaria’s ruby clicked once against the packet cord. Jacaerys was still watching Aeleanora. Baelor released the chair and returned his attention to the household list. Mysaria crossed the solar and lifted the latch. Aeleanora followed her into the passage, keeping a princess’s pace until the oak closed behind them and Jacaerys’s voice disappeared beneath the sea wind moving through the stairwell.
“Your mouth,” Mysaria said.
Aeleanora touched two fingers to it. “What has it done now?”
“It is smiling.”
“Then walk faster before Jacaerys sees and recalls his leave.”
Mysaria took the sea stair without slowing. Aeleanora followed, already choosing which black silk would mourn best and which clasp would offend Mysaria least. At first light Dreamfyre would cross the Sound. Behind the closed oak, Jacaerys’s broken wax remained upon the blackwood, and Baelor had not turned the route sheet from the same line. The harmless petitions in Aeleanora’s chamber could sour unopened until evening.
Later that afternoon, they gathered in Mysaria’s private workroom, two passages below the rooms shown to petitioners. The walls stood close, and the ceiling was low enough to punish a tall man who forgot himself. Wax clogged the seams of the central table, and vinegar had bleached one corner. Knife marks crossed the wood near a dark stain Aeleanora had once been forbidden to question. Nesta’s drawing of the mourning chamber lay open with black linen, a silver copy of the pomegranate spoon, and a packet of names. Jacaerys stood near the door as if keeping himself between Aeleanora and the whole trade in secrets might help him sleep. Baelor had taken the place by the shelves with the route sheet in hand, while Rhaenys stood opposite Mysaria, studying every mark upon the drawing as though Laena’s old training might be hidden among the ink.
Laena had arrived ahead of them because Aeleanora had sent for her the moment she escaped Jacaerys’s solar. She wore dark green silk cut low across the shoulders, the fitted bodice worked with bronze thread that curled over her ribs like the ridges of Vhagar’s wings. Her heavy silver braid fell nearly to her waist, though she had drawn the end over one arm and begun plaiting the last few inches anew without need. Aeleanora stood beside her pretending to read the packet of names, while Laena pretended to ask whether silver or jet would better suit a mourning clasp. Each fell silent whenever footsteps passed outside and began speaking again the moment they continued down the passage.
“You told me Ysabel was coming and then made me wait,” Laena grumbled.
“You are queen,” Aeleanora said. “Endure with grandeur.”
“I have endured three petitions and a fitting today. My grandeur has done enough.”
Rhaenys looked from one of them to the other. “You were sent away to become less troublesome.”
Laena smiled at her mother. “Was that the purpose? I must have missed that lesson.” She turned towards Aeleanora. “Do you remember it?”
Aeleanora flicked the end of Laena’s braid from her arm and watched it fall behind her. “Vaguely. I believe we were upon a roof that morning.”
The latch lifted before Rhaenys could answer. Nesta entered with her cropped hair uncovered and a deep yellow gown buttoned to the throat, dipping in a brief bow to Jacaerys. She crossed directly to the table, pulled a folded strip from her sleeve, and set it beside the drawing. Laena made a sound wholly unworthy of a queen and crossed the room before Nesta had taken three steps. Aeleanora reached her a heartbeat later, rank alone keeping her from running before Jacaerys.
“If either of you shrieks, I am leaving,” Nesta said.
Laena caught her by both shoulders. “You cut your hair.”
“It was in the way.”
“It was beautiful.”
“It was in the way beautifully,” Nesta said. Laena pulled her into an embrace regardless. Nesta suffered it with her arms pinned at her sides, though one hand closed briefly against the back of Laena’s cloak before she pushed free. Aeleanora was waiting when she turned, which gave Nesta time to look her over from crown to hem with old and merciless care. “You were less affectionate earlier.”
“I was being excluded earlier.” Aeleanora caught her by the forearm and drew her close before Nesta could avoid a second embrace. It lasted only a breath. Nesta smelled of wet wool and horse. Beneath both lingered the bitter soap Mysaria’s women used to strip dye from their hands. Aeleanora released her first, because Jacaerys was watching with an expression she had no wish to examine. Nesta put the folded parchment on the table at once.
“The western passage is watched. Mortal man, red hands, no proper work near the linen press. We leave by the women’s stair unless the prayers close it,” Nesta said.
Laena came to the drawing beside her. “Cruel of you to leave me behind. The herb water will pass that stair more often than the linen. Keep Ysabel with the pitchers and no one will question why she crosses twice.”
“Ysabel waits across the lane unless blood begins,” Nesta said. “Lysa carries the herb water. She knows the stair.”
“Then the second daughter is the difficulty,” Aeleanora said. “She watches the servants more closely than the bier.”
“Keep her watching you.”
“A rare burden.”
Nesta ignored her. “If the spoon has been moved, we do not search the nursery chest. If the septa closes the stair, we leave through the hall. If anyone names me, the visit ends.”
“Yes, Mother,” Aeleanora said.
“You only call me that when you mean to disobey.”
“Then be grateful I have warned you,” Aeleanora returned. Laena lowered her head towards the map to hide her smile. Baelor’s gaze remained upon Aeleanora until she bent over the route beside them.
Laena and Aeleanora turned towards it together with such naked anticipation that Nesta sighed. “Try to behave as if you have seen a woman before,” she said.
“We have not seen this one in too long,” Laena said.
Ysabel entered carrying a rolled leather satchel under one arm. She was dressed in a smoke-grey kirtle with sleeves mended in thread a shade too dark, the hem brushed clean but worn thin where boot heels had worried it for years. Her sandy-brown hair was drawn into a hard knot, leaving bare the strong western cheekbones of a father who had given her his face, some magic, and little else. Her hands were scrubbed clean, though old cracks remained across the knuckles and vinegar had reddened the skin around her nails.
Ysabel stopped just inside the threshold when a deep tremor passed through the floor beneath her boots. Somewhere below, a dragon settled against stone. Her eyes rose to the carved ribs overhead, caught upon the black dragon worked into the lintel, then travelled across the room and found the king, the Hand, Rhaenys, and Laena, who was not her queen the last time Ysabel had seen her. By the time they reached Aeleanora, her grip had closed hard around the leather satchel beneath her arm.
Aeleanora knew those hands. They had corrected her knife grip, bound Laena’s split knuckles, and shoved Nesta back onto a roof after she swore the distance could not be crossed twice. Ysabel had once needed only to point at a stair for all three of them to run it again. Now she stood beneath Dragonstone’s vaulted stone with mud drying at her hem, trying to remember how deeply a bastard healer ought to bow before girls who had grown into a crown princess and a queen. Aeleanora wanted, with immediate violence, to make every polished stone in the keep apologise.
Laena reached her first. “Do that with your knees and I shall knock you over.”
Ysabel stared at her. “You are the queen.”
“Only when someone wishes to spoil my day.”
Ysabel’s eyes travelled over the dark green silk and bronze embroidery. “You used to arrive covered in mud.”
“Silk conceals a great many sins,” Laena said with a smile.
“It has failed to conceal you.”
Aeleanora came to Ysabel’s other side and took her free hand before she could attempt the bow again. Ysabel’s rough palm rasped against her rings. Aeleanora closed her fingers over it and held on until Ysabel finally looked at her rather than the crowned dragon embroidered across her breast.
“And you,” Ysabel said quietly.
“Still dreadful.”
“Much more silk.” Another low scrape moved through the stone underfoot. Ysabel’s gaze dropped towards the floor before she could stop it.
“Just Dreamfyre,” Aeleanora said. She moved closer, keeping Ysabel’s hand within hers. “She is beneath the eastern side of the mountain. Laena’s girl is in the sea cavern.”
Ysabel looked at her with naked horror. “That was meant to comfort me?”
“She has always been poor at comfort,” Nesta said.
“I told her what made the noise.”
“You told me there were two dragons beneath my feet,” Ysabel replied. “That is a tally of dangers.”
Laena laughed and caught Ysabel around the shoulders. Aeleanora joined her from the other side before dignity could interfere, leaving Ysabel trapped between two silver-haired women who had once been thin-kneed girls under her instruction. Ysabel endured them for one breath, then another. Her arm came around Laena’s back while her fingers closed briefly against Aeleanora’s sleeve, creasing the silk.
“Release me,” she said. “You are both too large now.”
“You have grown frail,” Aeleanora said.
“You have grown heavy with silk.”
“Blame Dragonstone.”
Nesta watched them with her arms folded, her flat mouth betraying a trace of pleasure. “She crossed half the realm to be crushed by royalty.”
“They were cheaper when they came with torn hems,” Ysabel said.
“They still do,” Nesta replied. “The maids mend them before anyone important sees.”
They let her go at last. Ysabel took Laena by the wrist and turned her hand palm-up, then ran one thumb over the knuckles that had once split beneath her wrappings. Aeleanora received the same inspection without being asked, chin high while Ysabel pressed the old knife callus at the base of her fingers. Laena stood still. Aeleanora did as well. Neither of them moved until Ysabel released their hands.
Ysabel pointed at the table. “Move. All three of you are standing in my light.” Aeleanora stepped aside before the last word left her mouth. Laena followed, and Nesta rescued the inkstone from Ysabel’s sleeve. Jacaerys straightened from the doorpost and watched his queen and heir obey before the command had finished leaving Ysabel’s mouth. His eyes moved to Mysaria for an explanation. Mysaria kept her attention upon the drawing.
Rhaenys looked from Ysabel’s patched cuffs to her daughter, who had already yielded the better place at the table. Baelor raised one brow above the route sheet. Ysabel set her satchel at her feet and bent over the mourning-room drawing, one rough fingertip finding the shrine. “Is taste still the first warning?”
“Usually,” Aeleanora answered.
“How close before it begins?”
“I will know when I am there.”
“Then remember where you are standing when it begins. Tonight you take no wine, honey, milk, cloves, mint, or poppy. Plain bread and water before you fly.”
Aeleanora stared at her. “You have murdered breakfast.”
“I have forbidden six things that might leave a taste in your mouth before the spoon does.” Ysabel looked down at Aeleanora’s right hand. “Give me that.” Aeleanora placed her hand in Ysabel’s. Ysabel caught the thumb ring between two fingers and turned it until the little dragon engraved upon it faced inward against Aeleanora’s palm. “When the taste begins, turn the dragon so and leave it,” Ysabel said. “Nesta will see.”
Aeleanora glanced down at the ring. “I turn it whenever a man speaks beyond his point.”
“You worry it,” Nesta said. “You do not turn it halfway and leave it.”
Laena glanced at the ring. “And the man usually knows he has displeased you long before your hand moves.”
“Then confusion appears unlikely.”
Ysabel released her. “The ring is the only answer you give. Once the dragon turns, your part with the spoon is finished.”
“I heard Mysaria.”
“You said that at Tanner’s Fold.”
Aeleanora narrowed her eyes. “That roof was wet.”
“That roof was flat,” Ysabel said.
“The chickens were dry until you arrived,” Nesta added.
“They had chosen a poor place to stand.”
Laena’s laughter escaped before she could cover it. Aeleanora followed a breath later, bright and helpless, remembering feathers caught beneath her collar and Ysabel standing over the pen with both hands upon her hips. Jacaerys released the doorpost. Baelor looked up from the route sheet and remained looking until Ysabel tapped the shrine again.
“Say it,” Ysabel ordered.
Aeleanora sighed. “When the taste begins, I turn the dragon towards my palm and leave it there. I touch nothing upon the shrine.”
“Well done, little magpie.”
Aeleanora’s fingers stopped against the ring. Laena’s delight appeared at once, while Nesta folded her arms and waited for the inevitable offence. Across the table, Rhaenys looked from Ysabel to her daughter and found Laena grinning as though the name belonged to her memories as well. Aeleanora swatted the back of Ysabel’s hand. “Do not call me that before kings,” Aeleanora said.
Jacaerys frowned and looked towards Mysaria. “You let them call her ‘little magpie’?”
Mysaria drew the packet of names closer. “She earned worse.”
Baelor’s forefinger remained beneath the same line of the route sheet. His eyes were on Aeleanora, and when she caught him at it, he returned to the page one beat too late. “Mistress Ysabel,” Jacaerys began, “if she is hurt inside the keep—”
“No mistress.” The correction escaped before Ysabel remembered who had spoken. Her shoulders drew inward again, and her eyes dropped to the drawing. “Your Grace. Ysabel will do.”
Aeleanora slid the packet beneath Ysabel’s waiting hand. “Ysabel will do.”
Jacaerys looked at her, then at the patched grey sleeves and vinegar-reddened hands resting upon his sister’s route. “Ysabel, then. If she is hurt?”
Ysabel’s grip steadied around the packet. “The visit ends. Nesta gets her across the lane. I can hold blood inside a cut long enough to bring her home. Steel through the heart or throat leaves me almost nothing.”
“And if she refuses to leave?” Baelor asked.
“Nesta removes her.”
Aeleanora lifted her brows. “With what army?”
“The same one that pulled you from the dyer’s yard in Lys,” Nesta said.
“You had two dockwomen.”
“They disliked you.” Ysabel fixed Aeleanora with a level look. “You will leave.”
“I know.”
Mysaria placed two more markers upon the drawing. “Again from the outer gate.”
Nesta began with the household welcome. When she placed Lysa beside the linen press, Laena reached across and moved the marker nearer the women’s stair. “She carries hot water,” Laena said. “Keep her moving. A servant standing still with a steaming pitcher gives everyone cause to ask why.”
Nesta considered the change, then left the marker where Laena had put it. Rhaenys watched her daughter withdraw her hand from the drawing. Jacaerys remained by the door, though his shoulders had eased away from the wood. Aeleanora gave the route back exactly. Ysabel interrupted twice, once when she failed to name the western passage and again when she said she would leave after confirming the spoon.
“You leave when Nesta says,” Ysabel corrected.
“Even if I have not confirmed it?” Aeleanora asked.
“Especially then.”
Aeleanora repeated the answer without protest. When she glanced towards Baelor again, the route sheet had lowered in his hands. He watched Ysabel move Aeleanora away from the drawing, then watched Aeleanora obey without lifting a brow. Mysaria gathered the markers once they had completed the route twice. “Enough. Nesta leaves before dawn. Ysabel takes the upper room across the lane. Aeleanora enters beneath the king’s seal and comes out when Nesta commands.”
Laena folded her arms. “And I remain here.”
“Half the keep would follow you to learn why a queen had come,” Nesta said.
“They will follow Aeleanora.”
“They are meant to,” Ysabel answered.
Laena looked at Aeleanora with open betrayal. “Bring me something.”
“A grieving septa, perhaps?” Aeleanora asked.
“Something useful.”
Aeleanora lifted her chin. “Then I shall bring the spoon.”
Ysabel bent to retrieve her satchel. Another low rumble travelled beneath the floor, and her fingers closed on the strap.Aeleanora took it up before she could. “You will sleep in my rooms tonight.” Ysabel looked instinctively towards Jacaerys. “Do stop asking the king with your eyes,” Aeleanora said. “He has granted me leave once today and will grow drunk upon it.”
Jacaerys met her gaze, and one corner of his mouth gave way. “She may stay with you.”
Aeleanora gave Ysabel a look of wounded vindication. “See what you have done? He believes himself consulted.”
Ysabel took the satchel from her, though she did not release Aeleanora’s hand at once. “I remember why they sent you away.”
“And yet you crossed half the realm to find me.”
“Someone had to discover whether you remained trainable.”
Laena slipped her arm through Ysabel’s other one. “She does not.”
Nesta collected the route drawing and joined them. Aeleanora went between Ysabel and Laena, her hand still caught in Ysabel’s rougher fingers and Laena’s sleeve warm against her other arm. Neither woman bowed, and neither asked leave to take her. When Aeleanora looked back, Rhaenys was studying the correction Laena had made beside the women’s stair. Jacaerys watched from the doorway, while Baelor held the route sheet open to the same unread line.
☙──────────✧──────────❧
At first light, Dreamfyre carried Aeleanora over the black water beneath a sky the colour of old iron. Her black silk surcoat covered ceremonial riding leathers, silver fastened at her throat and nowhere else, which ought to satisfy Jacaerys’s sudden authority over mourning clothes. Far below, Ser Roric and the condolence party crossed under a single dark sail, the boat leaning into the chop while Dreamfyre passed over it in three beats of her wings. The brief flight should have made the whole affair seem modest. A dead raven and a frightened household had persuaded Dragonstone to treat a gods-touched spoon like enemy ground.
The Sunglass seat rose above the harbour through the mist, its salt-whitened walls narrow and devout, with black mourning cloth hanging from the inner gate. Dreamfyre circled until Ser Roric’s dark sail reached the quay. When she turned towards the yard, Aeleanora felt her count the ground beneath them: armed men by the steps, horses pulling against their ties, servants drawn into rows too orderly to have formed without shouting.
Aeleanora stroked the scale before her saddle. “Mind the walls. They have made such an effort to appear holy.” Dreamfyre landed, rattling the gate fittings, and kept the stone beneath her claws intact by what Aeleanora considered extravagant mercy.
Lord Edric Sunglass met her at the steps with Lady Helicent beside him and his daughters arrayed behind them in mourning grey. The eldest, Lady Sabitha, pressed her thumb against the side of her forefinger until both had gone pale. Septa Meredyth stood close behind her shoulder, her prayer beads looped twice around one hand. “House Sunglass is honoured beyond measure by your kindness, Princess,” Lord Edric said. His collar had darkened with sweat before he finished speaking. Ser Roric stepped forward and placed Jacaerys’s sealed condolence in Lord Edric’s hands.
“You have the Crown’s sorrow,” Aeleanora said. “Lady Morya served her house through more years than most lords give honest service.”
“My mother held Dragonstone in constant devotion.”
Sabitha lowered her eyes. The movement lasted only a breath, though the septa saw it and drew the prayer beads more tightly through her fingers. Aeleanora allowed the silence to make Lord Edric uneasy before turning towards his daughters. “I should like to pay my respects beside her household shrine, with their leave.” Sabitha glanced towards Meredyth before answering, as Mysaria had warned she would.
“Of course, Princess. Her dearest things have been laid beside her.”
They led Aeleanora through the hall with Ser Roric two paces behind and the royal guards left at the inner gate. Salt damp lined the tapestries, and perhaps the bloodline itself. Nesta stood near the passage to the women’s stair with folded linen over one arm, head covered and face emptied of every memory they shared. Her eyes remained upon the floor as Aeleanora passed. The western passage beyond her held the red-handed servant from Nesta’s drawing, stationed beside a linen press with no cloth in his hands and no honest reason to be there. Ser Roric stopped outside the mourning chamber.
The chamber had once been a solar. Pale walls and narrow windows left little space around Lady Morya’s covered body, while carved screens concealed the women’s stair and the herb-water table from the bier. At her feet stood seven crystal figures beside a salt dish, a mended bone comb, two children’s shoes, and a cracked green cup. The spoon lay nearest the widow’s lamp. Its bowl had been worn thin by mouths, and the handle ended in a silver pomegranate split around seeds of dark garnet.
Aeleanora bowed beside the bier and tasted honey before she raised her head. Her throat worked around a swallow she had never chosen. At six paces, the roots of her teeth began to ache although no hand had touched the spoon. Near the screen, a mortal woman rubbed two fingers over the inside of her wrist while Lady Helicent watched the pomegranate handle with the fond solemnity of a family keepsake.
Aeleanora let her right hand fall beside the black leather at her hip. Her forefinger caught the dragon engraved upon her thumb ring and turned its head inward until the metal pressed against her palm. Beyond the carved screen, Nesta passed the folded linen from one arm to the other. Aeleanora looked towards the little shoes. “Were these Lady Morya’s?”
Lady Helicent stepped nearer, pleased by Aeleanora’s attention to the shrine. “My good-mother chose each piece herself. The shoes were hers as a babe, and the spoon was dear to her.” Aeleanora kept her eyes upon the worn leather toes. The honey under her tongue thickened until the roots of her teeth complained. “Every child fostered beneath this roof was welcomed with it,” Lady Helicent continued. “Milk and honey, given before the household and the Mother.”
Septa Meredyth’s beads clicked once against her ring. Lady Sabitha looked towards her before pressing her thumb harder against her forefinger. “My mother never permitted the old words to be altered.”
“‘The house remembers what held it together,’” Lady Helicent said, with the solemn pride of a woman reciting an honour earned in battle.
The taste of hot milk flooded Aeleanora’s tongue though her mouth remained empty. Poppy followed, bitter and softbeneath the honey. Her tongue flattened and her throat worked around a swallow again. The second swallow came upon the final word. Someone had used it recently. Beside the screen, the mortal woman’s fingers dug harder into her wrist, while Sabitha’s nail blanched against her forefinger. Aeleanora kept her attention upon the little shoes.
“Remarkable. Most household prayers acquire a grandmother’s amendment every generation.” Aeleanora warmed the first word for Sabitha and clipped the last for Meredyth.
“My mother said the words were older than this sept,” Sabitha said.
“Lady Morya spoke from family memory,” Meredyth cut in. “The Faith has guided the custom for generations.”
“Then House Sunglass has a longer memory than most old houses.” Aeleanora smiled at Meredyth. “Will you give me the prayer that follows the house words, Septa? I have never heard the Sunglass form.”
Meredyth glanced at Lady Helicent and Lord Edric’s daughters. Refusal would have required an explanation before them all. She straightened and began the prayer. Her voice steadied once every face near the bier turned towards her. The newer blessing enclosed the older command without a seam, asking the Mother to sweeten what was given and keep the child beneath her hand. By the time Meredyth reached the final words, no one was watching the women carrying linen and hot water.
Nesta entered behind the woman Aeleanora took for Lysa Waters while Meredyth spoke. Lysa carried a shallow basin of steaming herb water, forcing the watcher near the screen to step aside. Nesta followed with the folded mourning linen against her breast, knelt beside the shrine, and reached to straighten the black cloth.
The linen covered the spoon for the breadth of one prayer. Nesta’s left hand drew the true silver beneath the fold while her right placed the copy beside the widow’s lamp. Lysa shifted the steaming basin, and the vapour briefly clouded the lower part of the screen. When Nesta rose, the false spoon caught the lamplight among the household treasures. The hidden weight pulled one corner of the mourning linen lower against her wrist. Aeleanora held Meredyth’s eyes until Nesta passed into the women’s stair.
Aeleanora inclined her head when the prayer ended, granting Meredyth praise while the old silver left beneath a servant’s linen. “Beautifully remembered,” Aeleanora said.
Meredyth accepted the praise with a stiffness that made it worth giving. The servant kept his eyes on the women’s stair, pressing both palms against his thighs as though the stains there might begin speaking in front of the Crown. Lady Helicent gathered her skirts and glanced towards the door. “Princess, refreshments have been laid in the hall. My good-mother would have wished you to take wine beneath her roof.”
“How kind,” Aeleanora said.
Ser Roric opened the chamber door while Lysa lifted the basin. Lady Helicent drew her younger daughters towards the passage, and Meredyth turned back to inspect the shrine. Aeleanora took Sabitha’s hand between both of hers, gentle as Aemma had always been before saying something a child would carry for years. To every watching eye, the princess was offering a bereaved daughter one final private condolence.
“Your warning reached Dragonstone,” Aeleanora whispered. Sabitha’s nails pressed through Aeleanora’s glove. Her eyes tried to turn towards the shrine. “Keep looking at me.”
Sabitha obeyed. “Meredyth watches it.”
“Let her watch you receive comfort,” she whispered, then raised her voice as Lady Helicent glanced back from the doorway. “Your mother will be remembered.”
Sabitha’s throat worked once. “Thank you, Princess.”
Aeleanora released her and followed the others into the passage. The false spoon remained beside the widow’s lamp, innocent as porridge and twice as dull. Meredyth stood over it with her beads trapped inside one fist. Her eyes moved from the spoon to the doorway and then to Sabitha. Aeleanora approved. If Meredyth meant to guard the rite, she might at least lose sleep over it.
The hall offered watered wine and clove cakes stamped with seven-pointed stars. Even grief had been forced to observe doctrine. Aeleanora accepted a cup and left it untouched while Lady Helicent spoke of Lady Morya’s needlework. Lord Edric praised his mother’s devotion until Aeleanora began to wonder what the word was meant to cover.
In the polished silver dish upon the sideboard, Aeleanora watched the room behind her. Meredyth drew the watcher near, spoke against his ear, and pressed a small object into his palm beneath the cover of his sleeve. He left through the western door without collecting his cloak. There, little mouse. Run, she thought. Nesta would have him before the lane’s second turning and his answers before the keep noticed his absence.
Lord Edric rubbed his thumb along the stem of his cup before setting it down. “Forgive me, Princess. We had expected a septon from Dragonstone, perhaps one of the king’s household. My mother would have treasured so great an honour, yet I confess I do not know why His Grace sent his heir herself.”
Aeleanora turned the untouched cup once between her palms. His courtesy did little to conceal the question: why had the dragon come sniffing about his mother’s bier? “Lady Morya gave the Crownlands more years than most lords give honest service. My brother thought red wax and a hired prayer a poor return.”
“His Grace is generous,” Meredyth said. Her prayer beads remained trapped inside one fist. “Such honours are seldom bestowed without some greater cause.”
Aeleanora looked at her over the rim of the wine. “Death is cause enough, Septa. Or has the Faith begun charging extra when a princess comes to pay her respects?”
Lady Helicent’s hand caught against the edge of the sideboard, making the silver dish tremble upon its stand. Lord Edric gave Meredyth a quick look before recovering his courtesy. Sabitha lowered her face, though Aeleanora saw the brief pull beside one corner of her lips. Poor girl. Laughter during mourning was frowned upon, especially when a septa had earned it.
“My meaning was only that we were surprised,” Lord Edric said.
“Surprise has harmed no one beneath this roof.” Aeleanora set the cup down without drinking. “Thus far.”
A servant appeared at the end of the hall, bowed, and announced that the princess’s escort waited. Lord Edric rose at once, while Lady Helicent began gathering daughters and cousins into the proper order for farewell. Meredyth glanced towards the western door before following, her beads wound tightly around her hand. Her warning was already in the lane. Nesta would be there first.
Aeleanora received Lord Edric’s bow and allowed Lady Helicent to thank the Crown until gratitude began resembling a punishment. The younger daughters curtseyed in turn. Sabitha came last and took Aeleanora’s gloved hand between both of hers, lowering her head while a folded scrap slid beneath the cuff.
Sabitha’s grip closed briefly around her hand. “She raised frightened ones.”
Aeleanora pressed the scrap flat against her wrist. “Frightened women still find ink.”
Lord Edric led them back through the black-draped hall, with Lady Helicent beside him and Meredyth keeping close to the daughters. Ser Roric reclaimed his place at Aeleanora’s shoulder while servants hurried ahead to open the outer doors. The procession descended the narrow stair and entered the yard to another round of bows and thanks. Salt wind caught the black silk surcoat around Aeleanora’s legs, carrying the harbour stink beneath the sweeter trace of funeral herbs clinging to her sleeves.
Ser Roric offered his arm at the steps, and she accepted because the man had earned one public kindness and because knights deprived of purpose frequently resorted to speeches. Dreamfyre lowered her head when Aeleanora approached. One pale blue eye fixed upon the Sunglass household behind her, and the nearest horse hauled at its tether until the hitching rail dragged through the mud. Aeleanora placed her palm against the warm scale beside Dreamfyre’s jaw. The last bitterness from the spoon had faded from her tongue, though the memory of honey remained lodged behind her teeth like a sweetmeat served by an enemy.
Aeleanora mounted before House Sunglass discovered another farewell. Dreamfyre rose with a great snap of her wings, sending black veils streaming and forcing Meredyth to seize her skirts with both hands. The keep dwindled beneath them while Ser Roric’s dark sail waited below the harbour wall for the slower journey home. Men did adore travelling by sea when a dragon had already demonstrated the superior arrangement. Only when the coast had become a pale line did Aeleanora pull off her right glove and open Sabitha’s note. Three words crowded the cramped scrap.
Septa knows more.
Aeleanora read it twice, tucked it inside her surcoat, and pulled her glove back over her hand. Meredyth had watched her request the house words before the spoon disappeared. That was the detail Sabitha feared, more dangerous than the missing silver itself. By nightfall, someone beyond Sweetport would hear that the princess had known which prayer to ask for.
Dragonstone rose ahead, its black towers cutting into the low cloud. Every term Jacaerys had laid upon her remained unbroken, and the spoon was theirs without bloodshed in the chamber. Somewhere behind her, Nesta was teaching a fleeing servant the cost of haste. A frightened septa was also deciding whom to tell about the king’s sister. Salt wind entered Aeleanora’s collar, and she sat a little taller in the saddle. Let Jacaerys explain why a princess who had kept every term and stolen a cursed spoon before breakfast required less freedom.
Ser Roric’s boat reached Dragonstone well after Dreamfyre. By then, salt had dried white along the seams of Aeleanora’s riding gloves and the sea wind had pulled half her hair loose from its braid. She met the returning party in the yard and went with them directly to Mysaria’s workroom, surrendering her cloak to a maid while her boots were still damp at the heel. The spoon lay upon black cloth inside a narrow square of black salt. Sweetness gathered at the back of Aeleanora’s tongue whenever she looked directly at it, faint and unwelcome. Its silver pomegranate held dark garnets between the split halves of the fruit, while the bowl had been worn thin by generations of mouths that never knew what their feeding and polishing preserved.
Nesta stood near the wall in her servant’s gown with the coif removed and her cropped hair flattened on one side. Ysabel washed her hands at the basin, rubbing soap beneath her nails before rinsing them in water gone grey with harbour grit. Mysaria sat opposite Aeleanora with the Sunglass packet open before her. Lady Sabitha’s note lay beside the stitched warning and a fresh sheet of parchment, while a covered plate of bread and white cheese waited near Mysaria’s elbow. Mysaria had yet to set down a word.
“Well?” Aeleanora asked.
“You have been inside the room for less than a breath,” Mysaria said.
“Enough time for praise.”
“You kept the terms,” Nesta said.
Aeleanora looked towards her. “All of them?”
“All of them,” Ysabel answered as she dried her hands. “Have that carved over your bed if you require witnesses.”
“Parchment will serve. Stone invites pilgrims.”
Mysaria drew the blank sheet nearer. “Exact words.”
Aeleanora pulled off her right glove and set it beside the packet. She turned the little dragon upon her thumb ring outward again, setting it right with one push of her forefinger. Rhaenys’s demand had pursued her home and taken a chair beside Mysaria in spirit. The realm persecuted beauty in very small ways.
“Honey before I raised my head from the bier,” Aeleanora said. “Milk came when Lady Helicent spoke of the nursery welcome. Poppy followed beneath it once she gave the house words.”
“The words exactly,” Mysaria said.
“The house remembers what held it together.” Aeleanora looked at the spoon as she said it. The taste of honey thickened slightly. One garnet caught the candlelight and kept it after Aeleanora turned her head, a dull red point between grains of black salt. “It liked being remembered. Vain little thing.”
Ysabel drew the empty chair away from the table and sat astride it, her forearms resting across the carved back. “What did the words do?”
“My throat worked as though I had taken a mouthful and needed to swallow it.” Aeleanora glanced towards the spoon. The taste of honey strengthened by one spiteful degree. “The swallow came with the last word. Before that, the honey had stayed upon my tongue and behind my teeth.”
Mysaria’s quill began moving. “How far were you from it?”
“Six paces when the honey began. I was nearer when Lady Helicent spoke. The taste weakened beneath Nesta’s linen and disappeared once she passed through the women’s stair.” Aeleanora touched her tongue to the back of one tooth. “The roots of my teeth ached before the house words.”
“And the servants?” Mysaria asked.
“One woman near the screen rubbed two fingers over the inside of her wrist before the house words. She stopped when the spoon left the chamber.” Aeleanora glanced towards the black salt. “Disappointing, I know. No flames, and unfortunately the septa did not drop dead.”
“I will set down the honey, the ache in your teeth, the woman’s wrist, and when each ceased.” Mysaria turned the sheet beneath her hand. “The king shall hear no more than we can swear to.”
Ysabel studied the black cloth. “Then begin with the house words while the spoon remains covered.”
“For now,” Mysaria said, and set the quill to the next line. “Lady Sabitha?”
“She looked to Meredyth before granting me entrance and again when the house words were spoken,” Aeleanora said. “She passed the warning into my hand before I left. She has watched Meredyth’s face so long that she checks it before she answers anyone.”
“The septa saw the switch too late,” Nesta said. “She returned to the mourning chamber after the princess departed and touched the false spoon through her sleeve. Her mouth went flat and her face flushed.”
“Anger,” Aeleanora said.
Nesta nodded. “Anger.”
“Then she felt robbed.”
“She knew enough to remain alive,” Mysaria replied.
“Must every pleasing thought be assigned a keeper?”
“When it belongs to you, yes.”
Nesta unwrapped a copper ring from a small cloth and set it beside the spoon and the black salt. Green had gathered where the metal had rested against skin. A pomegranate had been pressed into its face so crudely that only someone expecting the mark would have recognised it. “His name is Tommen,” Nesta said. “Kitchen-born and mortal. His mother served Lady Morya until her hands stiffened. He left through the western door and ran to the old salting shed. There he gave this ring to a fishmonger who meant to put him aboard a crabber bound for Sharp Point.”
“Did he reach the boat?” Aeleanora asked.
“No.”
“How much of him remains?”
“All his teeth,” Ysabel said. “His courage has suffered worse.”
Mysaria lifted the ring by its edge and studied the mark. “What did he know?”
“Meredyth told him the nursery silver must remain beneath the Sunglass roof,” Nesta said. “A woman from Sharp Point had promised coin if the spoon was moved. He had watched Lady Sabitha since she wept over the list. He knew no reason for any of it.”
“He also knew where to run,” Mysaria said. “That is enough for tonight.” She placed the ring beside Tommen’s name and added Sharp Point beneath it. One pomegranate had been worked in silver for the house. The other had been stamped into cheap copper for the servant ordered to warn it.
“Meredyth will send another warning,” Mysaria said. “By sunset, someone will know that the king’s sister came to Sweetport, asked to hear an old nursery prayer, and left before the spoon was found missing.”
“How much will she know?” Aeleanora asked.
“That the spoon vanished while the Crown occupied her hall,” Nesta said. “The copy leaves her to wonder who betrayed her and when.”
“Then her warning carries suspicion rather than proof.”
“She will question every servant who stood near the shrine before she trusts another messenger,” Mysaria said. “That buys us time.”
Aeleanora looked from the crude copper ring to the spoon within the black salt. Meredyth would spend the evening recounting every bowed head and lowered sleeve in the mourning chamber. By midnight, she would have half the household frightened of the other half. Aeleanora hoped she began with the servants who had watched her pray. The Faith had taught her to govern women through fear. It seemed only courteous to let the lesson turn upon her.
Mysaria followed her gaze. “Do you want to taste it again?”
Aeleanora faced her. “You make curiosity sound indecent.”
“Answer.”
“Yes.” The answer came at once. Aeleanora bent towards the black salt, her eyes fixed upon the buried silver. “Speak the house words with no child present. I want to hear it search for a mouth and find only us.” Her nail scored a pale line across the tabletop. “Then uncover it. I want to see whether it turns towards the hand, the voice, or the strongest blood in the room. And if it turns towards me, no one touches it first.”
Ysabel’s thumb rubbed once across the scar at the base of her palm. “You will remain beyond the salt.”
“I recall the rule.”
“You recalled it this morning and obeyed it. I am rewarding success with repetition.”
“How lavish.”
“We speak the words with every witness present,” Mysaria said. “You remain beyond the salt. The spoon stays covered between trials.”
Aeleanora leaned back in her chair. “And will I be present?”
“Yes.”
The knot between Aeleanora’s shoulders eased, and she smiled before she could hide it. Nesta saw it. Ysabel did as well. Old sisters were a plague because they remembered every face one had worn before learning to lie beautifully. “Would you send me again?” Aeleanora asked.
Mysaria held her gaze across the spoon. “I would.” Aeleanora’s smile widened. Mysaria let her have it for half a breath before lowering the quill to the page. “Do not make a feast of one answer,” she said.
“You have kept me hungry.”
Nesta picked up Lady Sabitha’s note and slid it beside Aeleanora’s glove. “You also left the cakes untouched.”
“They were shaped like seven-pointed stars. I have spent enough of my life being swallowed by the Faith. I decline to return the courtesy.”
Mysaria raised her eyes and gave Aeleanora a long, flat look. Her thumb turned the ruby inward against her palm, warning enough from the only other woman at the table who knew precisely which two gods the princess had inherited her insolence from.
“You drank nothing,” Ysabel said.
“I accepted wine.”
“You carried it from shrine to hall and set it down full.”
“Poison remains the easiest way to kill a dragonrider.”
Ysabel pushed the covered plate across the table. “Bread.”
Aeleanora looked at her, then uncovered the plate. The bread was coarse and still faintly warm at its centre. She tore off a piece and ate it. Refusal would only give Ysabel another reason to watch her. Mysaria folded the first sheet over the second. “The king shall have every word concerning the taste, the servant, and Meredyth’s warning. He shall also hear that no blood was drawn and every term was kept.”
“Do linger over that last part. Jacaerys has invested heavily in conditions.”
“He will read it in the order it happened.”
“Then use darker ink,” Aeleanora said.
Mysaria regarded her for a breath before reaching for the black cloth. She spread it over her fingers, caught the spoon by the handle through the fabric, and folded the loose end across the bowl. The ash-lined box waited open beside the salt, its warding marks cut shallow beneath the rim. Mysaria lowered the wrapped silver inside and closed the lid. The key scraped once, and the honey vanished from Aeleanora’s tongue before the lock stopped turning.
“That is mine,” Aeleanora said.
“A raven died before you knew its name,” Mysaria replied. “Sabitha risked her throat. Nesta carried it out while Meredyth prayed over her shoulder.”
Aeleanora bit into the bread and considered the correction. “Ours, then. How pious.”
“You will see it tomorrow.”
“Morning?”
“After you eat.”
“Cruelty has made you petty.”
“Hunger has made you foolish before.”
A low tremor travelled through the floor and set the basin water trembling against its rim. Nesta looked down. Aeleanora knew the scrape that followed: Dreamfyre lifting her head below the eastern side of the mountain, one horn grazing stone. The dragon’s unease gathered beneath Aeleanora’s breastbone and eased when the water went still.
Mysaria dipped her quill and wrote to the bottom of the page. “The king will read that you held the cover until Nesta cleared the room. He will read that you came home when ordered.”
“Put the second sentence in larger letters.”
“He can read.”
“Fear makes men overlook proof laid before them,” Aeleanora said.
Mysaria scattered sand across the final lines and waited until the wet shine disappeared. She folded the account once, pressing the crease beneath her thumbnail before setting it aside. Jacaerys would have the truth before supper, the unlikely portion in which his sister had kept every precious condition. Aeleanora hoped the darker ink soothed him.
Aeleanora tore another piece from the bread and watched the locked box. Deep in the mountain, Dreamfyre dragged one claw across stone, a slow scrape that stopped when Aeleanora swallowed. The plain grain tasted offensively mortal after sweetness that had crossed a mourning chamber to find her. Before dawn, Jacaerys had given her terms sharp enough to cut pride. By midday, she had returned with every term unbroken and the relic sealed inside Dragonstone’s wards. Let him spend the evening deciding which fact frightened him more.
By early evening, Dragonstone had begun closing its doors against the cold. Aeleanora had refused the family supper and accepted a tray in her solar after the third maid began looking personally wounded by starvation she had neither caused nor been permitted to cure. A half-drunk cup of wine stood beside the bread and stewed onions at her elbow, while a trout lay beneath lemon slices with all the appeal of a septon bathing in perfume. Lady Sabitha’s note rested under a black-glass weight near the Tyrell rose pin Aeleanora had pulled from her shelf. The spoon remained locked inside Mysaria’s ash-lined box two passages below, a theft from Aeleanora that everyone insisted upon calling safekeeping.
She had changed into loose black silk and abandoned her braid after the sea wind left half of it hanging around her face. One long lock circled her forefinger while she stared at Sabitha’s cramped warning and replayed the morning for the pleasure of finding no mistake in it. The knock came at the outer door, firm with rank and restrained enough to irritate. A guard spoke softly beyond the oak. Aeleanora released her hair and sat straighter, because victory had apparently failed to exempt her from visitors.
“Enter,” she called.
Baelor came through the front door alone. The corridor remained busy behind him with pages and servants, though the oak cut them away once he closed it. He wore black court clothes with dark red beneath the collar, every fastening still in place despite an entire day spent governing people a hammer might have ruled more profitably. His eyes went first to her face and stayed there. The folded page in his hand lowered by an inch before he looked towards the untouched tray on the table beside her chair. Aeleanora approved of the order. The Hand had remembered his errand only after the man had finished looking.
“You have chosen the lawful entrance,” Aeleanora said. “Shall I summon witnesses?”
“Jacaerys wants your account after breakfast,” Baelor replied.
“He sent the Hand to carry one sentence?”
Baelor laid the folded paper beneath the lower edge of the black-glass weight, careful to leave Sabitha’s warning uncovered. “He sent a page. I relieved him of it.”
“How transparent.”
“I used the front door.” Baelor drew the nearer chair towards her table with one hand and sat beside her. “The deceit was slight.”
The answer pleased her and therefore required immediate punishment. Aeleanora tucked one bare foot under her skirts and left the trout untouched. He read Sabitha’s three cramped words beneath the black-glass weight, then lifted the lemon slices from the fish and laid them along the rim of the dish. His knee came near the fall of her black silk when he set the serving knife down with its handle towards her. The man had entered through the lawful door and immediately begun taking liberties with supper.
“You have come to govern my fish.”
“It had been badly governed.” Baelor looked at the loose silver waves around her face. “How late did Nesta and Ysabel keep you?”
Aeleanora’s right forefinger left her thumb ring. The question carried none of Jacaerys’s solemn concern, which usually arrived wearing boots and meant to trample every private thing beneath them. Baelor speared one of the stewed onions and ate it while he waited, turning the inquiry into something asked across a shared supper rather than a reckoning. The Hand knew how to hide curiosity inside theft from her plate. Aeleanora approved of the method and resented its success.
“Until the second candle drowned,” she said. “Nesta took the cushion nearest the fire and denied the theft while sitting upon it. Ysabel found sugared ginger in my sweets and declared that Dragonstone has made me soft again, then could not bring herself to stop eating it once she tried it.”
A small smile showed at one corner of Baelor’s mouth. He chose another onion, though he had already shown an appetite she could use against him. “Did she condemn the whole dish before finishing it?”
“Naturally. Ysabel has standards. She merely refuses to let them obstruct sweets.” Aeleanora nudged the onion dish nearer him. “Laena sat behind her upon the hearthrug and combed out her hair while Nesta searched my ribbon box for the ugliest colours she could find. Ysabel endured silver ribbons at both temples. Nesta laughed once too often and found three narrow braids pinned over one ear.”
“And you?”
“They denied me the comb on account of several ancient accusations.”
Baelor rested his fork against the edge of the dish. “Sound judgment.”
“I had committed no fresh offence.” Aeleanora took the onion from his fork before he could eat it and bit into it.
Baelor looked from the empty fork to her mouth, a dry smile showing beneath his beard. “Little magpie?”
Aeleanora gave him a smile sweet enough to absolve considerably worse thefts. “Do you not find me covetous and meddlesome?”
Baelor laughed, low and warm. “Daily. I have the marks to prove it.”
Aeleanora finished the onion with a smug smile and let her eyes fall to the dark red cloth hiding his throat. “Later Laena ordered all of us into my bed because the hearthrug had grown cold. Nesta took my side, Ysabel claimed the middle, and Laena stretched herself across our feet as though a queen’s title included ownership of every mattress beneath the Crown.”
Baelor set the empty fork beside the dish. “Which part of your own bed did they grant you?”
“The edge. I had half a coverlet and Laena’s heel against my calf. Nesta woke with one hand knotted in my hair and accused me of moving.”
His smile deepened into a soft, fond laugh. “The Queen Consort at the foot and the Princess of Dragonstone at the edge, both defeated by Nesta and Ysabel.”
“Rank has little force against women who know where one keeps the extra blankets. I had only ordered Ysabel into my rooms. Laena made a campaign of it.” Aeleanora nudged the dish back towards him. “I did think it discourteous of them to occupy an evening I had already made a habit of stealing from you.”
His smile lingered as he reclaimed his fork. “The theft was noticed.”
“Do not sound wounded. I was the one exiled to the foot of my own bed. Tonight I have arranged the household more wisely.”
Baelor’s fork stopped above the onion dish. He glanced towards the inner arch leading to her bedchamber and then back to her. “Ysabel has been given chambers?”
“The eastern guest chamber. Nesta chose the little room across the stair before I could assign it.” Aeleanora drew the onion dish back towards herself when he reached for it. “My bed has ceased serving as an inn for armed women.”
Baelor caught the opposite rim of the dish, holding it between them. “A prudent arrangement.”
“I awoke beneath Laena’s ankle. Prudence was forced upon me.” She surrendered the dish after stealing one last onion. “Tonight I expect to be crowded more pleasantly.”
Baelor breathed once through his nose and turned Jacaerys’s folded page beneath his palm. The small restraint pleased her obscenely. A man who had spent all day governing the realm had been reduced to pressing parchment flat because she had mentioned an empty bed. The Crown ought to issue her a second seal.
“Your brother wrote seven questions,” he said.
Aeleanora stared at the page. “Seven?”
“He began with eleven.”
“You struck four?”
“Three repeated themselves. One accused the spoon of choosing you.”
Her hand paused before the wine cup. “And what did you tell him?”
Baelor released the paper and sat back to study her without the tray obscuring anything. “That it answered the words spoken over it. You merely had the ill manners to listen.”
Aeleanora let a smile show as she met his eyes across the tray. “How comforting.”
“He did not find it so.”
Aeleanora took the page and unfolded it. Jacaerys’s strokes cut deeply into the parchment wherever his hand had pressed too hard. The first question concerned the taste. The second asked when Meredyth had sent her servant running. By the fifth, he had abandoned any pretence that the king was speaking and demanded to know whether Aeleanora had felt pain at any point after leaving the mourning chamber.
“He might have saved ink and written, ‘Did the terrible spoon eat my sister?’”
“That was the first version.”
Her laugh escaped before she could make it suitably regal. Baelor reached across and drew the page lower when it threatened to hide her face, keeping two fingers against its upper edge. “Mysaria’s account answered all of this,” she said.
“He wants your voice attached to the answers.”
“He knows my voice. He has objected to it for years.” Aeleanora folded the lower corner of the page over Baelor’s fingers, trapping them beneath the parchment.
Baelor drew his hand free and flattened the fold with his thumb. “He wants to hear whether you are frightened.”
Aeleanora lowered the parchment. “I am not.”
“I know.”
He left the corner bent where she had put it. Aeleanora watched that tiny surrender with more interest than a folded scrap of parchment deserved. “You came to inspect me more closely.”
Baelor took the wine cup from beside her elbow and drank from the place her mouth had left damp. “I came because Jacaerys sent a page.”
“Poor lie.”
“He did send one.”
“And you wrestled it from a child out of devotion to correspondence.”
Baelor regarded her with the patience he reserved for petitions founded upon obvious nonsense. “The boy surrendered without a struggle.”
Aeleanora folded Jacaerys’s questions and tucked them beneath the edge of the black-glass weight. “You have now discharged the king’s business. Yet you remain beside the trout you rescued.”
“You did well.” Baelor returned her cup to the same damp ring upon the table, though his thumb stayed against the rim.
His attention remained upon her, and heat gathered beneath the collar of her black silk. Aeleanora turned the cup once between her fingers before trusting her face. “You say that as though it pains you,” she said.
“It does.”
“Then perhaps you would prefer me less good at it.”
“I do not want you less good.”
The cup stopped beneath her hand. For one rude heartbeat, she had no answer at all. Aeleanora raised one brow before the silence could become public knowledge. “That is a very inconvenient distinction.”
He reached for the serving knife and cut a small piece from the trout where he had stripped away the lemon. “I want you to remember that skill cannot bargain with every blade.”
“There. You have spoiled it with wisdom.”
“Eat before I add more.”
Aeleanora accepted the piece because refusal would make the fish important. Without lemon, it proved better, a fact that would die unrecorded and unmourned. Baelor cut another before she had finished the first and placed it upon her trencher. The set of his shoulders eased when she ate it, a ridiculous reward for obedience which she accepted because even princesses must sometimes profit from men’s weaknesses. “Satisfied?” she asked.
“With the fish.”
“Coward.”
“You know my answer concerning you.”
Aeleanora set down the fork. Black silk hid the narrow space between their knees. She placed her palm upon his thigh and leaned nearer. His leg opened beneath her touch, and the dark wool over his lap drew taut. “I know very little,” she said. “You have hidden behind my brother’s parchment for half an evening. The trout has done the rest.”
Baelor covered her hand with his and pressed her palm higher against the half-hard length beneath his clothes. “The trout has told you all it knows.”
Aeleanora’s smile arrived with considerably less innocence than the supper deserved. “Then I shall question the more interesting witness.”
Baelor closed his fingers around her wrist before her thumb could reach the laces of his breeches and drew her out of the chair until she stood between his knees. Black silk brushed his boots, and one bare foot found the cold stone. Aeleanora planted her free hand upon his shoulder and looked down at him, pleased that a single touch had finally persuaded the Hand to abandon trout as a defensive position. His palm remained wrapped around her wrist to keep her where he wanted.
Aeleanora tested his hold with a small turn of her wrist. “You have stopped me at the interesting part.”
“You may finish tonight.” Baelor’s thumb pressed into the pulse beneath her palm. “After I have made you forget why you reached for the laces.”
Her smile widened. “You have grown ambitious.”
“Familiar,” he corrected.
He kissed her before she could invent terms. One hand caught the back of her neck while the other drew her closer by the waist, pressing her belly tight against his hips. His cock had hardened fully now, and his tongue met hers with little of the patience he had granted Jacaerys’s page. Aeleanora slid her hand into his hair above the ear and pulled until he groaned against her mouth. The table edge pressed into the back of her thighs, with Sabitha’s warning and her brother’s seven questions still within reach of either hip, both suddenly much less compelling than the man between them.
Boots crossed the corridor beyond the oak, followed by the low murmur of a page speaking to one of her guards. Baelor ended the kiss with his hand still firm at her nape. His breathing had roughened, though his eyes returned to hers with all their usual discipline, which seemed an extravagant insult after what his body had confessed beneath her palm. Anyone outside could have heard the chair scrape. Aeleanora blamed him entirely.
“You chose the door,” she whispered.
“I wanted to see you before the castle slept,” he murmured.
Heat climbed beneath her collar. Aeleanora caught the dark red cloth at his throat between two fingers and tugged it crooked. Baelor looked down at it and left it so. “When you come through the wall tonight,” she said, “put your mouth between my thighs before you say another sensible thing.”
He tightened his grip on her waist. “That is your answer to praise?”
Aeleanora kissed the corner of his mouth, letting her lips linger against the rough edge of his beard. “It is your reward.”
“Arrogant girl.”
She smiled against his skin. “Good. You were listening.”
Baelor drew her nearer until the silk gathered between his knees and her breasts pressed against his chest. Aeleanora’s right hand slid from his hair to the back of his neck as his beard grazed her cheek. “Tonight I mean to hear how long you keep that tone with my tongue inside you.”
Her inner lip met her teeth before pride could forbid the betrayal. Baelor drew back far enough to see it, and the satisfaction beneath his lowered brow made her want to climb into his lap and test the threat before the corridor emptied. She pressed her palm against him again instead, dragging it once over the hard length beneath the cloth. His fingers closed more firmly around her waist.
“Longer than you hope,” she said.
Baelor gathered the silk higher along the back of her thigh. “I hope you keep that tone until I have both your legs over my shoulders.”
Aeleanora’s nails traced the nape of his neck. “Then kneel properly when you come back.”
Baelor kissed her once more, bruising the insult from her mouth, then broke away before judgement failed him entirely. He released her wrist and rose, leaving Aeleanora trapped between his body and the table until he chose to step back. The dark red at his collar remained crooked beneath his black doublet. His hair above one ear had suffered worse, a small victory she intended to let him carry into the corridor.
“Leave the silk on,” he said.
Aeleanora looked down at the loose black folds before returning her eyes to him. “How imperious.”
“I want it bunched in your fists while my mouth is between your thighs.”
She slipped one finger beneath the dark red cloth at his collar and pulled it crooked again. “You presume upon one bitten lip.”
“And an excellent memory,” Baelor said, his attention resting upon her mouth.
Aeleanora let her fingertip trace the edge of his collar. “Then remember where I like your hand when you make me come.”
Baelor pressed his thumb once against the bitten place on her lower lip. Her toes curled against the cold floor. He took Jacaerys’s page from under the black-glass weight and folded it once more, then returned it beneath the weight with the corner she had bent still untouched. After correcting his collar, he started towards the door.
At the threshold, his eyes dropped once to the black silk settling around her bare feet before the oak closed behind him. Aeleanora waited until his steps passed the guards, then carried the cup he had used into the bedchamber. She set it beside her hairpins near the hidden panel. The silver rim caught the candlelight as though it had always belonged among her things, and the sight drew a smile she would have denied beneath torture.
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