musings

two days.

it was a small number, you knew. in the long and heavy history of the great houses of westeros there were women who had waited seasons, years, entire lifetimes for a husband to look upon them with anything approaching acknowledgement.

and yet, two days without sight of him. two mornings rising to a cold basin and a quiet room, two evenings walking through the red keep with your hands folded against your skirts and your eyes careful, not to betray how fervently you watched the corners at the end of every corridor for a flash of black and red that never came.

at breakfast on the first morning you had arrived at the long table to find his chair empty. no explanation for your husband’s absence was given, and you felt too ashamed to ask considering the way in which your last conversation had gone. you simply took your seat and unfolded your napkin, placed it delicately on your lap and ate three bites of buttered bread that tasted like dust in your mouth, and then folded the crumbed napkin back as though it had never been touched at all.

across the table, prince maekar had looked at you, his dark, heavy eyes had settled on your face with the kind of quiet knowing that made you want to excuse yourself from the table and not return. your hands became clammy once you caught his eyes on yours.

what if he knows, you thought, if he knows what a complete and utter failure i have been to his son. the idea that aerion may have informed his father of the pitiful attempt to gain his favour made a shiver travel down your spine.

you had not excused yourself. you had sat perfectly straight and asked the lady to your left whether she found king's landing humid at this time of year.

you could not recall her answer.

at supper on the first evening, aerion's chair was empty again.

this time you did not look at it. you had made a promise with yourself, with whatever single shred of dignity you had remaining: if you did not look at the chair, then it was not empty. it simply was not there. the evening was going well, you were poised and composed, and you sipped your wine in measured increments, and when princess rhae leaned over to whisper something to her sister, the shared glance that followed. the fleeting, pitying exchange that passed between them surely had nothing whatsoever to do with you.

you were certain of it.

or near enough.

the second day was no different. the chair was empty at breakfast. the chair was empty at supper. the family of your husband moved around the absence of him like cool water around a stone that had just been thrown into a river.

it was in the way they held their cups, violet eyes skimming to you and quickly away in a movement too fluid to be accidental. it was in the way prince daeron, red-nosed and loose-tongued as he was, had not made a single one of his low, shameful jokes at your expense that second evening, which was somehow worse than if he had. even the youngest boy, prince aegon, had watched you from across the table, all wide eyes and bitten lip.

it was pity.

you had been raised to be above it, your mother had combed your hair and dressed you in silks and taught you to hold your chin just so, and never, not once in her gentle teachings, had she prepared you for the particular shame of being pitied at a dinner table by people who were not even supposed to like you.

that was the part you could not name to jeyne, when she plaited your hair in the evenings and watched you in the glass with her kind, worried eyes.

it was not grief, exactly. you had not known him long enough to grieve. it was something smaller and more humiliating than grief. it was failure. the low, corroding certainty of it, settling in the spaces between your ribs like water finding its own level.

you had been made for this. the septas had said so. your mother had said so. your father's silent, nodding approval on the morning of your wedding had said so more clearly than any words could. you had been shaped, carefully and entirely, for the purpose of being a wife. a good wife, a faithful wife, a wife who brought grace to her husband's house and peace to his chambers and sons to carry his name into another generation.

and on the second night of aerion's absence, sitting on the edge of your too-large bed and pressing the tips of your fingers one by one into the fading red mark on your palm, you understood with a quiet, sickening clarity that you did not know how to be a wife to a man who did not want one.

the gods had not prepared you for that.

you had prayed, of course. both mornings, both evenings, and twice in the long pale hours between, kneeling at the little carved alcove in your chamber until your legs ached from the cold stone with your bandaged hand pressed flat against the cold stone. you had asked for patience, and you had asked for wisdom and you had asked for something, anything, that might tell you what a dutiful woman was meant to do when her husband could not care less for her presence.

the waxy candle had only flickered slightly in response and carried on burning.

on the evening of the second day you returned to your chambers early.

there was no shame in it, you told yourself. you had a slight headache; you had mentioned this quietly to no one in particular and risen from your chair and made your exit with the same measured grace your mother had spent sixteen years teaching you. no one had tried to stop you. when you reached the corridor outside the great hall and heard the low hum of voices and music fading behind you, you let the breath go from your chest all at once.

jeyne had already turned your bed down, the silken sheets folded open and waiting for you to crawl in once more and lay awake until the pastel shades of dawn peeked through the curtains.

the evening light had long since turned dusky and the colour of wine echoed along the walls. the torches in the corridor had been lit in your absence, their glow casting long amber lines beneath the heavy wooden door of your chamber, spilling beneath the door of aerion's chamber. the adjoining door. the one you never looked at directly, the one that sat in the wall between your two rooms like a held breath.

you changed yourself, slowly. unlaced your bodice without jeyne's help, though it took longer than it should have and left your fingers raw at the knuckles. pulled the soft sleep shift over your head and sat at the edge of the bed in the quiet.

the red keep settled around you. the distant sound of the city below the hill, the occasional step of the night guard in the passage outside. the low, almost musical groan of old stone contracting in the evening chill.

you were composing yourself for sleep, hands flat in your lap and eyes lowered, when you heard it.

a sound.

from his room.

not the sound of footsteps or of a man moving about his chambers in the late evening. not the creak of a chair or the clink of a cup or the shift of boots being pulled from tired feet.

something else.

a low voice. muffled, but present, unmistakably present, filtering through the thick stone and the carved wood of the joining door.

you stilled.

your hands were very still in your lap as your heart began to beat loudly against your ribs.

it could be anything. you told yourself this as you sat there unmoving. a servant, delivering something. a page with a message. a guard. there were any number of reasonable explanations for the presence of another voice in your husband's chambers, and a composed woman, a good wife, a woman of faith and sense and dignity, would not trouble herself about it.

but the sound came again.

softer this time. and then a low, short noise that you could not rightly name, the kind that lives in the throat and escapes before it can be shaped into words.

slowly, without quite meaning to, you rose from the bed.

your feet were bare on the plush rug and dragged through the threads as your body moved of its own accord. the chamber air was cool, and you folded your arms across your chest as you moved towards the joining door, nipples peaked against the thin fabric.

you stopped just before it, an arm’s length away from the locked barrier between your husband’s room and your own, the hair on the nape of your neck prickled slightly in the chill and worry quickly pooled in your stomach.

you reached out and pressed your soft palm against the door, as if as though you may feel his presence and know that everything is alright. the carved wood was dark and old and smooth with age. the brass keyhole was very small with a thin line of amber light emitting beneath, you waited with bated breath as you paused, listening for signs of aerion beyond the wall.

your first thought was that he was ill.

your second thought was that he would not want you to check.

your third thought arrived with the low voice again, closer now, unmistakably from a mouth not far from the other side of the door, and it was not his voice at all.

it was a woman. you could hear it now, warm and low with a sort of practiced gentleness that you did not recognise.

the cold moved through you differently after that. not the cool evening air from the window, but something that started somewhere behind your sternum and spread outward into your arms, into your hands, into the tips of your fingers where they had gone very flat against the dark of the wood.

you should have moved away.

you were aware, in some distant and secondary part of yourself, that the correct action, the dignified action, the action that your mother and your septas and the seven themselves would have counselled, was to step back. return to your bed. fold your hands and pray. sleep if sleep would come. and in the morning rise and dress and go down to a table where his chair would be empty again, and smile, and not permit your face to say a single word about it.

instead you lowered yourself to your knees on the cold floor.

the stone was hard and sharp against your bones, and the hem of your sleep shift pooled around you as you brought your eye level with the brass keyhole. your heart was doing something very strange now, something with a tempo you could not regulate, hard and uneven, the way a horse sounds when it has been ridden too hard and too fast and hasn't found its footing yet.

you looked.

the keyhole was small and the room beyond was lit by the amber warmth of several candles and the picture it gave you was narrow, a sliver of the world he occupied, and yet it was enough.

it was more than enough.

aerion was there. he was not ill. he was not receiving a late message or conferring with his guard or doing any of the countless reasonable things you had tried to convince yourself might account for the presence of another person in his chambers. he was there and he was very much alive and the woman with him was not a servant, was not a maid, and the sounds you heard were not anything that required explanation.

your breath left you.

not dramatically, not in a great visible heave that might have brought footsteps to your door. just... quietly. a long, silent exhale that never quite became an inhale again.

the woman was beautiful in the way of women who are paid to be beautiful, adorned and deliberate about it, her dark hair loose across the pale linens of your husband's bed. she was laughing at something, very softly, and aerion's hand moved against her in a way that made the laughter catch and change.

you knew, in the way that sheltered daughters of noble houses know things without having been told them, the theory of what it was you were witnessing. it had been explained to you in the oblique language of the septas, in the careful metaphors your mother had employed the night before your wedding while holding both your hands in hers and saying this is what is required of a wife, and what is required is not difficult, and what is required will not be unpleasant.

and yet the knowing of it as a theory and the seeing of it were not the same thing at all.

it was the sounds, mostly.

you had not known about the sounds.

low and intermittent and human in a way that made something very strange happen in the bottom of your stomach, something you had no honest name for, something that coexisted, horribly and perversely, with the hot ache behind your eyes and the tightening of your throat and the very clear and present knowledge that you were crouched on your knees on a cold stone floor peering through a keyhole at your husband bedding a woman who was not you.

you did not move.

that was the part that would haunt you afterward, in the small hours when you lay straight and still in the dark and replayed it with the particular cruelty your own mind seemed to reserve for moments of private shame: you did not move away. not immediately. not for longer than you would ever confess to.

part of it was shock. the clean, white paralysis of it. the way the mind sometimes refuses to move the body when what has been understood cannot yet be made sense of.

but part of it, and this was the part you would spend the better portion of the night beseeching the seven to forgive, was something else entirely.

something that had no place in a woman of faith, in a princess of the realm, in a wife. something that twisted the sick grief of the moment into a shape that was far less simple and far more shameful. something that the woman you had been raised to be would not have looked at, let alone named.

yet you could not look away.

aerion and the woman were strewn across his bed, sheets and clothes draped over the end of his four-poster bed, and you took in their naked forms.

you knew what a woman's body looked like, of course you had one of your own, but you had never seen one in such a debauched position as this. she kneeled in between aerion's pale legs, face hovering just above his manhood blocking it from view, her bronzed skin shimmered in the candlelight and from where you crouched, you could see a small tuft of dark hair covering her nether region.

her back arched to give aerion a direct view of her oiled bottom as he sat lazily back on the mound of pillows behind him. she began to move and your throat tightened in anticipation, her head dipped low and through lidded eyes she began to softly lick the pink tip of your husband's member.

aerion's face tightened into a smug smirk as the woman's ministrations continued, she bobbed her head gently up and down his hard shaft as your knees began to ache pressed against the stone.

what is she doing? you questioned, the brief explanations of what you would be required to do with your new husband to bring him an heir had never mentioned such an act.

perhaps this type of behaviour was reserved only for the girls who frequented the street of silk. that was presumably where aerion had found this woman, you thought. of course he would bed with cheap whores instead of his dutiful wife who slept only footsteps away from him each night, his arrogance and shamelessness would allow for it.

the more you watched your husband's face twist with pleasure the more confused you started to feel; you were aware how improper this all was. watching as your new husband took another woman in the bed that you were supposed to be lying in. but you could not peel your eyes away from the smooth curves of her naked form, the rosy blushes of pink lips and cock as she worked her neck, the dark hair that curled down her slender back and bounced with each movement.

the room around you felt incredibly small, racing heartbeat and sweaty palms pressed against the wood as your head spun with an almost dizzy force.

a deep groan left aerion's throat and instinctively your thighs pressed together.

it was all too overwhelming, your brain overcome with emotion. anger, betrayal, disgust, jealousy twisting knots into your stomach as you watched his hand reach out and plant itself firmly in her brown hair.

but worst of all. most shamefully of all, there was desire.

a deep ache bloomed from your core and travelled lowly to your thighs, warm and throbbing in slow shocking pulses.

please stop. you begged internally, reaching with one hand to grip the fabric of your dress tightly in your fist. whether it was to aerion or yourself you could not answer.

inside the chamber aerion's noises grew louder, he gripped the woman's hair with such force his knuckles had whitened and yanked her head along his shaft with such roughness she began to choke and spit, dribbling saliva down her chin and onto the dark sheets below.

the vulgarity of his actions was shocking.

and it brought further shame upon your soul as you shifted against the uncomfortable stone and felt a warm slickness sticky between your legs.

your breath caught.

leave. move away from the door now and pray. pray that you will be granted forgiveness for watching this debauchery.

but you could not. your body simply did not want to listen to your harsh commands, what it wanted was to feel something.

and something felt a world better than the nothing it had been feeling the past few weeks spent alone.

the wet sound of aerion pulling the woman off his length brought you back to the scene in front of you.

his hand gripped her face tightly, squeezing her full cheeks together as he moved her at his will. "get on all fours." he grunted, pushing her face back with force.

she wobbled for a moment, her face angling itself slightly. you could see her properly now, rounded chestnut eyes heavy with lust and lips flushed with a deep red stain, she was beautiful you could not deny. her softly angular face was spattered with moles in perfect places, and her thick, dark brows worked to highlight her glossy doe-eyes.

"move." aerion spat, patience waning thin.

she nodded slyly and turned, full breasts swaying slightly as she bent over in front of your kneeling husband and arched her back so that her chest was resting upon the bed.

from here you could see aerion fully, his skin pale and glistening from the thin sheen of sweat that covered his body. you dragged your eyes from one part of his body to the next, his muscles pulled taught as he used his hand to stroke his length slowly.

the heat between your legs was almost unbearable, slick dripping unceremoniously down your thighs as your linen shift clung to your back.

you had never seen a man in such detail before, especially not in such a state like this.

it was scandalous, what would mother think, you lamented and quickly pushed to the side. it was utterly devious that you were crouched at your husband's door watching him pleasure himself with another woman's cunt.

how sick you felt at your own actions.

this was not like you, aerion you could rationalise, you knew him well enough by now that his infidelity did not come as a great surprise. you did not, however, predict that you would be watching it with your own eyes.

your eyes blinked quickly as a stinging bead of sweat dropped from your brow.

from the bed aerion continued working his cock, moving forward slightly to rub it along the woman's slit. how was it supposed to fit? you wondered breathlessly, you had gotten a glimpse of between her legs as she had moved to rest on all fours. surely aerion's length wouldn't be able to enter her, he was well endowed, you could see as he chubbed and hardened further in his hand.

your body was alight with nerves, each hair standing to attention as you took shuddering breaths in an attempt to gain a semblance of control. forehead resting against the thick wood of the door now, heated cheek beginning to press hard enough that you knew when you pulled away the knots of the wood would be engrained into your skin.

aerion shifted slightly forward, one hand reaching to grip and squeeze at the round globes of her bottom. he rubbed his length once, twice, and pressed forward until the angry red of his tip disappeared into her dripping cunt.

a thick wad of spit caught momentarily in your throat as you gasped at the sight, sending you unceremoniously into a coughing fit as you pressed your hand tightly against your cracked lips to hide the sound.

aerion moved forward suddenly, thrusting his hips into her, filling her up to the hilt. you watched as her eyes rolled to the back of her head and arms reached out to stabilise her on the bed.

you felt debauched and perverse. watching your husband pound into the whore on your bed. silently wishing that it was you instead.

the look on his face was something between pleasure and anger, his brows furrowed as he picked up his pace and sucked his bottom lip in with a hiss. his silver hair mussed and the angles on his face highlighted by the low glow of the candles.

he truly was a beautiful man.

no wonder the whore was groaning the way she was. at least someone is enjoying the presence of my husband, you thought, even though it sounds as though she is in a great deal of pain.

the heat between your legs had become too great to ignore now, wet skin slipping together as you clenched at nothing.

you had never touched yourself in that before. you had been told it was not proper for a young lady like to do.

but could it really be so bad? you rationalised, it was clear from the scene in front of you that it must feel good.

slowly, tentatively, you ran your hand down the front of your nightdress. clammy palm and fingers drifting across your chest and against your hardened nipples, shocks of excitement tingled over your needy flesh like lightning bolts.

with quickening breath you moved down past your soft stomach and to the apex of your groin, fingertips mixing with the soft tuft of hair that sat just above your dripping cunt. your heart knocked loudly against your ribs as you watched aerion ram into the whore from behind.

jealousy and desire mixed dangerously in the pit of your stomach as you finally reached the puffy folds aching between your legs, and with a final breech in your restraint and a quiet, high-pitched sigh, you began tracing the weeping lips.

after a few hesitant seconds of teasing you could no longer resist the urge to uphold the dignity you valued so much in yourself. who were you fooling, you almost scoffed at yourself, you were crouched on the floor of your room watching through a keyhole as your husband defiled another woman, with a breath so heavy one would have assumed you had been running around.

there was certainly no turning back now, that thought cemented your shame as you dropped your head forward to push against the rough wood of the door, sweaty skin slipping slightly as you pressed your eye tight to the hole.

an animalistic groan escaped from aerion's throat and in one final motion you pressed your middle finger through the sticky wetness of your folds to press against the tight hole of your cunt.

it throbbed harshly in reaction to the intrusion, finger pushing gently in, meeting unexpected resistance. you gulped audibly and thrust your finger ever so slightly in attempt to lessen the nervous tightening of your slit; it stung a little, you noticed, and with furrowed brow you wondered if the woman on the bed in front of you was writhing from the sheer size of aerion's cock.

although the high-pitched squeals echoing against the stone walls quickly convinced you otherwise.

continuing your ministrations, you moved your finger in and out of yourself with a newfound confidence you felt was surely fed by the humiliating need invading your body. you thrust into yourself in a slow rhythm that became easier as the minutes drew on, slick dripping down and coating your fingers as you began to chase the warm feeling stirring down below.

the ache flowed from your crotch and spread through the surrounding flesh, sweat beginning to sheen across your desperate skin. you needed more.

the perverse shame possessing you as you wished to be the woman aerion was pounding into this very moment. you wanted to feel him. feel as his cock stretched your virgin cunt out around him.

you wanted to be the cause of his pleasure. it was your right as his wife.

quickening your movements, you felt the sticky warmness of your envy dribble down your wrist.

this is so wrong, you thought, as you moved your index finger to join in the breech of your womanhood. the sting appeared again, not as clear as before, but you sunk your incisors into the chapped skin of your swollen lip as you pushed two fingers inside. a broken moan escaped you as you leaned forward fully.

face pressed ungracefully against the door; you removed the hand supporting your limp body and traced it against the curves of your skin beneath your nightgown. you squeezed your breasts as you imagined aerion's slender fingers as your own, waves of pleasure crashed through your body as your fingers tweaked at your pebbled nipples.

from beyond the door your husband was beginning to reach his climax, he pulled himself from out of the whore's cunt and forcefully pressed his hands into the small of her glistening back. her knees gave out as she slumped against the sheets, whimpering quiet moans from the absence of his member.

he climbed atop her body pressed flush against the bed and pushed back into her with no pause, a loud yelp left her as he thrust quickly and unforgivingly down into her. she turned her rosy face back to look at him, lids hooded in pleasure, and he jerked his hand forward to grip over her head pushing it down into the mattress below.

your cunt clenched harshly around your fingers, the obscene sight of aerion's dominance spurred your movements to quicken.

hastily you pinched at your nipple, the pain bringing pleasure you knew you would be ashamed of once this moment had ended. with rough thrusts you fucked yourself with no restraint, the slick sounds of your palm making contact with the skin above your hole making you chase your release desperately.

"if only he could see me", you whispered to no one, the vulgar image of aerion stalking over to the door to pull it open and find you slumped and sweaty with your hand between your legs made your eyes roll to the back of your head.

the ache in your cunt was reaching its peak now, hole fluttering in pleasure around your soaked fingers, whimpers leaving your dry throat with every movement.

as you humped your slick fingers you felt filthy, chasing the release you felt building up through every fibre of your being.

through the keyhole aerion was destroying the woman trapped beneath him, beads of sweat dripped from his forehead and each grunt he made was punctuated with a heavy breath in.

watching as his muscles flexed and clenched as he reached his peak, you squeezed your eyes tight as you reached your own. hips twitching and knees scraping against the cold floor below, white hot pleasure coursed through your veins as your throat closed with a high-pitched squeak of air.

the sight of aerion pulling out of her with his leaking tip made your legs squeeze together tightly as you stuttered against the door, fingers buried deep within you. he flopped backwards against the pillows and closed his eyes as his still hard length slapped up to meet his stomach.

the woman remained lying there, twitching and whimpering against the sheets, aerion paid her no mind as he relaxed into the bed.

a shaky breath left your lips as you finally stilled, the cool breeze from the night outside alerting the hairs along your arms to prickle up and stand to attention. you blinked twice, slowly, drawing you back into your body as fresh waves of shame and regret crashed in the pit of your stomach.

gently you pulled your fingers from between your folds, quickly wiping the sticky proof of your defilement against the fabric of your gown to remove it. leaning back on your heels you peeled your face away from the door and looked down at your hands.

a small, red sheen covered one of them and moving your eyes to the hem of your shift you could see smeared blood covering the thin fabric. the bright evidence of what you had done filled your eyes with embarrassed tears.

you looked away.

you let your head hang heavily now, chin resting against the clammy skin of your chest. questions of why and how fought against each other in your cloudy head, too tired to identify them you rose from the cold floor on unsteady legs, one hand pressed flat against the stone wall to keep yourself from listing sideways. your knees ached. your wrist ached. the guilt began to make you feel sick.

you moved back to your bed in the dark without letting yourself think about what you had just done. laying down atop of the cold, empty mattress, and curling into yourself.

you pressed your burned hand very firmly against the linen sheet beneath you and fixed your gaze on the ceiling above and listened to the old stone of the red keep settling around you, and the city below the hill, and the night guards in the corridor, and the faint sounds from the other side of the wall that you attempted to ignore.

you did not pray.

or rather, you tried to and found that the words would not arrange themselves into anything the gods deserved to receive.

the candle in your alcove had burned itself out.

you noticed that, in the dark, and thought it was perhaps appropriate.

and when at last the sounds from his room went quiet, and the line of amber light beneath the joining door went dark, and the only thing left was the silence and you in it, you turned onto your back and pulled the sheet up to your shoulder and told yourself, firmly and without any particular conviction, that this did not mean what you were afraid it meant.