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Valarr frowns before he fully realizes it and pushes himself upright so he can look at him properly rather than from the half-lowered angle of the pillow.

“Are you serious?” he asks, more sharply than intended. “I’m leaving in a week, and you’re going off to see Gwayne?” He had expected Matarys to understand without needing it explained that this stretch of days mattered, that his leaving for Braavos—him leaving for a year—was not something to be treated lightly. Had Matarys spoken to their father about it? Surely, he would not allow it, not now, not when there would be time enough for visits after he was gone.

Matarys looks at him with open confusion, his expression tightening slightly as he tries to follow the sudden shift in tone, his brows drawing together in a seriousness that does not quite suit him.

And then, just as Valarr is about to press the matter further, Matarys breaks into laughter, the tension dissolving as quickly as it had formed, and gives him a small shove with his shoulder.

“I’m joking,” he says, still smiling, brushing a loose strand of hair back behind his ear. “Father sent me to wake you. Uncle is coming.”

“Uncle Rhaegel?” Valarr asks, the sharpness leaving him as quickly as it came, his body easing back into the bed as he lets his head fall against the pillow again, eyes closing briefly as he exhales. “That’s good. You like Uncle Rhaegel.”

It would be pleasant to see him again. The last time Valarr had visited, his uncle had been staying at a private clinic in Oldtown, pale and drawn in a way that had been difficult to ignore, though Matarys had thrown himself into his arms without hesitation, clinging to him with the same open affection he had shown as a child. There had always been something similar between them, a shared softness that Valarr did not entirely understand but recognized nonetheless.

And if Rhaegel was coming, it meant the house would shift around it, attention drawn elsewhere, which in turn meant something else entirely—more time unaccounted for, more time with father.

“No, not Rhaegel,” Matarys continues, quick to correct himself. “Uncle Maekar—and the cousins.”

“All of them?” Valarr asks, more out of habit than surprise, though he does pause for a moment as he considers it more carefully. They have every right to come to the summer state whenever they please; in fact, if one were to be precise about it, the place likely belongs as much to Maekar as it does to his father, maybe even more. It would not be unusual. Still, he wonders briefly whether father might have invited them himself, perhaps under the pretense of marking Valarr’s departure. He can imagine Maekar making the effort to come and see him off, but he doubts Daeron or Aerion would do more than send word. More likely, they are here for the season itself, for the weather. That, at least, requires no further explanation.

“I don’t know, I think so,” Matarys replies, though his attention has already begun to drift elsewhere, his focus shifting with the ease of someone who has not yet learned to hold it in place for long. “I’ll show my lizards to Aemon,” he adds, as though that were the most immediate and relevant consequence of their arrival.

Valarr makes a quiet sound in acknowledgment, not quite a response but enough to let him continue.

“My leopard gecko—and the bearded dragon too,” Matarys goes on, leaning slightly forward as he speaks, a trace of quiet enthusiasm slipping into his voice despite himself.

It is a recent development, this interest of his, something that has taken hold over the past months with a consistency Valarr had not expected, and though Matarys insists on showing them to him whenever he can, guiding his attention carefully, explaining their habits with a seriousness that borders on earnest pride, Valarr has never quite understood the appeal. He indulges him regardless, listens where he can, asks the occasional question when it seems expected, but the fascination itself remains distant to him.

Aemon, however, will likely appreciate it. He has always been a curious child, attentive, and if Matarys is to find a willing audience among them, it will be him.

They go downstairs together and find their father already in the secondary kitchen of the estate, the one fitted with the expensive oven and the older cabinetry, not the service kitchen at the far end of the left wing, the one lined with industrial refrigerators and provisions enough to feed an army. Father had insisted on keeping the staff to a minimum during their stay, taking into account that it was only the three of them and meant to be a quiet summer retreat. It will not remain that way for long, though Valarr assumes that when his father speaks of wanting to be alone, he does not mean the absence of company so much as the absence of witnesses, of staff moving in and out, listening without appearing to.

Something hisses in a pan as Baelor pours in a measure of olive oil, the sound sharp against the otherwise calm space. His sleeves are rolled to the elbows, though not with much care, and there is a plate of cut tomatoes set beside him, along with other ingredients already prepared and waiting.

“There you boys are,” he says as soon as he hears them approach.

Matarys moves ahead of Valarr, reaching for a piece of bread from the basket at the center of the table in a hurry.

“Valarr was snoring,” he announces.

“That’s not true,” Valarr replies evenly. “I was only resting my eyes.”

Baelor smiles at the exchange, a small, unforced thing that does not linger, and Valarr steps closer as the moment settles.

“You can sleep if you wish, Valarr. You’re on holiday,” Father reminds him, his tone ever so gentle.

Valarr does not answer that. Instead, he reaches for the plates from the cupboard and begins setting them out, aligning them with a quiet precision that borders on unnecessary. They are a pale yellow, patterned in a way he has never paid much attention to, something chosen, he assumes, by his mother—or perhaps his aunt. He remembers the two of them spending a season here under the pretext of renovations, which had mostly resulted in replacing anything neutral with something brighter. ‘Modern’, they had called it.

When he looks back at his father he notices the sleeve of his shirt slips slightly each time he moves, the fold uneven, beginning to come undone. He steps in closer, reaching without asking, his fingers brushing the fabric as he straightens the fold, adjusting it with more care than it had been given before, securing it in place so it will not fall again. It is a small thing.

Baelor’s movement stops.

“That’s enough,” he says.

His voice is not raised, but it is firm, and his eyes are on Valarr. “Go to the table. Food is almost done.” Valarr stills for a fraction of a second before withdrawing his hand immediately. He looks at his father a moment longer than necessary, searching his expression for something clearer—for irritation, for displeasure—but finds neither.

Valarr does not return to the counter again. He takes his place at the table instead, Matarys is already seated, tearing at a piece of bread with idle impatience, his earlier amusement not yet entirely spent, Valarr wanders if he just wants to go back to the pool.

Baelor brings the pan to the table himself, setting it down between them without. The scent rises at once and the heat still clings to the metal, faintly visible in the way the surface shifts. He reaches for the bread basket as he sits, tearing off a piece for himself before gesturing lightly toward the dish.

“Go on,” he says. “Before it cools.”

Matarys does not need to be told twice. He leans forward immediately, dipping his bread with careless precision into the egg and sauce, while Valarr follows a moment later, breaking the surface cleanly rather than pressing into it. For a time, the only sound between them is the quiet rhythm of eating, the scrape of bread against the pan, the low clink of glass as Baelor reaches for his wine.

It is only after a few moments that Baelor speaks again.

“You may have some, if you like,” he says, glancing toward Valarr as he sets the bottle back down. “You’re not a child.”

Valarr’s hand stills where it rests near the edge of the table, the movement cut short almost without his noticing. The offer itself is unremarkable, given without insistence, yet he finds himself shifting slightly in his seat all the same. He does not make a habit of drinking in front of his father—nor, if he can help it, in front of anyone at all. Not since two winters ago, when Daeron’s name had made its way across three newspapers in the days after he was found insensible in the snow, drunk and dirty, and what followed had been less a reprimand than a formal instruction: a meeting with their PR team, arranged and attended, in which the terms of their conduct were laid out with careful clarity, as though they were matters of state rather than of youth. Valarr had taken it as such. Since then, he has preferred restraint, or at the very least discretion, a limit observed even when others see little reason for it. He looks at the glass for a moment, then lifts his gaze to his father, as though weighing something.

“I don’t mind,” he answers after a pause, though he does not reach for it at once. “It’s just—” He stops himself there, the rest of the thought forming and dissolving in the same instant. It is not the wine itself that gives him pause, but the image of it, being too conscious of how things appear, how easily a moment can be misread when taken out of its place.

Baelor watches him for a second then pours a small measure regardless and sets the glass within reach.

“You can decide,” he says, and leaves it at that.

Valarr inclines his head slightly in acknowledgment, though he still does not drink.

Across from him, Matarys has already moved on from the matter entirely.

“When are they getting here?” he asks, the question arriving without preamble. “Our cousins.”

Baelor leans back slightly in his chair, one hand still loosely wrapped around his own glass.

“Soon,” he replies. “Your uncle sent word this morning. They were already in town—something about getting a few things they left behind earlier in the season. They’ll come up once they’re done.”

Matarys nods, accepting the explanation without much thought, though something in it seems to catch his interest just long enough for him to ask.

“All of them?”

“So I was told.”

“That’s good,” he says, a note of quiet satisfaction slipping in before he adds, almost as an afterthought, “I’ll show Aemon the lizards.”

Baelor’s expression shifts faintly at that, not quite a smile, but close enough to suggest one.

“Show Aegon as well,” he says. “He won’t follow half of it, but he’ll remember that you included him.”

Matarys makes a small face at that, the first sign of resistance since he sat down.

“He’s too little,” he says. “He’ll just try to grab them.”

“Then you’ll learn to keep them out of reach,” Baelor answers, evenly. “It’s not a difficult problem.”

Matarys exhales through his nose unsatisfied. He tears another piece of bread, slower this time, his thoughts already beginning to rearrange themselves around the instruction.

Valarr watches the exchange without intervening, his gaze moving briefly from one to the other before settling back on the table. There is something familiar in it, in the ease with which his father redirects, in the quiet expectation that things will be done a certain way without needing to insist on it.

After a moment, he reaches for the glass at last and takes a small sip, more out of acknowledgment than desire, setting it back down in the same place it had been left for him.

Under Matarys’ insistence, the three of them end up lounging by the pool after lunch. Valarr sits at the edge with his feet in the water, letting the sun settle across his chest while he counts, silently, how long Matarys can remain under. A few feet away, father reclines in a low chair with a second glass of wine in hand, this one dressed with a slice of blood orange; he appears half-asleep, his posture loosened in a way that never quite happens at home, his shirt opened at the collar and then further, perhaps without noticing, in concession to the heat. Valarr’s gaze drifts, briefly and without permission, along the line of his father’s chest before he returns his attention to the water.

“How long? How long was it?” Matarys’ voice breaks through as his head emerges all at once, sending a sharp splash toward the edge.

“Forty,” Valarr replies.

Matarys inhales quickly, still catching his breath, but nods as though committing the number to some private standard he intends to surpass.

“Again,” he says, already drawing in air before submerging once more. Valarr resets his count.

From above, Matarys is easy to follow even with his eyes closed—his red hair fans out in uneven strands beneath the surface, his hands fixed tightly at his nose, his expression set with unnecessary determination. Valarr watches for a moment, then, as before, allows his attention to shift.

Baelor has not moved. There is a kind of ease to him here that feels unfamiliar; it is not that his father is incapable of rest, but that it is rarely allowed to be seen. The summer seems to suit him. Valarr recalls, with some clarity, the stories Rhaegel had told them about this same estate, years before, when father and his brothers had come here on their own—long evenings, careless company, the absence of scrutiny. It had been said lightly, almost as an aside, but what stayed with Valarr was the suggestion of simplicity, of a version of his father who had moved through the world without calculation.

“No one disliked him,” Rhaegel had said. “No one had a bad story to tell about him. Now, as for the rest of us—”

Something unsettles, faintly, in his stomach at the thought of that earlier version of Baelor—less burdened. Part of him resents the idea that he never knew him that way; another part, quieter and less easily named, feels something closer to pity. He would prefer to see his father with fewer obligations, fewer calls, fewer expectations handed down from his grandfather and uncles. But preference has little to do with it. Baelor is the eldest. The structure holds.

Valarr straightens slightly where he sits, adjusting his posture without realizing it, and lets his gaze settle on him again, more deliberately this time. He wonders, not for the first time, whether his father is satisfied with the shape of his life—whether the absence of scandal is a choice or simply the cost of his position, whether restraint becomes easier with time or merely more necessary.

The water breaks again.

Matarys resurfaces with more force than before, this time reaching immediately for Valarr’s legs, his laughter uneven from the effort.

“How long? How long?” he asks, breath catching on the words.

Valarr glances down at him and stills his count.

“Fifty-seven,” he says. “That’s an improvement.”

Matarys seems pleased with this, though he does not say so directly. Instead, he shifts closer, resting his head against Valarr’s knees in a position that is not especially comfortable and Valarr lets him. For a few seconds, none of them speak. The air is warm, the sound of the water soft and repetitive, the little sounds of summer fill the space. Just the three of them.

Valarr leans back on his hands and closes his eyes against the sun.

“I’m going to miss you,” Matarys says after a moment, his voice calmer now that his breathing has steadied.

Valarr opens one eye, turning his head just enough to look at him, noting the seriousness of his expression.

“You can come visit, Mat” he says. “Your nameday, or mine…”

Braavos is not particularly close, but the arrangements have already been discussed, short trips on some weekends or holidays. It will be possible.

“We’ll go out,” Valarr adds. “You’ll like it there.”

He thinks, briefly, that it would do Matarys good to see something beyond what he already knows. The thought extends, as it tends to, a step further than it should: what it would mean to take him along entirely, to remove him from this family for longer than a visit. It does not hold. Matarys is still in school, still young, Valarr is pretty sure Matarys hasn’t gotten rid of all his childhood toys yet. The idea collapses under its own impracticality almost as soon as it forms.

Still, Valarr does not entirely let it go.

“Mhm,” Matarys replies, unconvinced but not inclined to argue. He shifts slightly where he rests, settling more comfortably, as though the matter can be postponed simply by not pressing it.

Valarr lets his eyes close again, his hand resting absently near Matarys’ shoulder, the contact light, trying to reassure him of something neither of them has quite said aloud.

The quiet of the afternoon holds a moment longer before it breaks—first with the distant grind of the gates, then the sound of a car making its way up the drive. It carries easily through the stillness of the villa.

Baelor shifts slightly in his chair, pushing his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose as he listens more closely. After a second, he takes them off and rises without urgency, stretching once before heading inside at an unhurried pace, as though the arrival concerns him only in the abstract.

Matarys notices at once. His attention sharpens, his mood lifting almost immediately, and he reaches for Valarr’s arm with both hands, tugging insistently for help out of the pool. Valarr obliges, steadying him as he climbs out, then hands him a towel. Matarys makes a partial effort at drying himself—hair, shoulders, a quick pass across his chest—before abandoning it entirely and hurrying inside, still dripping, leaving the towel in a careless heap behind him.

Valarr lingers a moment longer. He retrieves his phone from where it had been left near the edge, then his father’s wine glass, setting both down on the shaded table. By the time he steps into the entrance hall, Maekar is already directing the staff, passing off luggage with clipped efficiency. He moves to the rear door of the car and opens it himself.

“Out,” he says, not loudly, but with enough force to settle any hesitation.

One by one, they emerge—Daeron first, then Aerion, then Aegon, smaller and slower to climb down, and finally a man Valarr does not recognize. Large, broad-shouldered, not dressed as staff, but not quite family either. He remains close to the car, watchful without appearing tense.

Valarr’s gaze lingers on him a second too long before shifting past, searching the interior of the vehicle out of reflex.

No one else follows.

A small sound escapes him before he can quite stop it. Further ahead, Matarys—already at Baelor’s side—glances back at him with a faint, matching disappointment.

Of course. Aemon is not there.

“Inside, now,” Maekar says, already turning away from the car. His tone is controlled, but the strain beneath it is not particularly well concealed.

Baelor meets him halfway, greeting him with an embrace that Maekar returns more out of habit than warmth. Baelor takes one of the bags from his hand without comment, easing the exchange into something that looks almost casual.

“Can the children go to the pool?” Maekar asks, the words coming quickly, as though he would rather not spend time on them. “I’m expecting a call from Brynden.”

There is enough said in that alone.

Baelor’s mouth curves slightly with amusement and he inclines his head.

“Of course,” he says, then gestures broadly toward the back of the house. “All of you, go on. Swim first. Your things can wait.”

Daeron passes first, ruffling Matarys’ hair with an easy familiarity that Matarys accepts without protest, though he immediately tries to smooth it back into place. Aerion follows with more energy, striking Matarys’ hand in a quick, careless high-five before already beginning to pull at his shirt as he walks.

They are in good spirits, then. Whatever prompted this trip has not settled on them in the same way.

“Cousin,” Daeron says as he passes Valarr, already half-turned toward the pool.

Valarr is a second too slow to answer, caught between the movement in the room and the need to respond properly. By the time he lifts his hand in acknowledgment, Daeron is already gone.

Aerion brushes past him next, shirt already off, his attention elsewhere. Up close, the energy around him feels less like ease and more like restlessness, contained for now. Behind them, Aegon hesitates at the threshold, looking between the adults and the direction the others have gone, as if uncertain where he is expected to be. The large man from the car remains near him, not intervening, but not straying far either.

Valarr steps forward then, closing the distance with a small, deliberate motion.

“This way,” he says, gesturing toward the back. “They’ve gone ahead.”

Aegon looks up at him, then nods, reassured enough to follow. After a brief pause, the man follows as well.

Valarr falls into step just behind them, his attention already shifting—half on the children ahead, half still in the room he has left, where Maekar waits for a call that will decide, at least for the moment, how the rest of them are meant to behave.

“That’s my father’s,” Valarr says when he meets his cousins out, taking the glass of wine from Daeron’s hand before he can drink from it. Daeron lifts both hands at once in easy surrender, more amused than apologetic.

“I wasn’t stealing it,” he says, then looks him over briefly. “How are you, cousin? Father said you’re leaving soon.”

Valarr nods.

“Braavos.”

Daeron lets out a small, approving sound, followed by a faint tilt of his head that suggests interest, though not quite sincerity. Valarr recognizes it for what it is—polite acknowledgment, nothing more. Braavos is impressive in theory, but mostly because it is expensive. He does not comment on it.

Instead, his attention shifts.

“Who is he?” Valarr asks, indicating, with a slight movement of his gaze, the tall man crouched near Aegon. He is speaking to him with patience, holding up a bottle of sunscreen as if explaining its necessity. Aegon appears to be listening.

Aerion exhales sharply beside him, rolling his eyes.

“Father hired him for me,” he says, already irritated by the subject. “He used to follow me after school. Made sure I didn’t disappear or pay off the driver to take me somewhere else.” He speaks as if the arrangement had been excessive and undeserved. “He turned out to be useful with the younger ones, though,” Aerion adds, with a careless shrug. “Rhae’s obsessed with him.”

“What Aerion means,” Daeron cuts in, settling more comfortably into one of the chairs, “is that he tried to climb out of his bedroom window one night, and Father decided it was easier to give the giant a room inside the house than to keep replacing staff.”

Aerion clicks his tongue and turns his head just enough to bare it at him in silent annoyance, childish in a way that sits oddly against the rest of him. As he does, the light catches briefly against the metal at his brow—and then again, lower.

Another piercing.

Valarr notes it without comment, though he cannot help but wonder, distantly, how many more his cousin intends to accumulate.

“And Brynden?” Valarr asks.

It is an obvious question. Something has happened; Maekar’s tone had made that clear enough. Whether it concerns Aerion alone or both of them remains to be seen.

Behind them, there is a sudden splash as Matarys throws himself back into the pool, water reaching just far enough to scatter across the edge. A few drops land on Aerion’s arm.

He recoils immediately.

“Gods—” he mutters, brushing at his arm with visible irritation. “Nothing,” Aerion answers at last, still in a poor mood. “I went out, someone took photos, and now it’s in a magazine.”

“Two photos of him drinking,” Daeron adds, without looking at him. “One of him with someone’s tongue down his throat at a Qartheen diplomatic party, and I’m fairly certain you threatened someone. Was it a waitress? Or have you moved on to something more ambitious?”

Aerion makes a dismissive sound, flicking his hand as if the details are beneath consideration.

“I don’t see the problem with drinking or kissing.”

The sun catches again on the metal at his brow. Valarr finds himself looking away.

“It’s illegal,” Daeron replies mildly. “You’re underage.”

He turns his head slightly toward Valarr, as though including him in the conversation without expecting a response.

“That’s why Brynden wants him dead. Father too, for that matter.”

“Brynden can go to the seventh hell,” Aerion says, already done with the subject. He slips off his shoes and steps toward the pool without further hesitation. “I’m not sitting through another lecture while that red stain on his face keeps shifting every time he talks.”

Daeron lets out a short laugh at that, leaning back into his chair with complete ease.

“Well,” he says, “I’m just glad it’s not me.”

Valarr does not join him. He remains where he is, the conversation settling into place in his mind piece by piece. It is not surprising, but it is useful to know the extent of it.

His gaze drifts back toward the house.

Through the glass doors, he can just make out the figures inside—Maekar turned slightly away, phone pressed to his ear, his posture rigid; Baelor across from him, still, attentive, saying nothing.

Watching.

Valarr holds the image a moment longer than necessary, then looks away. He makes a mental note of looking for the magazine on his computer later.

Aerion joins Matarys in the pool without warning, ducking his head beneath the surface before emerging again with a quick breath, pushing his silver hair flicking water toward Matarys in quick, deliberate motions, as if testing the limits of his patience; Matarys tolerates it only briefly before turning his head away with a soft, annoyed sound, wiping his face with the back of his hand.

“What about Aemon? Is he coming?”

Aerion, who has already stretched himself out, floating on his back, eyes half-closed against the sun, answers without looking at him.

“He’s not here, is he?” The response is enough for him, apparently, but not for Matarys, who shifts his attention instead toward Daeron.

“He’s doing some kind of preparatory course,” Daeron says and Valarr finds his attention dividing, because Daeron, despite the heat, despite the clear discomfort suggested by the faint sheen of sweat at his temple, does not remove the short-sleeved shirt he wears unbuttoned over what is unmistakably a piece of sleepwear, the fabric worn thin in places, softened by use, and not particularly well-fitted; Valarr notes it in passing, the small inconsistencies in presentation and concludes, without much interest, that Maekar likely no longer concerns himself with Daeron’s appearance.

“In Oldtown,” he continues. “A school there. Something like a boarding arrangement.”

“What was wrong with the school in King’s Landing?” Matarys mutters, more to himself than to anyone else, what could possibly be lacking in the school at King’s Landing, where all of them, without exception, had been educated.

No one answers him, and after a brief pause, he exhales through his nose and sinks back under the water, as though the absence of a response confirms what he had already suspected, resurfacing only long enough to ask, with a tone that suggests he is no longer seeking clarification.

“Are they sending Aemon away too?” Valarr understands immediately that the question extends beyond Aemon, that it carries a knowledge of his own departure, of Braavos. The words linger longer than they should.

It is not difficult to understand Maekar’s reasoning, at least in part; Aemon, by all observable measures, is the least troublesome of his sons, measured where the others are impulsive, disciplined where they are careless, and it stands to reason that removing him from their immediate influence might be seen as a corrective measure, a way of preserving what has not yet been altered by proximity to them.

Aemon is being sent away because he is good, because he can remain so if placed in the proper environment, because there is something in him worth safeguarding before it is compromised. The logic is simple.

Aemon is being sent away because he is good.

And me?

Braavos had been presented to him as an opportunity, something aligned with his position and his future, a place where he might refine his education in business and politics in a way that would better prepare him for what is expected of him, and he had accepted it without hesitation, because it was reasonable, because it was appropriate, because it did not, on the surface, contradict anything he has been taught to value. It had been his father’s suggestion and Valarr had understood, as he always does, that agreement was not only expected but required.

Where Aemon is being sent away to remain what he already is, to be protected from influences that might alter him, Valarr cannot determine with the same certainty what, exactly, his own removal is meant to accomplish, or whether preservation is the intention at all.

The afternoon continues without much incident, settling into something quieter after the earlier movement, with Maekar withdrawing into one of the rooms without explanation and closing the door behind him with a finality that discourages interruption, and Baelor informing them, almost in passing, that he will only join them later, at dinner, which draws a short, sharp laugh from Aerion—too quick—cut off just as quickly when Baelor looks at him, not with irritation but with something steadier, enough to make Aerion drop it without protest.

Daeron, who has been half-listening from his place near the edge of the pool, lifts his head just enough to insert himself into the exchange, announcing that if they manage to behave until then he might even prepare cocktails for everybody, already amused by the idea of it, before glancing toward Baelor with a half-smile that lingers just long enough to require acknowledgment. “Right, uncle?” he adds, and Baelor, already turning away, answers with a brief nod that could be approval or simple tolerance, Valarr can’t really tell.

The man Maekar brought with him turns out to be called Duncan Pennytree, a detail Valarr gathers through the persistent questioning Matarys directs at him in the pool, circling him asking where he is from, what he does, whether he can fight, whether he has ever been to the city, until the answers begin to assemble into something coherent: Flea Bottom, public university, night classes twice a week, all of it offered with patience, he is probably used to being handled this way, Valarr thinks, or at least willing to allow it. Matarys, apparently satisfied with this, insists on pulling him into some invented game that quickly loses structure, dragging Aegon into it as well, leaving Duncan to manage both of them.

Valarr notes—that is how Aerion managed to slip out for that party, then, Duncan’s night classes. He does not look toward him when the realization forms, but he is aware of him regardless, of the way Aerion carries himself and Valarr finds himself wondering, briefly, whether Duncan had understood what he was enabling, whether he had noticed and chosen not to intervene, or whether it had not seemed significant enough to register as something that required refusal.

He leaves it there, without pressing the thought, and goes inside instead, taking a shower and only returning to the garden after the sun sets, the light gone entirely, replaced by a softer darkness and a warm breeze that carries just enough coolness to suggest it will drop further as the night goes on. The staff have arranged a long table across the lawn, set for all of them, the decision to dine outside already in place, and as he approaches he recognizes Marilda and Harrin among them, moving between places with ease.

He lifts a hand in greeting, a small, automatic gesture, and Marilda notices, smiling at him, and he returns it without thinking, the interaction brief but sufficient, and it is only afterward, as he watches her turn back to what she was doing, that something unsettles him—he has known them since he was a child, long before the gray in her hair, before Harrin’s posture had begun to shift with age, and yet he cannot recall their last names. The absence of it feels disproportionate, more than a simple lapse, and it irritates him in a way he does not entirely examine, as if it reflects something he should have noticed earlier and failed to.

Across the garden, he finds Matarys and Aegon again, both of them hanging from the giant—Duncan Pennytree, the university student, he corrects himself—one from each arm, insisting that he carry them, move them, do something that requires effort, and Duncan allows it, adjusting his stance slightly to keep his balance, accommodating them without complaint. For a moment, Valarr considers stepping in, telling Matarys to get down, to stop treating him as if he were there solely for their amusement, but the impulse passes before it reaches his voice, restrained not out of uncertainty but out of recognition—Matarys will not remain a child long enough for it to matter, and there is something in letting it pass that feels more appropriate than correcting it.

Maekar joins them shortly after, his mood apparent before he speaks, written plainly in the set of his expression and the way he presses a hand briefly to his face as if trying to push something back into place, whatever rest he may have attempted earlier clearly insufficient. He approaches Valarr, stopping close enough to rest a hand on his shoulder in greeting, the gesture firm, familiar in a way that does not soften it. “Nephew,” he says, and then, without pause, “your father mentioned you’ll be going to Braavos. To continue your studies.”

Valarr nods, offering a small, contained smile that does not extend further than it needs to. “Yes.”

Maekar’s hand tightens slightly on his shoulder, his gaze settling on him with a kind of assessment that feels less casual than the conversation allows for. “If only you were one of mine,” he says, almost offhandedly. Sons, Valarr thinks, if only I were one of your sons. Valarr doesn’t delve into the thought, he is Baelor’s son, that’s enough for him.

They are called to dinner sooner than expected, Marilda’s voice carrying lightly across the space, and when they gather around the table it becomes immediately apparent that she is not the only one serving, because Baelor stands beside her, setting plates down one by one. Maekar notices it at once as he takes his seat, a low chuckle leaving him before he can quite suppress it, more surprised than amused. “Since when do you cook?” he asks, watching as Baelor sets a dish in front of him—shakshuka. The same we ate as lunch, Valarr thinks, he made it for Maekar? No, for everybody, he corrects himself.

Baelor does not answer immediately, adjusting the placement of the pan at the center of the table before straightening slightly, his expression composed. “Since it was easier to make it myself than listen to you complain about how it’s done,” he replies, the tone mild, almost conversational, though the familiarity of it carries something older beneath it. He glances briefly at the others as he takes his seat. “Eat while it’s warm.”

Maekar lets out a short breath through his nose, something close to a laugh but not quite, and reaches for his fork without further comment, though the line of his mouth suggests he has not entirely let it go.

He calls the rest of them over with a brief motion of his hand, his attention already shifting elsewhere as he adds, “Aegon, leave him be and sit down,” He says, directed toward where the boy still lingers near Duncan, reluctant to disengage from him. Aegon hesitates only a moment before obeying, moving toward the table with a last glance over his shoulder.

Aerion takes the seat beside Valarr without asking, though Valarr would have preferred Matarys at his side, not for any particular reason beyond the quiet consistency of it. Instead, his attention shifts past Aerion, toward Duncan, who has not moved to join them, remaining a few steps away from the table, standing in a way that suggests uncertainty.

Valarr watches him for a moment, noting the hesitation in the way he shifts his weight, the slight movement of his mouth as if testing words before committing to them, and it occurs to him that the man may not know whether he is expected to sit with them or remove himself entirely, whether his place here extends beyond what has already been allowed.

Aerion leans back in his chair, balancing it carelessly on its rear legs, his gaze settling on Duncan with open interest that does not bother to disguise itself as anything else. “What?” he says after a moment, the word edged just enough to draw attention. “Do you prefer eating grass to what my uncle cooks?” There is a pause, brief, calculated. “Don’t worry, you can sit with us—if you know how to use a fork.”

The remark lands as intended and Valarr notices immediately the way Duncan stills, the hesitation sharpening into closer to discomfort than confusion.

“That will do,” Baelor cuts in before anything further can follow, his tone even, and it is enough to stop Aerion without requiring more than that. “Duncan is our guest.” He turns his attention toward him then, the shift in his expression subtle but unmistakable, something more open. “Sit with us. Worry not.”

Duncan nods once, quick, as if relieved to be given a clear instruction, and moves to take one of the remaining seats, his movements careful, measured in a way that suggests he is aware of being observed, of his size, even if no one is looking directly at him now.

Aerion does not apologize, nor is he expected to; he adjusts his posture slightly, letting the front legs of the chair fall back into place with a soft sound, the corner of his mouth lifting just enough to suggest that he has not taken the correction personally and he reaches for his glass as though the moment has already passed.

“Hey, Daeron,” he says a second later, turning his head just enough to address him, the earlier remark already folded into something else, “did you find anything for those drinks you were talking about?”

Daeron glances up from his plate, one brow lifting in mild acknowledgment, but before he can answer, Maekar sets his fork down with a sharper movement than necessary, the sound distinct against the table as his expression tightens.

“Drinks?” he repeats, the word carrying more weight than it should, as if testing it for absurdity. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

Valarr keeps his attention on his plate, breaking into the food with precision, though the shift in tone does not escape him, nor the direction it is taking, because it is obvious enough—Maekar has no intention of allowing it, not after what has already happened, not while they are here for this specific reason, and he does not attempt to soften it.

“Aerion,” Maekar continues, his voice steady but edged now, “you are not on holiday. You’re here because you needed to be removed from the public eye for a while.” He leans back slightly in his chair, though the tension in his posture does not ease with it. “You will behave.”

For a few moments, no one speaks and they adjust in their seats, and Valarr finds his attention drawn to Aerion, to the expression that lingers there— something closer to surprise, as if he had not anticipated being called out with that degree of anger in his father’s voice. He does not answer, does not attempt to deflect or escalate, and the absence of it feels more telling than anything he might have said.

Valarr shifts his gaze instead toward his father, watching the way his father’s attention moves across the table, first on Maekar, then on Aerion, and back again, measuring, and there is a brief, almost imperceptible tightening in his jaw, the muscle in his cheek marking itself before he speaks again.

“One drink.”

Maekar turns toward him immediately, his brow already drawn, the objection forming before it is voiced, but Baelor places a hand on his shoulder before he can interrupt. “One,” he repeats, his tone even, and then, with the smallest shift, something lighter added to it, “we are, after all, marking Valarr’s departure, aren’t we.”

Valarr nods when his name is brought into it, though he would not have insisted on it, would not have asked for it, and if anything, he finds himself wanting the opposite—to finish his meal, to leave the table before the tension settles into something more difficult to ignore—but he does not say that either. He keeps his gaze lowered, avoiding Maekar without making it obvious, though he hears the quiet exhale that follows, the sound of Maekar conceding without agreeing.

Baelor’s voice shifts again when he turns toward Daeron, the edge gone entirely now, replaced with something almost conversational. “Tell me, Daeron, what was it you were planning to make?” he asks, as if the suggestion had not already been contested. “I’m sure we have something in the dry bar.”

Maekar’s attention turns sharply toward his son, who sits to his left with his arms drawn in, his posture closed in on itself, his gaze fixed on the untouched plate in front of him. Daeron does not look up when he answers.

“No… there isn’t a cocktail, I-” he says, the words coming out quieter than before, he is mumbling, probably feeling his father staring a hole on the side of his face. “It was a joke.” There is a pause. “Something Aerion and I have been saying.”

Maekar exhales again, this time sharper, his hand coming up to his temple as if to steady himself, though when he speaks his voice remains measured, he makes sure they understand every word. “Your brother is involved in a scandal, and you are making jokes?” he says, and though it is phrased as a question, it does not wait for an answer. Valarr know what Maekar is asking. Are you making a joke of this family? Of your own father?

Daeron shakes his head, but the gesture is insufficient on its own, and Valarr finds himself watching him with growing frustration, willing him, if only this once, to say something—to answer like an adult—but nothing follows, the silence stretching just enough to become noticeable.

Baelor leans slightly toward Maekar then, speaking low enough that the words do not fully carry, though the tone is clear in its intent, something conciliatory, something meant to reduce rather than escalate, and after a moment Maekar exhales once more, this time longer, the resistance still present but set aside with visible effort, his attention returning to the table even if the matter itself is not entirely resolved.

Valarr considers, briefly, whether it will return later, whether Maekar will address it again once he and his sons are alone, behind one of the villa’s closed doors, where things are handled more directly, without the restraint Baelor tends to keep, and where a silence like this would not be allowed to stand on its own.

Baelor shifts the conversation himself, calling Marilda over and asking for a bottle from the cellar under the pretext of a toast, and then, without pause, he turns to Aegon, asking him something about school, about the classes he is going to take, something simple enough to draw the attention away from what had just passed. Matarys joins in quickly, adding something about the start of term, about clubs and schedules and choices that still feel open and the conversation begins to move again.

Valarr does not follow it closely, his attention drifting instead, the edges of the discussion passing him without much weight, and by the time the drinks are brought out, placed carefully along the table, he notices without surprise that Daeron’s plate remains untouched, the food exactly as it had been before, undisturbed.

Dinner, like most things, comes to an end eventually, the tension that had marked its beginning thinning out into something more manageable by the time the last plates are cleared, though not entirely gone, never entirely gone; they had, in the end, been allowed more than one drink, despite Maekar’s resistance, despite the earlier exchange, and Valarr had not refused when the second was poured, even if he had no real intention of finishing it, even if he had only taken a measured sip before setting it back down, but it had been enough regardless, enough for him to feel it settle lightly into his system, a faint, unfamiliar warmth that lingers at the edges of his body, in the tips of his fingers, in the slight delay between thought and movement. When he finally excuses himself and makes his way back to his room, closing the door behind him, he exhales more deeply than he had realized he needed to.

He crosses the room without turning on the main lights, letting the softer lamps carry the space, and then lets himself fall back onto the bed, the sheets newly changed; for a moment he does nothing, one arm resting across his stomach as he stares at the ceiling, the quiet of the room settling around him, and then, with a small shift, he reaches to the side for his laptop, pulling it toward him and opening it without much thought.

The screen lights up and the image that greets him is unavoidable—a photograph he has not changed in months, a selfie, Kiera, leaning into him, pressing a kiss to his cheek, her hair bright, unmistakably pink, catching the light in a way that draws the eye first before anything else, before the angle of their faces, before the way he had allowed himself, in that moment, to smile without restraint, small but real, and he studies it now with a kind of distance, noting the unevenness of his own eyes, the slight mismatch in their color, the ease in his expression that he does not often see reflected back at him on the mirror. It makes something in his stomach tighten.

Kiera will be in Braavos as well, though not at the same time; she had mentioned it, a gallery presentation, not this semester but the next, something temporary. And then what? What is he expected to do? What is he going to do once she is there? Valarr has no idea. He does not like that.

He unlocks the computer and opens the browser. The cursor blinks for a fraction of a second before he begins typing.

‘Aerion Targaryen.’

He pauses only briefly before pressing enter.

‘News.’

Another click.

The first result that appears is a publication from The Raven, and Valarr exhales sharply through his nose as soon as he recognizes the name. Something of this kind would never be printed in Westeros Today, nor in The Crown Ledger, and even less in The Iron Post, all of them bound by the same quiet understanding of what is allowed to exist in print and what is not; at most, he might find a carefully diluted mention in Rhaeny’s Hill Magazine, softened into something resembling youthful indiscretion rather than scandal, but even that would depend on timing and approval, because in the end all of those outlets belong to his family, and nothing moves there without intention. Brynden has always dismissed The Raven as tabloid waste, something written for idle housewives with too much time and too little discernment, and Valarr had accepted that explanation. He knows now that Brynden hates it because it’s the first outlet to publish their scandals. Perhaps it is sensationalist, perhaps it exaggerates, or perhaps it is simply less invested in protecting them. It does not matter how careful his father is in maintaining a courteous distance with the Hightowers who own it, the line between them is clear, and it is not one that favors discretion. Of course it’s them, Valarr thinks.

He clicks on the article.

‘FIRE AND EXCESS: “BRIGHTFLAME” GONE WILD’

Valarr rolls his eyes at the headline, “Brightflame.” He has never cared for it, not particularly, and certainly not when it appears like this, stripped of whatever admiration it might have once carried and repurposed into something closer to mockery; he is fairly certain Aerion picked it up during one of his fencing tournaments, something to do with agility or visibility or the way he insists on drawing attention to himself, and the fact that it has followed him into this context only confirms what Valarr already knows, that anything associated with Aerion is eventually made excessive.

FIRE AND EXCESS: “BRIGHTFLAME” GONE WILD  By Alyn Ambrose Aerion Targaryen, grandson of former Prime Minister Daeron Targaryen and one of the more visible younger members of the family’s next generation, is at the center of growing scrutiny following his conduct at a private diplomatic gathering hosted by Qartheen representatives earlier this week. The event, held at the Qartheen consulate in King’s Landing, was intended to foster cultural and political exchange between delegations, and attendance was limited to invited guests, including junior political staff, foreign interns, and select members of prominent Westerosi families. Several sources present at the gathering describe an atmosphere that was, at least initially, formal and controlled. That tone, however, appears to have shifted as the evening progressed. According to multiple attendees, Targaryen was seen consuming alcohol throughout the night despite being under the legal drinking age. One guest, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, described his behavior as “increasingly erratic,” noting that his presence drew attention not only for who he is, but for the way he conducted himself within a setting that, by design, leaves little room for impropriety. Photographs obtained by The Raven appear to show Targaryen in close physical contact with another attendee, later identified as a junior political intern affiliated with the Qartheen delegation. In one image, the two are seen kissing openly in a section of the venue not intended for private use. The individual in question, whose identity we are withholding due to his position, was contacted by The Raven following the publication of the images. He confirmed that he had interacted with Targaryen during the event and stated that Targaryen had presented identification indicating he was of legal age to drink. “He showed me something that looked official,” the intern said. “I had no reason to question it at the time.” The intern has since been dismissed from his position. No formal statement has been released by his former employers. Questions surrounding Targaryen’s conduct do not end there. Staff working the event reported at least one verbal altercation involving the young Targaryen and a service employee. A waitress present that evening declined to comment when approached by The Raven, but two additional sources confirmed that Targaryen raised his voice during the exchange, drawing attention from nearby guests. Whether that interaction escalated further remains unclear. At the time of publication, no official statement has been issued by the Targaryen family or their representatives, and coverage of the incident has been notably absent from outlets affiliated with the family’s media holdings. The lack of response has done little to quell speculation. While some may dismiss the evening as an instance of youthful indiscretion, others have raised concerns about the broader implications of such behavior in a setting tied to international relations, particularly given Targaryen’s name and the expectations that accompany it. For a family whose public image has long rested on discipline, discretion, and control, the incident presents an uncomfortable contradiction—one that, for now, remains unanswered.

As he clicks through the images he wonders what Brynden will arrange, how this will be corrected in print, because it will be corrected, it always is, and he can almost anticipate it—perhaps a statement about the young heir being subjected to undue scrutiny, something that shifts the focus away from the act itself and toward the reaction to it, reframing it into excess on the part of the public rather than failure on their part.

He opens the first image fully and leans slightly closer to the screen without noticing. The photograph is dark, poorly lit, grainy in a way that makes it difficult to hold onto detail, and for a moment he cannot even be certain that it is Aerion at all, the angle obscured, the faces too close. He lingers on it longer than necessary, as if clarity might emerge if he looks long enough. It could be anyone, Valarr thinks.

He clicks again.

Maybe Brynden will come up with an emotional difficulty, a period of instability, something that requires understanding rather than condemnation, followed, if needed, by the suggestion of rehabilitation, of correction, of steps being taken; it would not be the first time that distance is framed as care. Send him away, call it help, Valarr thinks. Make it look intentional.

Aerion is unmistakable in the picture, head tilted slightly back, a glass in his hand, his mouth open just enough to show the metal at his tongue as he sticks it out toward whoever is taking the photo. The piercing catches the light immediately, bright, deliberate. Valarr’s eyes fix on it before moving across the rest of his face, counting—two at each brow, one at the nose, one at the lip, and now this. His gaze lingers there longer than it should. When did he get that one, Valarr thinks.

He takes a good look at the picture.

Aerion’s hair is styled upward in some sort of short, undefined spikes, held in place with gel, the silver color catching the light in a way that makes it almost reflective, and there is something about the image that makes Valarr return again and again to the same points as if repetition might produce something clearer, something that explains it. He knows he’s being photographed, Valarr thinks. He doesn’t care.

He clicks back, then forward again, looking at the images once more—the pixelated one, then the other, and then again—until he can almost make Aerion out in the blurry one, can almost see him, tracing the outline of his figure, the position of the other man’s hand at his waist. Drunk or sober, Aerion should know better than to be doing that.

Valarr realizes, all at once, that he is angry.

He keeps his eyes on the screen, the faint, unfamiliar fizz of the alcohol still present in his body, subtle but persistent, settling somewhere behind his cheeks and along his fingertips and he lets himself stay there unmoving, until the mattress shifts abruptly beneath him and Matarys climbs onto the bed again without much care. Valarr does not close the laptop; he keeps looking at it even as Matarys speaks.

“Can I sleep with you?” Matarys asks, already half-settled, as though the answer has little bearing on whether he will stay.

“What about your dragons?” Valarr replies without looking at him, his voice even, distracted, as he scrolls and opens the comments section beneath the article.

‘This is embarrassing. These are the people representing us abroad?’

Valarr exhales softly through his nose, his expression tightening almost imperceptibly as his eyes move across the line. Aerion does not represent anything, he thinks; it is obvious he used a fake ID to get in, or promised something to someone who could give him access, he would not have been there otherwise, not officially, not in any capacity that matters. He’s not representing us, Valarr tells himself.

“I already fed them,” Matarys answers, shifting closer, already making himself comfortable against the pillows, his presence warm and insistent, pressing into Valarr’s side without asking.

“And did you brush your teeth?” Valarr asks, still not turning toward him, his gaze fixed on the screen as another comment loads beneath the first.

“You sound like Mother,” Matarys replies, not answering the question, his tone light, almost amused, as he settles further into place.

‘This is what happens when families like this go unchecked for decades.’

Valarr’s eyes pause on that one longer than the others, his jaw tightening slightly as he reads it again, slower this time, as if repetition might clarify something that does not make sense to him. What is that even supposed to mean, he thinks, a single mistake and they forget everything, everything that has been done, everything that has been maintained for years, for decades, reduced to this.

‘He’s a teenager, people need to calm down.’ ‘The Targaryens have done more for this country than any of you in the comments.’

His pulse picks up without warning, subtle at first and then more noticeable, a steady rhythm that he can feel faintly in his ears if he pays attention to it, the alcohol not helping, amplifying the sensation just enough to make it difficult to ignore, and he does not realize how still he has become until Matarys shifts again beside him.

“What are you reading?” Matarys asks, quieter now, noticing the way Valarr hasn’t moved, hasn’t answered, hasn’t really acknowledged him beyond the first exchange.

“Nothing,” Valarr replies, the word coming out more quickly than intended, and only then does he close the laptop. He reaches to turn off the light at his bedside, the room dimming at once, and then lies back, adjusting himself against the mattress, allowing Matarys to move closer without resistance, the smaller body fitting easily against his side, warm, familiar, already beginning to go still as sleep takes him.

Valarr keeps his eyes open a moment longer, staring into the dark, the echo of the comments still present, not fully gone.

He is not sure how much time passes. He tries to sleep, to close his eyes and let himself drift, to follow the same easy descent Matarys seems to have found without effort, but it does not come, not even in fragments; his body remains alert in a way that feels disproportionate, his thoughts moving in slow, repetitive loops that do not quite resolve into anything useful. After a while he turns his head and looks at Matarys, who is already fully asleep beside him, breathing evenly, his face softened in a way that makes everything seem simpler than it is, and Valarr exhales quietly, careful not to disturb him.

He frees himself from his brother’s weight, lifting the arm that rests across him, shifting inch by inch until he can sit up without waking him, he stands and the floor feels cool beneath his feet. From the window he can see the faint, steady glow of the pool lights, the automatic system casting a pale blue across the water, and he does not think about it for long before moving, crossing the room, opening the door without sound, and making his way outside.

The air is cooler than he expects, the night settled fully around the house, and he walks toward the pool, stopping only when the edge of it reflects him back. The surface is still enough to hold the image clearly at first, the pale blue broken only by the geometric pattern of the Dornish tiles beneath, visible through the water. He looks at himself without stepping closer.

There is a weight in his stomach, low and insistent, pulling downward in a way he cannot quite place. His reflection shifts slightly as the water moves, distorting his features just enough to make them unfamiliar, and he watches it, watches the way his face breaks and reforms with each small ripple. His hair looks darker under the artificial light, the brown more pronounced, though the streak of silver cuts through it sharply, visible even like this. It has grown. He notices it now in a way he had not earlier, the length at the nape of his neck, the way it falls differently. He lifts a hand and touches it, pressing his fingers lightly against the back of his head, feeling the excess there.

Valarr wants to cry.

The realization comes without warning. He presses his teeth into the inside of his cheek instead, grounding himself in the small, controlled pain, holding it there, refusing the rest of it. He should not be feeling like this, not over something like this, not here. There is no reason for this, Valarr tells himself.

He keeps his eyes on the water.

Has it always felt like this, he wonders, the question forming slowly, as if it has been waiting to be asked. Has everything always carried this same pressure beneath it, this same sense of something not aligning properly, or is this new, something recent, something that has shifted without him noticing when it began. Has it always been like this? Will it stay like this?

For the first time, clearly, without qualification, he allows another thought to follow.

He does not want to go to Braavos.

He wants to stay. He wants to remain here, within something he understands, where the expectations are already known, already practiced, where he can continue as he has been—quiet, correct, without incident, without deviation. He wants to stay close, to be present, to be where he is meant to be. I can stay, Valarr tells himself. I can do things right.

He looks down again at his reflection, steadier now.

He wants to stay in the house, to behave, to not appear anywhere he is not supposed to, not in any article, not in any photograph, not like Aerion, not like that. He wants to remain within the lines that have been drawn, to follow them exactly as they were intended. He wants to be near his father.

The thought shifts slightly as it settles.

Why does father not want him close?

“Valarr?”

His father’s voice cuts cleanly through the stillness, precise enough to break the line of thought without raising itself, and Valarr hears the sound of footsteps approaching across the stone before he turns. When he looks up, he finds him already halfway there, dressed in his nightclothes, a cigarette held loosely between his fingers, unlit. For a second, the detail stands out more than anything else. He had stopped, years ago, or at least Valarr had believed he had, long enough that the habit had become something distant, something associated with a different time. He does not remember when it started again.

“What are you doing out here this late?” his father asks.

Valarr does not answer.

The movement is  abrupt enough that it feels like a break in something rather than a choice, and he steps forward quickly, closing the distance between them in a single motion before pressing into him, his arms wrapping tightly around his father’s middle with more force than he had meant to use. He does not moderate it. His face finds its way against the fabric of his shirt without precision, pressing in wherever it can, against the thin cotton of the pajama, against the familiar warmth beneath it, the scent of him—clean, understated, layered with something else, cologne or soap, something consistent enough to recognize even now.

His fingers tighten further, gripping, the fabric pulling slightly under the pressure as his hands flatten against his back, his nails pressing in without restraint.

Valarr feels it then, fully, without the distance he had tried to maintain before.

He feels desperate.

“I don’t want to go,” he says into his chest, the words catching as they come out, his voice uneven, constricted somewhere in his throat, the pressure of it building behind his eyes without quite breaking through. “Please don’t make me go.” The sentence settles heavily between them, more direct than anything he has said before. “I don’t want to go to Braavos,” Valarr says, the words clearer this time, even if the strain remains.

“Son—”

“I can’t,” he interrupts, the refusal immediate, almost sharp in its urgency, his grip tightening again as if the emphasis alone might be enough to make it understood. “I can’t leave. I want to stay here.” He does not pull back as he says it, does not look up, does not give the words space to soften. “I want to stay with you.”

His father does not push him away and that alone is enough to keep Valarr where he is for a second longer, pressed too close, his grip still tight, his breathing uneven against fabric that does not shift or resist. There is a pause, brief but perceptible, and then Baelor’s hand comes up settling first at the back of his neck in a steadying gesture before guiding him, gently, to pull back just enough to be seen. When Valarr lifts his head, it is only because he is made to, not because he chooses to.

Baelor looks at him fully then, his expression composed, his thumb brushing once across Valarr’s cheek, catching at the dampness that had not quite fallen.

 “You have to go,” he says, his voice low, even, not unkind. He does not rush the words, does not layer them with unnecessary explanation. “You know that.” His hand remains where it is, resting lightly against the side of Valarr’s face, holding his attention in place. “You wanted this,” Baelor continues, quieter now, as if reminding him of something already decided. “You’ve been preparing for it.”

Valarr shakes his head before he can stop himself, the movement small but insistent, his expression tightening as the words land in a way that does not align with what he feels now. “No,” he says, the denial immediate, almost reflexive, his voice still unsteady. “No, I didn’t.” The contradiction comes quickly, pressing forward before he can reconsider it. “You want me to go,” Valarr says, more clearly this time, the thought taking shape as he speaks it aloud, something he had not fully allowed himself to articulate until now. “Not me.” He pulls back just enough to look at him properly, searching his face in a way that feels unfamiliar, as if expecting to find confirmation there. “You don’t want me here,” he adds.

Baelor’s expression shifts, subtly, and his hand moves again, this time more firmly along Valarr’s cheek. “That’s not true,” he says, the response immediate, “That will never be the case.” His gaze does not leave him as he says it, holding it there with quiet insistence. “You are my boy,” Baelor continues, the phrasing careful, each word placed with intention. “You are going because you should, because it is what comes next.”

Valarr tries to close the distance again as soon as he feels it begin to widen, the space between them intolerable now that it has been introduced, and he moves forward without restraint, his hands finding his father again, pulling himself in with a kind of urgency that is no longer controlled. He presses in too close, misaligned, and then he is kissing him—clumsy, not aiming for precision but for contact, his mouth landing wherever it can, the corner of his lips, his cheek, then his mouth again, uneven and insistent, as if repetition might anchor something that is slipping. He does not stop to think about it. He does not give himself the time to reconsider.

Baelor reacts immediately his hands coming up to steady them both, one at Valarr’s shoulder, the other attempting to create space without escalating the movement, guiding rather than pushing, but Valarr does not follow the intention, he resists it, pressing closer instead, and their footing shifts unevenly as a result. Their legs catch against each other, misstep over misstep, until they collide with the small table set near the patio chairs, the impact sharp enough to knock it back into the decorative screen behind it, the sound brief but loud in the quiet. The obstruction traps them there, too close, held in place by the lack of room to move. The table digging in Baelor’s back.

Valarr does not register it beyond the interruption. He leans in again, reaching for him, kissing him once more with the same lack of order, the same urgency, and this time Baelor does not pull away immediately. The contact holds for a second longer, not fully returned. It is not a kiss in any conventional sense, not structured, not reciprocal in the way it should be; it feels closer to a request, something unformed and pressing. Please don’t make me go, Valarr tells himself, as if the thought could transfer through contact.

Baelor allows it only for that moment.

Then he moves, more decisively this time, his hands firm as he separates them, creating distance where there had been none, pulling Valarr back just enough to break the contact completely, to reestablish something that resembles order. His grip rougher.

“Valarr,” he says, his voice lower now. “Not here.”

“Please, dad, I need it,” Valarr feels himself begging, desperate. And something moves inside Baelor. He allows Valarr to take more.

They kiss again—rougher this time—breathing heavily against each other, almost grunting. Maybe his father is trying to eat him alive, he thinks. Valarr would allow it; Valarr would allow so many things from Baelor. The heavy knot in his chest seems to dissipate for a second, and Valarr seeks more—he pulls at his father’s shirt, tries to move, to do something, but Baelor keeps him in place. He tries again, hands clumsy, and he feels his father’s tongue on his, heavy and tasting just like he remembers.

Gods, he wishes to remain like this just for a moment longer.

He manages to grab at the waist of Baelor’s pants and begins pulling, he needs to do things right, he needs to make Baelor understand that he is good, not a problem, not a burden, but his boy. He will always be his boy.

Valarr sinks to his knees, and he holds there for a second longer than necessary, his eyes lifting to meet Baelor’s.

They are the same.

It is always the first thing people notice, as if resemblance itself were a kind of proof, something measurable, something that could not be argued against. The same colors, the same shape, the same way the light catches at the edges. Because he is the firstborn. Because he takes after him.

He searches his father’s expression for something immediate, something clear, but finds instead that same restraint, that same careful distance that never quite disappears, even now, even with him this close, and the absence of it unsettles him more than anger would have.

“I didn’t mean to—” he starts, but the sentence does not hold, it thins out before it can fully take shape, and he has to try again, his voice steadier the second time, more controlled, as if that might make it easier to accept. “I can do better.”

The words come out quickly, almost too quickly, as though they had been waiting there, rehearsed without his noticing. He does not specify what he means by it. He assumes he does not need to.

His hands remain grabbing at his father sleeping pants, though there is a tension in them that suggests movement held back.

“I’ll do it properly,” he adds after a moment, quieter now, more precise, as if narrowing the statement might make it more convincing. “Whatever you need.”

Baelor does not respond immediately, and the pause stretches just long enough for doubt to begin settling in, pressing at the edges of what little certainty Valarr had managed to gather.

He does not look away.

Just say it, Valarr thinks. Tell me it’s enough.

“Valarr…” It is closer to a whisper, breathy and heavy.

Valarr’s hands shake a little, but he doesn’t care; he still manages to pull his father’s pants down and kisses him over his boxers. He buries himself there, and a small part of him feels the worry in his chest disappear when he feels his father already half-hard. When he kisses the bulge again, it’s wet and messy; under the damp cloth, he can start to make out the shape of Baelor’s cock, who is breathing a bit heavier above him. He feels Baelor’s hands on his head—not really guiding the movements, but rather allowing them—and Valarr feels his father’s fingers gently twisting themselves into the longer hair at his nape.

He feels himself getting hard beneath his shorts too and sighs against his father’s growing length. Somehow, this works as a small ritual for Valarr; by surrounding himself with his father—his smell, his skin—he can finally feel grounded. When Baelor holds him in his arms, he knows everything is alright; he knows he hasn’t done anything wrong.

He pulls his father’s underwear down and opens his mouth expectantly, his tongue half out as he looks at his father. There is a pause; maybe things would be easier if he were the one taking his father in with his own hands. But he needs it this way—he needs Baelor to give it to him. And when Baelor finally does, grabbing himself and guiding his cock slowly into Valarr’s mouth, heavy and musky, Valarr closes his eyes and lets it stay there.

Valarr swallows around it and breathes through his nose, his hands twitching at his sides, not really knowing where to put them.

Baelor is allowing him to remain exactly where he is without interruption. The absence of resistance registers more strongly than anything else, and Valarr leans into that absence, into the permission implied in it, letting it guide him into something quieter, something more contained. His thoughts, which had been scattered, begin to narrow into something simpler, more manageable, as if the act of being accepted into that space, however conditional, removes the need to question himself so urgently.

It is easier like this, he realizes, easier to follow rather than anticipate, to respond rather than question, to let himself be shaped by what is allowed instead of trying to determine what should be.

It is in his father’s hands where he finds something that resembles relief, something that allows him, for a moment, to stop resisting himself.

He hums around it when his father finally begins to move; his thrusts are slow and shallow. Father is being careful with him, Valarr realizes. He feels the saltiness on his tongue and he can’t help but follow the shape with his tongue, letting saliva pool in his mouth alongside it. Baelor grunts quietly above him, and that gives him a surge of confidence; he lifts his left hand and grabs the base of Baelor’s cock, slowly taking it out of his mouth just to lick it from root to tip, spending more time than needed on the head.

Baelor pulls slightly at his hair, it feels like a warning of some kind, though not a scolding.

Valarr continues; he kisses it and takes it again, bobbing his head until he is choking on it. His father’s grip tightens on his hair, and he feels Baelor bucks his hips, losing some of the control that so often characterizes him. Valarr moans at that, and he moans again when Baelor starts to fuck his mouth, chasing his own orgasm. Valarr is fully hard by now, leaking onto his shorts; a wet spot forming where he clearly had forsaken underwear. He does not think about himself in that moment, not in any way that matters, because whatever space he might have occupied internally is overtaken entirely by the realization that his father is no longer holding back. There is relief in it, in being reduced to something functional, something that does not require interpretation.

The grip tightens again, more noticeably this time, and Valarr does not mistake it for anything gentle, nor does he expect it to be, because this, too, feels like part of it, part of what he had been trying to reach, the moment where his father stops dividing his attention, stops moderating himself, and allows something more singular to take over. It is not balanced, not mutual, not something that considers Valarr beyond what he is already doing.

For a moment, Baelor exhales sharply above him and Valarr feels it settle into him like a confirmation he had been waiting for, something that quiets the last of his doubt.

Baelor comes with a low grunt, trying to keep himself quiet just in case, and Valarr, as expected, swallows it.

He takes what his father gives him and sinks back, settling onto his legs even as he remains on his knees, still looking up at him, unwilling or perhaps unable to break the line of sight now that he has it. His chest rises and falls unevenly, the rhythm not yet steady, and he is aware of the heat in his face, of his flushed cheeks, of the lingering sensitivity in his lips, still swollen and covered in spit and some leftover cum, still marked by what just passed. There is a lightness in his head that makes everything feel slightly distant, as if the moment is still catching up to him, and yet his focus remains fixed, almost rigidly so, on Baelor, who stands above him breathing heavily, a faint sheen of sweat visible at his temple, at the edge of his hairline. Valarr does not look away.

Baelor reaches for him then, hands settling at his shoulders and lifts him up with an ease that makes Valarr suddenly aware of his own body again, of how unsteady he feels, how his legs do not quite respond the way they should when he tries to stand, how hard and needy he feels. There is a brief moment where he has to rely on him entirely, where balance is not something he can maintain on his own, and he does not resist that either. His knees feel weak, almost unreliable beneath him.

“I—” he begins, the word forming without direction, without a clear intention behind it, and he stops just as quickly, because he realizes he does not know what he means to say, whether there is anything he is supposed to say at all, whether speaking would clarify something.

“Valarr, my dear boy,” Baelor says, and there is something in his voice that Valarr struggles to place, something softer than before, something that almost resembles pity, or perhaps care, something that treats him as though he is fragile in a way he does not quite recognize in himself but feels nonetheless under the weight of it. It makes him still. It makes him listen.

Baelor brushes his fringe back with a slow, absent motion, fingers passing through his hair as though to settle it, and then pulls him in closer, not hesitantly, not distantly, but into a real embrace, one that holds. Valarr allows himself to lean into it without thinking, his body fitting into the space given to him, his head tilting just enough to follow the movement when his father presses a kiss to his hair, to the top of his head, and begins murmuring something low and soft against him.

“Go get some rest, alright? We’ll talk tomorrow… you don’t have to figure anything out tonight.”

Valarr says yes against his neck, the word muffled and barely formed but he does not make any real effort to move until his father begins walking back toward the house, and only then does he follow, a step behind, his body still carrying that strange, unsteady lightness that has not fully left him. Before going to his room, he turns into the bathroom without thinking too much about it, his mind still clouded, and turns the shower on, setting it immediately to cold. He steps under the water and exhales slowly, willing his boner to go away and his body to settle, to return to something easier to manage.

He breathes in deeply a couple of times, pressing his forehead against the tiled wall, the cold surface grounding in a way the rest of him is not, while the water runs down his back in sharp, almost stinging lines, leaving his skin dulled rather. His hands curl into fists at his sides, tightening and then holding there, his eyes closed as he focuses on the rhythm of his breathing, on the effort of keeping it even. He needs to learn to control himself, Valarr thinks.

By the time he steps out of the shower, he feels closer to something stable, not entirely steady but functional enough, and he reaches for his shorts, pausing when he notices the faint stain of pre-cum left on the fabric, visible enough to make him hesitate for a second longer than necessary. He pushes the thought aside quickly, shoving them down as far as possible into the bottom of the laundry basket and then pulls on a clean pair of underwear before heading back to his room without stopping again.

Matarys is still there, curled up in his bed in a tight, self-contained shape, undisturbed, breathing evenly, completely removed from everything that has just happened, and Valarr watches him for only a second before lying down on his own side, not allowing himself to linger on it, not allowing himself to think too much about anything at all. The exhaustion catches up to him quickly, heavier now that everything else has settled, pulling at his eyelids.

When he falls asleep, he does not dream.

The morning wakes him in a wash of brightness filtering through the curtains, the light too bright in opposition to the heaviness of his mood. Matarys is out of bed almost immediately the moment he hears movement from downstairs while Valarr stays where he is, forcing himself into stillness, squeezing his eyes shut with a pressure that borders on painful, as if he could hold the morning off a little longer by refusing to meet it.

He cannot think of a single acceptable excuse to stay in Westeros, not one that would hold under even the slightest scrutiny, and the thought of having to see his father, to speak to him, to construct something coherent out of what feels like nothing more than resistance and fear, makes something in him tighten further. He turns over possibilities in his head, one after the other, but each of them collapses almost immediately, sounding weak, indulgent, insufficient even to his own ears, let alone his father’s. They all reduce to the same thing—caprice, avoidance—and Valarr knows it, which only makes the frustration worse as he presses his face into the pillow and lets out a low, contained groan. Braavos has lodged itself somewhere inside him, a presence that feels physical, like a knot pulled tight in his stomach, something he carries as he walks from room to room, and he is suddenly aware of how much he resents it, how much he resents himself for not having made more of the time before it became inevitable. What was he supposed to enjoy, exactly, Valarr thinks. Being able to look at his father without feeling like something is about to break loose in his throat? How was he meant to know?

He considers, briefly but with a kind of quiet intensity, going to his father’s room, slipping into his bed without a word, pressing himself into his chest the way he used to when he was younger, when things were simpler, or at least felt that way, but the thought collapses almost as soon as it forms. His father is already awake, he is certain of it, and even if he weren’t, Valarr knows it would not be allowed, not really, not in the way he wants it, because even if Baelor let him stay in his bed, even if he did not send him away immediately, he would not let him forget, would not let him close his eyes and disappear into it, not without reminding him that he still has to leave.

By the time he makes his way downstairs, he settles at the breakfast counter without any real intention of eating or speaking, his presence there more habitual than deliberate. Aerion and Daeron are already there, and Valarr’s gaze moves between them without quite meaning to, catching on small details he would not usually linger on, like the fact that Daeron is still wearing the same sleep shirt from the day before, now without the button-down layered over it, the fabric slightly wrinkled. Aerion, by contrast, is wearing a black band t-shirt Valarr does not recognize, something faded and probably chosen for effect. Marilda offers him something to drink as she sets down a tray of pastries between them, and Aerion reaches for one almost immediately, while Valarr only shakes his head in refusal, though from the corner of his eye he notices that she prepares another cup of tea anyway.

His attention settles, without much resistance, on Aerion’s hands, because they are the only thing in the room that seem to move with any kind of energy, fingers tapping, shifting, reaching, and he notices the faint traces of what looks like black nail polish still clinging unevenly to his nails. He wonders, briefly, whether Maekar had made him remove it before coming here, and the thought develops on its own into an image that feels too harsh—Maekar gripping Aerion’s fingers, pressing acetone-soaked cotton against them with more force than necessary, enough to strip the color and sting the skin beneath it. He wonders if that is what it feels like to be Maekar’s son.

Aerion reaches for the small cinnamon shaker and adds several spoonfuls into his tea without hesitation, and when he looks up, he catches Valarr watching him, one brow lifting slightly, something like a brief, almost genuine smile passing across his face before it settles again.

“It makes you taste better,” Aerion says as he closes the lid, casual. “You know, there…” He leaves the rest unsaid, but the meaning is clear enough, and Valarr understands immediately. It makes cum taste better.

Daeron’s laughter breaks against the surface of his black coffee, abrupt enough that it spills slightly over the rim, and he leans back in his chair with exaggerated disbelief.

“Who’s even going to suck your dick? We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

Aerion scoffs, taking the comment with visible offense as he lifts his cup. “The Tyrells are staying nearby. Matarys told me.”

“Oh yeah?” Daeron laughs again, louder this time. “Which Tyrell is gonna suck you off? Please.”

“What do you know about dick sucking anyway?” Aerion shoots back, and there is something almost childish in the edge of his tone, something quick and reactive. “Can you even get it up?” he adds before biting into the pastry.

“Oh, fuck off,” Daeron dismisses him easily, already standing, already done with the exchange as he takes his coffee and moves away from the table.

Valarr watches as Aerion follows suit in his own way, shifting over to the couch and picking up an iPad with a bright red case covered in stickers—Aegon’s, most likely, because he doubts Aerion is allowed his own phone—and without any concern for the quiet of the house, he starts playing something at full volume, filling the space with noise that feels out of place but not entirely unexpected.

Valarr lets his gaze linger on him for a moment longer before it drops back to the small cinnamon shaker left behind on the counter.

From the end of the hallway, he can hear his father’s voice, and his uncle’s, both approaching, their conversation still indistinct but close enough to register, and without fully thinking it through, his fingers close around the shaker.

The servants should have known better than to bring out the black.

The yard behind the stables was still blue with morning when the stallion tore the tether free. One moment, he was standing, gleaming and restive beneath the groom’s hand; the next, his head snapped up, ears cutting the air, nostrils flaring at something only he could scent in the cold. The white steam of his breath gusted once. Twice.

Then he exploded.

The steed shot upwards, its front hooves flailing against the pale sky, and the groom cried out, stumbling backward as the leather strap seared through his grip. He came down awkwardly, the stallion, in a half-turned, half-twisted motion, his rear end bunching as if to propel him forward. The tether, looped through a hoop in the post, tugged sharply, resisted for a moment, and then snapped free, its iron ring echoing loudly against the wood.

“Easy, Drogon,” Baelor said, his voice cutting through the air, his feet already sending him onward with an automatic urgency. The steed’s eyes rolled white, catching the pale autumn light. He danced sideways, shoulder striking an empty cask hard enough to overturn it, muddy water sloshing over the packed earth.

A kitchen boy, hurrying across the yard with a basket full of wood, stopped dead in the animal’s way.

“Move!” Baelor barked.

He didn’t. The stallion reared up, the loose leather whipping behind it with a sharp crack, and then bolted forward with an angry snort. With a gust of wind, the boy’s basket was knocked from his hands, and sticks and bark tumbled across the cobblestones a heartbeat later. By the time Baelor reached the fence, the horse was already in full flight, black flank slick with cold sweat, tail streaming.

“Close the south gate!” someone shouted.

“Too late, he’s past—”

Hooves hammered over stone, then muffled as they hit the softer earth beyond. In a breath, the stallion was gone: a streak of black cutting through the mist, vanishing toward the tree line. Silence fell in his wake, thick and embarrassed. The air stank of churned mud and animal fear. A couple of chickens, disturbed from their pecking, took flight briefly before landing again with disgruntled squawks. The kitchen boy stood in the middle of it, chest heaving, splinters of kindling at his feet.

Baelor’s eyes blazed as he spun to confront the stablehand, his knuckles whitening on the sword hilt, a silent promise of pain in the air.

“What were you thinking?” he snapped. “You know he spooks at sudden noise, and you bring him out when they’re beating barrels? Gods, Gerren, I told you—”

The man blanched, broad face folding in on itself. “My prince, I—I checked the yard was clear—”

“It plainly was not.” The words came out too sharp, each one like a thrown bit of gravel. “That horse is worth more than—”

He stopped himself there, jaw locking. The kitchen boy had flinched at his first shout. Now he stood stiff, gaze fixed on the ground, fists curled in the air above his empty basket. A flush crept up his neck and onto his face, a warm, spreading tide that made his skin tight and his eyes sting.

The anger pulsed within Baelor, ricocheting off his ribs and shattering against his inner resolve. He drew a slow breath, long enough that it smoked visibly in the chill. He released it through his nose, pressing two fingers briefly to the bridge of it. His pulse thudded once, twice, then steadied.

“My temper was for the horse,” he said, this time quieter. “Not for you.”

Gerren shifted, uncertain. The kitchen boy risked a glance up and then away again.

Baelor softened his tone deliberately, the way a rider relaxes his hands on the reins. “No harm was meant. I know that.” He looked back toward the open gate, where the mist was lifting over the fields beyond; the low rise of the woods already a solid, dark line. “But a lot has been put into him.”

Baelor didn’t say years. He didn’t mention that the powerful stallion, a creature of untamed energy, was the only consistent presence in his life, bridging the gap between the thunderous tourney fields and the suffocating, oppressive halls of court. That when everything else required a posture, a word, a calculated smile, the horse had required only consistency. A steady hand. Honesty.

“He’s my favourite,” Baelor said instead, the admission feeling bare in his mouth. “We must retrieve him.”

“We’ll send men at once, my prince,” Gerren offered, half eager, half anxious. “Four riders, maybe five. The wood’s edge is—”

Baelor’s mouth tightened. The edges of the local woods were a hungry place, a place that consumed anything unable to navigate its paths.

“I’ll lead the search,” Baelor said.

Gerren stared at him. “Your Grace, with respect—”

“I am not yet king,” Baelor cut him gently. “And I am not sending anyone chasing him who cannot read when he’s about to bolt again.” He looked back towards the forest, observing the Riverlands mist gathering in the hollows, its white tendrils weaving through the trees and its grey form clinging to the branches.

“Saddle another mount. Light and quick. We’ll stay to the edges.”

“As you say, my prince.”

Baelor reached down, picked a fallen sliver of kindling from beside the boy’s boot, and set it back into the basket himself before straightening.

“The fault was mine,” he addressed the boy, meeting his eyes just long enough to make the words stick. “I startled him as much as any of you.”

The boy’s throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. “Yes, my prince.”

Baelor’s shoulders slumped as he turned toward the gate, the biting wind chilling him to the bone and a hollow ache settling in his chest. His jaw set with determination. Behind his composed profile, the thought gnawed: a black stallion, loose in Whispering Wood, his training undone in a heartbeat.

It was a familiar feeling.

The forest woke differently from the castle.

It did not clang or chatter. It exhaled.

Mist hung in the lower branches like breath held between teeth, a pale film clinging to the undergrowth and sinking into hollows where last year’s leaves lay in damp, matted layers. Above, the canopy filtered the weak, late-autumn light into thin, greenish ribbons that slanted down across trunks, interrupted by patches of moss, old wounds, and the deep, vertical lines etched by time.

You moved through it with familiar ease, like entering a room where the quiet hum of conversation had only paused for your return. Your boots sank half an inch into the leaf mould with each step, making a soft, sucking sound. The cold seeped up through the soles, a clean, metallic chill that bit pleasantly at your toes. Your trousers, damp to the knee from the dew-wet ferns you had pushed through earlier, clung to your calves and thighs.

Your attire suited the surroundings, not the observers: a dark riding surcoat, belted snugly over a linen shirt, wool trousers tucked into scuffed boots, and a cloak the color of wet bark draped open and loose from your shoulders. The only bright thing on you was the small weirwood-and-raven brooch at your throat, the Blackwood sigil dulled by age and touch.

Even though the morning had barely begun, stains already marked your gloves. The smaller basket on your arm cradled the spoils: pale, fleshy discs of oyster mushrooms arranged as if they were scales of some soft, subterranean fish; a cluster of chanterelles, their undersides finely ridged; a single, perfect hen of the woods, dense and layered like a ruffled fan, pried carefully from the base of an old oak. Mushrooms told on the forest as well as tracks.

You knelt beside a rotting log; the wood long gone to sponge under your palm. A scatter of tiny, translucent caps trembled there, almost invisible until you leaned close. You did not touch them. They emitted a faint shimmer, an oily sheen that caught the fog-filtered light, creating an unsettling, in a way, wrong feeling.

“Not you,” you murmured, more to yourself than to them. “You’d have my liver for breakfast.”

You straightened, knees damp, and let your eyes travel. Everywhere you looked, something had left its mark. The story of the place was etched into its marks, twists, and empty spaces. A sapling, twisted unnaturally and snapped at the top, bore witness to passing deer during last rut’s mating season, their antlers snagging and tearing. A darker, smoother patch on the bark of a beech, greasy with the rub of a bear’s flank months ago, now drying to a dull, scabbed sheen. Higher up, four long, parallel scars sank deep into the trunk, the width of them and the smoothness of their edges saying claws rather than blades. On another oak, the grey bark had been stripped in a lengthy, clean swath for nesting fibres;

Beneath your feet, the earth was freshly disturbed, marked by the distinct tracks of hooves, larger ones, forming a trail that led toward the babbling stream, showing a small herd of deer had recently passed. You read the depth, the spread, the slight drag of a back hoof and stored it away without effort. The Whispering Wood was a book you had been reading since childhood. Every morning you stepped into it was another page, another short paragraph added to a lifelong story. The chapter today was veiled in mist, its edges sharp with a slice of cold, and carried the earthy scent of soaked foliage, ancient bark, and a subtle, metallic undertone. Early autumn. The leaves had only just begun to turn, tips tinged yellow, a few bronzed scouts already fallen and dotted with mould. The air was thick enough that each breath felt like drinking; it lay on the back of your tongue, damp and green.

You had spotted a promising ring of mushrooms at the base of a hornbeam, their caps brown and rounded, not too glossy, the gills neat, when the forest offered you something else.

The first thing that caught your eye was a flicker of motion, an anomaly. Not the quick, countless flickers of birds, or the furtive scurrying of small things in the undergrowth. This was heavier, a deeper disturbance. A shadow slid between two oaks at the edge of your vision, then vanished behind the white veil of low-lying fog. You turned, one hand easing the birch bark basket closer against your hip, the other dropping instinctively to the knife at your belt—not because you meant to use it, but because your body liked the reassurance of steel. For a moment, there was nothing. Just mist and trees and the quiet drip of condensed fog falling from a high branch.

Then he stepped out.

For a heartbeat, you truly wondered if you had misjudged the strange little cluster by the log. That some treacherous cap had slipped into your basket and was now blooming hallucinogenic visions within your bloodstream.

The stallion materialised out of the grey as a piece of night undone. He was big: taller than most northern stock by a hand and more—but what struck you first was not his size or noble frame. It was the way he held himself, even in panic. He was all clean lines and hard curves: long neck arched, the crest thick with a mane as black and glossy as the rest of him; shoulders falling into a deep, powerful chest; back short and strong, croup sloping into a tail that hung like a sheet of obsidian silk. His coat was a deep black that seemed to absorb all light and trap it underneath, but even through the grime of dried sweat and mud, a subtle sheen remained, glistening in dark, inky patches on his sides.

He looked like something bred in a place that believed in perfection as a sacred duty.

The saddle on his back confirmed it. You knew leather; you knew what coin could buy. This was not some lordling’s best. This was royal. Dark, supple leather, too fine to squeak, too well-used to shine, moulded precisely to a single rider’s seat. Silver mounts and buckles chased with dragons and flames, tarnished now with dirt, glinting dully where branches and old bark had scored them. One strap had a fresh, ugly scrape, the leather abraded white where it had kissed something rough at speed. The flap of the saddlebag bore a small, distinctive stamp: a three-headed dragon in relief.

Your lungs burned, reminding you that you had unknowingly held your breath.

“Brackens be damned,” you muttered, almost amused despite yourself. “Either I picked the wrong mushroom, or some Targaryen princeling has misplaced a very expensive piece of horseflesh gifted on his name-day.”

The stallion saw you at the same moment.

He checked, hooves skidding a fraction in the leaf mulch, head snapping back. His ears went flat. The whites of his eyes showed, a rim of stark, startled moon around the dark. His body thrummed with a tense, coiled dread, a feeling that felt like it was burning through him, more suited for a creature built for flight than for combat. Something had chased him. His flank muscles quivered, and faint, straight scratches marred the skin above his hock, too shallow for serious wounds but too defined for brambles, betraying its presence. Claws? Branches? A boar’s tusk? He smelled of sweat and fear and the cold, metallic tang of water—a stream, probably, crossed in panic.

You did not move toward him at once. Instead, you lowered your eyes a fraction, softening your shoulders, letting your body fall into the loose, non-threatening posture you used on half-wild colts and offended hunting dogs. You shifted your weight deliberately, the crunch of your boots on the fallen leaves a slight, familiar sound he noticed.

“Easy,” you whispered, as if he were an old friend you’d surprised in a compromising position. Your voice sounded small in the vastness between the trunks, but it was steady. “I’m as out of place as you are, I promise.”

He snorted, a sharp, uncertain noise, and danced sideways, the reins trailing, catching briefly on a low fern and then slipping free. The bit clinked softly against his teeth. His front hooves lifted an inch, came down again. He wanted to rear, but he’d run out of outrage somewhere between the castle and here. What was left was nervous energy and the edge of exhaustion.

You slipped the basket from your arm and set it down carefully on a patch of moss, making a point of letting him observe the movement. Then, keeping your hands where his eye could track them, you reached into the leather pouch at your belt.

“You came a long way to the wrong wood, handsome,” you said, fingers closing around the cool, familiar shape of the apple you’d tucked there out of habit before leaving. “Let’s see if southern princelings feed you the same as northern ladies do.”

You brought the fruit out slowly. Red over green, a little bruised on one side. The horse’s ears twitched toward the front, then back again, indecisive. His nostrils flared, catching the scent. You took a step forward. Then another. Not directly at him, that would be a predator’s approach, but on a slight angle, letting your path arc closer rather than cutting straight. His glinting black pearls tracked you, head tilting with minute precision.

“Smells better than fear, doesn’t it?” you breathed. “Come on.”

At three paces, he stiffened. You stopped. The mist between you thinned, then thickened again as a stray draught moved through the undergrowth, bringing with it the faint sound of a crow’s distant complaint. You extended your hand. The apple sat on your palm, your fingers flat so your knuckles wouldn’t feel like teeth. For a long, taut moment, nothing happened.

Then he stepped in.

It was small, a half-step, as though he were ready to bolt the instant he smelled something wrong, but it was toward you. His muzzle dipped, the delicate, whiskered skin of his upper lip quivering as he investigated. The warm puff of his breath washed over your fingers. He brushed the apple, a slight jolt running up your arm, and then held it, his teeth brushing your palm with a sting that was sharp but safe. You let him have it, resisting the urge to flinch. A flinch at this moment would tell him you were just as unsure as he was.

“There,” you said in a soothing tone, as he crunched. The apple’s crisp echoed, ripples of sound spreading in the muffled morning, crunch after crunch. A piece of apple fell, bounced in the leaves; he nosed it up, less polite now that the first barrier had broken. “See? Not all strangers mean to drive you into trees.”

While he chewed, you extended your hand with deliberate accuracy, letting your fingers caress the moist, velvety texture of his neck. He tensed, eyes flashing white again, then seemed to decide that the sweetness in his mouth outweighed the new intrusion. His skin twitched once under your fingers, but did not pull away. Up near at hand, you could see the faint ripple of his heartbeat in the hollow of his throat. It matched, almost absurdly, the thud in your own chest. You ran your palm along the muscle, feeling the way it bunched and eased under your touch. He smelled of leather and sweat and something faintly smoky: familiar stable straw, perhaps, or the lingering ghost of the yard. Presence of the royals at Raventree Hall was foreseen, a strategic move in their Riverlands campaign, though their swift arrival caught you off guard. Your thumb snagged on the rough, slightly raised edge of a recent scratch near his side. You hissed softly through your teeth, sympathetic.

“Whoever frightened you is getting their ears boxed,” you told him. “If they have any sense left after your master is done with them.”

Master. Rider. Dragon.

Your gaze slid to the saddle again, to the small, scuffed sigil on the leather. Three heads, one body. Red on black, even under the mud. Of all the horses in all the woods in all the kingdoms, a royal Targaryen stallion had walked out of the morning mist into your reach, dripping black dread and pride in equal measure. You laid your forehead briefly against his neck, feeling the warmth there through the biting air, the way you sometimes did with the big wolfhounds at home when they came in from a hunt, trembling with leftover adrenaline.

“All right,” you said, more to him than to the gods who’d arranged this ridiculous gift. “Let’s find the princeling who was foolish enough to lose you.”

A soft chuckle escaped your nostrils. “Clearly, they were far more adept on dragons than on horseback.”

You gathered the reins, feeling the weight of the fine leather in your hand, and swung into the saddle in one smooth, practiced movement, the way you had mounted onto a hundred lesser horses since you were little. The stallion danced under you for two steps, testing, then settled when your seat settled, when your thighs and calves closed around him with the firm, unafraid contact he understood. From up here, the forest looked different. The mist was a little thinner. The trunks seemed less like pillars and more like markers on a road you hadn’t known you were riding until now. You clicked your tongue once, low and encouraging.

“Show me the way, then. You know where you came from. I’ll see you back.”

He exhaled, a sound akin to a sigh, and then faced the distant scents of smoke, man, and stone. With a gentle lightness in your hand, the reins guided him as he stepped down, his sure footing a promise as he bore you from the forest towards the life intended for him. You, astride a dragon’s black stallion, a steed reserved only for the royal family, vanished into the fog with him.

A woman in hunting clothes with a basket full of mushrooms and no skirts to trip her, riding a creature that was destined to bear no one but a prince.

By the time the shout erupted, Baelor had worn a path into the yard.

The search yielded results slowly and in fragments: first came two riders, their clothes caked in mud and their faces grim, already offering apologies before dismounting. An hour later, another pair arrived, their broken branches and scraped shins bearing silent witness to their failed attempt. The mist, thick and clinging, spread low over the fields as the sun rose, pooling along the fence line like spilled milk and resisting the morning’s warmth. At this point, the edge of it sat twenty yards beyond the open stable gate, a soft, grey wall. The forest further on might as well have been a separate realm.

Baelor stood facing it, cloak drawn close against the damp, jaw set hard enough that a muscle jumped now and then at the hinge. The sound of other horses’ hooves, a dull clop on the packed earth, followed him as the search party dismounted, their tack jingling with that defeated, hollow noise animals make when their riders are lost.

“He will not have gone far, my prince,” Gerren tried, from somewhere at his shoulder.

Baelor did not answer at once. His eyes were on the mist. In his mind, the steed’s dark form ghosted through the trees, a silent, aching reminder of a joy now lost. Every snapped branch, every unseen dip in the ground replayed as a break, a fall, a shattered leg. Having witnessed the plight of many broken horses, he found it difficult to design any other outcome. Baelor swallowed, the taste of sour worry heavy on his tongue.

“Send for hounds this afternoon if he’s not back by—”

“Your Grace!”

The call cracked across the yard like a whip.

A younger groom’s voice, a nervous, wavering sound teetering between fear and excitement, reached you. Baelor’s head snapped toward him, irritation flaring; then he saw where the boy was pointing.

The mist.

Initially, the fog alone was present, swirling as a gentle breeze meandered through the trees. The shape coalesced within its darkness—a towering figure, moving with a slow, rhythmic rise and fall, far removed from the panicked, headlong flight of a galloping horse.

A black stallion emerged from the cool grey.

He came at a trot, neck arched, ears pricked. Mud speckled his legs to the knee and flecked his underside; the fine leather of the saddle stained and scored along one side, but his movement was clean: no hitch, no favouring of a leg. Each hoof landed strong and sure.

A faint, ragged sigh escaped Baelor’s lips, a sound he made no effort to hide.

Then he saw you.

For a heartbeat, his mind rejected the image: a trick of mist, some strange mirage conjured by exhaustion and worry. No one rode that horse. No one had ever ridden that horse but me. He had broken the stallion himself under the eye of the master of horse, with more bruises and more pride at stake than he would ever admit.

But you were there—on top of him.

You sat astride as if you had been born that way: hips moulded to the saddle, thighs close around the horse’s barrel, weight balanced in the easy, unconscious manner of someone who does not need to think about the body beneath, because you had always known how to listen to its natural rhythm. Each step of the steed's trot carried you forward and back in a smooth, unbroken motion, your pelvis rocking with the creature’s tempo, not fighting it.

Your cloak—dark, heavy wool—hung open and soaked, hem darkened to near-black where it had dragged through wet undergrowth, clinging in damp folds around your thighs. Your trousers were worse: plastered to your legs up to the knee, the fabric moulded to the shape of muscle and bone, showing the clean line of your calves, the flex of your knees as you absorbed the movement—details he’d memorized a hundred times on horses, never on a woman.

A smear of dirt streaked one of your cheeks, where you must have brushed at it with the back of a hand. Your hair had come loose from whatever braid it had started the morning in. Sodden strands of it, cool against your skin, clung to your temples and neck. You shed all ladylike pretense, appearing as if the very essence of the forest had mounted the horse.

The stallion’s ears flickered, yet he remained unfazed by the sounds and quick motions. As you moved from the soft earth to the firm, hollow sound of hooves on packed yard, he lessened his pace of his own volition, his trot softening to a walk beneath your hand with no visible or audible signal.

Baelor sensed a shift in the stable’s atmosphere, a hushed, collective breath as everyone present: grooms, stableboys, and riders alike—turned their heads to witness the object of the prince’s captivated gaze.

“Who,” Baelor said, and his own voice surprised him. It came out low, rougher than he had intended. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Who is on top of my stallion?”

“Lady Blackwood, Your Grace,” Gerren answered at once, half awe, half disbelief.

More than any title could, the name embodied what he was seeing.

You drew the horse to a halt a few yards from Baelor with a light hand on the reins, the creature’s warm breath puffing in short, contented clouds, not the harsh, stuttering pant of panic. As you turned in the saddle, your eyes found his.

In that instant, the yard dissolved into a narrow, airy passage directly between you.

A dark, assured look settled in your eyes; then a swift, scrutinizing gaze swept across Baelor’s face, followed by a steady, unwavering stare that caused a knot to form beneath his ribs. You took him in the way you take in a horse: not the colour of the coat, but the posture, how the weight was carried, the tension in the jaw.

He discovered, with a flicker of anxiety, that he did not know what you saw.

Then you broke the gaze yourself with an economical movement, swinging your right leg over the steed’s back and dropping lightly to the ground. Your boots met the flat surface with a gentle thud, your knees instinctively softening the landing. For a heartbeat, your hips were level with the horse’s—a straight line of woman and animal—and then you stepped away, the long, wet fall of your cloak separating you.

Your hands stayed.

You turned back to the horse immediately, fingers going up to his jaw, along the line where cheek met neck. His ears flicked back, then forward again, mildly curious but unafraid. Baelor couldn’t quite make out your hushed words, a sound more than meaning, as the horse lowered its head, the hard ridge of its nose nestling into your palm as if it recognized the touch.

“Such a good boy,” you breathed, half coo, half praise, soft enough that it felt indecent to overhear. Your lips softened around the words, going round and full, your mouth almost a pout as you pressed a quick kiss to the damp, velvety patch between his nostrils. “Easy, easy. This one is feisty,” you added, fingers scratching lightly at the base of his mane. “But absolutely, rightfully so.”

The creature closed his eyes briefly, the long lashes fluttering once against your skin. He had never done that for anyone, barely even tolerated the master of horse. He allowed Baelor and no other.

Baelor realised his hand had clenched, unthinking, around the edge of the stable doorway. Wood bit into his palm at the exact moment his mind chose to remember how firmly your legs must have gripped the saddle—and refused to grant him any kinder image.

“Lady Blackwood,” he said, forcing his fingers to relax. The name tasted unfamiliar, though he knew the house: rivers, ravens, the poisoned tree, old kings in the ancient castle that had bent the knee late and grudgingly, but aided Aegon the Conqueror, regardless. “I assume this is my horse. Drogon.”

You turned your head back toward him, one hand still on the Drogon’s neck, the other resting flat against his cheek as if to reassure the animal you wouldn’t stray too far.

“Yes, I would assume so, my prince,” your voice, a deep rumble with that unmistakable Riverlands cadence, lent a deliberate, thoughtful weight to every word you uttered. “I did not think he belonged to the village dairyman.”

The yard’s edge rippled with a brief, choked-off sound of laughter. A smile tugged at Baelor’s lips, threatening treason, but he kept his face schooled.

“He was startled,” you continued with a plain tone and no smile in sight, thumbing at a smear of mud on the Drogon’s jaw as you spoke. “Far from here, in the wild parts of the woods, where the stream bends and the old beeches grow close together. The ground was torn where he’d skidded; there were fresh claw marks on some trunks.” You glanced at the long, shallow scores along his flank. “He took a few branches, maybe something with tusks, but no more. His hooves are whole. Knees and ankles intact. No heat, no swelling that I felt.”

Your fingers had run up and down the tendon as you said it, gentle, testing, fingers spreading then coming together. The intimacy of the touch—precise and skilled and yet soft—made the words land with double weight. Baelor’s gaze stayed on your palm for a bit too long, a moment of distraction his mind couldn’t justify, his lips pressing together as he swallowed.

“The saddle is scratched,” you added as if you were responsible while brushing the thumb over a raw strip where the leather had turned pale. “But that matters less than the precious thing beneath it.”

“The scratches are of no consequence,” Baelor said, a feeling so true it would have seemed alien to him an hour earlier. His eyes were on the Drogon’s legs, tracing the familiar lines, checking every fetlock, every joint for the faintest hitch. There was none. “Leather can be replaced.”

You nodded once, satisfied with the answer.

“He is a beautiful creature,” you said. “I have never seen one quite like him.”

Pride burned through Baelor then, hot and swift and embarrassing. He felt it flare in his chest like a coal teased by a hidden draft.

“He is Prince Baelor’s pride and joy,” Gerren put in, half eager, half still a little afraid. “Bred from royal stock across the Narrow Sea, they say.”

You glanced between the man and the beast again, as if measuring the claim.

“It was a privilege to ride him,” you said, and there was a flicker of something like mischief in your eyes now, quickly smoothed over. “Even in such circumstances.” You paused, and for the first time a hint of conventional courtesy slipped into your tone, though it sat oddly, like silk over mail. “And I apologise in advance for doing so without your leave, my prince. He was too far in and too unsettled to lead on foot all the way. The path back is long. And,” you added, almost as an afterthought, “roadless.”

The emphasis on the last word was mild, but it made Baelor’s mind draw unhelpful pictures of your inner thighs tightening around the stallion’s sides, squeezing the saddle, as Drogon picked his way through roots and ruts, your hips smoothly shifting with each unpredictable dip, cloak dragging in briars, damp hem slapping against your boots with an unexpected sound.

“It is… unseen,” he said slowly, pulling his thoughts back into order, “that he lets anyone ride him. Besides me.” His eyes dropped to Drogon’s muzzle, where the animal was now lip-searching your sleeve for more apple with the greedy assurance of a beast that had decided someone belonged to him. “However, he appears tranquil in your presence.”

“Lady Blackwood is the best horsebreaker and trainer in the Riverlands, your Grace. Forgive my intrusion,” Gerren said fervently, as if the words themselves might ward off the prince’s anger. “Bless the Gods, Old and New, she found him. Should another person mount your stallion, it would undoubtedly be our gifted Lady Blackwood.”

The words hung in the air, charged with a significance that wasn’t intended by Gerren. Baelor’s ears picked up on every subtle implication and resented the way his body agreed with all of them, a pang of annoyance at its willing response.

Horsebreaker. Best in the Riverlands. Calming something too wild for anyone else. Feisty, but rightfully so. Riding without permission because the path was long and roadless.

Baelor’s mouth went dry. He sensed the intensity of numerous eyes darting between his face, your expression, and Drogon; every man in the yard heard the same echo, a sound that resonated within them, yet they all strained to maintain stoic expressions.

You seemed, for a heartbeat, to hear it too. Your brow lifted a fraction. Instead of looking away, you met Baelor’s eyes full on, one corner of your mouth curling in the barest suggestion of a smile that was not quite polite.

“If it consoles you, my prince,” you said, fingers still stroking the stallion’s neck, “he did make me work for it.”

It should not have felt like a confession. It did.

Baelor’s throat worked. The word ‘privilege’ lodged somewhere unhelpful. For one, sudden, unprincely instant he wondered whether the horse had been the only one. He caught himself, smoothed his face, and inclined his head.

“Then I am doubly in your debt, Lady Blackwood,” he said. “For bringing my friend back to me. And for managing what no one else has.”

The political matter had taken three days. Again.

Baelor had sat through two dinners, one arbitration over river rights that had been festering since his grandfather’s reign, and a very long afternoon listening to Lord Blackwood and Lord Bracken explain, with the thin courtesy of men who had been killing each other’s great grandfathers since before the Conquest, why the other one was wrong. He mediated with the patience and precision of a seasoned prince, understanding his regal presence subtly influenced conversations, a tool as potent as any blade.

Baelor had done all of this. He had done it well. He always did it well.

On the second morning, as mist settled low over the Blackwood courtyard, he stood at the guest quarters’ window, gazing at the wooden chest secured to his accompanying carriage. The political matter wasn’t the sole purpose of his journey, this time.

He had been working toward this conclusion for some weeks.

It was logistics; he told himself. The Riverlands were on his route. The horse needed a destination. A gift delayed too long becomes an insult. There were a dozen reasonable, unimpeachable reasons to stop at Raventree Hall on the way back from a perfectly legitimate diplomatic errand, none of which had anything to do with a wet cloak or the way a stranger’s mouth had softened around such a good boy and made the words sound as if they belonged in a darker room. Baelor told himself all of this. His body, stubbornly, believed none of it.

The rumble of the horse carriage echoed across the main yard in the late morning, a sound that marked the end of their meetings and Lord Blackwood’s generous offer of the hall. Baelor had thanked him with the warmth of genuine liking—the old lord was blunt, loyal, and pleasantly uninterested in flattery—and asked, with a casualness he had rehearsed once, whether Lady Blackwood might be sent for.

“She’ll be with the kennels,” Lord Blackwood replied, without surprise and without apology, a man who had made peace with this reality. “Someone will fetch her.”

Baelor nodded, expressed his gratitude, and went to wait in the yard.

He’d had the horse prepared before he left the road. The two grooms who’d travelled with the animal had done their work well: the carriage door gleamed, the tapestries folded and pinned neatly along its sides. The chest sat on the second cart, iron-bound, lid closed, strapped securely. Baelor stood beside his own mount with his hands loose at his sides, watching the courtyard’s routines carry on around him: a stableboy crossing with buckets, ravens wheeling above the great weirwood in the inner yard, a grey-muzzled hound ambling across the stones with the profound self-certainty of a dog that had decided it owned this particular patch of ground and all who moved across it.

Then he heard them.

A complex, interwoven chorus of barks and whimpers emerged from the kennels, as if the dogs were in a democratic debate over their next destination. Nails on stone. The scuff and slide of boots. Three dogs rounded the corner first, their ears and jowls flapping with every bouncy step. Two hounds, along with a broader, lower, and more menacing-looking dog whose blunt head and rolling shoulders suggested a purpose beyond mere good looks. Their attention was not on Baelor. They were not, precisely, in pursuit.

They were following.

You came around the corner after them.

His immediate thought was that the visit had been a miscalculation, though not one he regretted, but rather the opposite.

Your working jacket, made of heavy oiled leather, hung open over a once-white shirt now stained with the day’s beginnings, its fur trim dark and clumped, hinting it had been used as a towel at some point. Your leather trousers, tucked into boots that were muddy up to the ankle and beyond, bore a perfect paw print pressed in something dark and earthy across the left thigh: a large paw, four-toed, a testament from a decisive creature. Your hair was down, or most of it. A braid had survived somewhere at the back, but the rest had been liberated, and a loose strand curled against your cheek, apparently having been there long enough that you’d stopped noticing it. There was a smear of what looked like kennel mud along the inside of your right forearm, and something that might have been dried blood—animal, not yours, the quantity too small for worry—on the heel of your hand.

Baelor knew what ladies were meant to look like: silk pinned so tightly it creaked when they sat, gold at throat and wrists, hair coaxed and powdered into shapes that took three women and half a morning to achieve, a laugh produced on cue for the benefit of half a court that spent its days arranging itself around them. Gold that lay in the hollow of the neck like a collar, something a lord could close his hand around behind polite doors and have the body follow without a word.

You looked like none of that. You looked like someone entirely occupied with something that mattered, a woman who put collars on other creatures and expected them to mind you instead; A lady of an old lesser house who handled her own dirty work, unaware that the world expected her to clean up before being seen.

Baelor’s mind strayed to a place it shouldn’t have: what it would be to be led that way himself, contemplating the sensation of being overpowered, to feel a hand close at his throat and have his body go quiet and obedient without consulting his rank. It was an idle fancy for a man who was second in the realm and bred to hold reins, not give them up. He shut the door on it, a fraction too late.

As he wrestled with his thoughts and began to lose, Baelor conceded with a weary, specific clarity: Ah. Of course.

You noticed his horses first, their sleek coats gleaming, followed by the vibrant colours of his attire, and finally, the man himself. Something shifted in your face and beyond—a quick reorganisation, the eyes sharpening, the body adjusting posture without quite committing to formality.

Then the dogs caught up.

All three arrived around your legs simultaneously, completing the orbit they’d been executing since the kennels, looking up at you with the expectant attention of creatures awaiting permission to do whatever they were about to do. You glanced at them. A single look, no words, your hand dropping briefly—one flat, downward press of your fingers.

Every dog sat. Not in stages, not with a shuffle or a half‑hearted slump, but in the same instant, the way birds turn on a wind. Three animals of different sizes and tempers hitting the ground because your hand had said so.

Baelor looked at the dogs. Looked at you.

It was the forest and the stallion again, except the creatures at your feet had teeth and would gladly open a throat for you if asked. Something low in him answered the sight with a feeling he would not, under any circumstances, name. His fingers twitched at his sides, an unconscious, useless answer to the urge to see what you could make him do with only that hand.

You were already moving toward him, brushing your palms briefly against your thighs as you walked, and he could see the moment you registered the full state of yourself—a small, almost invisible pause behind your eyes, the kind not meant to be noticed. You did not apologise for it. You did not reach for your hair. You simply arrived at him, exactly as you were, and let that be the thing.

“My prince.” Your voice carried the familiar, deliberate rhythm he recalled, each word precisely placed as if pre-calculated. “I was not told to expect you.”

“The fault is mine,” Baelor replied. “I did not want to alter your morning.” He let his gaze move over you once, brief, and allowed something close to a smile to surface; the easy one, the one that said I find this charming, while some less disciplined part of him noted mud, leather, throat, the loosened strand of hair with a care that had nothing to do with courtesy. “It appears I failed.”

“You interrupted a hound that was halfway through a lesson.” The look you gave him was dry. “He was not pleased.”

“I apologise to the hound.”

“There’s no way he’ll take it.”

You took in the carriages with a practiced assessment, accustomed to deciphering their contents purely by observation. You scanned its contours, taking in its size, the ventilation grates, and the peculiar, slightly agitated movement of unseen mass within.

“You brought a horse.”

Not a question.

“I did.”

A subtle, almost imperceptible shift occurred within you, like a mere degree of change. A small brightening, quickly reined back in. Baelor caught it.

“The debt I mentioned,” his voice dropping a register, deliberate as a key in a lock. “I told you, Lady Blackwood, I do not forget.”

“You were not required—”

“I rarely do what I am required to do,” he said pleasantly, “and frequently do what I decide to do. You’ll find there’s a difference.”

You looked at him for a moment. He could see you measuring the exact width of that sentence, deciding whether to argue with it. Then your eyes returned to the carriage, and whatever debate had been occurring behind your expression adjourned.

Baelor nodded to the groom. The carriage door.

Opened.

The horse descended the ramp, its entrance as graceful and unannounced as a masterpiece entering a gallery, its presence immediately altering the atmosphere and making the surrounding air rearrange itself. Much as a woman had once ridden out of the trees and rearranged his.

He had chosen this one for that very reason. There were sound explanations, of course—bloodlines, suitability, the practicalities of Riverlands terrain—but beneath them lay a simpler truth: he liked watching people see what only Targaryen heirs could casually bring into a yard. The right horse, at the right moment, could do what titles sometimes could not.

He was young—four years at most, his body still holding the last suggestion of colt-length in the legs, the chest not yet fully filled, which only made the potential of him more startling. His coat was a rich, deep brown, which, in the shadows, deepened to an almost black hue, possessing a subtle, iridescent sheen like mother-of-pearl. The weak autumn sun illuminated the layered hues of his hip and withers, the colour of ancient heartwood, vibrant and full of life. His mane was a breathtaking sight: long, flowing waves with a delicate curl, possessing a hue reminiscent of pale hay softly kissed by late summer light; it absorbed the very essence of it, appearing almost white when illuminated and giving off a faint glow that made it look like molten gold. It was full and loose, and the breeze stirred it against his neck with a movement that felt unnervingly free.

His belly, which Baelor had observed stopped people in their tracks, was marked with patterns resembling shallow water flowing over white sand. Faint dappling, almost transparent, barely-there spots and stripes that shifted as the horse moved and disappeared when it stood still, the kind of thing you second-guessed yourself about, wondering whether you had seen it or invented it.

The grooms had placed a necklace that morning: a delicate white gold chain set with stones of black and red, the colours of Blackwood, which fell against his chest and caught the light with his every movement. The tapestries across his back bore ravens in flight against white trees, the fabric deep crimson and black, chosen to fall across the dark of his coat without clashing. It was, without exaggeration, the sort of animal one expected to see under a Lannister in full cloth-of-gold, or parading with a Tyrell tournament entourage, rather than stepping into a muddy Riverlands yard just because a prince had chosen to entertain the consequences of its placement.

His left eye, dark and liquid, held the ordinary miracle of a horse’s gaze. His right, though.

Baelor watched the realisation move through the fence line like a shiver.

The nearest Blackwood groom went very still. The armed men in the distance adjusted their positions, their glances not quite meeting. Someone’s mouth opened on what might have been a comment and closed again on a swallow. No one said a word. They did not have to. Every person who had stood close enough to the prince to see one brown eye and one unmistakably Targaryen violet now saw it looking back at them out of a stallion’s head.

He had chosen the horse for many reasons. Bloodlines. Temperament. Potential for distance and cold. That was the story he would have told if anyone had been foolish enough to ask. The truer reason was simpler, and lived in the small, private satisfaction of this exact moment: a blue right eye, set in a dark face, watching you.

The grooms had done their work; the necklace lay at the colt’s chest, the Blackwood colours blazing against his coat, the ravens and heart‑trees riding his back like a herald’s dream. But it was the eye that stopped you. You devoured the lines of him with the focused hunger of someone finally reading a text they’d waited years for, your attention locked from neck to shoulder to hip to hock, entirely uninterested in the gasps at the fence.

Then your gaze reached his head.

Left, dark. Right, blue.

You stilled in a new way.

Your expression was completely empty for a split second, just the raw, empty intake of facts. Then your eyes left the horse and found Baelor’s across the yard, and he watched you see it: brown, violet; brown, blue. The deliberate echo. The insult to common sense and good modesty that was putting a stallion with the prince’s gaze under the keeping of a minor Riverlands lady.

It was not subtle. It was not meant to be.

You held Baelor’s look for a fraction longer than courtesy required, as if measuring how far you were willing to let the implication travel. Your jaw did a small, traitorous thing—tightened and released—and your tongue pressed once against the inside of your cheek in a gesture that would have passed for nothing if he had not been specifically watching for it.

Then you looked back at the horse.

Your professional calm guided you as you detailed his finer qualities, but the knowledge sat between all three of you now like a hand on the reins: you would ride a stallion who carried his colours and his eye. You would put your knees to his sides, your weight behind his withers, your hands on a neck Baelor had chosen in his own image, and every time you did it some part of you would be forced to admit that this was what a prince’s vanity looked like when it stopped pretending to be anything else.

It was petty. It was possessive. It was, Baelor acknowledged to himself with a slow, private satisfaction, very nearly obscene in its intimacy.

He had no right to touch you.

He could, however, make sure that when you swung your leg over this beast and settled your hips to its stride, you would be doing it astride a piece of him, however symbolic. A lesser lady on a horse better suited to Lannister cloth‑of‑gold or Tyrell procession—except that your thighs, not theirs, would be the ones closing around the saddle. Your hand, not theirs, would lie against the warm, flexing throat beneath that mismatched gaze.

You understood that. He saw the moment your awe and your sense rebelled at it at the same time, and the moment your desire for the horse won.

You took one step closer.

The blue eye tracked you as you came, curious, unafraid. Beneath your ribs, an unseen force nudged you forward, compelled by an unacknowledged inner voice. Baelor’s fingers curled once, slow and tight, around the rail, savouring the fact that he had managed, with a choice and a coin and a bloodline, to arrange it so that whenever you mounted this creature, you would have to think, if only for the length of a single breath, of the man who shared its gaze.

The stallion reached the ground, took three steps, and stopped. His blue eye found you.

You froze in place. It wasn’t the composed quiet of the court, but the stillness of a body that no longer knew how to pretend. Your lips parted; the hands that had been moving to brush mud from your sleeve hung motionless at your sides. Whatever words you might have had for him earlier in the day had been quite cleanly removed.

The way you observed the horse was akin to how others behold perfection—a palpable yearning that transcended facial expression, manifesting instead in your body’s slight forward inclination and suspended breath. A distinct satisfaction washed through Baelor as he stood close enough to see it. This, too, was a language he knew: the moment when someone realised that what stood in front of them was more than they had ever expected to be offered. Power moved differently then, and he liked the feel of it.

You had not gawked at him in the mist. You had met a Targaryen prince and heir with steady eyes and a plain voice, as if his face and his reputation were facts to be filed rather than wonders to be admired. Now, though, you were standing absolutely struck in front of something he had chosen with you in mind, and some unprincely part of him uncoiled at the sight.

Baelor watched you look at it. He felt something move in him that was not, precisely, strategic or measured. Memory was unhelpful; it supplied the sound of your voice in the mist, low and pleased on such a good boy, and laid it over the way you were looking at this one now until his skin felt too tight. It was a ridiculous thing, perhaps, for the second man in the realm to be pleased that he could make a lady’s composure slip with nothing more than a horse and a decision—but he was, and the knowledge ran through him like heat.

“My prince.” Your voice came back to you a beat slower than usual. “This horse has never seen winter.”

Baelor folded his hands at his back. “He has not.”

“He is built for a king’s parade,” you said, and there was something almost sorrowful in it, as if you were arguing yourself out of something while the argument was still arriving. “For a lady in silk on a summer road. For a knight going somewhere that will remember him.” Your eyes tracked the blaze of white gold at his chest, the tapestried ravens. “Not for mud and frost and two hundred miles of northern track.”

“That is what I assumed you would say,” Baelor answered.

You looked at him.

“His dam is Essosi,” he said, allowing nothing into his voice but the clean interest of the information. “Bred for plains and cold both, built to move in wet ground without tiring, to go long between water. His sire is Crownlands stock—fast, responsive, lungs like bellows. The noble silhouette.” He paused. “Northern garron mares were used as a foundation as well, for hardiness, thick bone, and winter tolerance.” He met your eyes. “Hardy enough for the North, elegant and smooth enough for a lady.”

“Exotic enough to show off obscene wealth and ambition,” you added. The people in the yard were dead silent.

Baelor let a gentle chuckle escape his lips.

“The crossbreed is—untested. In the formal sense. Should my lady desire it, I am ready to tell everything about this particular stallion.”

You could practically taste the smug satisfaction in Baelor’s voice as he spoke the line. Someone cleared their throat.

“Untested,” you repeated.

“He has never been ridden,” Baelor declared, his violet eye glinting with a hint of impatience as he stared you down.

Something shifted in your expression. Not the doubt, not quite. For a fleeting moment, your eyes met his before darting away, as if the unspoken words had settled in several places and you were unwilling to acknowledge them all. Baelor kept his tone bland. His pulse was less disciplined.

“His hooves?” you asked. Your voice had gone quieter.

“Hard. Wider than pure Essosi breeding gives. Built to grip.” Baelor paused. “His health record is here, if you want it. The farrier’s notes as well. I brought them.”

You were looking at the horse again, not at him. The blue eye tracked you, curious, without fear, which was, Baelor knew, extraordinary in a young, unridden stallion in an unfamiliar yard. Most of them danced, pulled and found something to be afraid of. Its intelligent eyes studied you, as if an unfamiliar presence were being meticulously evaluated.

“He doesn’t know me,” you said, almost to yourself.

“No,” Baelor agreed. “He doesn’t know anyone.” He let a beat fall. Then, quietly, with precision: “You are the best horsebreaker in the Riverlands, Lady Blackwood,” he said at last. “It would please me to see the truth of that said about you. In action.”

A fractional pause. “If the lady allows.”

The yard fell silent again, the chirping of birds abruptly ceasing. No one repeated Gerren’s praise this time. They did not need to; every man present heard the echo, and every one of them suddenly found something else to look at.

You turned your head toward Baelor, and the look you gave him was different from before. It wasn’t the hurried judgment one might receive from the stable yard, nor the cool, evasive response of a woman keeping a prince at arm’s length. This was more direct. Your eyes travelled his face, settling with a thoughtful, unhurried intensity, like a person contemplating the difference between what is seen and what is truly felt.

Baelor met it.

You held the gaze long enough that he felt it—the specific, quiet pressure of being actually looked at, not as a prince, not as a title, but as a person who had brought a gift, that could mean several things and was waiting, carefully, to see which meaning you took.

It was not the open, hungry staring he knew from tourney stands and court halls, the wide eyes that drank in his face and saw only story: the Realm’s Delight, the tourney champion, the future king. It was narrower, steadier, almost inconveniently calm. You weren’t trying to impress him, or to be impressed by him. You were simply… taking stock. As if he were a horse you were considering: bone, balance, temper.

The first time you had seen him, you hadn’t even noticed the eyes. That had stung, absurdly; half the realm told stories about the Targaryen violet, and you had looked straight through it, filing him away without so much as a second glance. Now, though, after the stallion with the mismatched gaze, you looked at him and saw it. And there was a flicker there, a tiny, traitorous acknowledgement that you understood exactly what he had done.

Heat went through him like a struck vein. It showed up in small, betraying places: the way his fingers curled once against the back of his wrist where his hands were clasped; the way his throat worked as if the air had thickened; the slow, heavy pull of blood lower, coiling in a body that had no business reacting to a look as if your gaze were a forbidden touch. Being regarded like this, with unblinking attention, aroused him with an intimacy that no amount of courtly admiration had ever managed. Deliberate. Full. He felt a jolt, a visceral response to being seen so completely, so intensely, like a predator brought to bay, an awakening far more profound than the superficial praise. A forbidden current within.

For a fleeting moment, a wild, insane sense gripped him almost by the throat: that if you held his gaze any longer, if you decided to stay there with a patience of a horsebreaker, to linger, and discover what lived behind the purple and the brown; some crack in him would show itself without his permission, and an involuntary vulnerability would break through.

And the worst of it, the thing that made his grip on his own composure feel suddenly, precariously thin, was that a part of him wanted you to.

“You chose an unknown breed,” you said. “Deliberately.”

“I chose an excellent horse.”

“You chose one I’ve never handled.”

“I chose one no one has. There have been attempts, though, with dire consequences.”

A silence. The horse shifted its weight, the necklace chiming softly against the chest.

“This is a very expensive gift,” you said, “from a man who is not my kin and is not my lord.”

“It is a debt repaid.”

“It is far more than a debt.”

He inclined his head, neither confirming nor denying, letting the silence answer for him. Your jaw worked once, as if there was a plainer word you would have liked to use and had to swallow instead. You did not want to owe a prince; he had expected that. He had counted on it. The resistance put a keener edge on his own intent, the way a whetstone made a blade more itself.

“You understand what you’ve done, my prince,” you said, still looking at the horse rather than him. “No man in all kingdoms would willingly let a woman from a lesser house sit a creature like this. He will be stolen within a month, and I’ll face severe reprimand for my scandalous display: parading in the mud on something so outrageously bred it makes the Bracken studs look like plough nags, mere farm animals. The North and the Riverlands do not forgive that kind of spectacle.” You tilted your head, considering the blue eye. “Especially not when the faces in question already spend their days smeared in their own horseshit.”

The yard broke like a wave.

Laughter, sharp and delighted, spilled over the fence, devoid of any pretense. A stable boy slapped the rail. One of the men‑at‑arms bent double, wheezing. Even Lord Blackwood’s steward allowed himself the ghost of a smile, which in him might as well have been applause.

“Lady Blackwood,” Baelor said with a smile that appreciated the joke.

The sound of his voice cut cleanly through the noise. He let it sit a heartbeat, looking down at his own leather boots drenched in mud as he shifted his weight, hands clasped behind him—modest, almost, if not for the faint curve at the corner of his mouth. Then he raised his head.

The moment his eyes landed on you, the violet fleck in his right iris seemed to capture every particle of the wan autumn light.

“All the Seven Kingdoms will know whose gift he is,” he said, each word measured, almost lazy with assurance. “No one will dare lay a hand on a horse that carries my colours and my eye. And especially not the lady mounted on top. Not Brackens, no other Riverlords or Lords in the North, not any Lannister or Tyrell, not any man in any muddy yard who values his own skin.”

He let the next phrase fall with the pleasant finality of a gauntlet.

Possession. Ownership. Without a single touch or command.

“That is a crown’s promise.”

The chuckle that went through the men then was different, lower, edged with something like approval and relief. A prince staking a claim in plain hearing, wrapping a lady of a lesser house in the quiet, territorial arrogance of a Targaryen guarantee.

Baelor was absurdly, privately pleased by how good it felt to say it—and by the fact that, for once, the weight of the dragon on his breast did not feel like duty alone.

There it was, the calculation, running openly behind your eyes. Not whether you wanted the horse: you had decided that before you finished looking at him, and you both knew it. The question was the cost. What you would owe after, and to whom, and whether a gift accepted was something left open. You did not want to owe a prince. Baelor had expected this. He had counted on it, in fact, and then found, somewhere between the planning and the standing here, that he liked the clean, unbending honesty of it rather more than he’d expected.

You looked at the horse.

The horse looked at you with its blue eye.

“What a stallion,” you whispered, your voice carrying further than you intended.

“He has never been ridden,” Baelor said again, softly. “He is waiting for someone who knows what she is doing.”

You took a breath. Let it out slowly.

“If I accept this—”

“I will want to watch,” he interrupted, “from the first touch to the moment he gives you his back.” His tone stayed pleasant; the words did not.

Another silence. Your throat gave a small, involuntary gulp, a tiny crack in your maintained calm, and your fingers ghosted over your wrist, as if to confirm your pulse was behaving itself. The broad-headed hound’s tail resumed its slow, stubborn wag against the ground.

You turned back to the horse. You took a tentative step, then another, your hands already lowering into the relaxed posture that had calmed Drogon in the mist. The blue eye tracked your approach. The horse did not step back. His ears perked up, wide with curiosity, deciphering your motion like an animal senses truth: the depth of your awareness, the absence of threat in your posture, and the deliberate calm of someone who has all the time in the world. Your hand reached his nose. He sniffed once—long, searching—and then, to Baelor’s very private satisfaction, pressed the flat of his muzzle into your palm as if there had never been any other choice.

“Ridiculous creature,” you said, very quietly. Baelor could not have said with certainty which of them you meant.

“I’ll need a week with him before anything of note,” you said, not turning, fingers already learning the map of the bone beneath the skin. “Possibly more. The process takes months, but I can achieve initial results in days.”

Lord Blackwood hummed in approval.

“I am in no hurry,” Baelor said. It came out lower than he intended, almost velvety, as if his conversation implied something else entirely.

“To go anywhere in particular.”

Your hand paused for the space of a heartbeat on the long muscle of the horse’s neck, thumb pressing in, as if testing not his steadiness but your own, before resuming its slow, sure path. You said nothing to that. But your fingers curved around the horse’s jaw, initiating the slow, deliberate process of building trust, and you chose not to turn him away.

It was a ridiculous thing, perhaps, for the second man in the realm to be pleased that he could make a lady’s composure slip with nothing more than a horse and a decision—but he was, and the knowledge ran through him like heat. What followed was less comfortable.

Baelor wanted her to look at him that way.

Not at the Targaryen colours, not at the tournament record that preceded him into every hall in the realm, not at the face his mother’s ladies had called beautiful with a reverence that had always struck him as faintly impersonal, as if beauty were a property of the station and not the man. You had given him none of that in the mist. You had looked at him the way you looked at everything: with a steady, appraising patience that gave nothing away and required nothing from him in return. He had found it irritating. He had found it, if he was honest, intoxicating.

The horse had moved you. He had not.

The thought landed with the specific, unpleasant burden of an unforeseen issue he was now fixated on. What would it require? Not his title, not his lineage, not the effortless ease with which he could command a room. Something else. Something you had decided, by your own private measure, was worth the concession.

He did not know what that was. The not-knowing was new.

His father had granted him leave to choose. Not a diplomatic arrangement, not a match made in a council chamber over maps and alliances, but a choice: the particular, rare indulgence of a king who trusted his heir’s judgment in most things, including this. Baelor had taken the commission seriously and had conducted it with method. He had stood in the great halls of the Great Houses and watched ladies move in silk and gold with the practised eye of a young man, the first prince, who understood that a marriage was also a partnership, a prolonged negotiation, and that the body beside him for the rest of his life had better be one he could at least bear to sit across a table from without something in him going dim.

Baelor had not yet found the answer. He had not been looking for it in a muddy Riverlands yard.

You were not the answer; he told himself. A minor house. A woman who kept kennels and broke horses and met princes with dry courtesy and unimpressed eyes. Not a match his father would have circled on any list, not a name that solved anything he needed solved.

You were, he thought, looking at you now with your hand moving slow and sure along an animal that no one else had ever managed to reach—you were, perhaps, the last of something. The last question before the answer was given. The last afternoon of good riding before the road closed in and required him to be only what he was supposed to be.

Baelor was second in the realm. He would be first, in time. The stallion’s days would end when the harness went on, and he had known that since boyhood with a clarity that left no room for complaint.

He watched your fingers find the long line of the colt’s jaw and felt, with a quiet and unprincely resignation, that he would spend a very long time wondering what it would take to make you look at him that way instead.

It began as a tremor beneath your feet, a vibration that didn't belong to normal turbulence. You had flown dozens of times before; you knew the rhythm of harmless shaking, the soft dips that made stomachs lurch and strangers grip armrests. This was different, and vert wrong.

You had been half-asleep when it started. The cabin lights were dimmed to an artificial twilight. A thin blanket lay over your lap. The old person beside you had their headphones on, head tilted against the window. You remember thinking how tired you were. How, when you landed, you would call your mother. How you still hadn't answered your friend's message. How you had work waiting, responsibilities... a life.

Then the plane dropped.

Not a gentle dip, not the familiar sway of turbulence that earns nervous laughter and tight smiles.

A violent, stomach-flipping plunge that ripped a scream from the cabin, and one from you before you could stop it. Your body jerked forward against the seatbelt, your fingers instinctively clutching the back of the seat in front of you. Your hair fell into your eyes, your vision blurring as gravity seemed to lose its mind.

The overhead bins rattled like bones in a coffin. And then the oxygen masks fell.

They dropped from the ceiling with a series of mechanical pops, swinging wildly as the plane shuddered again. Training took over before thought could. You grabbed the nearest mask and pulled it down hard, securing it over your nose and mouth with shaking hands. The elastic dug painfully into your hair.

Beside you, the elderly woman fumbled with hers, her fingers trembling too violently to position it properly. Her eyes were wide : terrified and confused. You reached across, forcing your own panic down long enough to guide the mask over her face, tightening the band behind her head.

"Breathe," you told her, though you weren't sure if you were speaking to her or yourself.

Then you grabbed the seat in front of you again and bowed your head.

You began praying. To God, to science, to luck, to anything that might be listening.

Please let this pass. Please let us land.

The seatbelt sign chimed again, shrill and absurdly polite in the middle of chaos... And then came the screaming metal.

Louder than before, closer, like a tearing and shrieking roar that vibrated through the fuselage as though something massive had raked claws along the length of the aircraft. The sound burrowed into your bones. The wings groaned in protest, the entire cabin tilted sharply to one side, sending a fresh wave of screams crashing through the air.

A bag burst from an overhead compartment and slammed into the aisle. Another followed. Luggage rained down somewhere behind you. A child wailed for their mother, someone shouted a name over and over again as if repetition could anchor reality.

The baby a few rows back stopped crying for a moment, and then screamed even louder. Not the ordinary cry of discomfort, no, a high, panicked, animal sound that didn't belong to an infant.

Someone began praying loudly, voice breaking on every word. Someone else sobbed uncontrollably. A man across the aisle tried to stand and was immediately thrown back into his seat as the plane lurched again.

This is hell, you thought distantly. This cannot be real.

You remembered reading once that only one in millions of flights ended in disaster. Statistically impossible and astronomically rare.

So why yours? Why this one? Why now?

The plane shuddered again (more violently this time) so hard your teeth snapped together.

The shriek of metal rose into something unbearable, no longer a distant groan but a tortured scream that seemed to come from every direction at once. It sounded as if the aircraft itself were being ripped apart midair, its bones splintering under invisible strain. The floor trembled beneath your shoes, vibrating up through your legs, into your spine. The cabin lights flickered.

A cold draft swept through the cabin, unnatural and biting, raising goosebumps along your arms despite the heat of panic.

The woman beside you would not stop screaming. It broke and rose and broke again, high and frantic, right against your ear. Her hands were locked around the armrests so tightly her knuckles had gone white beneath the cabin lights. She kept repeating the same word over and over, though you couldn't tell if it was a name or a prayer.

The sound drilled into your skull, but you couldn't blame her. Across the aisle, someone was hyperventilating.

Then you saw her : the hostess (who had been smiling barely minutes ago as she collected plastic cups and asked if anyone wanted coffee) stumbled into the aisle again. The plane lurched forward so abruptly she lost her footing entirely and was thrown against the armrests. She hit hard, scrambling to steady herself as another violent jolt rocked the cabin.

Blood trickled down from her hairline, slicing a thin red path along her temple.

It was only then that you felt the warmth on your own brow.

You lifted your fingers shakily and touched just above your eyebrow. They came away smeared with red. You must have struck your head against the seat in front of you when the plane first dropped. You hadn't even felt it, adrenaline had swallowed the pain whole.

You remember her face clearly : blonde hair pulled into a tight, immaculate bun that was now half-fallen loose, strands sticking to her cheek with blood. Her makeup was smudged. Her composure cracked but not gone.

"Please remain seated!" she shouted, her voice straining as she gripped the backs of seats to keep from being thrown again. "Keep your seatbelts fastened!"

The plane bucked again, and she nearly fell a second time.

The overhead speakers crackled to life, the pilot's voice came through distorted, too fast, too tight. You caught fragments.

"...unexpected system failure..."

"...attempting emergency descent..."

"...please remain calm..."

Remain calm.

The plane lurched again, harder this time. A suitcase struck the ceiling and burst open mid-air, clothes scattering like frightened birds. Someone slammed into the aisle. The hostess lost her footing and hit the floor, scrambling back up as the cabin angled sickeningly downward.

You remember thinking, absurdly: This isn't how I die.

No, you weren't ready. You hadn't finished anything, you hadn't said goodbye properly to anyone, your phone was in airplane mode, your last message to your sister unsent.

You thought of your mother's laugh, of your father's pride, of your friends teasing you about overworking. Of the way the city lights looked at night from your apartment window. Of the life you had built, painstaking and imperfect and entirely yours.

And then another sound split the air — louder than the first and second. A final rupture. A violent crack like the sky itself breaking.

The plane shook so violently your teeth snapped together. The hostess screamed now, not composed or trained.

You could barely see through the blur of panic and tears. People were crying, praying, shouting names into the chaos as if their loved ones could somehow hear them through metal and cloud.

The pilot's voice again, barely audible over the roar.

"...brace — brace — brace — "

You tightened your seatbelt. Your knuckles went white around the armrests.

You remember thinking, with strange clarity: Of course. Of course it would be something like this. Of course I would be this unlucky.

You had survived exams that nearly broke you, sleepless nights in residency, survived heartbreak, failures and stupid break-ups... And now this.

The plane tilted nose-down.

The world outside the window was only cloud and blinding white.

Someone grabbed your hand. A stranger, surely. You never saw their face clearly. You squeezed back without thinking.

And then : Impact.

Not the clean finality movies promise, not the soft fade to black or the surrender of consciousness. There was nothing merciful about it.

It was violent in a way your mind still struggles to shape into memory. Bone-rattling. Organ-shaking. A catastrophic detonation of sound and force as the aircraft finally tore itself open.

You felt it before you understood it : a rupture.

A splitting crack so loud it didn't register as noise at first — only as pressure. The cabin walls buckled with a metallic scream that rose higher and higher until it stopped sounding like metal at all and became something almost alive. Something dying.

Then the plane opened.

The fuselage peeled back with a thunderous, ripping roar. Freezing air exploded inward, slamming into you like a physical blow. The pressure shift crushed your ears, the oxygen mask was torn sideways across your face. Papers, bags, plastic trays, clothing (everything not bolted down) erupted into a cyclone.

Seats wrenched free from their anchors.

You saw it happen.

You saw the row ahead of you twist at an unnatural angle. You saw bolts shear, you saw metal give way. A section of the cabin simply... disappeared, leaving a jagged mouth open to the sky.

And through that opening : People.

You saw them dragged toward it as though gravity had changed its allegiance. Hands clawed at armrests, fingernails scraped against metal. A man across the aisle reached for his daughter and missed by inches. A flight attendant vanished mid-step, her scream ripped from her throat and flung into the roaring void before it could fully form.

Their cries were not human anymore, they were torn apart by wind before they could reach your ears whole.

The sky outside was not gentle blue. It was vast and merciless and blinding.

A woman two rows ahead was ripped from her seat entirely, her hair streaming behind her like a banner as she disappeared through the fractured hull. Her scream cut off so abruptly it felt like someone had switched off the world.

Then the old woman beside you was taken.

One moment she was there : fingers digging into the armrests, eyes wide behind the plastic of the oxygen mask you had secured for her.

The next, the wind claimed her.

The decompression tore her sideways with terrifying force. Her frail body slammed against the jagged edge of torn metal where the fuselage had split open. You heard the sickening crack as her head struck steel and then the gale swallowed her entirely, dragging her into the open sky before you could even reach for her.

Her seatbelt had failed... or snapped... or simply hadn't been enough.

She was gone. Vanished into blue and white and screaming air.

Your mind refused to process it.

It rejected the image outright, like a corrupted file it could not open. There was no space in you for the reality of what you had just witnessed. No room for grief or horror. Only blank, stunned disbelief as your brain struggled to protect you from the impossible truth: You're watching people die in front of you, soon, you'll be next. This isn't happening. This cannot be happening.

But it was.

The force inside the cabin became unbearable. Air howled past your ears so violently you couldn't hear yourself think. The cold was immediate and savage, biting through your clothes, through your skin, straight into your bones.

Your shoulder slammed hard against the armrest as something heavy (maybe luggage? maybe part of the overhead panel?) struck you from the side. Pain burst down your arm. Your head snapped forward and collided with the seat in front of you. You tasted blood instantly, metallic and warm against your tongue.

You forced your eyes shut, you couldn't watch another person be swallowed by the sky.

The aircraft twisted again — harder this time. The floor tilted at an impossible angle. Your body lifted against the restraints of your seatbelt, straining forward as if the plane were trying to fling you out with the rest of its insides.

The noise became everything, metal tearing, wind screaming, people praying, you screaming, children crying, structural beams snapping like bones.

It felt as though the plane itself was being peeled apart layer by layer, like a tin can crushed in a giant's fist.

Something slammed into your shoulder again — hard enough to steal your breath. Another impact glanced off the side of your head. White light burst behind your eyelids, brilliant and blinding. Your vision fractured into shards of brightness even with your eyes closed.

For one split second, time stretched.

You thought of your mother again, of your father standing in the kitchen doorway, of your best friend laughing at something stupid you said last week, of your siblings and their stupid antics, of the unfinished emails on your laptop, of how statistically impossible this was.

One in millions.

And yet : you.

Of course it would be you, the plane lurched into what felt like a final, catastrophic roll.

Your stomach flipped, your ribs screamed, and your skull rang.

And then the white consumed everything, not darkness, not peace, no, just an all-devouring, obliterating white.

And then — silence. Not even wind, not even fire.

Just silence.

You wake with a violent, choking gasp, as though you have just been pulled up from deep water. Air floods into your lungs too quickly, and your throat burns the instant it expands. You cough hard, the sound scraping out of you, and roll onto your side, clutching at the ground beneath you as if the earth itself might shift again.

It doesn't.

The soil is cool and damp under your palms. Real and solid. Packed with roots and fallen leaves that press into your skin. You inhale again, slower this time, and the air tastes nothing like smoke or jet fuel or burned plastic. It smells green, wet, and of course ... alive.

Your eyes snap open fully, you expect chaos.

You expect twisted metal impaled into the earth at impossible angles, smoke rising in thick black columns against the sky. You expect fire. You expect the distant crackle of burning debris, the hiss of ruptured fuel lines, the groan of wreckage settling into ruin. You expect screams — injured passengers crying for help, someone calling a name over and over again.

There is none of it.

You push yourself up onto your elbows, your entire body trembling with adrenaline that hasn't yet understood it no longer has anything to fight. Your vision blurs for a moment before sharpening, and what you see makes no sense at all.

You are in a forest.

Not at the edge of one. Not near a clearing gouged into the earth by impact, not beside shattered wings lodged between tree trunks.

You are in the middle of it.

Tall trees surround you in every direction, their trunks thick and ancient, bark ridged and moss-covered. Sunlight filters down through a dense canopy of leaves, scattering in soft green shafts that move gently with the breeze. Birds flit between branches overhead, chirping as though the world is undisturbed. Insects hum somewhere in the underbrush.

You turn your head to the left, then to the right, your pulse beginning to pound harder.

No smoke, no debris, no smell of burning.

What the actual fuck ?

Your mind scrambles for something reasonable to hold onto. Perhaps you were thrown clear? Perhaps the plane crashed miles away and you were flung by force farther than seems possible? Maybe the wreckage is beyond the trees? Maybe you landed on softer ground. Maybe —

You force yourself to your feet, swaying immediately as dizziness sweeps through you. Your ribs ache when you straighten, you let out a deep groan, bruised pain that makes breathing uncomfortable. Your shoulder throbs where something struck it. There is a heavy pulse at the back of your skull, and when you raise trembling fingers to your brow, they brush against dried blood crusted along your hairline.

You turn in a slow circle.

If there had been a crash, the forest would not look like this.

There would be a path carved through trees, splintered trunks. A scar across the earth where the fuselage tore forward. There would be luggage scattered between roots, torn seats, shredded fabric caught on branches. Something.

There is nothing.

No torn seats scattered across a field, no broken windows glinting in the dirt. No black box half-buried in soil. No burning wing lodged against bark. No emergency slide tangled among the trees. No bodies lying still and terrible in the grass.

Not even a distant sound.

The silence is wrong. So, so wrong. 

You step forward carefully, scanning the ground as if something might materialize if you look hard enough. The leaves are undisturbed except for where you must have fallen, the earth bears no sign of violent impact. No gouge, no crater, not even a trail of destruction.

It is as though the sky never tore open.

As though the plane never existed.

Your breathing grows uneven again, though this time it isn't from smoke or altitude. It is from the creeping, suffocating realization that there is no logical explanation for what you are seeing.

Even if you had been thrown clear of the wreckage, even if by some impossible miracle you were the only survivor, there would be proof. Physics would demand it. 

Instead, the forest stands whole and indifferent around you, untouched by catastrophe.

You open your mouth and call out, your voice raw from earlier screams. "Hello?!"

The word travels through the trees and fades without resistance.

You wait, but nothing answers.

You try again, louder now, desperation creeping into your voice despite your attempt to control it.

"Is anyone there?!"

Only birds take flight from a nearby branch, startled into brief motion before settling again.

No engines in the distance, no sirens, no shouts of other survivors.

Just wind sliding softly through leaves.

Your heart begins to race in a different way now — not from imminent death, but from the unbearable impossibility of survival without context. You are standing in a place that does not match the disaster you remember.

"Help!" your sore throat rasps again, cracking under the strain. "Please... somebody help me!"

It comes out as more of a sob than a shout now, ragged and desperate, and still there is nothing — only the distant rustle of leaves and the occasional chirp of birds. Your voice barely carries; it feels swallowed by the air itself, broken by fear and exhaustion.

Your eyes sting, blurry from the tears and sweat, and you have to blink several times before you can even recognize the forest around you. Your ears ring, your ribs ache sharply with each breath.

With great effort, you push yourself up on shaking arms. Your palms scrape along rough bark and damp earth, the sting biting into your skin. Your clothes are torn, fabric shredded in places from the crash or the fall. You touch your hair and find dried blood crusted along your hairline and temple. A deep, pounding ache throbs behind your right ear.

Your shoulder hurts, you glance down and see it : blood has soaked through your thin, now-ruined jacket. A shard of wood protrudes from the flesh, jagged and cruel. Your fingers hover above it, trembling. Your mind (your trained, rational, doctor's mind) knows not to touch it. Any interference now could risk infection, make it worse. So you hold back, unable to do anything but watch it, wishing you had antiseptic, wishing you had scissors, wishing you weren't alone.

Even so, your instinct drives you forward. You force your voice out again, hoarse and raw, dragging it from deep in your chest. "Help... please... anyone!"

It burns. Every syllable scorches your throat as it catches on cracked vocal cords. You bite your lip to hold back tears, but they slide anyway. The damp earth under your knees makes it worse, cold and gritty, mixing with blood and sweat.

No answer comes.

Nothing but the forest. The too-green, too-alive forest.

You are utterly, and impossibly alone.

One step after another, you force yourself to move. 

Part of your mind keeps whispering, maybe help is on the way, maybe someone is coming for you, but you know it's a lie your fear wants you to cling to. You can't wait, you have to keep going, hoping that if you stumble through the trees long enough, maybe you'll find someone, anyone, alive.

But no one comes.

Hours pass, though time feels fractured. The sun sinks low, bleeding red behind the branches, and when you finally emerge from the forest, night has already claimed the sky. Your legs are raw and trembling. Hunger gnaws at your stomach until it feels hollow. Your throat is raw from screaming and thirst, each swallow a burning reminder of how little you've had to sustain yourself. 

You don't even know how you survived — after the crash, the terror, the running, the empty hours with nothing but your own ragged breaths. Maybe you drank from a lake along the way. Maybe you didn't. Your body doesn't care or remember. It just wants to survive.

And then, as the forest finally thins, there it is.

A village.

Thatched roofs, crooked and low, their beams dark with smoke curling lazily into the evening sky. Mud streets winding between timber-framed houses. Chimneys spewing pale tendrils of smoke. Men in rough wool tunics and patched leather boots, women in coarse linen dresses and aprons, children barefoot and darting through the dirt, laughing or crying or both.

You stop dead, your pulse spikes.

Where the fuck are you?

Where are the roads, the cars, the electricity lines, the streetlights, the convenience stores? The reality of it presses in on you like a hand around your throat.

For a brief, ridiculous second, you think maybe it's a reenactment. A film set, a medieval festival somewhere. Or a commune — maybe some strange, isolated community living like it's centuries ago. You pin the idea to the thin hope that your mind is just trying to explain this insane impossibility.

But then you step closer.

You enter the village proper, the mud streets narrowing underfoot, the smell of woodsmoke and cooking fire heavy in your nose. And immediately, people begin to look at you.

The stares are piercing, curious, judging and ... appraising.

Your modern clothes mark you instantly as out of place. Your torn jacket, your sweatshirt, your jeans — everything is wrong. Women glance at you as though they've never seen anything like you, their aprons and veils standing in stark contrast to your foreign appearance. Men eye you from head to toe, arms crossing instinctively over their chests, sizing you up with suspicion and barely disguised interest.

You pull your jacket tighter around yourself, wincing as the weight of it presses against your shoulder wound. The ache pulses sharply, reminding you of every step you've taken, every scrape, every cut you've tried to ignore.

Ignoring the stares that prickled at the back of your neck, you gather what courage you have left and reach out to stop an old man as he shuffles past, his gait slow and uneven. You catch his arm gently, careful not to startle him. 

"Excuse me... sir," you say, your voice trembling despite your effort to sound firm. "Where... where are we?"

He freezes for a moment, his one good eye narrowing as he looks you over. The other socket is empty, a smooth scar where the eye should have been, giving his face a peculiar, lopsided gravity. His brows knit together, forming deep creases across his forehead, and his mouth hangs slightly open, revealing teeth that are mostly gone or worn to yellow stubs.

The smell hits you before his words do : a heavy, sour scent of sweat, smoke, and unwashed cloth that makes your stomach churn. Despite this, you hold his gaze, trying to convey that you mean no harm, that you are... simply lost.

He tilts his head, studying you in silence, his one good eye tracking every movement, every tremble in your posture. The noises of the village fade into a dull hum behind you, the clatter of boots on mud and the low murmur of voices retreating from your awareness.

"Ashford Meadow," he says gruffly.

"Where... where is this?" you ask, confusion twisting your tongue. The syllables feel foreign, awkward, even to your own ears, but you need answers.

"The Reach," he replies, before adjusting the heavy pack on his back and continuing on his way.

You swallow hard, your throat raw, and glance around nervously. A few men whistle at you, their eyes lingering a little too long, but you ignore them, focusing on keeping your balance and your wits. Is this some kind of movie set? you wonder again, though the faces staring back at you (their expressions curious, wary, almost skeptical) tell a different story. You must look like a mess: dried blood in your hair, your clothes torn and muddied, your walk unsteady.

Your gaze sweeps the village quickly, searching for something familiar, something that can anchor you. And then you see it: a tavern. Its wooden sign creaks slightly in the wind, and smoke curls lazily from the chimney. The doors are open, and warm, amber light spills into the street, cutting through the cool, green gloom of the evening.

You stumble toward it, hope sparking faintly in your chest, even as every step aches, your shoulder burning and ribs throbbing. Maybe inside, you can find someone who can explain where you are, and perhaps, just perhaps, what has happened to the world you thought you knew.

You step further into the tavern, the warmth and smell of smoke and roasting meat washing over you in a strange relief. Your legs ache with every step, your shoulder throbs, and the dried blood in your hair makes your skin crawl, but the human presence, any presence, draws you forward. You reach the bar, where a barmaid wipes a mug, her hands steady despite the busy room. A few patrons glance up at you, their faces shadowed under hoods or rough hair.

The barmaid freezes slightly at your approach. 

"Good evening," you say automatically, though your voice cracks on the second word. "Please — can you tell me where I am? Is this some kind of historical reenactment? A themed settlement?"

She does not answer at once. Her eyes drag over your clothes — the strange cut of your jacket, the metal teeth of the zipper, the fabric of your shirt, your sneakers. Her gaze lingers at the dried blood crusted in your hair.

"Gods preserve us," she mutters softly. "What queer raiment is this?"

A man beside you, thick-bearded and red-cheeked with drink, leans closer. "You've the look of a hedge-witch," he says. "Or some eastern courtesan gone astray."

"I'm not either," you snap, then wince at your own sharpness. "I just need to know where I am."

The barmaid sets down the cup she was polishing. "You stand in Ashford Meadow," she says carefully, as though speaking to a child or a madwoman. "In the Reach. Beneath the rule of Highgarden and our good lord."

You blink at her. "The Reach," you repeat. "Highgarden?"

"Aye." The bearded man squints at you. "Have you taken a blow to the head, girl? You speak as one fresh from fever."

"Do you have a phone?" you ask suddenly, the words tumbling over each other in rising panic. "Anything — some kind of device? I just need to call someone. Emergency services, the police—anyone who can track where I am."

You look from face to face as though one of them might finally understand, might reach into a pocket and pull out something familiar : glass screen, metal casing, signal bars in the corner.

Instead, they stare as though you have begun speaking in tongues.

"A... fone?" the bearded man repeats slowly, brow creasing. "Is that some manner of instrument?"

"Emergency," another mutters under his breath. "What lord bears that name?"

The barmaid's eyes narrow, studying you with growing certainty. "There is no such thing here," she says carefully.

Silence follows. A long, heavy silence.

Your breath quickens. "It's just a phone," you insist, gesturing helplessly with your good hand. "A small device. You can speak into it and someone far away hears you instantly. Anywhere in the world."

A ripple of uneasy murmurs moves through the room.

"Instantly?" the older patron echoes. "Across leagues?"

"That is sorcery," someone whispers.

"It's not sorcery," you snap, then drag a shaking hand through your matted hair. "It's technology. It's normal."

Your throat burns as you swallow. You feel the panic clawing higher, pressing against your ribs. You force yourself to speak more clearly, slower, as though explaining to children.

"I was in a plane crash," you say, despite the rasp in your voice. "A plane. Uh -- an aircraft. It's a machine made of metal, with wings. It flies — high above the clouds. It carries hundreds of people at once. We were traveling, and something went wrong. The engines failed... We fell."

"A craft... that flies?" the barmaid repeats slowly.

"Yes. Like a — like a metal ship with wings. Powered by engines. Fuel. It's not magic, I swear!"

The bearded man barks out a laugh. "A ship of metal that flies?" He slaps the bar. "Hear her! She speaks of dragons clad in steel!"

"It's not a dragon," you insist. "It's technology."

"Tek-nol-oh-gee," he echoes mockingly, tasting the foreign word. "And pray, what manner of sorcery is that?"

"It's not sorcery! It's fucking science. We learned how to build them, they cross oceans in hours."

The laughter fades. Not into amusement — into something else... Unease.

"One ocean is more than enough for mortal men," the barmaid says quietly. "And none cross the skies save dragons."

"Dragons aren't real," you reply automatically.

A man at a nearby table turns in his seat, eyes narrowing. "Not real?"

The bearded man snorts. "Not these hundred years, fool. Since the Dance of the dragons at least. The last dragon died in King's Landing." He looks back at you, smirking. "Though some say their bones still smoke."

You stare at him. "Dragons?"

"Aye, dragons," he says. "Winged fire made flesh. What child's tale did you grow upon, that you deny them so bold?"

Your heart begins to pound harder than it did in the forest. "What the actual fuck are you talking about?"

A few of them flinch at your language. The barmaid's brows draw tight. "Mind your tongue, youn lady."

"I'm serious," you say, voice rising despite yourself. "Dragons aren't real. They're myths. Stories. Reptiles don't breathe fire. That's biologically impossible."

"Bio... what?" the bearded man mutters.

"You speak madness," says another patron, older, thin-faced. "And you bleed through your sleeve."

You glance down. The dark stain has spread further. You're swaying slightly; you hadn't noticed.

"I told you," you say weakly. "The plane crashed. The wreckage must be somewhere in the forest. There were people, some died!"

"Metal that flies," the bearded man says again, softer now. 

The barmaid steps out from behind the counter. Up close, her gaze is sharp as a blade. She reaches toward your shoulder but stops short of touching. 

"That wound festers if left untended," she says. "Whatever tale you spin, you are hurt. And lost."

"I'm not spinning anything," you whisper, teary eyed. "I woke up in the woods. And now I'm here, and you're talking about dragons like it's normal."

The bearded man studies you, longer this time. "If you be some mummer's trick, you've chosen a strange hour for it," he says. "If you be mad, you are a convincing sort. And if you speak truth..." He trails off.

"If she speaks truth," the barmaid says quietly, "then the gods have cast her far from her home."

You swallow hard. "This isn't funny."

"No," the barmaid agrees. "It is not."

"Help me... please," you whisper, and this time there is no sharpness left in you, no insistence, no frustration — only something small and fraying at the edges.

The room tilts.

You don't notice it at first. Just a subtle sway beneath your feet, as though the floorboards have turned to the deck of a ship. The warmth of the tavern becomes suffocating. The smoke too thick. The faces around you blur at their edges, colors bleeding into one another.

Your fingers tighten around the edge of the bar. You feel the rough grain of the wood beneath your palm, grounding yourself in it, clinging to it as your knees threaten to give.

"I — I don't feel..." you begin, but the words dissolve on your tongue.

The barmaid steps forward quickly now, suspicion replaced with alarm. 

"Gods," she mutters.

The throbbing in your shoulder surges, hot and insistent. Your ears ring again (louder this time) drowning out the murmurs rising in the tavern. Your vision tunnels, narrowing to a thin circle of flickering firelight and worried faces.

You try to steady your breathing. Try to stay upright.

But your body has endured too much—blood loss, hunger, fear, the long march through the forest. Survival carried you this far, and now it demands payment.

Your grip slips.

The world lurches violently to one side. Someone reaches for you (you think they do) but your knees buckle before you can tell. The bar rushes upward, or perhaps you fall downward; you cannot tell which.

Sound fractures.

A distant voice curses, another calls for water. Hands brush against your arms.

Then darkness closes in, thick and absolute.

And as consciousness slips through your fingers like water, one final thought drifts through you — slow, terrible, undeniable:

Maybe the plane didn't just fall... Maybe you fell somewhere else entirely.

When you wake, it is to the scent of lavender and smoke.

The ceiling above you is low and slanted, beams dark with age. Morning light spills through a small round window, pale and soft, catching dust in the air. Your body feels heavy, ached through, but cleaner. The wound at your shoulder is bandaged tightly in linen, the cloth stiff with herbs and salve.

You are lying in a narrow bed beneath roughspun blankets, not the tavern floor.

A chair scrapes softly beside you.

"You've woken, then."

It is the barmaid. In daylight she looks older than you first thought — lines at the corners of her mouth, silver threaded through her dark braid. Her gaze is steady, practical.

"My name is Clare," she says, as though that settles something. "You took a bad turn last eve. Near bled out on my floor, you did."

You swallow, throat dry. "You... helped me."

"Aye. I've seen worse than you stagger through that door." A faint huff of amusement touches her lips. "Though none dressed like some Lysene mummer with iron teeth sewn in her jerkin." She eyes the zipper of your jacket with suspicion.

You almost laugh, almost.

You don't ask how long you've been asleep. You don't ask how she carried you. You don't ask why this still feels real.

Clare pours water into a clay cup and presses it into your hands. "Best you drink slow."

You obey.

There is a pause before she speaks again, and when she does, her tone shifts — less wary now. More... resolved.

"You asked where you are."

Your fingers tighten around the cup. "Yes."

She folds her hands in her apron. "You are in Westeros."

The word means nothing to you. You wait for the punchline, it does not come.

"What is that?" you ask quietly.

She does not look at you as though you are mad this time. No narrowed eyes. No guarded distance.

"Westeros is the realm of the Seven Kingdoms," she says, patient as a mother instructing a child. "North and South alike. There is the North, vast and cold, ruled from Winterfell. The Vale of Arryn, ringed in mountains. The Riverlands, green and oft bloodied. The Westerlands, rich in gold. The Stormlands, fierce and sea-battered. Dorne, hot and proud in the south. And the Reach—" she gestures lightly toward the window " — where you now lie, beneath the rule of Highgarden."

You stare at her. "Westeros," you repeat faintly.

"Aye."

"And Ashford Meadow?"

"A village in the Reach. Not a grand one, but honest."

Your heart is hammering, but you force your face to remain composed. Do not unravel. Do not scream. She helped you, don't look mad.

She studies you for a moment before asking, "What is your name, child?"

You tell her.

She rolls the sound over her tongue once, twice. 

"An uncommon name," she says at last. "I've heard stranger, mayhaps, in port towns and from passing traders — but not oft. It sits foreign on the ear."

"That's because I'm foreign," you murmur.

"So you are."

She hesitates. "Have you kin? A father? A mother?"

"Yes," you answer automatically — then the truth fractures under the weight of reality. They are not here. They cannot be here. If this is real, then they are --- " You swallow. "They're... dead," you finish instead. "Probably."

Clare's mouth tightens. "That is a hard thing to say so young."

You say nothing. She seems to read something in your silence but does not press. Stern, yes — but not unkind.

"Tell me more," you say carefully. "About... this place."

Clare shifts in her chair. 

"The realm is ruled now by House Targaryen," she says. "Dragons were their sigil — and once, their strength. Silver hair and violet eyes, near unearthly in their beauty. The blood of old Valyria runs in them. Kings and queens upon the Iron Throne in King's Landing."

You feel cold despite the blankets.

"They had dragons?" you ask.

"Once," she says. "Great winged beasts of fire and shadow. Long gone now... though their name still carries flame enough."

Targaryen.

You manage a slow nod, as though absorbing simple geography instead of the collapse of everything you understood about reality.

Inside, you are spiraling. But you keep your face calm.

You cannot afford to look any more mad than you already sound. You sit propped against the pillows, hands folded tight in your lap so she does not see them tremble. The names still mean nothing to you — nothing solid, nothing real. 

Clare seems to take your silence for confusion, not disbelief, and continues in the same patient tone.

"Each of the kingdoms's got its great house," she says, adjusting the blanket at your feet as though that, too, is part of the lesson. "That's how it's always been. Great lords over lesser lords, bannermen sworn and bound. In the North it's Stark — grim folk, so they say, but honorable. In the Westerlands, Lannister — rich as sin, with gold in their hills. The Vale's ruled by Arryn, high up in their mountains. Stormlands by Baratheon, fierce and loud. Dorne's Martell, sly and sun-kissed. The Riverlands... Tully. And here in the Reach, we bend the knee to House Tyrell of Highgarden."

She pauses, then adds, "Though above all of 'em sits the Iron Throne... the blood of the dragon."

You only look at her, even more confused. 

"That's the Targaryens," she says, and there's a faint shift in her voice — half reverent, half wary. "They come from old Valyria, they did. Not like other folk. Hair pale as spun silver, eyes purple as a bruise at dusk. Pretty as paintings, most of 'em. Too pretty, some'd say. And proud with it."

She leans back slightly.

You stay very still.

"The king now is Daeron," she continues. "Daeron the Good, they call him. Peaceful sort, so the tales say. More book than blade—but wise, and kinder than most kings get to be."

Your pulse skips.

"He wed a Dornish princess," Clare says, nodding approvingly. "Brought Dorne into the realm proper, he did. Not by fire nor sword, but marriage. Folk grumbled at first—Dornish are... different—but peace is peace."

She leans back slightly.

"He's four sons, too. Four princes."

Your throat tightens.

"The eldest is Baelor." She smiles faintly. "Baelor Breakspear they name him. Not for breaking his own spear, mind — but for shattering others in tourney. Brave warrior that ended the Blackfyre rebellions... Strong as an ox and twice as steady. Darker than most Targaryens, on account o' his Dornish mother. Black hair, not silver. But noble through and through, they say. Honorable. The sort a smallfolk can look upon and feel safe."

You didnt know if you understood anything, but you just nod to let he know you're listening. 

"The second's Prince Aerys," she goes on. "Bookish, some say. Close with his brother. Not so broad in the shoulders, but sharp in the mind."

She ticks another finger.

"Then there's Rhaegel. Quiet one. Keeps to himself. Some whisper he's... touched in the head, but court's full of whispers." She shrugs. "Hard to know truth from wine-talk."

"And the last?" you ask carefully.

"Maekar." Her expression shifts slightly. Firmer. "Maekar's iron. They call him the Anvil. Hard man. Hard face and judgments. A warrior through and through."

The room feels smaller the more she speaks.

"These princes — they ride, they train, they wed, and one day one o' them will sit the Iron Throne after their father," Clare says. "That's the way of it."

She studies you now.

"You truly never heard the name Targaryen?"

You force yourself to shake your head. 

Clare studies you for a long moment, then snorts softly. "Then you're either lost beyond sense... or bonkers... or both."

A weak sound escapes you — something between a laugh and a sob. Your eyes burn, glossing over despite your effort to stay composed.

"It feels like I'm dreaming," you murmur. "Or trapped in a nightmare I can't wake from. Maybe I already died. Maybe that crash — " your throat tightens " — maybe that was it. And this is... something after."

Clare's brows draw together. She looks at you as one might look at a child claiming to see ghosts.

"Girl," she says firmly, pressing a rough but not unkind hand to your wrist, "this is as real as the floor beneath us. You're flesh and bone and stubborn breath. Dead folk don't bleed nor faint in my taproom."

She dips a cloth into a basin of water and lays it across your forehead. The coolness steadies you.

"Mayhaps the gods sent you," she adds, quieter now. "Stranger things have happened than a lost maid stumbling out o' the wood." She tilts her head. "What was it you said brought you? That thing what flies?"

You hesitate. For the first time, the thought solidifies in you—not just fear, not just shock. A theory. Alternate world? Different time?

Maybe you died in yours, maybe you crossed into this one. If so... this is the past. 

"What year is it?" you ask instead of answering her.

She doesn't find the question strange. "Two-hundred and nine, after Conquest."

You almost choke. The number slams into you harder than any physical blow.

When she looks at you sharply, you force your expression to smooth out. 

"Right," you manage faintly. "Of course."

You draw a slow breath. "It's called a plane," you begin again. "The thing that flies. It's... a craft. Made of metal. It carries many people at once through the sky."

Her eyes narrow slightly, but not in mockery this time — only confusion.

You stop yourself. "I'd rather you not repeat that to anyone," you say quickly. "Please. People already think I'm mad. I need... time... To uhm -- understand." Your fingers twist nervously together in your lap. "And I'm sorry," you add, shame creeping in. "I don't have any money. No coin. I must be nothing but a burden."

Clare makes a dismissive sound. "Nonsense."

She wrings out the cloth and sets it back upon your brow.

"The gods don't send burdens without cause," she says. "And the sept teaches we are to shelter the innocent, and protect women who've no shield of their own. You seem to be both."

She smiles then, a genuine one. You have no idea what a sept truly is, but you nod as though you do.

"You're welcome to stay," she continues. "As long as you've need. I've room enough. Been alone these years since my husband passed. My sons are wed and gone to their own fields, my daughter to her husband."

She gives you a sideways look. "Wouldn't mind the company... Nor the help. For a time." She winks.

Something tight in your chest loosens for the first time since the forest.

You are in 209 AC. In the Reach. Under the reign of King Daeron the Good.

And somehow... impossibly... alive.

Days pass.

You recover beneath Clare's roof.

It takes effort not to interfere. You are a neurosurgeon — years of study, of sterile rooms and surgical lights, of steady hands mapping the fragile architecture of the human brain. You know exactly what kind of trauma a blow behind the ear can cause. You know the risks of infection in a puncture wound. You know how crude linen and boiled wine are poor substitutes for antibiotics.

But you also know something far more dangerous: none of what you know exists here.

There are no cultures grown in labs, no imaging machines, no sterile theaters. Even the words would betray you. So you say nothing.

You let Clare work. She cleans the gash at your hairline with vinegar and something that smells sharply of rosemary. She packs the wound at your shoulder with poultices made of comfrey and garlic, muttering about "drawing out the rot." She binds it tight and scolds you when you try to move too much.

You grit your teeth and allow it.

And somehow... you heal. Not perfectly of course, not comfortably... but you heal.

Clare gives you clothing once you are steady on your feet — simple linen shifts, woolen kirtles, aprons sturdy enough for tavern work. Your old clothes she folds carefully and sets in a small wooden chest at the foot of your bed.

You hesitate one night, staring at them. Part of you thinks they are dangerous : proof of something unnatural. Something that could get you accused of witchcraft or worse. Burning them in the hearth would be safest. But you cannot.

They are the last thread tying you to your world.

You woke here with nothing else. No suitcase, no passport, no phone. Just those clothes. So you keep them, folded and hidden. Sacred in a way you cannot explain.

In return for shelter, you help.

You scrub tables, pour ale, carry trenchers of bread and stew. You learn how to move through the tavern without drawing too much notice, how to lower your voice into something less sharp, less modern. You practice speaking as they do, you swallow words that do not belong here.

And you listen, the tavern is a well of stories.

You learn of the Narrow Sea and the lands beyond it : the Free Cities of Braavos, Pentos, Lys, Myr. You hear of sellswords and merchant princes, of ships larger than anything Ashford has ever seen.

You learn of the Wall in the far North, though most speak of it as a distant curiosity rather than a living defense.

And always — always — the talk circles back to the royal family.

The cursed yet favored Targaryens.

Traveling hedge knights drink heavily and boast loudly. They speak of the king, Daeron the Good, as a scholar-king, gentle but shrewd. They speak of his sons with admiration, and sometimes mockery.

They speak often of the Blackfyre Rebellion. 

You piece it together from fragments: Daemon Blackfyre, the king's half-brother, claiming the throne. Lords choosing sides. They speak Prince Baelor's name with particular reverence.

"Breakspear held the line at the Redgrass Field," one knight says, pounding his cup for emphasis. "Fought like the Warrior himself had taken his arm."

"And the young prince beside him," another adds. "Maekar — gods, that one fights like a hammer striking steel."

Maekar the Anvil.

You store every detail carefully. 

Late one evening, after too much ale, a hedge knight leans toward you with wine-thick breath and grins. "Strange folk, dragons' blood," he says. "Keep it pure, they do."

"How?" you ask, feigning mild curiosity.

"Marry their own," he says. "Always have. Brother to sister, uncle to niece. Keeps the dragon strong."

You still. Cousins marrying cousins does not shock you; history in your own world was full of such unions among nobility. Politics above affection.

But brothers to sisters? Uncles to nieces? Something twists uneasily in your stomach.

"For the blood of the dragon," the knight repeats, as if that explains everything. "They ain't like us."

You nod slowly, hiding your reaction behind lowered lashes. You know too much about genetics to find comfort in that tradition. 

The more you hear of the dragonlords, the more they take root in your thoughts.

It frightens you — how easily your mind conjures them now. Silver hair catching sunlight. Violet eyes assessing battlefields. Armor ringing beneath banners stitched with three-headed dragons.

You should be terrified. You are terrified.

But you are fascinated too.

"They've that way about them," Clare tells you one night as she plucks a chicken by the back door, feathers drifting like snow around her boots. "Targaryens. Folk fear 'em, aye—but they look twice all the same. Like staring at a flame. You know it can burn you, but still you draw close."

You say nothing, because she is right.

At night, when the tavern empties and the shutters are barred, when the last drunk has staggered home and the hearth burns low, the silence becomes unbearable. That is when your old life creeps in.

You think of your mother's voice, your father's tired jokes, your friends sending you messages you will never answer.

You picture the hospital operating room: bright, sterile, humming with focus. The years of study — undergraduate, medical school, residency, fellowship. More than a decade of sacrifice to become what you were. A neurosurgeon.

Here, you scrub ale from tables.

You turn your face into the thin pillow and let the tears come soundlessly, shoulders shaking beneath rough wool blankets. You do not want Clare to hear, you do not want her pity.

Some nights you wonder if God — your God, and not theirs — has punished you. For ambition, for pride, or neglecting faith until crisis demanded it.

Clare notices your restlessness. She begins taking you to the sept on certain mornings.

It is a modest building of pale stone, its walls limewashed and clean, the seven-pointed star carved above its wooden doors. Inside, the air smells of beeswax and incense. Light filters through colored glass in small round panes, painting the floor in muted blues and reds.

At the front stand seven carved figures:

The Father with his scales. The Mother with her outstretched arms. The Warrior armored and stern. The Maiden serene and young. The Smith strong at his forge. The Crone with her lantern raised. The Stranger, faceless and shadowed.

It unsettles you how familiar it feels. Not the shapes, but the structure, the reverence, the kneeling. It reminds you of Catholic churches : statues of saints instead of these aspects, candles lit for guidance, confession whispered in corners.

Clare shows you how to light a taper properly. How to bow your head. Which figure to pray to for protection, for guidance, for forgiveness.

"Sometimes," she says softly before the Mother's statue, "we don't need answers. Just strength enough to bear what's given."

You nod. You do not know which god — if any — has brought you here. But kneeling beside her steadies something inside you.

Late at night, when the tavern quiets, Clare talks more.

She tells you of her late husband : broad-shouldered, fond of dice, gone three winters now from a fever that took him quick. She tells you of her sons, married and settled in neighboring villages. Of her daughter, wed to a miller.

Her stories are ordinary. Human. And then she asks about you.

You tell her about your family in soft outlines. A father who worked too much, a mother who called too often. Siblings who teased. Friends who felt like siblings.

You do not tell her about surgical residencies or night shifts or conferences. You do not tell her that in your world women lead hospitals, argue in courtrooms, command armies of knowledge. You do not tell her that you studied more than twelve years to carve tumors from human brains.

It would sound like witchcraft, or arrogance. Or both.

So you let her believe you are simply a woman who lost her kin.

She (and others) ask often why you are not wed.

It happens at least twice a week. Patrons with ale-heavy breath, neighboring wives who peer too closely, even Clare herself once or twice.

"You're beautiful," one woman remarks while kneading dough beside you. "And not lame nor dim. Why's no man claimed you?"

Claimed.

The word stings.

You quickly learned that by their measure, you are... late. A woman of your age should have been married years ago, bearing children, running a household.

So you crafted a shield.

"My husband died," you say quietly whenever asked.

The word husband tastes strange on your tongue. It works. The questions stop at once, and faces soften. Some murmur condolences, others nod with that grim understanding of life's cruelty.

A widow is acceptable. An unmarried woman past her prime is suspicious. You hate the lie, but you cling to it.

It keeps them from pressing further.

And each night, as you lie in Clare's spare room, listening to the wind sweep across Ashford Meadow, you feel yourself splitting in two.

The woman you were : educated, modern, certain. And the woman you must become : quiet, cautious, shaped by a world that burns the different.

For a while, it is fine. Not good, not truly, but ... predictable. Yes, that was the word. 

You wake before dawn because there is nothing else to do.

There are no alarms here, no glowing numbers on a bedside clock, no distant traffic humming beyond double-paned windows. Only the slow thinning of darkness and the cold that seeps through stone and wood alike.

Your body has learned the rhythm of this place. You rise when the air is still blue, when frost clings to the edges of the well and your breath ghosts in front of you. For a few fragile seconds each morning, suspended between sleep and waking, you forget where you are.

Then the ceiling comes into focus — low beams, smoke-stained and rough. And you remember. Oh, you remember.

You dress in layers of wool that scratch at your skin. You tie your hair back in a braid bun. You descend the narrow steps into the tavern's common room where embers glow faintly in the hearth like watchful eyes.

Clare is often already there, sleeves rolled to her elbows, flour dusting her forearms.

You knead dough beside her, your palms pressing into it rhythmically, folding and turning, building gluten without consciously thinking the word gluten. The repetition steadies your breathing. It quiets your thoughts.

Haul water, scrub tankards, sweep rushes from the floor. Wipe down tables sticky with spilled ale and old laughter.

Listen. You have become very good at listening.

Men speak freely around you now. You are furniture to them : useful, unthreatening, forgettable. They argue about crop yields and taxes and the price of grain. They whisper about lords and feasts and marriages. 

You pretend not to care.

Days blur together until they are less like individual memories and more like one long stretch of endurance. Morning work, midday rush, evening exhaustion. Sleep heavy and dreamless — until it isn't.

Routine becomes a kind of mercy, routine leaves little room for panic. You almost begin to believe you could remain here. That you could build something small and steady in the shadow of someone else's story, a quiet life. 

And that thought frightens you. You were not raised for invisibility.

You were raised on achievement charts and acceptance letters. On the belief that your mind was your greatest weapon. You spent more than twelve years carving your path — undergraduate degree, medical school, residency, fellowship. Nights without sleep, holidays missed, and relationships sacrificed.

You remember the first time you held a scalpel over an exposed brain. The weight and the terror of it. The precision required, the knowledge that a millimeter too far could steal someone's speech, their memory, their life.

You had power there, purpose even. Here, your hands smell of onions and yeast.

Some days you accept it with surprising calm. Other days it claws at you.

You step outside behind the tavern when it becomes too much. You brace your hands against the cold stone and breathe through the ache in your chest. You look up at a sky that feels familiar and foreign all at once.

And then the thought comes. Soft at first, tentative :  What if this isn't real? What if the plane never truly crashed?

What if your body lies somewhere in a hospital bed (machines humming, nurses whispering) while your mind constructs this elaborate medieval hallucination to fill the void?

It would explain the impossibility of it all. The way history here feels both written and unwritten.

And if it is a dream — if it is a coma — then there is a way out.

The idea slithers in slowly, like something ashamed of itself.

If you died here... would you wake there? You imagine it in flashes. Cold river water filling your lungs — and then air, clean and filtered, flooding them instead. Darkness closing in, and then fluorescent lights burning your vision as your eyes snap open.

Your mother's voice breaking as she says your name. The fantasy is intoxicating in its cruelty. For a moment, you want to believe it. But then the rational part of you (the surgeon, the scientist) rises up.

What if you are wrong? What if this is not a dream but a displacement? What if whatever force tore you from your world placed you here entirely?

If you die in this body, what if you simply die?

No hospital, no second chance, no awakening.

Just nothing. Oblivion. You weigh it clinically sometimes, as if evaluating a risky procedure: probability unknown. Outcome irreversible.

You survived the crash — however impossible that survival looks now. You clawed your way through confusion and hunger and fear. You adapted and endured.

Would you truly throw all of that away on a theory born from desperation?

Another voice whispers cruelly: You're too afraid. And maybe you are. But another voice answers back: You fought too hard to live to surrender it so cheaply.

Even if living means kneading dough in a world that should not exist. Even if living means being small for now. So you choose the mundane. You choose to wake before dawn. You choose to haul water. You choose to survive.

And every morning you open your eyes beneath those smoke-darkened beams, you acknowledge the truth that frightens and steadies you all at once: If you were meant to die in that crash, you would have, but you are still here.

Which means, somehow, your story is not finished.

Until one afternoon, Clare sits across from you at the scrubbed wooden table, hands folded, eyes thoughtful in a way that makes your stomach tighten.

"I've been thinkin'," she says slowly. "I'm not as spry as I was. Winter's harder on the bones each year. My Ellyn's wrote again—her husband's done well for himself. Big house, servants and all that. She's asked me to come live with 'em proper."

The words hang in the air between you, you feel your expression change before you can stop it — your features twisting into something unguarded. Confusion first, then disbelief, then something far more fragile.

What does she mean, she's leaving?

Clare isn't just the woman who owns the tavern. She is the reason you did not lose your mind in the first week, she is routine and familiarity and the one steady voice in a world that still feels like it's made of shifting sand.

She is proof that kindness exists here.

Without her, the fragile structure you've built to keep yourself upright feels as though it might collapse. She has been your anchor, your interpreter, your quiet reassurance that you are not entirely alone in this strange place.

And now she speaks of leaving as if it is simple. As if it does not feel like the ground giving way beneath your feet.

She gives a small shrug. "I'll be closin' the tavern by harvest's end."

You hadn't realized how much of your fragile security rested on these walls.

She watches your face, then reaches across the table and pats your hand. "You can come with me, if you like. There'd be space. Ellyn's good-hearted. Or — " she hesitates, " — there's Lord Ashford."

You blink. "Lord Ashford?"

"Aye. The lord of these lands. His sons come drink here often enough. I know the family. Decent folk, for nobles." She snorts lightly. "If you go to the castle and tell him you're sent by me, with a letter in hand, he'll not turn you away. They'll always have need of another maid."

A maid.

From neurosurgeon to tavern girl to a fucking maid in a medieval castle.

Your pride stirs, then you crush it. Pride is useless here, pride does not feed you.

That night you lie awake long after the hearth goes cold. You weigh your options carefully. Go with Clare? Live out your days under another woman's roof, dependent again. Safe — but small.

Or go to the castle. Risk the unknown, place yourself closer to power, closer to the currents of this world that still feel like a story unfolding around you. Maybe you could find help, to go back where you came from?

By morning, you have decided.

"I'll go to the castle," you tell her quietly.

Clare's smile is soft, but there is sadness behind it. "Thought you might." She cups your cheek briefly, like a mother might. "I'd have liked you with me, truth be told. But you've never been one to settle where you don't mean to."

You wonder if she sees more than you think.

She presses a small pouch of coins into your palm. "For a proper gown. Can't have you showin' up lookin' like you've slept in my flour sacks."

Your throat tightens. "Clare, I — "

"Hush." She waves you off. "You've worked hard enough for your keep. Let an old woman feel generous."

The last morning comes too quickly.

You stand outside the tavern with a small bundle of your belongings — two dresses, your old clothes, a comb, the worn shoes you've grown used to, and Clare's folded letter sealed with wax.

The air smells of damp earth and distant hay.

You throw your arms around her, unable to hold back the tears now. "Thank you. For everything."

She stiffens for half a second (unused to such open affection) then pats your back awkwardly. "Oh, off with you. You'll make me weep, and I've no patience for that." Her voice wobbles despite her attempt at gruffness. "It's been a pleasure, girl. Truly."

You step back, wiping your face.

As you walk away down the road toward Ashford Castle rising pale against the hills, a realization settles heavily over you. You were lucky. So impossibly lucky.

You could have woken in a ditch, in the hands of cruel men, sold, accused of witchcraft. Left to starve.

Instead, you found Clare. A widow with flour and ale on her hands and kindness in her bones.

You glance back once more. She is still standing there, small against the tavern door, watching until you round the bend.

Then you face forward.

The castle looms closer with every step — stone walls high and unyielding, banners snapping in the wind.

Your heart pounds so hard you feel it in your throat, another life ending, another beginning waiting. And you walk toward it alone.

The road stretches ahead in a pale ribbon of packed earth, damp from the night's mist. Your bundle feels heavier than it should, though it carries little more than spare clothing and Clare's sealed letter. Each step takes you farther from the tavern — the only place in this world that has ever felt remotely safe.

You've never really ventured beyond it before.

Not properly.

You told yourself it was because there was too much work to be done. Because Clare needed you. Because the village was small enough and the world beyond it irrelevant.

But the truth is simpler... You were afraid.

Afraid of being asked questions you couldn't answer. Afraid someone sharper than a drunken farmer would notice the way you hesitate before speaking, the way you choose your words too carefully. Afraid of slipping — of referencing something impossible, of revealing how little you truly understand.

So you stayed small.

You stayed within the tavern's walls, where you knew the rhythm of the day and the measure of each man's temper. Where invisibility protected you.

The castle had always existed at the edge of your vision.

You'd seen it from afar : its pale stone towers rising above the trees, banners fluttering against the sky. A distant shape against the horizon, more storybook than real. You never let yourself think about it too deeply.

Castles meant lords, lords meant scrutiny, and well... scrutiny meant danger.

But now, as the structure grows larger with every step, it is no longer a distant silhouette. The battlements carved in clean lines, the guards posted at the gates, the gleam of sunlight against arrow slits and iron-bound doors.

It is real. Terrifyingly real. And you are walking straight toward it.

There is no tavern wall to hide behind now. No Clare to answer for you, no familiar faces to soften the edges of this world.

Just you, alone.

Your heart pounds — not only from fear, but from something else too. A reluctant awareness that this is movement. That you are no longer merely surviving inside borrowed safety. You are stepping into the wider world. Whatever it does to you next, it will not be because you stayed hidden.

The gates rise above you like something carved from judgment itself.

Two guards stand at attention, mail glinting softly in the afternoon light, spears grounded but ready. They look bored more than anything else, until they see you.

A lone woman, simply dressed... with no escort. Their eyes immediately narrow in polite suspicion.

You force your shoulders to stay relaxed. To look small, harmless. You lower your gaze just enough — not submissive, but respectful. You have learned the balance.

"I beg your pardon, ser," you begin carefully, smoothing your accent, sanding down the sharper edges of your speech. "I've come seekin' Lord Ashford." She says adds quickly. "If it please you."

One guard shifts his weight. "For what purpose?"

Your pulse flutters, this is where tone matters, word choice matters. Too bold and you are insolent... Too educated and you are strange.

"I've heard there be need of a maid in the castle," you say softly shielding the sun from your face with the back of your hand. "I was sent by Mistress Clare — the tavern keeper at Ashford Meadow. She bid me bring a letter to his lordship."

At the mention of Clare, something eases in the older guard's expression. Recognition, perhaps or familiarity.

"The widow who keeps the alehouse by the crossroads?" he asks.

"Aye, ser."

They exchange a glance.

You keep your hands folded loosely before you, heart hammering but face composed. You are acutely aware of every movement — how you stand, how you breathe, how long you hold eye contact. You cannot afford to appear odd.

After a moment, the older guard nods. "Wait here."

He disappears through the gates, leaving you alone beneath the weight of stone and sky. You resist the urge to fidget. This is nothing like walking into a hospital administrator's office. There, you belonged. Here, you are asking to be tolerated.

The guard returns sooner than you expect.

"You'll come," he says simply.

The gates open. The sound alone (iron and wood shifting) makes something inside you jolt. You step through into the castle yard.

It is larger than it ever seemed from afar. Stable boys hurry past leading horses, servants cross with baskets of linens. The smell of hay, smoke, and damp stone fills the air. The keep rises ahead, windows narrow and watchful.

You are led through corridors cooler than the outside air, torchlight flickering along the walls. Tapestries hang between stone columns — hunting scenes, battles, the Ashford sigil, a sun in orange back, worked in careful thread.

Your shoes echo faintly on the floor. You remind yourself to walk neither too quickly nor too slowly.

At last, the guard stops before a wooden door banded with iron. He knocks once, then pushes it open.

"The girl from the tavern, m'lord."

You step inside. The solar is warmer than the corridors, sunlight filtering through arched windows. Shelves lined with ledgers and scrolls. A heavy desk near the far wall.

Lord Ashford stands beside it.

He is older than you expected — hair threaded with gray, beard neatly kept. His tunic is finely made but not ostentatious. He looks like a man accustomed to command without needing to shout.

His gaze settles on you, assessing but not cruel. You drop into a small, practiced curtsey, like Clar told you to do if you see nobility.

"My lord," you say, careful, respectful. "I thank you for granting me audience."

He gestures faintly. "You're sent by Clare?"

"Yes, m'lord." You step forward just enough to offer the sealed letter with both hands. "She asked that I place this in your care."

He takes it, breaks the wax, and reads in silence.

You keep your eyes lowered, but not to the floor entirely — focused somewhere near the edge of his desk. Submissive enough, not suspicious. At last, he folds the letter.

"She speaks well of you," he says. "Says you've worked honest these past months. That you're steady."

Relief flickers through you, but you keep your expression modest. "I do my best, m'lord."

"And you seek a place in my household?"

"Yes, m'lord. As a maid, if it please you. I've experience keepin' house, tendin' tables, seein' to chores as needed." All true. 

His eyes linger on you a moment longer. You fight the instinct to fill the silence. In this world, silence belongs to the powerful.

At last, he nods.

"There is always work to be done. You'll report to the housekeeper. She'll judge your usefulness better than I."

Your lungs loosen for the first time since you reached the gates.

"Thank you, my lord," you say, despite the tremor in your chest. "You'll not find me idle."

He studies you once more, as if committing your face to memory.

"We shall see," he replies evenly.

And just like that, another door opens in this strange, impossible life of yours.

The woman waiting for you in the hallway is nothing like Clare. She is older, posture rigid, shoulders squared, and the smell of old wood clings to her like a second skin. Her grey hair is pulled back in a tight knot, gray streaked with stubborn black. Her eyes assess you, and her yellowed teeth glint faintly when she murmurs a greeting.

"You must be the girl from the tavern," she says, each word precise. "Esthis, the housekeeper. Do not waste my time, girl. You are to learn quickly, or you will not last here."

You bow your head. "Yes, Mistress Esthis. I shall do my best."

"Your best will not suffice," she mutters, inspecting you as though you were a piece of furniture she was considering keeping or discarding. "But mayhap it will do until you prove otherwise."

She leads you through a series of corridors, the walls lined with tapestries and shields, the air smelling faintly of incense and wax polish. You keep your head down, careful not to stumble, careful not to breathe too loudly.

“You are to serve the youngest of Lady Ashford’s charges,” she continued in that same measured tone that left little room for questions. “Lady Gwyn. The boy-knights are rarely home — they are off gallivanting across the realm, chasing glory in tournaments and jousts like all young fools with a sword and a horse. The girls remains here with her father. She has an older sister as well, Lady Siena Ashford. Wild, that one.” The woman’s mouth tightened slightly as she said it. “But your attention is not for her. Your duty is to the younger girl, and entirely so. Lady Gwyn is to be your charge.”

Lady Siena and Lady Gwyn. You had heard those names before, long before you ever stepped inside Ashford Castle. In the village below the hill they appeared often enough in idle gossip.

"She turns thirteen soon," Esthis adds, as though noting it for the record, "and you are now her maid. You will anticipate her needs. You will serve without complaint. Do not fail."

You nod again, swallowing the lump in your throat. "I understand."

She grunts, apparently satisfied, and guides you to a small chamber tucked beneath the eaves. The room is modest — bare walls of oak, a narrow bed with a rough woolen blanket, a small chest at the foot. There is a single window that lets in pale sunlight and a draft that chills your shoulders despite your layered clothing.

"This is where you will stay," Esthis says. She gestures to the chest. "Place your things there, and othing more. Keep it tidy, keep it neat. This is not your home, girl. Remember that."

You step inside and lay your bag upon the chest. The room feels impossibly small compared to the open space of Clare's tavern. But it is yours, for now.

Esthis leaves, the door clicking behind her with the kind of authority that leaves no room for argument. You exhale, leaning against the rough wall, feeling the first true weight of your new life settle on your shoulders.

Late at night, when the castle has quieted and the echoes of the day have faded into the thick stone walls, you find yourself in the small, shared quarters with the other maids. They sit cross-legged on worn floorboards, hushed whispers weaving between the shadows of the room. A candle flickers in the corner, throwing dancing light across their faces, and you instinctively smooth your hands over your lap, careful to remain composed.

The conversation drifts from spilled ink to errands and laundry, until, inevitably, it circles back to you.

"You look so young," one whispers, voice tinged with curiosity and something like envy. "So... beautiful. How comes a maiden such as you is not wed? Nor with child yet?"

The question hits with a peculiar weight. It is not asked with malice, but with the casual certainty of those for whom such questions are ordinary, unavoidable truths of life. In this world, it is taken as strange for a woman of your apparent age not to be promised, married, or expecting.

You feel the heat rise to your cheeks, the memory of your modern world pressed beneath the folds of this strange one. You were never expected to marry at twelve, thirteen, fifteen — not when ambition and knowledge drove you. And yet, here, in this stone chamber with flickering candlelight, it feels as if your very existence contradicts the order of things.

"I..." you begin carefully, forcing a calmness into your tone, steadying it against the strange ache that has lodged in your chest. "...My husband... he is dead."

A pause ripples through the room, like a soft wind through cobwebs. Their eyes widen slightly. It is enough to silence further questions, though curiosity lingers in the air. You let it.

"And... that is all I shall say of it," you continue, with the faintest tilt of your chin, enough to signal finality without arrogance. Your fingers play lightly in your lap, knotting and unknotting in the candlelight. "It is not for me to speak more."

It is strange (achingly strange) not to speak the way you once did.

In your old life, your words were quick, precise by education and habit. You debated colleagues., you issued instructions in operating rooms without lowering your eyes to anyone.

Here, a misplaced word can mark you as odd. Or worse : arrogant. Or worse still : dangerous.

So you trim your speech carefully. You soften consonants the way the peasants of the Reach do. You round your vowels. You replace perhaps with mayhap, yes with aye, I understand with as you say, my lady.

At first it feels like acting in a play that never ends. You stumble and overcorrect. You lie awake at night replaying conversations, wincing at phrases that may have sounded too polished, too foreign.

But you learn.

You listen the way you always have : absorbing cadence, rhythm, slang. You let it seep into you until it becomes second nature. Now when you speak, it no longer feels entirely borrowed.

Your life settles into routine again, and you are grateful for it.

You scrub floors until your hands crack and bleed in the colder months. You carry water up narrow staircases until your shoulders burn and tremble. You air linens, mend small tears, brush out tangles from silks more expensive than anything you once owned.

You learn to curtsy properly : deep enough to show respect, not so deep as to seem theatrical. You learn when to speak and when silence is safer. You say "My lady" and "My lord" with the right balance of humility and steadiness.

You lower your eyes when addressed.

It is stricter than the tavern ever was. Cleaner, and more controlled. There are no drunken men grabbing at sleeves here — but there are expectations heavier than ale-stained hands.

And then there is Lady Gwyn Ashford. Soon to be thirteen, and painfully aware of it.

She takes a liking to you faster than you expect.

Perhaps it is because you are not cowed by her in the way some of the younger maids are. Perhaps it is because, despite your careful speech, something in you still feels different. Or perhaps she simply senses kindness.

She reminds you, painfully, of girls you once knew. Of nervous patients before minor procedures. Of your friend's daughter who used to sit in hospital waiting rooms swinging her legs. Of nieces who asked too many questions and laughed too loudly.

Lady Gwyn is curious in a way that borders on restless. She is clever — though not always encouraged to be. Bored, often. She speaks constantly of marriage prospects, of what sort of knight or lord she might one day wed, of the duties of a lady, of how she must represent House Ashford well.

Sometimes you see the tension beneath it, the awareness that childhood is slipping from her like sand through fingers.

She asks questions when no one else is near. "What was it like, before you came here?"

"Do smallfolk truly wed for love?"

"Are boys in the villages handsome?"

You answer carefully, always carefully.

And sometimes (when the door is closed and no one important lingers) you let your old self slip through the cracks.

She once described a boy who strutted through the courtyard, boasting of future glory.

You smiled before you could stop yourself. "In my... village, we'd call that peacockin'. All feathers and noise."

She blinked at you. Then laughed — bright and delighted.

"You are strange," she declared. "But funny."

She says you are very pretty, too. That one unsettles you more.

Because here, beauty is not curated the way it was in your world. Peasant women work until sun and wind harden their skin. They do not have the time (or luxury) for careful grooming. In your old life, appearance was maintenance. Skincare, haircare, fitness. It was expected, almost clinical in its routine.

Here, it stands out.

You keep clean because you must. You tie your hair neatly because it is habit. You hold yourself straight because years of professional posture never left you.

And she notices.

"You do not look like the other maids," she once said bluntly, studying you. "You look... finer."

You laughed it off. "Hard work will mend that soon enough, my lady."

But you see it in her eyes : curiosity. Surprise that someone who claims to be smallfolk carries herself differently. And then, inevitably, she asks the question that seems to haunt this world.

"Why are you not wed?"

It is not accusation, it is confusion. You smooth her hair as you've done a hundred times before, fingers gentle as you braid it for the evening.

"My husband died," you say softly, the words practiced and steady.

She goes still. "Oh."

And then her face shifts (not to gossip, not to suspicion) but to genuine sorrow. "I am sorry," she says earnestly. "Truly."

And you believe her.

Lady Gwyn is a truly lovely girl, not yet hardened by politics, not yet burdened by expectation.

You dip your head slightly. "It was some years past, my lady. I have made my peace."

It is easier now to tell the lie. It rolls from your tongue with less resistance. Because in a way, you have lost something. An entire life, a future, people who will never know what became of you.

She leans into your touch as you finish her braid.

"I hope," she says thoughtfully, "that I wed a good man. Not one who boasts like a peacock."

You smile despite yourself.

"I hope so too, my lady." 

She smiles at you then, the kind of smile that belongs to a girl and not yet a lady trained for court. Through the mirror, her eyes meet yours.

"I really like your necklace."

Instinctively, your fingers rise to your collarbone, brushing the thin chain. You rarely think of it during the day (it has become part of you) but now it feels suddenly heavy.

It is small. A delicate golden heart, no larger than the pad of your thumb, engraved with your initials. The chain is fine, almost fragile. In your old world it would have been ordinary.

Here, it feels dangerously precious.

You had removed your watch the first week — its glass face, its ticking hands, its impossible design too strange for this place. You keep it wrapped in cloth at the bottom of your chest.

But the necklace... you could not part with it. It was your mother's gift. A graduation present. "So you'll always carry home with you," she had said, fastening it at your neck.

You swallow gently. "Thank you, my lady. My mother gifted it to me."

Gwyn nods, studying it with approval. She does not ask more. For that, you are grateful.

You notice the books at first only because your eyes are starved for printed words. Leather spines line the shelves of her chamber. Some cracked with age, others newer, their bindings still stiff. Titles stamped in gold leaf. Pages edged in faint red or blue.

You try not to stare.

One afternoon, while braiding her hair, you let yourself glance too long at a stack near the window.

"You look at them as if they might speak," she observes.

You nearly flinch.

"I only think they're handsome things," you reply, cautious.

She tilts her head. "Can you read?"

The question lands heavier than it should. Most smallfolk cannot.

You measure your answer like you once measured incision depth. "Aye, my lady. I was fortunate. A nobleman once passed through our village. Taught a few of us letters in the evenings."

It sounds plausible. 

Her brows lift slightly — not in suspicion, but mild surprise. "That is rare."

"I know," you say, lowering your eyes just enough.

There is a pause. Then, gently: "You may borrow one, if you like. I have more than I care to finish. It is expected I read them, but I confess I do not always enjoy it."

You bow your head, hiding the rush of relief and hunger. "You are most kind, my lady."

Kind does not begin to cover it. You devour them. You read in your small chamber by candlelight until wax pools dangerously close to the holder. You read in stolen moments between duties. You read as if the pages themselves might reveal a map home.

At first it is simple histories.

Dragons long dead : Balerion the Black Dread, whose shadow once swallowed cities. Vhagar. Meraxes. Names that feel mythic and yet are recorded with dates and witnesses.

You read of Aegon's Conquest : of fire made flesh, of Harrenhal melting like wax, of kingdoms bending or burning.

You read of the Dance of the Dragons, civil war tearing a dynasty apart. Brother against sister. Dragon against dragon. Skies black with ash.

Then the Blackfyre Rebellion : bastards claiming crowns, legitimacy questioned, blood spilled over lineage and pride.

And always, threading through it, the Targaryens.

Daeron II Targaryen : called the Good. The king who did not conquer Dorne with flame, but bound it through marriage. A political union that reshaped the realm more effectively than war. So it is true.

The drunken man in the tavern had not exaggerated.

You are living in the reign of a king whose name you now trace with your fingertip across parchment. You turn pages faster.

His sons, that you know with you many stores you've read already.

Baelor Targaryen. Breakspear. Widower. Warrior. Diplomat. The text praises his honor, his measured temperament, his ability to bridge divides between regions long hostile to one another.

You pause over his description longer than necessary. The other sons too, but not much is known in text, more in rumors. 

Maekar Targaryen, stern, rigid, unyielding. Also widower with many children.

"His children are said to be fierce," Gwyn murmurs one afternoon as you fasten the small pearl buttons at her sleeves, her voice lowered as though the stone walls themselves might carry tales. "But they have a poor reputation as well. Mother says the eldest is oft in his cups, and the second... cruel."

She hesitates, then adds with a small shrug, "I heard he has sent one of them to the Citadel to forge a chain and become a maester. I know little of the others, though. Only whispers."

That is not written in the book. But it feels true.

You read of the coin the gods are said to flip at a Targaryen's birth, madness or greatness. As if divinity itself cannot decide what it has created. You read of the Wall in the far North, ancient and impossibly vast. Of creatures scholars dismiss with careful language, but never entirely deny.

White walkers. Giants. Things that do not fit within your old understanding of biology.

You close the book slowly. It was absurd, all of it. 

The announcement comes like a thunderclap: the royal family will attend Gwyn's name day.

Even Lord Ashford looks stunned.

You overhear Lady Ashford murmuring to her companions that the Targaryens no longer soar as they once did, not without dragons. That Prince Baelor seeks closeness with lesser houses, to strengthen loyalty.

"They must remind the realm they are still flame," she says.

You polish the silver until your fingers ache and the metal gleams like still water. You work the cloth in small, patient circles, watching your distorted reflection waver in the curve of a goblet. For a moment, you barely recognize yourself — your face stretched thin by the bowl of the cup, eyes darker than you remember, older somehow.

You were not in the courtyard when Lord Ashford rode out to greet them, but you heard the trumpets. You did not see the formal bows, nor Lady Gwyn's carefully practiced curtsey, nor the way the household must have gathered in subtle clusters to witness dragon-blood stepping through their gates.

You only hear about it afterward in fragments from the stable boys.

Now you stand inside the solar, tray balanced carefully in your hands, breath measured and posture exact. The room has been prepared meticulously — rushes refreshed, fire stoked, wine decanted.

Brinna stands beside you, barely fifteen, gentle as pressed linen and twice as obedient. She clutches her own tray with white-knuckled fingers.

Then the door opens.

You feel it before you see them — the subtle shift in the air, the awareness that something important has entered the room.

Prince Baelor steps inside first.

He is broad-shouldered, yes, but not in the brutish way of men who rely solely on strength. There is composure in him. Control. The sunlight that follows through the open door catches in his dark hair — Dornish blood unmistakable in the tone of his olive skin, in the shape of his features. Truly handsome.

Behind him comes Prince Maekar.

If Baelor is tempered steel, Maekar is iron left in the forge too long — hard and severe. His jaw is set tight, his gaze sharp and restless. There is no warmth in the way he surveys the room. If anything, there is impatience.

You sense immediately that he finds this tourney tiresome. Beneath him. A duty to endure rather than enjoy.

They cross the threshold with Lord Ashford speaking between them, voice diplomatic, eager but measured.

Baelor came in front of you... and oh, he was handsome — truly, unfairly handsome.

Not in the fragile, ethereal way of the silver-haired princes sung about in taverns, but in something steadier. Baelor Targaryen entered the solar like a man accustomed to being watched and yet uninterested in the watching. Broad-shouldered, dark-haired, sun-browned by Dornish blood rather than pale Valyrian frost. Strength without ostentation, authority without noise.

His brother was the opposite in coloring if not in bearing. Hair white as bleached bone, eyes pale and sharp — the first time you saw a man like that, in your old world, you would have assumed albinism. Here, it marked him clearly: Targaryen. Or Lyseni. But no one mistook him. This was Prince Maekar : rigid, hawk-faced, coiled with restrained impatience.

And yet it was Baelor you looked at.

You were not present at the gates when Lord Ashford welcomed them. You did not see the formal bows, nor hear the words exchanged in the courtyard. But you heard later that the prince had greeted his host warmly — no arrogance, no lazy disdain. The rumors were true, then. Both that he was honorable... and that he was striking.

You met them inside, when they were shown into the solar.

Brinna, sweet and obedient Brinna, barely fifteen and already trained into quiet invisibility, carried one wine bocal. You slipped smoothly beside her and relieved her of it before she could protest. She blinked at you but said nothing. You were older; you moved with more certainty. Or perhaps more habit.

And then they entered.

Baelor first, accompanied by Lord Ashford, who spoke in a tone of careful optimism. Behind him came Maekar, tension drawn across his shoulders like a bowstring.

Maekar's eyes moved unkindly around the chamber. 

He muttered curses under his breath — not the performative kind meant to shock, but the habitual sort of a man already displeased before the day has begun.

You would have snorted once, in another life. The reflex rose in your throat before you strangled it. You were not that woman here, you were a maid.

You stepped forward. Baelor's eyes found you immediately. Not in hunger like most men, or in dismissal. Simply — awareness.

You lowered yours at once and moved to help him remove his cloak, fingers careful, deferential. And then the trembling began.

This was no minor lord. This was the heir to the Iron Throne. Descendant of dragonriders. A man whose ancestors had conquered kingdoms with flame.

You had heard of him in taverns — in gossip thick with ale and envy. Breakspear. The warrior who split shields. The widower prince. The good one.

And now he stood before you, smelling of leather, steel oil, and something clean... early rain, perhaps, caught in wool.

"Spring rains have swollen many of our streams," Lord Ashford was saying gently. "Perhaps the young princess has merely been delayed."

"Fuck me," Maekar muttered flatly. "Delayed," he repeated with disdain. "They are not delayed."

Your hands faltered at one stubborn clasp near Baelor's shoulder. You dared, foolishly, to glance up. He was not looking at you, but at his brother.

Faster, you tell yourself.

"Do not curse our gracious host," Baelor said quietly.

His voice was low, and you felt it more than heard it — a faint vibration beneath your fingers where the cloak still rested against his chest.

The clasp refused you.

Your fingers fumbled. Shit, shit, shit.

His gaze shifted.

For one terrifying second you thought he would rebuke you — a mean correction, a prince's impatience. Instead, something else crossed his face. Amusement? Understanding?

He covered your hands with his. And oh... They were so calloused in a way no court-bred dandy would ever be. The hands of a man who had actually wielded a weapon rather than merely posed with one.

"I have it," he murmured, not unkindly.

You withdrew at once, stepping back as though burned, eyes dropping to the floor. He unfastened the clasp himself and lifted the cloak from his shoulders in one smooth motion, handing it to you rather than letting it fall.

"Thank you," he said.

To you. Not past you. Not through you. To you.

This should have been ordinary — once, in another life, it would not have unsettled you at all. But here, in a world where rank carved distance between souls and nobles rarely wasted gentleness on those beneath them, kindness felt almost unnatural. So rare, so unexpected, that you found yourself stunned by it.

Behind him, Maekar tore off his own cloak and let it fall carelessly to the floor.

"I said fuck me, not fuck him," he grumbled, pacing toward the window. "It is not his fault Father bade us attend this miserable circus."

Lord Ashford's smile tightened. Just barely.

You saw it, and you felt a strange flicker of protectiveness toward him. He was kind. You knew that much. He did not deserve open contempt in his own hall.

Baelor sensed it too.

"Might we discuss this another time?" he suggested, already taking a seat with deliberate calm — not commanding, not pleading, simply redirecting.

The conversation shifted, politics, appearances. The expected arrival of other nobles.

You did not hear most of it, no, you were too busy memorizing him.

Oh, damn it — why did you have to feel this sudden, traitorous heat when he was the very portrait of the realm itself? The embodiment of honor, of duty, of everything sung about in halls and whispered about in awe. It was absurd, mortifyingly predictable. A foolish, girlish cliché you would have mocked in anyone else.

And yet, you couldn't help it.

The way he leaned back but never slouched, eating his grapes. The way his attention sharpened when someone spoke. The way Maekar's agitation seemed to orbit him rather than disturb him.

And then the interruption came.

A large, awkward young knight (broad as an ox and twice as uncertain) was discovered hovering too near the doorway, clearly listening. He looked as though he regretted being born.

Ser Duncan the Tall.

He stammered something about entering the lists. About having once served a certain Ser Arlan of Pennytree. About a joust sixteen years prior.

To your astonishment, Baelor remembered.

You poured more wine as they spoke, careful not to spill a drop. Maekar rolled his eyes openly when Duncan praised Baelor's skill. But Baelor waved it away with almost embarrassed humility.

"No harm done," he told the knight. "You may enter the lists."

The gamemaster shifted uneasily, and Baelor reminded the young man he would require a sigil if he were to compete — he was not Ser Arlan's son.

You felt something twist unexpectedly in your chest. Like you, he had no banner to claim. No father to stand behind. No clear place in this world that insisted upon lineage as proof of worth.

He bowed awkwardly, nearly tripping over himself as he withdrew.

When the door closed behind him, the room felt different somehow.

You linger at the edge of the solar while the princes, the maester of the games and Lord Ashford continue their discussion of the morrow's lists — which banners will ride, which rivalries must be carefully managed, which slight from ten years past might reignite beneath the guise of sport. It is a dance of pride disguised as chivalry.

You move when needed. Refill wine, replace a cup, answer when spoken to.

"Yes, my lord." "At once, Your Grace."

Invisible, efficient, and forgettable. Yet you feel his presence in the room like a second hearth-fire.

It is well past midnight when you see him again.

Lady Gwyn had fussed longer than usual before sleep, restless with anticipation of the tourney, whispering about which knight might crown her Queen of Love and Beauty. You stayed until her breathing softened and evened, until her fingers loosened their hold on your hand.

Only then do you retreat to your small chamber.

You hesitate before putting on the dark cloak. This is foolish, you tell yourself. But the air in the castle feels too thick tonight. You need distance from polished floors and noble tempers.

The lists are quiet now, the great pavilions stand like sleeping beasts beneath the moon. You only want to walk between them. To feel something that is yours.

You step into the corridor, fastening the clasp at your throat — and walk straight into someone.

You hit something solid, and a hand grips your upper arm to steady you before you can lose balance.

"Shit — oh my God—" you breathe automatically, the old words slipping out before you can catch them.

The hand stills, and you look up.

Prince Baelor. Your heart slams so violently you're certain he must feel it through your sleeve.

You drop at once into a curtsy, mortification flushing your skin. "Forgive me, Your Grace. I did not see — I wasn't looking — "

"It is quite all right," he says, and there is no irritation in it. 

He releases your arm, though his touch lingers in your awareness. His cloak is gone now; he wears only a simple dark doublet, unlaced slightly at the throat. Less princely. More man.

"And where are you going," he asks, tilting his head slightly, looking at your cloak, "at such an hour?"

The question is gentle, not accusatory. Still, you feel suddenly aware of how improper this might appear — a servant wandering alone at night.

"I wished for some air, my prince," you answer carefully. "The halls grow close after a long day."

His gaze rests on you longer than it should. 

"The grounds are not entirely empty," he says. "Knights drink deeply after a day in the lists."

"I can take care of myself," you reply before you can stop yourself. Shit. Too bold. You lower your eyes quickly. "Forgive me. I only meant — I will be cautious."

A faint smile touches his mouth — not mocking. "I do not doubt you can," he says. "But caution is no insult to strength."

Silence stretches between you, you don't know what to say.

He seems kind — more than kind. A man who listens before he speaks and does not wield his rank like a cudgel. There is nothing cruel in him, nothing careless. And that, somehow, makes this worse. Because you are not merely speaking to a courteous knight.

You are speaking to the heir to the Iron Throne.

To the son of a king, to the grandson of dragonriders. To a man whose blood has ruled the Seven Kingdoms since Aegon's Conquest... In your other life, men like him existed only in books and on screens, safe behind glass and fiction.

And yet here he stands in the flickering torchlight, close enough that you can see the faint scar near his jaw, close enough to hear the cadence of his breathing. It should terrify you... and it does, a little.

"You are not from these lands," he observes suddenly.

Your breath catches.

"My prince?"

"Your speech," he clarifies. "It is careful. As though chosen."

Your thoughts scatter at once. Holy shit. You cannot afford to be examined too closely. Not by anyone — and certainly not by him. Another realization follows swiftly on the first: he is not merely honorable, nor simply kind. He is observant, attentive in ways that unsettle. The sort of man who notices small fractures in a polished surface.

That is certainly a danger to you.

You are meant to be forgettable, another quiet maid in a borrowed apron. A bowed head, a pair of hands that pour wine and vanish. You have worked diligently to smooth away the sharper edges of your old yourself — the cadence of another world, the posture of someone accustomed to being seen.

And yet here you stand, caught beneath the gaze of a prince who has already noticed too much.

"I was fortunate, growing up," you say evenly. "A nobleman once allowed me access to letters. I learned to speak properly in service."

"Fortunate indeed," he murmurs. "Few are granted such opportunity."

He studies you again — and this time it feels as though he is not looking at a maid, but at a person trying very hard to remain small.

"And yet," he continues quietly, "you do not seem small."

The words strike deeper than they should.

You swallow. "It is not my place to seem otherwise."

"For what it is worth," he says after a moment, "place and worth are not always the same thing."

You dare to meet his mismatched eyes then.

They are warmer up close than you expected. Purple and blue, flecked with gold in the torchlight. 

"Thank you, Your Grace," you say softly.

He inclines his head, as though you have offered him something equal in return.

"If you must walk," he says, stepping slightly aside to allow you passage, "remain near the larger pavilions. The guards patrol there."

"I will."

You hesitate. "And if you require anything — "

He shakes his head gently. "No. But I thank you."

Another pause, the corridor feels narrower now.

"You said 'God,'" he adds suddenly.

Your stomach drops. Fuck.

"My prince?"

"When you stumbled," he says mildly. "You did not say 'gods.'"

Your thoughts tangle over themselves, searching desperately for something plausible.

"I -- I was startled," you manage at last. "An old habit."

A soft, nervous laugh slips from you, an attempt to thin whatever tension has gathered between you. It sounds too light in the narrow corridor, too fragile.

Your hands have begun trembling again — traitorous things. You hide them in the folds of your gown, fingers curling into the fabric as if you might anchor yourself there.

He watches you for a heartbeat longer. Then, unexpectedly, he lets it go. "As you say."

Relief floods you so suddenly your knees almost weaken. You incline your head, meaning to take your leave at last.

The corridor is dim, lit only by guttering torches that paint the stone in restless gold. Your slippers make scarcely a sound upon the rush-strewn floor. You have almost reached the turn when his voice rangs again. 

"What is your name again?" the prince asks.

Again? As if the loss of it pricks him.

Your pulse stumbles, names are dangerous things. In this world they carry lineage, allegiance, memory. You have forged yours carefully, stitched it into the fabric of your lie until it sits comfortably on your shoulders. Even so, for a moment you consider giving him another.

But he is waiting.

His thumb rests lightly against your sleeve, warm through the wool. His gaze is searching your face in the half-light.

You hesitate for only a heartbeat. It is enough for him to notice.

A faint line appears between his brows — not anger, not suspicion, but thought. As though he senses there is more beneath your silence than shyness.

"My name, Your Grace?" you echo softly, buying time you do not possess.

"Yes," he says. "I would not forget it twice."

There is no command in the words, so you give it to him. The sound of it feels strange in your own mouth tonight.

He repeats it, lower, tasting the syllables. Not mockery. Not correction. Memory. He nods once, committing it somewhere behind those steady brown eyes.

"It suits you," he says, almost absently.

You don't know what that means. He releases your arm then, though slowly, as if reluctant to surrender the contact.

"Good night," he says at last.

The corridor seems smaller somehow.

"Good night, Your Grace."

You curtsy again, deeper this time. When you rise, his gaze has not left you. You step past him, acutely aware of his proximity — the warmth, the faint scent of leather and steel that clings to him.

You walk steadily until you turn the corner. Only then do you press your hand to your chest.

Oh, this is dangerous.

You were present in the solar when Aerion made his declaration.

The chamber felt smaller that day, though the great carved beams and high windows had not shifted an inch. Lord Ashford sat at the head of the heavy wooden table carved with his house's sunburst crest. Beside him, stern and watchful, was his liege lord from the house of Tyrell. The king's sons occupied the opposite side — Prince Baelor composed, Prince Maekar tight-jawed.

Ser Duncan the Tall stood before them, flanked by royal guards, looking as though he had wandered into a tale far larger than himself. When the knight requested trial by combat, Aerion refused. He sat half-sprawled in his chair, a dagger in hand, cracking nuts against the tabletop with idle flicks of the blade. Shells scattered like splinters around his plate. His pale hair caught the light; his eyes did not.

"A trial of seven," he announced, as if suggesting a change in weather.

It was excess, spectacle even! It was cruelty wrapped in ceremony.

You felt the shift in the room — the tightening of jaws, the quick exchange of glances. A trial of seven meant blood would not be contained to two men. It would draw others in. Escalate pride into ruin. You moved quietly around the table, pouring wine into cups that did not need refilling. Your hands were steady by habit now. Your face carefully blank.

But inside, something twisted.

You pitied Ser Duncan. You had already pitied him long before this moment.

You had taken him food in the dungeons when no one was looking — crusts of bread, a heel of cheese, whatever you could slip past the guards under the pretense of cleaning. You should not have done it. It was not your place, but he had looked so bewildered in his chains, so alone.

And you had been there the day Aerion snapped the puppeteer girl's fingers.

The memory still made your stomach turn.

The girl had been part of a troupe traveling through the grounds, performing an old tale with painted wooden figures. You did not understand at first what had angered the prince so deeply. The maids whispered that the puppets had mocked the three-headed dragon, that the story made light of Targaryen power. That was why he had seized the girl's hand and bent her fingers back until they broke.

But in the kitchens, the cook had cut those whispers short.

"Fool talk," he had said slamming a cleaver into bone. "That tale is older than the dragons in this land. Older than their crowns. The prince needed no insult to do what he did. Some men are just born cruel."

Mad, others murmured later.

You did not know if it was madness, you only knew the sound the girl made.

And now here he was again, cracking nuts with his dagger, demanding seven men bleed for his pride, while Ser Duncan stood alone beneath banners that did not belong to him.

You poured more wine, and wondered how many more bones would break before this tourney was done.

When Ser Duncan was taken below (beneath the stone belly of Ashford Castle where the air turns damp and smells of iron and old straw) you told yourself it was none of your affair.

You lasted less than an hour.

Bread and cheese are easy enough to pocket if one knows when the kitchens are busiest. A heel gone missing raises fewer questions than a loaf. Water, easier still. You wrapped both in cloth and made your way down the narrow steps, heart hammering with every echo of your own footfall.

He could not have been more than nineteen, you thought when you saw him properly in the torchlight. Broad as an ox, yes. Calloused hands, yes... but young. Startlingly young when stripped of armor and pride.

He looked up when you approached the bars, confusion first — then recognition.

"You," he said, too loudly.

"Quiet," you hissed at once, glancing over your shoulder. "Do you want us both dead?"

That silenced him.

You passed the bread through the gap and the cup of water after. His fingers brushed yours, rough and shaking.

"You shouldn't — " he began.

"I know."

It was dangerous. Perhaps even treasonous, depending on how one wished to frame it. You had seen men hanged for less — for theft, for insolence, for merely being inconvenient to someone with power. A maid consorting with a prisoner accused of striking a prince? That rope would not hesitate.

Still, you could not unsee the puppeteer girl's broken fingers. You could not forget the sound.

"This does not leave this cell," you told him firmly. "You do not speak of me. If anyone asks, you found it on the floor. Understood?"

He nodded quickly. "I won't tell. I swear it."

He thanked you more times than necessary. You cut him off each time.

"Eat," you said. "You'll need your strength."

You did not stay long, could not afford to.

And so that night, they brought him back to the solar.

You stood once more with the wine pitcher in hand as the great men of the realm resumed their seats. 

Prince Aerion Targaryen lounged in his chair as though none of this concerned him. His lip was still split where Duncan had struck him; dried blood traced the edge of his mouth. 

He cracked nuts against the table again with the flat of his dagger. Again. Again.

The sharp report echoed in the chamber. If it pained him, he did not show it. If anything, the blood only sharpened his delight.

Prince Maekar looked as though he wished the stone floor would open and swallow him whole. Lord Ashford and Lord Tyrell shared a glance — discomfort poorly disguised as diplomacy.

Prince Baelor, meanwhile, might have been carved from marble, but you saw it.

The tightening at his jaw when you poured his wine. The faint flex of muscle beneath stillness. He did not speak out of turn, did not even interrupt.

When Aerion refused single combat and declared he would have a trial of seven, the air itself seemed to recoil, even Prince Baelor and Maekar stiffened, well Maekar was more confusing having never heard of a trial of seven. 

Baelor was the one who explained the custom : seven champions for the accused. Seven for the accuser. Judgment decided by blood and survival.

As he spoke, you watched Ser Duncan's face, you watched the light leave it.

Six other knights? He was a hedge knight — no house, no banner of note, no father's name to rally behind him. Large and awkward and earnest, a man who could barely afford decent armor. And now he was expected to find six others willing to stake their lives on his cause.

It was absurd! Cruel, even.

Your knuckles whitened around the neck of the wine pitcher before you realized how tightly you were gripping it, you couldn't help it.

The doctor in you (the part that once swore oaths about preserving life) recoiled at the spectacle of it. But even beyond that, simply the human in you balked. You caught Duncan's eye for a fleeting second.

He looked as though the ground had vanished beneath him.

Prince Maekar seized his son by the arm and all but dragged him from the chamber, annoyance radiating from him like heat from forge iron.

When the door shut behind them, the room felt drained.

Ser Duncan asked to be dismissed so he might seek his champions, voice lacking conviction. Already he sounded defeated.

Prince Baelor did not even look at him fully — only gave a curt tilt of the head.

Dismissed.

And just like that, the fate of a nineteen-year-old hedge knight was set loose into the night, expected to gather six men willing to bleed for him.

Soon enough, Lord Ashford withdrew with stiff courtesy, and Lord Tyrell followed, murmuring something about the hour and the morrow's arrangements. Their footsteps faded down the corridor, their voices swallowed by stone.

The fire had burned low, embers pulsing red and gold beneath settling ash. Shadows stretched long across the carved table bearing Ashford's crest. The air smelled faintly of smoke and spilled wine.

Prince Baelor did not leave.

He remained seated for a time, then rose and turned toward the hearth, hands clasped loosely behind his back. His posture was straight, but no longer ceremonial. Thoughtful now, almost burdened.

You were still there... Not dismissed.

The wine pitcher rested in your hands, heavier than it should have been. You did not dare set it down without instruction. Etiquette was clear: a servant speaks only when addressed. A servant does not intrude upon noble contemplation.

So you lowered your gaze and waited.

It startled you when he spoke.

"Were you present," he asked without turning, "during the... incident?"

You blinked, uncertain.

"My prince?"

He shifted slightly, glancing at you over his shoulder. The firelight traced the line of his cheek, softened the severity of his profile.

"You walk the grounds at night," he said evenly. "You said so. I thought perhaps you might have seen what occurred."

Understanding dawned slowly.

"Yes," you answered carefully. "I was there."

Silence lingered a moment.

"And," he continued, now facing you fully, "do you believe it just?"

The question struck you harder than any reprimand might have. You hesitated.

"May I speak freely, Your Grace?" you asked, pulse quickening.

A faint flicker of something (amusement, perhaps) touched his mouth. "You are already doing so."

You swallowed.

"I think it unjust," you said at last. "Your nephew was... out of line." You chose the phrase carefully, but the truth pressed harder behind it.

"It was cruelty," you added, more firmly than intended.

His jaw tightened.

"He was struck," Baelor replied. "Ser Duncan laid hands upon a grandson of the king."

"And breaking a girl's fingers shows strength?" you answered before caution could catch you.

The words came sharper than they should have. Too quick and honest.

You realized only then that your speech had shifted — less careful, less polished. Something of your other self slipping through.

You steadied your tone. "If I may, my prince... if such acts are meant to remind smallfolk of royal authority, they do not succeed."

His brows lifted slightly.

"How so?"

You set the wine pitcher down on the table, your hands suddenly free, folding them behind your back to still their trembling.

"I am smallfolk," you said plainly. "People talk. In kitchens, in stables, in the yards." You met his eyes now. "They have not spoken kindly of House Targaryen since that day."

He exhaled slowly, dragging a hand down his face — a gesture so weary, so human, it startled you. For a moment he did not look like the heir to a throne forged in dragonfire. He looked like a man carrying the weight of other men's sins.

The firelight caught in his eyes — one warm blue, the other purple, almost amber in certain angles. They fixed on you with unsettling intensity.

"You presume much," he said quietly.

"I report what I hear," you replied. "Fear is not loyalty... and well, cruelty does not inspire devotion. It inspires resentment."

He did not rebuke you.Instead, he looked... tired.

"I know," he admitted at last, voice low. "What my nephew did was not noble." A pause. "But I cannot publicly condemn him. He is my blood."

There it was. The line drawn not by morality, but by lineage.

He turned slightly away again, staring into the fire.

"I am a son of the dragon," he continued. "And dragons do not devour their own before the realm."

The statement was not prideful. It was resigned.

You felt something twist in your chest.

"And what of the realm?" you asked softly.

He did not answer immediately.

The embers shifted, a log collapsed inward with a quiet hiss.

When he looked back at you, there was something rawer in his expression now — something less princely.

"The realm," he said, "is rarely as simple as right and wrong."

You did not answer.

The fire shifted between you, collapsing inward with a soft sigh of sparks. You thought the conversation had ended there — that he would dismiss you, retreat back behind the careful walls of diplomacy and blood.

Instead, he turned fully toward you. "If you stood in my place," he asked, voice quieter now, stripped of ceremony, "what would you do?"

The question unsettled you more than any rebuke could have.

"My prince — "

"If you wore my name. My burden. What would you have done?"

You hesitated only briefly.

"I would have taught my nephew a lesson or two," you said lightly, attempting humor to soften the boldness.

His mouth twitched — barely. A faint distortion at the corner of his lips. Not quite a smile, but close enough to prove he understood.

Then you grew serious. "And I would have helped the knight," you added. "If not publicly, then quietly. Found men willing to stand beside him."

He interrupted you before you could continue. "And would you have stood beside him yourself?"

You blinked.

"If I were a man?" you asked.

"Yes."

"Then yes," you said without hesitation. "I would."

The answer surprised neither of you.

"And now?" he pressed.

You huffed softly. "Now they would not allow it. I lack the proper anatomy for their chivalry."

A startled sound escaped him — softer than laughter, but real.

He tilted his head slightly. "If you were in my place."

You stared at him as though he had sprouted a second head.

"Are you mad?" you blurted before you could stop yourself, finally realizing what he meant. Horror struck you a heartbeat later. You clapped a hand over your own mouth.

"My prince — forgive me — I did not mean—"

He shook his head, dismissing the apology. "I asked for honesty."

You lowered your hand slowly.

"If I were in your place," you said more carefully, "I would be furious. At my nephew, at the position... the choice between blood and justice."

His gaze sharpened.

"And what would you choose?"

You studied him now, truly studied him — the weight in his shoulders, the tension that had not left him since Aerion's declaration.

"You are contemplating it," you said quietly, finally putting the piece one by one. He wanted to side with Duncan, be one of his knights.

He did not deny it.

"The thought has crossed my mind," he admitted. "More than once."

"To stand for Ser Duncan?"

"Yes..." A pause. "The more I turn it over," he continued, "the more it seems the thing to do. The honorable thing."

The firelight flickered across his face, illuminating the conflict there : duty to blood, duty to justice, duty to the realm. You felt a chill that had nothing to do with the hour.

"My prince," you said carefully, "you are the heir to the Iron Throne."

"I am aware."

"It is dangerous."

"All things worth doing are."

You stepped closer without realizing it, lowering your voice instinctively though no one else remained in the chamber.

"I have seen the lists these past days," you said. "The broken bones. The blood in the sand. A trial of seven will not be sport. It will be slaughter."

He did not flinch. "I know."

"You are not some wandering knight with nothing to lose," you pressed. "You carry a kingdom's future on your shoulders."

"And what is that future worth," he asked quietly, "if it cannot defend what is just?"

The question struck deep. You searched for an answer and found none that did not wound.

"I agree with you," you admitted softly. "It would be right." A pause. "But right does not mean safe."

A faint breath escaped him... almost a laugh, though without humor.

"You sound as though you would rather I remain behind the walls."

"I would rather you live," you replied before you could temper it.

His eyes held yours — long, searching.

"My mind is not yet settled," he said at last. "But it leans."

You felt it then — that terrible, unmistakable clarity of who he was, a man who would bleed for principle, and perhaps that was the most frightening thing of all.

Targaryens were not known for goodness. If history allowed a few bright names, they were rare exceptions swallowed by the madness and ruin that followed most of the line. The books you had read about them were filled with dragons who burned too hot, kings who mistook cruelty for strength, princes undone by pride. And even in your own world, the good ones never seemed to last. The politicians who tried to stand upright in crooked systems were outmaneuvered, discredited, erased. Power had a way of devouring decency.

You found yourself worrying for Baelor in that same quiet, unreasonable way. You were not a monarchist. You never had been. In your world, crowns were symbols and relics, not necessities. But here (in this brutal, rigid land) there was no parliament to petition, no constitution to lean upon. The realm was its royal family. Their virtues and their failures shaped everything.

And perhaps Baelor could have shaped it differently. He listened, he had asked for your thoughts when he could have dismissed you without consequence. That alone set him apart from nearly every noble you had served under these stone ceilings. It should not have been remarkable — and yet it was.

You only hoped that kind of goodness would not cost him more than this world was willing to spare.