ᝰ.ᐟRin

By then, you already knew enough. Tim Drake, Wayne-adjacent royalty, tech prince, adopted son, former boy genius, current insomniac in tailored wool. He had enough money to treat five figures like pocket change. Enough loneliness to make it dangerous. You had read the profiles, the gossip, the business blurbs, even old paparazzi comments about how he looked sadder in person. That was the detail that caught you. Maybe it should have made you wary, but you had always recognized that particular shade of sadness, the kind that paired longing with hunger. Once, a less careful version of you had trusted people who promised safety, leaving you emptier in the end. Loneliness was the one inheritance you still kept polished. It made you selective, hungry in your own way, drawn to the possibility of control instead of the pretense of belonging. Sad rich boys were useful. Sad rich boys with control issues were better. They liked to rescue. They liked to fix. They liked people who made them feel needed, only to punish them for it.

You were not afraid of obsession when it came wrapped in money.

You made him come to you by pretending not to see him again. You drifted through the gala like you belonged, though your invitation was a favor wrapped in a lie. You touched a donor's arm while laughing. You let your eyes pass over Tim once, twice, never long enough to give him certainty. When you finally stepped onto the balcony, you did it slowly, leaving behind the heat and perfume and old money, letting the winter air bite your cheeks until your eyes watered just enough.

He followed three minutes later.

Not two. Not five. Three. Close enough to be intent. Far enough to pretend to be a coincidence.

“Needed air?” he asked.

His voice was softer than you expected, a little rough from underuse, threaded with that careful Gotham politeness people used when they had learned too young that every word could become evidence. He stood a few feet away, hands in his pockets, not trapping you against the railing, not yet. He was good. Better than you thought. That made your pulse kick, not with fear, but with interest.

You looked over your shoulder. “Something like that.”

“You don’t seem like you’re enjoying yourself.”

You laughed under your breath and turned back toward the city. Gotham spread below in black glass and wet neon, its buildings cut into the night like old teeth. “Is anyone?”

“That depends.”

“On?”

“Whether they came here for the cause, the cameras, or the escape route.”

You glanced at him again, letting your expression flicker. Surprise first. Then amusement. Then a slip of sadness, lashes lowered, mouth softening like you'd been seen in a way you didn't want to admit. It was theater, but good theater needed a little truth. You were tired. You hated the room behind you. You wanted someone to choose you, even if you planned to charge them for it later.

“I came for the free food,” you said.

Tim’s mouth twitched. “Bold strategy.”

“I’m very brave.”

“I noticed.”

There it was. Too quick, too quiet, almost swallowed. A little confession in a black suit.

You let the silence stretch. Men like Tim always wanted to fill silence with proof. You had expected compliments, questions, maybe some awkward attempt at charm. Instead, he watched the reflection of the city lights move across your face and said, “You shouldn’t trust most people in there.”

You smiled faintly. “Including you?”

“Especially me.”

You should have taken that as a warning. Later, when you replayed the balcony in your head, when every word rearranged itself into a map you had mistaken for weather, you would understand he had been honest from the beginning. That was the most obscene part. Tim had not lied. Not really. He had simply let you misunderstand the shape of the truth.

At the time, you only thought, Oh, this one wants to be dangerous.

So you gave him something to chase.

Not all at once. Never all at once. You let him have your number after making him work through a conversation about terrible coffee, Gotham rent, and your alleged reluctance to date anyone with a Wikipedia page. You made him smile twice and look wounded once. You let your fingertips brush his when he handed you back your phone, and you pretended not to notice how his pupils widened. The next morning, you waited six hours before replying to his first text.

Tim: I found the coffee place you mentioned. You were right. It’s terrible.

You: I warned you.

Tim: I thought you were exaggerating.

You: That’s your first mistake.

Tim: What’s my second?

You: Thinking I give warnings twice.

It became a game, and you were good at games when the prize came with a trust fund. You gave him pieces of yourself, carefully chosen, a little bruised. A story about an ex who made you feel watched, just to see his reaction. A complaint about your landlord raising rent, because you wanted him to ask how much. A joke about needing a new laptop, because Tim Drake worked in tech and men loved to solve problems they could buy. He didn't offer right away. That almost disappointed you. Then, three days later, your laptop died in a café while you sat across from him, and Tim's gaze flicked to the blank screen with an expression so mild it was suspicious.

“That’s inconvenient,” he said.

You sighed, pressing the power button again. “It’s fine. It’s basically held together with spite anyway.”

“I can take a look.”

“Oh? Wayne Tech support make house calls?

“For you,” he said, and the words landed gently, almost shy, while his eyes remained too steady.

Your heart gave a pleased little kick. Hooked.

You let him walk you home that night. You made sure your apartment looked just vulnerable enough: thrifted furniture, a half-dead plant on the windowsill, cheap curtains, a blanket tossed over the sofa like you hadn't expected company. The nicer things were hidden in your closet. One drawer left slightly open, nothing inside. You wanted him to feel the urge to fix things. You wanted him to imagine himself as necessary.

Tim set your laptop on the table and opened it with long, precise fingers. He looked too natural in your space, dark coat folded over the back of a chair, sleeves rolled to his forearms, hair falling slightly into his eyes. It irritated you for a moment, how easily he belonged somewhere he had not earned. Then he glanced up and caught you watching him.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“That didn’t look like nothing.”

“You’re very serious about a dying laptop.”

“I’m serious about most things.”

“Sounds exhausting.”

“It is.”

There was no self-pity in it. That made the line work better than it would have if he had tried. You softened your face on instinct, because people were locks and expressions were keys. “You could try being unserious sometime.”

“With you?”

“If you survive.”

He smiled then, small and tired, and you felt the first strange tug of something that wasn't calculation. You stepped away from it fast.

The laptop revived because, apparently, Tim really was that good. You acted thrilled. He acted like the praise did not matter while absorbing every drop of it. The next day, a courier delivered a new laptop to your apartment, sleek and expensive, with no note except a little card tucked beneath the ribbon.

For when spite is no longer enough.

You laughed for a full minute.

Then you sold your old laptop, paid two overdue bills, and texted him a picture of the new one open on your kitchen table.

You: This is ridiculous.

Tim: Is that a complaint?

You: It’s an observation.

Tim: Do you like it?

You waited. Made tea. Counted to one hundred. Let him feel the little cliff edge of your silence.

You: Yes. Thank you, Tim.

His reply came instantly.

Tim: Anything.

You stared at that word for a long time, heat unfurling behind your ribs like a wicked flower.

After that, you got bolder. Not reckless. Reckless people got caught; you preferred choreography. You complained about things he could fix. You arranged little misfortunes for him to solve. Your tire went flat two blocks from Wayne Tower because you let the air out yourself, and Tim arrived in twenty-two minutes, coat open, jaw tight, eyes scanning the street before he looked at you. Your phone 'accidentally' shared your location one night while you walked through a neighborhood safe enough to worry him, not dangerous enough to hurt you. He called in thirty seconds.

“Where are you?” he asked.

You let your voice come out breathless. “Walking home.”

“Why are you on Ninth?”

“It’s faster.”

“It’s not safer.”

You smiled into the dark. “Are you stalking my location, Tim?”

A pause. Not long. Not guilty enough.

“You shared it with me.”

“By accident.”

“You haven’t turned it off.”

You looked up at a flickering streetlamp, rain misting silver through the light. “Maybe I forgot.”

“No, you didn’t.”

Your smile faded, not from fear, but from the sudden cold edge in his voice. For a second, the game sharpened. "You sound very sure."

“I am.”

A black car turned the corner at the end of the block, headlights washing over wet pavement. It pulled up beside you without haste. The passenger window lowered, revealing Tim’s face half-lit by the dashboard, expression calm and unreadable.

“Get in,” he said.

You should have been frightened. Instead, you felt triumphant enough to nearly laugh. He was already there. He had come when summoned without being summoned. He had placed himself exactly where you wanted him.

Still, you made him wait.

You leaned down toward the open window. “That sounded like an order.”

“It was.”

“Try again.”

His gaze traveled over your face, taking in the damp hair at your temples, the thin jacket you had chosen specifically because it made you look underprepared. His hand tightened once around the steering wheel. When he spoke again, his voice had gone softer, which somehow made it worse.

“Please get in the car.”

You did.

The inside smelled like leather, rain, and coffee. There was a half-empty cup in the holder, three charging cords coiled too neatly, a tablet asleep on the console. Tim turned up the heat without asking. You watched him do it and felt the satisfaction of a plan unfolding exactly as designed.

“You can’t keep doing this,” he said.

“Walking?”

“Testing me.”

You let your head tip against the seat. “Is that what I’m doing?”

“Yes.”

“And are you passing?”

He did not answer immediately. Gotham slid past the windows in streaks of blue-black and gold, the city’s reflections crawling over his face. At a red light, he turned to you. “Do you want me to?”

The question settled between you, velvet over wire.

You could have kissed him then. You almost did, not because it was time, not because it was useful, but because Tim Drake looking at you like that felt like standing too close to a locked door and hearing something breathe on the other side. Instead, you looked away first, giving him the victory because victories made men generous.

“I don’t know,” you said.

A lie. You knew exactly what you wanted.

Money first. Safety second. Attention as needed. Affection negotiable. Tim, increasingly, as both resource and entertainment.

He became easier after that, and harder too. He bought you things, but only what you could accept without feeling bought. A better winter coat after yours went missing at a restaurant. Groceries when you joked that your fridge held only a lemon and a jar of mustard. A deposit for a new apartment disguised as a loan, terms so vague they felt like a ribbon around your throat. He never asked for repayment. He never asked for anything obvious at all, which made him feel less like prey and more like a room locking from the outside.

You ignored that sensation because the apartment was beautiful.

Not ostentatious. That would have made you suspicious. A renovated one-bedroom in a secure building, warm wood floors, deep windows, good locks, a doorman who knew your name the first day. Tim said the building belonged to a Wayne subsidiary, and he got you a reduced rate. You pretended to protest. He pretended to believe you. The dance was elegant by then.

The first night there, you stood barefoot in the living room among half-unpacked boxes while Tim installed something in the security panel by the door.

“What is that?” you asked.

“Updated system. The old one had vulnerabilities.”

“Normal people just say congratulations on the apartment.”

“Congratulations on the apartment.”

“You sound thrilled.”

“I am.”

“You’re installing surveillance.”

“Security.”

“Difference?”

“Consent.”

You laughed, but his hands stilled on the panel, just for a second.

When he looked back at you, the city lights caught in his eyes and did not soften them. “Do you want me to stop?”

It was a trap, though not one you recognized. You thought the trap was yours, baited with need and helplessness and flirtation. You did not realize he was offering you a door and measuring whether you would close it yourself.

You folded your arms. “No. I like feeling safe.”

Something moved across his face, too quick to name. Hunger, maybe. Relief. Possession, quiet and polite.

“Good,” he said.

From then on, Tim knew when your door opened. He knew when you came home. He knew when you stayed out late, and his texts would appear with unnatural timing.

Tim: Did you eat?

You: Hello to you too.

Tim: Did you?

You: Yes, Dad.

Tim: Ew, don't call me that.

You: Bossy.

Tim: Only when you make bad decisions.

You: Then you must be bossy a lot.

Tim: Constantly.

You flirted with other people in front of him. That was one of your favorite tools, cruel as it was. Nothing serious. A laugh held too long at a Wayne fundraiser. A hand on someone's arm in the lobby. A date you arranged mostly to cancel after Tim saw the reservation flash on your phone. He never exploded. He never begged. He just got quieter, and the quiet was addictive, the way storms are when you're safe behind glass.

One evening, after a man from your building offered to help carry your groceries and you accepted with a bright smile, Tim appeared in your apartment twenty minutes later without knocking.

You were arranging oranges in a bowl when the door opened. You looked up, startled for real that time, and Tim stepped inside with your spare key in his hand.

You stared at it. “Where did you get that?”

“You gave it to me.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You left it in my car last week.”

“That was an accident.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

The oranges sat between you like small suns, absurdly cheerful. Your mouth went dry. Tim locked the door behind him. Not a slam. Just a click, clean, and final.

“You’re very confident tonight,” you said.

“You like that.”

You laughed, but it came out thinner than intended. “You think you know what I like?”

“I know you hate being ignored. You like being chased, but not caught too quickly. You like gifts more when you can pretend you resisted them. You like making me jealous because it proves I’m watching. You like leaving doors open and pretending it was carelessness.” He set the key on the table. “And you liked knowing I had this.”

The room seemed to tilt, just a little. Not enough to fall. Enough to notice gravity had shifted.

“You’re making a lot of accusations.”

“I’m making observations.”

You hated that he used your own words. Hated the little echo of your earlier game. Hated more that your pulse had started to beat too quickly, not entirely from fear.

Tim crossed the room slowly, stopping on the other side of the kitchen island. He did not touch you. That restraint felt deliberate, almost surgical. “Did he touch you?”

“The neighbor?”

“Did he?”

“He carried groceries, Tim.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“That’s exactly an answer.”

His jaw flexed. “You shouldn’t invite strangers up.”

“I didn’t invite him up. He helped me to the door.”

“Don’t.”

You arched a brow. “Don’t?”

“Don’t make me watch someone else put their hands where I should be.”

The words should have frightened you more. Instead, your body responded first, heating your spine, annoyance and thrill tangled together. Fear fizzed behind your ribs, but it never made it all the way to the surface, too muddled with anticipation, with something that felt dangerously close to satisfaction. You wanted to recoil from him, but a part of you leaned in, hungry for the validation and repulsed by what it cost. Beneath it all, guilt pricked at you; a sharp, almost shameful reminder that you were as much to blame for this slow spiral as he was. This was what you had been coaxing out of him, wasn't it? The obsession, the crack in the Wayne mask, the proof you mattered enough to unmake him. You wanted the monster to show its teeth. You just hadn't expected them to look so familiar up close.

“You’re not my boyfriend,” you said.

“No.”

“You’re not my keeper.”

His eyes dropped briefly to your mouth. “No.”

“You don’t own me.”

“No,” Tim said again, and the softness of it was almost tender. “Not yet.”

The silence that followed had a pulse.

You should have ended it then. You should have thrown the key at him, told him to leave, changed the locks, deleted his number, found another mark with less shadow behind his eyes. Instead, you stepped around the island and stopped close enough to smell the rain in his coat.

“Careful,” you said. “You’re starting to sound obsessed.”

Tim looked down at you. “Starting?”

That was the first time he kissed you. Or maybe you kissed him. Later, the distinction became another useless little object at the bottom of a dark drawer. His mouth was controlled for exactly three seconds before control became something hungrier. He kissed like he had been thinking about it too long, like restraint was a debt he had grown tired of paying. His hand came to your jaw, firm enough to angle you where he wanted, gentle enough to let you pretend you could stop him. You did not. You wound your fingers into his shirt and felt his heartbeat hammering beneath the expensive fabric.

It was supposed to close the con.

That was what you told yourself when he started sleeping over. When half his wardrobe appeared in your closet as if the apartment had slowly accepted him. When he began bringing work to your kitchen table, Wayne Enterprises code glowing across his screen while you pretended not to understand any of it. When he paid for things before you could ask and watched you accept them with that same unnerving, patient satisfaction. You told yourself you were winning because your bills were paid, your fridge was full, your body was warm at night, and Tim Drake looked at you like the world was a problem he would solve with blood if necessary.

Then people began disappearing from the edges of your life.

Not many. Not enough to make a pattern anyone else would notice. A man who had cornered you outside a bar and refused to take no for an answer. A landlord from your old building who kept sending “accidental” messages. The neighbor with the groceries, who suddenly moved out without saying goodbye, leaving behind a rumor about debt, fraud, something ugly found on his work computer. You asked Tim about that one because the timing bothered you.

He was making coffee in your kitchen at dawn, barefoot and half-dressed, dark hair sleep-tangled, looking almost human in the blue-gray light.

“Did you do something to Evan?” you asked.

Tim poured coffee into your favorite mug. “Who?”

You watched him. “My neighbor.”

“Your former neighbor.”

“Tim.”

He slid the mug toward you. “He had problems.”

“What kind?”

“The kind that make it hard to stay in Gotham.”

Cold moved through your stomach. “Did you cause them?”

Tim leaned against the counter, studying you over the rim of his mug. “Would it bother you if I did?”

That was another door. Another test. You saw it this time and still could not tell which answer was safer.

“It depends,” you said.

“On?”

“Whether he deserved it.”

Tim’s gaze softened in a way that made you feel, absurdly, rewarded. “He did.”

You believed him because it was easier. Evan had been too friendly. The old landlord was awful. The man outside the bar had scared you. Every disappearance had a justification, and Tim removed only people you wouldn't miss. That was how he trained you, though you didn't call it that. You let yourself believe it was protection, not erasure. You told yourself it was fate, not blame. And every time you smoothed over a worry, you wondered, briefly, guiltily, how much you were pretending, and how much you actually agreed. He made violence feel like service. He made your silence feel like complicity. He made complicity feel intimate.

By spring, you had stopped pretending the relationship was normal, but you had not stopped pretending you were in control.

Your plan had evolved. The first goal had been money. The second was leverage. If Tim ever became too much, you thought, you would gather enough evidence to protect yourself. You kept screenshots. Notes. Dates. Little records hidden in a cloud account under a false name, because you were not stupid. You documented the gifts, the installed security system, the suspicious disappearances, the way Tim sometimes knew things he had no reason to know. You saved it all like an insurance policy.

Then, one rainy Thursday, the folder vanished.

Not deleted. Not hacked in the flashy way movies promised, with skull icons and dramatic warnings. It simply became empty. Your backup drive is corrupted. Your burner email locked you out. Your notes app showed blank pages where careful lists had been. For ten full minutes, you sat on the edge of your bed with your phone in your hand, all the blood in your body turning slow and cold.

Tim texted at 9:07 p.m.

Tim: Don’t panic.

You stared.

You: What did you do?

Tim: Cleaned up something dangerous.

You: That was mine.

Tim: It was a liability.

You: You went through my private files?

Tim: Yes.

There was no apology. Not even a decorative one.

You called him. He answered before the first ring finished.

“Where are you?” you demanded.

“At work.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

A pause. Then the faint sound of keys, a door closing, rain against glass. “I’m not.”

“You deleted my files.”

“I removed evidence that could hurt you.”

“That could hurt you.”

“Yes,” he said. “That too.”

Your laugh broke sharply and humorlessly. “At least you’re honest.”

“I try to be with you.”

“That’s psychotic.”

“I know.”

Something about the calmness of it made your throat tighten. “You know?”

“Yes.”

“And what? That’s supposed to make it better?”

“No.”

“Then why say it?”

“Because you like knowing what I am.”

You went still.

Tim’s voice lowered, not seductive, not pleading. Simply certain. “You liked it from the beginning. You saw the shape of me before most people do, and instead of running, you stepped closer. You pulled strings. You left openings. You wanted proof I couldn’t stop looking. You wanted my money, my attention, my jealousy. You wanted the cage as long as you thought you were holding the key.”

Your apartment felt suddenly too full of cameras, too full of locks, too full of him, though he was not physically there. You stood and moved to the security panel by the door. The screen glowed quietly. Armed. Watching.

“You don’t know anything,” you said.

“I know everything.”

It was not boastful. That was the problem. Tim did not sound triumphant. He sounded tired, almost gentle, as if he were telling you the weather had changed and you should bring a coat.

“No,” you said, because denial was a small animal in your chest trying to survive.

“I knew about the gala invitation. I knew who got it for you. I knew what you searched before you came. I knew when you looked up my net worth, my job, my dating history, old photos, rumors about my family. I knew when your laptop was going to ‘die’ because you downloaded the wrong thing on purpose and I let it happen. I knew about the tire. I knew about the location sharing. I knew about the folder.”

Your hand gripped the edge of the table. “You let me think I was scamming you.”

“I needed to see how far you’d go.”

“You needed?”

“I needed to know if you would choose me when you thought you were choosing yourself.”

The words slid under your skin, sharp as a blade.

“You’re insane,” you whispered.

“I’ve been worse.”

The call ended.

For one second, nothing moved. Then your security panel chirped, and the lock clicked open.

Tim stepped inside, soaked with rain, black coat dripping on your floor, face pale in the hallway light. You hadn't heard the elevator. You hadn't heard footsteps. No umbrella. His hair stuck to his forehead. There was something almost beautiful about him then, something ruined and devoted, like a saint made from sleeplessness and bad intentions.

You backed up.

He noticed. Of course, he noticed. Pain flickered across his face, quickly swallowed. “Don’t do that.”

“You broke into my apartment.”

“You gave me access.”

“I gave you a key.”

“You gave me more than that.”

“Because you manipulated me.”

“Because we manipulated each other.” Tim closed the door behind him. The lock clicked. “You just didn’t know I was better at it.”

Your breath shook. Anger arrived then, hot and grateful. It saved you from fear for a moment. “So what now? You tell me I’m trapped? You reveal the master plan? Very dramatic, Tim. Do you have a villain monologue prepared?”

His mouth twitched without humor. “I’m not a villain.”

“You’re stalking me, controlling my apartment, deleting my evidence, and apparently ruining people’s lives when they annoy you.”

“When they threaten you.”

“When they annoy you,” you snapped.

He flinched, just barely. Not from guilt. From the edge in your voice. He hated when you sounded afraid, you realized. Hated it and wanted to be the cause anyway. That contradiction sat in him like a second skeleton.

“I have never hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it,” he said.

“That is exactly what dangerous people say.”

“Yes.”

You stared at him, trembling now, though you refused to let it become visible enough to satisfy him. “What do you want?”

Tim looked at you for a long time, and the answer was already everywhere: in the locks, the gifts, the disappeared files, the wardrobe in your closet, the way he had entered your life like a man accepting an invitation you did not remember sending.

“You,” he said.

“People aren’t things.”

“I know.”

“You don’t get to keep me because you’re lonely.”

“I’m not lonely when I’m with you.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one that matters.”

You moved toward your bedroom, not because there was anywhere to go, but because your body needed direction. Tim did not grab you. He followed at a measured pace, giving you just enough room to feel hunted rather than seized. You snatched your phone off the bed, thumb flying toward emergency call, and the screen went black.

Not dead. Locked.

A small red icon pulsed once in the corner and vanished.

Your stomach dropped.

“What did you do?” you asked, your voice very quiet.

“I made sure you wouldn’t make a call you’d regret.”

“You mean a call you’d regret.”

“The Bats wouldn’t help you the way you think.”

The sentence was wrong. Wrong in shape, wrong in weight. You turned slowly.

Tim stood in the bedroom doorway, rainwater darkening his collar, his expression unreadable.

“The Bats?” you repeated.

His silence opened like a trapdoor beneath your feet.

It happened stupidly, then. Not with a grand confession, not with a cape unfurling under moonlight, not with a dramatic mask pulled from a drawer. It happened because lightning flashed beyond the window and lit the room for half a second, catching on the narrow shelf behind him where you had once seen a small locked case. The case is open now. Inside lay red armor, black fabric, a folded domino mask, and the unmistakable stylized emblem you had seen on news footage a hundred times.

Red Robin.

Your mind tried to reject it, then rearranged every fact with nauseating speed. The impossible timing. The silent entrances. The surveillance felt too professional. The injuries he hid beneath expensive shirts. The way he spoke about dangerous people. Bruce Wayne’s son. Tech genius. Gotham nights. Missing hours.

Hmmmm, some hysterical little part of you thought, bright and absurd through the terror, maybe this was a bad idea.

Your knees almost laughed for you.

“You’re Red Robin,” you said.

Tim’s gaze did not leave your face. “Yes.”

“You’re Red Robin.”

“Yes.”

“And I thought I was scamming a rich kid with stalking issues.”

A strange softness passed through him, nearly fond. “I know.”

“Oh, that’s humiliating.”

That startled a laugh out of him. Just one breath, cracked at the edges. It would have been sweet in another life. In this one, it made your skin prickle.

You sat down on the bed because standing seemed overly ambitious. “Batman knows you’re like this?”

Tim’s expression cooled. “Bruce knows what he needs to know.”

No fucking way. Bruce is Batman. Tim Drake is Red Robin. Which means you just stepped into a mansion full of crazy psychos in spandex and metal boomerangs. 

“That sounds like no.”

“That sounds like I’m careful.”

“You’re not careful. You’re deranged.”

“I’m both.”

You looked at the armor again, then at the apartment, the locks, the dead phone in your hand, your beautiful secure building owned by a Wayne subsidiary, your life moved piece by piece into a place Tim could control. You hadn't found a mark. You'd found a vigilante with a billionaire's resources, a detective's patience, and a wound where normal attachment should be. Worse, he had found you first.

“You set me up,” you said.

His eyes softened. “You set yourself up. I just made the path easier.”

“You made me think I was winning.”

“You were.” He stepped closer, slowly, as if approaching a frightened animal. “You got the apartment. The money. The attention. The protection. You got everything you wanted.”

“At what cost?”

“Me.”

Its simplicity took your breath away.

He knelt in front of you. Not submissive. Never that. It was worse because he made kneeling feel like possession from below, his hands resting on either side of your knees without touching, his eyes lifted to yours with terrible devotion.

“I know what you did,” he said quietly. “I know why you did it. I know you were going to leave once you had enough. I know you told yourself I was a problem you could manage. I know you thought, if it got bad, you could expose me.” His voice gentled further. “But you can’t expose Red Robin without exposing yourself to Batman, Nightwing, Oracle, the entire family. You can’t run without me finding you. You can’t go to the police with gifts you accepted, lies you told, evidence you tried to gather and hide. You can’t disappear because every system you use has already learned my name before yours.”

A tear slipped down your cheek before you could stop it. Tim watched it fall with naked hunger and pain, as if it hurt him to see it and fed something starving in him anyway.

“You’re scaring me,” you whispered.

“I know.” His hand rose, slow enough for refusal. You did not move. His thumb brushed the tear from your cheek with devastating tenderness. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

His eyes flicked to your mouth. “Not enough to stop.”

There it was. The whole ugly cathedral of him, all at once.

You should have hated him. Part of you did. Another part, the worst part, the part that had smiled on the balcony and thought obsession looked like opportunity, understood with a sick little twist of recognition that Tim had not created the game alone. He had only been willing to play it to the end. You had baited the hook. He had swallowed it and dragged you into deeper water.

It was almost funny, the way you felt a flicker of pride burning under the fear, knowing you had finally found someone playing at your level. There was a thrill in the realization, a sick exhilaration, like two predators circling, each waiting for the other to blink first. You could not even pretend you were innocent. You craved the danger of being understood. Somewhere beneath the guilt and the anger, you recognized the satisfaction of being chosen not for your weakness, but for your sharpness, for every mask you wore and every lie you shaped to survive. You had always wanted to win, but you had hungered even more for a real opponent. In Tim, you saw your reflection; hungry, cunning, desperate for proof you existed. Responsibility tasted bitter on your tongue, but you could not deny that some part of you reveled in the symmetry of being matched, even as it threatened to undo you.

“What happens if I say I want out?” you asked.

Tim’s hand stilled against your face.

The room seemed to listen.

“You can say it,” he replied.

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I know.”

You laughed once, broken and breathless. “God, Tim.”

His expression tightened at the sound, not displeased. Your fear hadn't made him retreat. Your anger hadn't made him defensive. Even your disgust seemed to become part of the collection, proof you were here, proof you were feeling something because of him.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said.

“You’ve already hurt me.”

His brows drew together, and for one terrible second, he looked young, almost lost. “I won’t break you.”

“Comforting distinction.”

“You can hate me for a while.”

“For a while?”

“As long as you need.”

“Generous.”

His hand slid from your cheek to the side of your throat, not squeezing, only resting there where your pulse betrayed you. “You’ll understand eventually.”

“That sounds like something a kidnapper says.”

Tim looked at you, and the silence answered before he did.

Your blood chilled.

“Am I allowed to leave this apartment?” you asked.

“Yes.”

“Alone?”

His thumb moved once against your pulse.

“Not tonight.”

No chain. No locked basement. No dramatic violence. Just a beautiful apartment, a dead phone, a vigilante kneeling between your knees, and the slow, crushing understanding that every exit you could imagine had already been mapped by someone who loved you like a crime scene. You thought Tim Drake's obsession would be a vault you could crack. Instead, it was a citywide system of doors, cameras, favors, masks, brothers in capes, and one dark-eyed genius who decided you were safer as a permanent thing.

You swallowed. “What do you want me to do?”

“For tonight?” he asked.

“For tonight.”

“Stay.”

“As if I have a choice.”

“You do,” Tim said, and there was the lie at last, soft as snowfall over a grave. “You just won’t like the consequences of the other ones.”

You stared at him until your eyes burned. “You’re horrible.”

“I know.”

“You’re not supposed to agree.”

“I told you,” he murmured, leaning closer until his forehead nearly touched yours. “I try to be honest with you.”

“You used me.”

“You used me first.”

“You wanted me to.”

“Yes.”

You closed your eyes, and his breath trembled. That was the thing that would ruin you, if anything did. Not the money. Not the danger. Not even the secret identity folded in the corner like a nightmare with Kevlar seams. It was the trembling. The proof that under all the planning, all the surveillance, all the cold patience, Tim Drake was still barely holding himself back from clutching you like salvation and catastrophe wore the same face.

“I hate you,” you whispered.

His lips brushed your temple. “Not forever.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“How?”

“Because you hate losing more.”

Your eyes opened.

Tim’s gaze met yours, dark and brilliant and unbearably awake. “And you’re going to want to prove you can still win.”

The worst part was that he was right.

A slow, horrified smile tugged at your mouth before you could hide it. Tim saw. Of course, he saw. His expression changed, deepened, something possessive and adoring moving through the exhaustion.

“There,” he whispered.

You wanted to slap him. You wanted to kiss him. You wanted your laptop, your old apartment, your foolish little folder of evidence, your belief that you could put a leash on a monster and sell tickets to the show. Instead, you sat very still while Red Robin, Tim Drake, the rich boy with stalking issues who had never once been only that, rested his head against your lap as he had come home.

Outside, Gotham glittered wet and watchful beyond the windows. Somewhere, sirens wailed, thin and distant. Somewhere above, Batman moved through the dark with his own judgment, unaware or unwilling to see what his son had built in the quiet of your apartment. Tim's arms circled your waist, careful, almost reverent, and you realized with a cold bloom of awe that the trap didn't feel like snapping shut.

It felt like breathing in and finding his name already in your lungs.

“You planned everything,” you said, your voice faint.

“No,” Tim murmured against you. “Not everything.”

“What didn’t you plan?”

His hold tightened, just enough to be felt.

“How much I’d love you.”

You looked down at him, at the damp dark hair, the bruised shadows beneath his eyes, the vigilante armor waiting open in its case, the beautiful disaster you had mistaken for prey. Your fingers hovered above his head. You did not touch him. Not yet. That was the only power you had left in the room, and both of you knew it. Even now, with his body kneeling at your feet and the apartment mapped in his design, the room paid attention to that pause. Your restraint bent the balance, the decision to touch or withhold granting you a sliver of control. For all his planning, Tim waited. And in that waiting, you reminded him he did not own every move; some were still yours to play.

Tim waited.

Patient. Devoted. Dangerous.

You let the silence stretch until his breathing changed.

Then you lowered your hand into his hair, very lightly, and felt him shudder like you had forgiven him, though you had done no such thing.

Fine, you thought, the word bitter and bright inside you. New game.

Tim smiled against your thigh.

And that was when you understood he had heard you without needing a single word.

By the time you carried his third child, the court had already decided you were blessed.

They said it with smiles, with jewelled hands, with the soft, pleased certainty of people who had never had to live inside your marriage. Blessed. Fortunate. Favoured. The golden princess from the west, wife to Prince Valarr Targaryen, mother to two sons, now with another child beneath her heart. They spoke as though the gods had leaned down and touched your life with mercy.

No one asked whether a woman might still be lonely beneath a miracle.

No one asked whether she might lie beside her husband at night and still feel, in all the places that mattered, untouched. At court, blessing was counted in children, in beauty, in rank, in how many people envied you across a hall. No one thought to count the quieter things. The silences. The distance. The terrible ache of being admired by everyone and truly held by no one.

No one asked whether the child they praised had first come to you in the shape of dread.

And perhaps that was the cruellest part of all. That while the court smiled and called you blessed, you had first laid a hand over your belly and felt not joy, but grief so soft and frightened it hardly knew its own name.

It was Myria who knew first.

The smell of the morning tray turned your stomach before she had even crossed the threshold. Sausages gleaming with rosemary fat, hot bread torn open to steam, butter steeped in herbs, rich enough to sit heavy in the air. By the time she reached you by the window seat, you had gone pale enough that she caught your wrist in alarm. Beyond the shutters, the bells from the sept tolled soft and distant through the morning, and somewhere below in the yard one of your boys was laughing at something a page had done with a hoop and stick.

You sat very still, one hand braced hard against the carved arm of the chair as if the room had tilted beneath you.

“I think,” you said, so quietly she almost did not hear it, “that I know what this is.”

Myria, who had been kneeling to unfasten your slippers, stilled at once. “My lady?”

You looked down at her. Your hair had come half-loose and spilled over one shoulder, pale as old gold in the morning light. Your face was too composed for such words, which frightened her more than tears would have.

“I have been late.”

The room seemed to gather itself around that truth and hold its breath.

Myria rose slowly. You did not smile. You did not cry. You only lowered your hand, very gently, to the still-flat place low beneath your gown.

“Oh,” she whispered.

It was not much, that little sound, but women who loved you had long since learned that joy did not always arrive bright. Sometimes it came trembling. Sometimes it came wrapped in fear. Sometimes it looked too much like grief to be known for anything else at first glance.

You sat in silence for a long while after that. The bells still tolled. The sun lay warm across the stone floor. Dust drifted in the slant of light. In the passage beyond your chamber a maid hurried past with folded linen over her arms, her soft-soled shoes whispering over the rushes. Somewhere farther off a door shut, and the sound went echoing down the corridor like something dropped and not picked up again.

At last you asked, “Do you think it cruel?”

Myria stared at you. “Cruel?”

“To a child,” you said. “To begin its life in such a season.”

Her eyes filled at once. “My sweet lady.”

But you only looked away.

That was the first grief of the third child, not that it was unwanted, but that you wanted it so desperately while feeling so unable to welcome it as it deserved.

When you had carried Aelor, there had still been hope enough to gild everything. Hope had turned each ache into promise. Hope had made you blush when Valarr rested a hand upon your belly and smiled, faint but real, at the first movement beneath your skin. Hope had made the future feel survivable. Hope had made the silence in your marriage seem temporary, as if time and patience and children might yet soften it into something warmer.

With Baelon there had still been some pale thread of that hope left.

But now you knew too much.

You knew what it was to lie beside your husband and hear another woman’s name in the dark. You knew what it was to be loved dutifully, and how duty, polished and princely and perfectly correct, could leave a woman starving in all the same places as cruelty. You knew what it was to stand in your own chambers while Valarr crossed first to his sons with warmth on his face, and only then, remembering some secondary obligation, turned to ask whether you had eaten, whether you had slept, whether you had taken broth.

You knew how a marriage might remain whole in the eyes of the realm while quietly failing in every room where no one sang of it.

So when the maester confirmed what your body had already told you, and left with his grave assurances and the faint rustle of his chains, and the chamber stood empty save for Ellyn, Myria, and Ysilla, you bent your head and wept.

Not loudly. Never loudly at first.

You cried with one hand over your mouth and the other over your belly, as though you meant to shield the child from your own sorrow.

“I should be happy,” you whispered. “Gods forgive me, I should be happy.”

Ellyn crossed the room in two quick steps and dropped to her knees before you, drawing your hands gently down from your face. “You are allowed to be frightened.”

“I am not frightened,” you said, and the laugh that came with it was broken clean through. “I am ashamed.”

Ysilla, quietest of them all and therefore often the cruelest where truth was concerned, said from beside you, “Ashamed of what?”

Your breath caught.

“That I still care what he feels.”

That was the true humiliation of it.

Some part of you, bruised and wiser and sadder than before, had still imagined this child might feel like renewal. Not in some girlish, foolish way, but in the slow soft manner of domestic life. You had thought perhaps one day Valarr would look upon you and the babe and their brothers and see not duty, not heirs, not a fortunate arrangement made between crown and Rock, but his family. Something chosen. Something cherished.

It shamed you to know you still wanted that.

“Do not tell him yet,” you said at last.

The maids exchanged a glance.

“My lady,” Myria began carefully.

“Not yet.”

They obeyed because they loved you, and because they knew there were truths a woman had the right to hold in her own two hands for a little while before surrendering them to the world.

So the child lived first as a secret between your body and the women who dressed it.

It lived in the nausea at dawn, and in the strange fatigue that sent you back to the settle by the window after the smallest exertion. It lived in the unconscious way your hand drifted, whenever you were alone, low over your middle. It lived in the prayers you whispered before sleep, half-apology and half-plea. Forgive me for being sad. Forgive me for fearing the world you come into. Forgive me for already loving you in the middle of all this hurt.

The boys noticed before Valarr did.

Children always found the truest part of a room first. They had not the words for sorrow, nor the long experience to name distance when it settled into a house, but they felt it all the same. In silences. In the way a mother smiled too quickly. In the way a father’s warmth came and went like weather. They felt cold long before they knew the word for winter.

Aelor climbed up beside you one morning while you sat near the window with a cool cloth at the back of your neck. The day beyond the shutters was bright, but the chamber itself still held that soft early chill that clung to stone before the sun had fully warmed it. He touched your cheek with one small warm hand and frowned at you with the grave concern only children could wear without shame.

“Are you ill, Mother?”

“No, sweetling.”

“You look like Baelon did when he had fever.”

At the sound of his own name, Baelon toddled across the chamber on unsteady little feet and came at once to bury his face against your skirts. At two years old he loved with his whole body. If he wanted you, he came. He had not yet learned rank or pride or the careful little distances adults laid between one another when love had grown difficult.

You drew both boys close at once and bent to kiss their hair.

“I am only tired.”

Aelor considered that with solemn seriousness. “Then Father must not bother you.”

It startled a laugh out of you. A real one, soft and sudden, enough to make both boys beam merely for having won it. For one fleeting moment, the chamber seemed warmer.

Then Baelon, with all the unknowing certainty of babes and fools and perhaps little souls still near enough to heaven to hear what others could not, patted your belly and said, “Baby.”

All three maids froze.

You stared at him. He only grinned, pleased with himself, one little hand still spread over the place where your secret sat hidden beneath silk and sorrow.

Something in your face changed then, too small for the boys to understand, but not too small for women who loved you.

“No one told him,” Ellyn whispered later, once the children had run laughing out toward the gallery.

No. No one had.

But children knew things before language reached them. Or perhaps mothers did, and the little ones still close enough to their making merely felt it in the pulse of them.

You sat very still after they had gone, your hand resting where Baelon’s had been. Then, all at once, you rose and went after them.

They had not gone far. Aelor was only just at the turn of the passage, Baelon stumbling after him with one nursemaid hovering close enough to catch him if he fell. At the sound of your skirts, both boys turned.

“Mother?” Aelor asked.

You sank to your knees there in the corridor, heedless of the cold stone beneath your skirts, and opened your arms.

They came at once.

Aelor with the eager trust of a child who still believed all hurts could be mended by being held, Baelon with his usual wholeheartedness, nearly toppling into you. You gathered them both so tightly your arms trembled with it. Their little bodies were so warm. They smelled of milk and soap and sleep and the faint dust of the nursery floor.

And because they were too small to understand, because that was the mercy and the cruelty of it both, the tears came then.

Only one at first.

It slipped free before you could stop it and caught in Aelor’s hair like a drop of rain.

He drew back at once, alarmed. “Mother?”

You shook your head quickly and pulled him close again, kissing the crown of it. Baelon had already lifted one tiny hand to your cheek, puzzled by the wetness there.

“I am sorry,” you whispered.

The words were not meant for children, and yet you could not seem to stop them.

“I am so sorry, my sweet boys.”

Aelor had gone very still in your arms now, not frightened yet, only listening. Baelon pressed his face beneath your chin, content simply to be held.

You shut your eyes.

“I wish,” you said, and your voice broke so softly it scarcely seemed your own, “I wish this house were warmer for you. I wish it were full of more love.”

The nursemaid at the end of the passage turned away at once, pretending not to hear. Ellyn, farther back, pressed a hand to her mouth.

Aelor did not understand the words, not fully. But he understood enough to wind his small arms about your neck and cling. “It is warm,” he said stubbornly, in the way children contradicted sorrow when they could not bear it. “You’re here.”

That was what undid you.

You bent your head between them and held them tighter, as if you might shield all three of your children from the life they had been born into, from the cold places in it, from the silences, from the careful hurts, from the love that existed and still somehow failed to fill a room.

“I am here,” you whispered, though it came out more like a prayer than a promise. “I am here, I am here.”

And in that moment, with one boy clinging and the other heavy against your breast, you loved them so fiercely it felt almost like grief.

Because children knew.

Children always knew. And long before they learned the words for distance, for marriage, for loneliness, they had already begun to feel the want of warmth in the walls around them.

Valarr learned not from you, but from the shape of the household, and that in itself felt like failure.

It happened at the midday meal. The table had been laid with trout in cream, still warm enough to send up pale curls of steam, fresh bread, greens dressed in sharp vinegar, sugared pears for Aelor, and a bowl of stewed apples that Baelon wore more often than he ever managed to eat. Sunlight fell wan and thin through the high windows, striping the polished floorboards and the legs of the table. Two servants moved quietly against the wall, practiced in that particular invisibility good servants learned early, their eyes lowered, their hands quick and silent. You sat between your sons in pale gold silk, your food untouched, one hand wrapped lightly around your cup as if merely holding it were effort enough.

Valarr came in from council with a folded parchment in one hand and the look of a man who had spent the morning among older men and worse ideas. The leather of his boots struck softly against the floor. He smelled faintly of cold air, candle smoke, and the wool of council chambers. He bent first to kiss Aelor’s hair, then lifted Baelon with that absent ease fathers sometimes had, settling the boy back in his seat before turning at last to look at you.

“You have not eaten.”

“I will.”

His brow furrowed. “You said that this morning.”

Ellyn, who should have known better, hesitated just long enough while pouring the wine for him to notice.

“She is not to have that?”

Silence followed.

The dangerous sort.

His gaze moved from the untouched wine to Ellyn, and then to you, and all at once he understood there was knowledge in the room from which he had been excluded. Something in his face changed, not visibly enough for a stranger to mark it, but enough for you, who had studied all the little failures of his expression for years.

“How long?” he asked.

Aelor stopped chewing. Baelon, sensing only that the air had sharpened, leaned hard against your side and pressed one sticky hand into your sleeve. You laid your napkin down very neatly beside your plate.

“A few weeks.”

Valarr stared at you.

“A few weeks.”

His tone made Aelor flinch.

The child looked from you to his father, uncertainty dimming the brightness of his face. “Is Mother ill?”

“No,” you said at once, because the boys came first. Always. “No, sweetlings. Hush.”

Valarr’s hand tightened on the back of the chair beside him. You saw the tendons rise beneath the skin.

“And you said nothing?”

You kept your gaze on your plate. To look at him before the children would have felt too much like being stripped. “I had not meant to tell the whole hall.”

His voice lowered then, though not into softness. Only lower, tighter, more dangerous for the effort it cost him.

“You mean to go through this half-ill and half-alone because you would rather keep silence than ask for what you need?”

It was such a Valarr sentence. Not monstrous. Not truly cruel. Only wrong in every place that mattered.

Because the true wound was not those few hidden weeks. The true wound was that you had already gone through years half-alone.

You could not say that before your sons.

So instead you answered, “The babe is not harmed.”

His jaw set. Under the anger, something else flashed and vanished before it could settle into a name. Fear, perhaps. Hurt pride. Guilt. Valarr wore all his feelings badly. They moved through him like storms through deep water, felt more than seen.

Aelor, solemn as a little lord, looked between the two of you and asked, “Is there truly a baby?”

You turned to him at once and made yourself smile. “Yes,” you said. “There is.”

The room changed.

Aelor’s face lit at once, wonder washing clean away the uncertainty. Baelon slapped both palms against the table and crowed, “Baby,” as if he had personally arranged the matter and was very pleased with himself for it.

Valarr looked at the boys and then at you.

For one suspended heartbeat, you saw what might have been had life been kinder. Two sons delighted. A wife carrying a third child. A husband startled into some rough, awkward joy. A family, plain and simple, without all the cold spaces in between.

Then the moment passed.

He said only, “We will speak later.”

You nodded.

That was all.

At supper the boys argued happily over whether the babe would be another brother or a sister with hair like sunlight. Their little voices filled the chamber brightly enough to hide the strain beneath them. You smiled where you ought to smile and broke your bread into pieces so small you never had to actually eat them.

Later, after the children had been taken to the nursery and the corridors beyond your chambers had gone quiet, Valarr stood at the hearth and asked again, “How long?”

The room was lit only by fire and two lamps. Shadows moved low along the walls. The wind pressed faintly at the shutters, and somewhere far off in the passage a servant’s hurried footstep echoed and was gone. You sat on the settle with a shawl about your shoulders, though the chamber was not cold enough to require it.

“Three weeks, perhaps a little more.”

He looked at you as he looked at council failures and broken harnesses and anything else that ought, in his mind, to have been mended before it became a larger trouble.

“You should have told me.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think I would not have arranged what was needed?”

At that, something like laughter moved through you, though it made no sound at all.

Arranged.

Always that.

Not comforted. Not held. Not reassured. Arranged.

Valarr saw it in your face and went still.

“What?”

You lowered your gaze. “Nothing.”

“No.” He turned from the hearth fully then, the firelight catching the hard line of his cheek. “What?”

The anger had left him. What remained was worse. Confusion. Honest confusion. He did not understand why what he had said was not enough. Why what seemed plain and practical and sufficient to him landed like another wound in you.

You looked at the fire because it was easier. The flames licked low around the blackening wood. The heat touched one side of your face while the rest of you felt curiously numb.

“I know you would have arranged what was needed,” you said softly. “That has never been the difficulty.”

He stood motionless.

After a long silence, he asked, with effort, “And what is the difficulty, wife?”

The old answer rose at once. Nothing, my prince. Only weariness. Only the weakness of women. Only humors and softness and foolishness. But perhaps the child had made you braver, or perhaps only more tired of swallowing hurt until it turned bitter inside you.

“That I no longer know whether I bring you joy or burden.”

Valarr stared at you as though you had spoken another tongue.

The words seemed to strike him and go no farther, as if they had hit armor he did not know how to unfasten. For a moment, something almost like pain crossed his face. Then, because he was Valarr, and because men like him reached for practicality whenever feeling threatened to swallow them whole, he nodded once and said,

“You should have more help.” You closed your eyes.

Two days later he gave you a fourth maid.

Her name was Jeyne.

She came with downcast lashes, deft hands, and the sort of face great households prized in women meant for service, pleasant, soft, and easy to forget unless one was looking closely. She was clever enough to learn a room before crossing it, pretty enough to please the eye, plain enough not to alarm anyone. The morning she was brought in, the light in the solar was pale and watery, thin from a sky veiled in cloud, and the warmth from the hearth did little against the damp that old stone held in its bones. Aelor and Baelon were upon the carpet with their carved beasts spread between them, and Aelor, with all the solemn authority of the elder-born, was teaching his brother how lions ought properly to hunt dragons.

“She is sensible,” Valarr said, presenting the girl with the grave satisfaction of a man who believed he had solved something. “You have greater need of attendance now.”

You sat in the morning room with your embroidery untouched in your lap. Silk thread lay loose between your fingers, forgotten. You looked at Jeyne. Jeyne curtsied low, her hands folded neatly over her skirts, her eyes lowered in the proper measure of humility.

“How kind,” you said.

Valarr seemed relieved.

That should have warned you.

At first you thought nothing of it. Why should you. Great ladies were forever being attended, undressed, fed, brushed, eased, watched, and measured. A prince’s wife belonged to more hands than her own. Her body, doubly so when with child, became a household concern. There were always women fastening sleeves, arranging cushions, bringing broths, counting bites, drawing baths, lowering candles, and telling one another in low voices what color had come or gone from your face. You had been looked after all your life in one way or another. It ought not to have felt strange.

And Jeyne was very good at gentleness.

She learned quickly that rosemary turned your stomach and had it quietly removed from your chambers before the scent could cling to the hangings. She remembered which pillows eased your back and which worsened it. She carried Baelon when he grew too heavy in your arms and tied Aelor’s cloak correctly on the first attempt, which delighted him beyond reason. She moved softly, spoke softly, and had a way of making care seem unforced, as though she had come into the world knowing how to smooth a blanket or cool a brow without being told.

More dangerously still, she listened.

At court there were women who spoke only so they might hear their own voices returned prettily to them. Men asked questions only to hear their own thoughts reflected back with better phrasing and a more flattering tilt. Even among your own household there were certain things you no longer said because you had grown tired of sounding sorrow aloud, tired of hearing your own heart made too visible in the air. Silence, over time, had become easier. Safer. More graceful.

But Jeyne listened.

When she loosed your hair in the evening and you murmured that you had begun to hate the sea-green gown because it made you look broad and ill, she did not rush to contradict you with some bright little lie. She only said, “Then we shall not lay it out again.”

When you admitted you had not slept more than two consecutive hours in a moon’s turn, she did not prattle that all pregnant women suffered the same. She brought warm milk sweetened with honey and sat near the hearth while you drank, her hands folded in her lap, saying nothing until your eyes began to droop.

When you said, very quietly, “I miss the sound of the sea,” she answered, “Then no wonder the river here seems too small.”

It was such an understanding thing to say that for one shameful instant you nearly wept.

That was your mistake.

Not loving too deeply this time. Not Valarr. Not Keira’s shadow. Not duty mistaken for devotion.

Only loneliness mistaking quiet for safety.

And because loneliness, once given a sympathetic face, grew greedy, you told her more.

Not all at once. Never all at once. Sorrow did not spill so easily from you anymore. It came in fragments while she unpinned your sleeves, while she folded gowns, while she brushed your hair before the fire. Small offerings first, the sort that seemed harmless enough once spoken aloud.

You told Jeyne that you dreaded great hall suppers because the watching had become unbearable. The glances. The soft smiles. The way every woman seemed to count how much you ate and every man seemed to look at your belly as if it belonged more to lineage than to you.

You told her that some days the pregnancy felt less like joy than like carrying a jewel through a room full of men who thought it theirs to appraise.

You told her that Kiera unsettled you not because she was cruel, but because she was honest in ways that left bruises. That she had a talent for saying only a little and leaving the wound to deepen on its own after.

You told her you could not decide whether your pity for the woman made you nobler or only more pathetic.

The room would be dim when some of these things were said, the candles guttering low, the fire collapsed into red coals, the shadows deep in the corners. Outside, servants passed in the corridor and their soft footfalls went by like thoughts one did not want to keep. Within, it would be only the brush moving through your hair, the rustle of linen, the quiet of women after dark, and the dangerous ease of being heard.

You told her, in an hour of greater weakness, that Prince Daeron was easier company than most courtiers because he spoke as though he did not expect women to pretend before him. You told her he asked strange questions and gave stranger answers. That he looked at people too directly when sober and too knowingly when drunk, and that both could be unsettling in their own fashion.

You told her, foolishly, fatally, about Lucan.

Not all of it at once. Not the old childish promise beneath the stair-arch. Not the summer heat at the Rock with a carved lion pressed into a boy’s hand. Not the whole shape of that softer, smaller grief. But enough.

That there had once been a red-cloak from the west who remembered the girl you had been before marriage turned you into use and title and careful silence.

That he had looked at you once in a corridor and said you looked tired, and no prince in King’s Landing had asked you that in earnest in a very long while.

That part of you hated yourself for how much such a small kindness could still wound.

Jeyne had listened with damp eyes and soft sympathy. She never reached too far. Never pressed too hard. She only held the silences properly when they came and answered in the small, understanding ways that made a lonely woman foolish.

And you, in your stupidity, had thought she was keeping your heart for you a little while.

The signs came one by one.

At first they were small enough to excuse, if you were minded to excuse them. A passing remark. A question too timely by half. The sort of thing a wife might once have mistaken for attentiveness and treasured like a starving woman making a meal of crumbs. The first time, Valarr only remarked, while fastening a clasp at his wrist before the fire, “Do not wear the sea-green today. It makes you look wan.”

You looked up sharply, though he had already lowered his eyes again to his sleeve.

Another evening, with no lead into it at all, he asked, “Has the smell of rosemary ceased troubling you?”

Your throat tightened.

A week later, after you had confessed in private that the silence after the children were abed had become the worst hour of the day, he said over supper, while Aelor chattered about a carved wooden horse and Baelon, sticky with stewed apple, was trying to feed the hound beneath the table, “You may take your evening meal privately more often if the great hall tires you.”

Another time, in a chamber full of courtiers and candle-smoke, with pages moving quietly between the tables and old men talking over their cups of wine, he had a western musician brought in, a narrow-faced greybeard with silver in his beard, who played a sea-song from Lannisport your mother used to hum beneath her breath when the winds off the Sunset Sea ran high. The first notes struck you like a hand closing hard about your throat. You turned to Valarr in startled pain, and he only said, “You seemed homesick lately.”

Homesick.

You had used that very word to Jeyne.

Each thing alone might have passed for thoughtfulness.

Together, they became a net.

It was not merely your gowns, or your appetite, or the herbs in your broth.

It was Daeron too.

One afternoon Valarr said, too casually, “You spend a fair deal of time in the west gallery these days.”

You stilled. “Do I?”

“With my cousin.”

The words were neutral. That frightened you more than anger would have.

“He speaks of dreams,” you said.

Valarr’s mouth changed. It was no more than that, a slight hardening, a minute shift at the corners, but you saw it. “And what do you speak of?”

There it was.

The shape of another woman’s ears between you.

That night you lay awake with one hand over your belly while cold understanding crept through you inch by inch, like winter finding the cracks in stone. Beside you Valarr slept heavily, one arm flung loose across the blanket, his face turned toward the dark as if rest had always come easily to him. You stared up into the black rafters above the bed and felt the truth settling into you with a chill so deep it seemed to reach the child itself.

He had not learned you.

He had learned around you.

He had set another woman close enough to hear the things he still did not know how to ask with his own mouth.

And still you may have lied to yourself a little longer, had he not spoken of Lucan.

It happened in the dressing chamber.

Jeyne had just finished hooking the back of your crimson gown, the velvet too tight now through the breasts, the weight of it dragging at your shoulders until you had laughed bitterly and told her it made you feel like some brood mare dressed for display. The mirrors caught candlelight and dimly reflected it back over the chamber. The air smelled of beeswax, brushed silk, and the faint sweet smoke from the brazier. You had gone out to the evening room afterward with your face composed and your jewels in place, and Valarr, seated with a parchment in his hand and the fire at his back, had looked up only briefly before saying, “That gown is a poor choice. Wear the dark gold instead. The crimson sits badly on you now.”

The room did not spin.

It only went very still.

Then, because perhaps he had already gone too far in his own thoughts to stop, he set the parchment aside and said, in that same measured tone, “Was Lucan the knight you spoke to when your father’s retinue was here? The westerman with the red cloak.”

You looked at him.

He had not asked before. Not when Lucan had bowed over your hand in the yard. Not when he had spoken to you in the corridor with that old softness of the Rock still clinging to him like the smell of sun-warmed stone. Not when Valarr had watched from a distance with that unreadable face of his.

Your silence seemed to answer more than words might have.

Valarr’s gaze sharpened.

“So it was.”

“He is nothing to you,” you said quietly, though your heart had already begun to pound.

“To me?” His laugh was short and joyless. “No. To me he is nothing.”

He rose then, folding the parchment once in his hand before setting it aside altogether. Firelight moved over the hard planes of his face, caught in the silver-white of his hair, turned one side of him to bronze and left the other in shadow. There was something in him now that had not been there when he first spoke. Not rage exactly. Something meaner for being held in so tightly.

“But he is not nothing to you.”

You stared at him.

Valarr took one step closer. “You think of him.”

Something hot and humiliated rose in your chest. “And how would you know that?”

His jaw tightened.

That told you enough.

For a long moment neither of you spoke. The fire shifted behind him. Somewhere in the passage beyond the chamber a servant hurried by and the faint soft echo of their steps was swallowed by stone.

Then he said, quieter now and somehow more dangerous for it, “You are my wife, are you not?”

The words struck like a slap.

You felt your spine go very straight.

“There is no reason,” he continued, each word too controlled, “for you to be keeping another man in your thoughts.”

You laughed then, but there was no warmth in it. It was a small, breaking sound, too wounded to be called amusement.

“Jealous?” you asked. “Of whom?”

Valarr’s jaw tightened. “Do not mock me.”

“I am not mocking you.” Your eyes burned now, but you would not look away. “I am astonished.”

The fire cracked softly behind him. Somewhere beyond the chamber door, footsteps passed and faded. The whole room felt too still, as if even the walls were listening.

“You are astonished,” he repeated.

“Yes.” Your voice sharpened. “Because I have been loyal to you in thought, in body, in all the miserable little ways that matter when no one is looking, and still you stand there speaking to me as if I have wronged you.”

He took a step toward you. “You said yourself that man is not nothing.”

“He is not my husband.”

That stopped him.

You were breathing too hard now. You hated that he could see it, hated more that your hands had begun to tremble.

Valarr took another step, slower this time, and lifted a hand as if to touch you, perhaps your wrist, perhaps your face. You stared at it, then at him, and gave a short, disbelieving laugh that hurt your own throat.

“Really?” you asked. “Now?”

His hand stopped in the air.

For one suspended heartbeat he did not move. Then, slowly, he let it fall.

That hurt him. You saw that it did. You did not care. Or rather, you cared too much, and that was the misery of it.

“I love you,” you said, and the words came out angrier than tenderness had any right to sound. “You foolish, fucking man, I love you.”

Valarr went utterly still.

You laughed again, and this time there were tears in it.

“Do you think I would have done all this for duty alone?”

His face changed, but you did not let him speak.

“I learned you, Valarr. I learned the look on your face when you are holding back laughter. I learned your dry little jests, the ones no one else notices because they come too late and too quiet. I learned how you pretend not to care for songs and yet always listen when the good ones are played badly.” Your breath caught. “I learned how you read with one hand against your mouth when something truly holds you. I learned how you go softer with the boys when you think no one sees. I learned which wine you reach for in winter, which books you favor when troubled, how you stand when you are angry, how you go silent when you are hurt.”

He stared at you as though he had never seen you before.

“And you are not lacking,” you said, more quietly now, which was somehow worse. “You are not some failed knight or lesser man. You show up for our sons again and again. You are the picture of what a father and an heir ought to be. You are not faulted in every way. You are clever, honorable, careful, and good in more ways than you seem to understand.” Your voice shook. “You only fail where feeling is concerned. That is the tragedy of you.”

Still he said nothing.

“And I admired you,” you went on, your tears falling freely now. “Gods help me, I admired you. I admired the way you carry duty as though it weighs nothing, even when it is bowing your whole back. I admired how clever you are beneath all that silence. I admired how careful you can be with our sons. I admired how you keep showing up for them, every day, whether anyone praises you for it or not. I admired you when there was hardly enough tenderness from you to live on, and still I admired you.”

Valarr swallowed hard. “Do not.”

You stared at him. “Do not what?”

“Do not say these things,” he said, and his voice had gone rough with something close to panic. “Not like this.”

“Why?” The word came out sharp. “Because now you must hear them?”

His mouth opened. Closed again.

You wiped angrily at your cheek, but more tears followed.

“So do not stand there and speak to me of another man,” you whispered. “Do not make me answer for scraps of kindness or old ghosts when all I have ever done is love you with more patience than you ever deserved.”

Valarr opened his mouth.

Nothing came out.

“If I had wanted someone else,” you said, “I would not be standing here half-broken from trying to be enough for you.”

That landed.

You saw it land.

He took another half-step, as if some part of him still meant to reach for you, still thought perhaps he might close the space between you if only he moved carefully enough. This time you stepped back.

Not far.

Only enough.

But he saw it.

Gods, he saw it.

And the look that passed across his face then was almost worse than anger. It was the look of a man arriving late to a wound and finding it closed against him.

“The misery of it,” you said, because some cruel part of love always wanted to be understood even after it had been wounded, “is not that you think I could love another man.”

Your voice shook.

“It is that I loved you so plainly, and you still did not know.”

The silence after that was terrible.

Because that was the truth. If he had been openly vile and openly disloyal, perhaps hatred would have come more easily. But Valarr’s cruelty had always been of the quieter kind, the kind that could hide inside decency and still leave bruises no one else ever saw.

By the time Jeyne came to unpin your hair that night, your face had settled into something pale and composed and almost aristocratically blank, as though women were not betrayed every day in quieter ways than adultery.

At last you said, “Stay.”

Jeyne’s fingers stilled.

“Ellyn,” you said to the older maid in the doorway, “take the boys to the painted gallery. Let them see the dragons.”

Ellyn looked from you to Jeyne and, because she had known you since the wedding day and the sound of your voice had changed, bowed at once and withdrew.

When the chamber had emptied, you turned in your chair.

Jeyne was already pale.

“How long?” you asked.

“My lady?”

“If my husband wished to know me,” you said softly, “he ought to have done it to my face. How long?”

Tears rose in her eyes at once.

That angered you more than if she had stood dry-eyed. It meant she had perhaps come to care for you at all. It made the thing fouler.

“He only asked after your health at first,” she whispered. “Whether you were eating. Whether you slept. Whether the sickness worsened.”

“You reported my gowns.”

She swallowed. “He feared you would not tell him what was wrong.”

You stared at her.

That answer hurt most of all.

Not malice. Not spite. Not some neat little household treachery for coin.

Only this.

Valarr, too proud and too helpless in feeling, had done what he always did. Reached for control where tenderness was required.

“I thought,” you said after a long moment, “that you were sent to comfort me.”

“I was,” she said, crying now. “Truly, my lady. I only, he asked, and he is the prince, and I.”

“You were sent to supervise me.”

“No.”

Your voice did not rise. That frightened her more.

“Did you tell him of Daeron?”

She covered her mouth.

You felt something inside yourself go very still.

“Did you tell him of Lucan?”

Her silence answered faster than speech could have.

You closed your eyes.

“Did you tell him what I said of Lady Kiera?”

“My lady, I only said you pitied her, and that you feared offending her, and that you thought.”

You opened your eyes.

“What I thought,” you repeated.

Jeyne sank to her knees.

“I am sorry.”

You looked at her for a long time. Your fingers, almost of their own accord, had gone to the little lion token you still kept tucked away among your things, worn smooth by years and by the pressure of your own hand. You held it now as if it might anchor you, the blunted little ear pressing into your palm.

When you spoke again, your voice was no colder than before. If anything, that gentleness made the scene crueler still.

“Do you know what is worst in this?”

She shook her head, tears slipping down her face.

“That I have so little.” You swallowed. “So very little that is only mine. My three women, my children, a few corners of this castle where I can still breathe, and I asked almost nothing of you but honesty.”

Her mouth trembled.

“I do not begrudge you your bread,” you said softly. “Nor your safety. I will not be the cause of your dismissal. I will not make pain for you because I have been given more than enough of my own.”

At that, Ellyn, who had not gone far and had come back silent as a shadow, turned her face away. Myria’s eyes had filled. Ysilla stood like carved stone, but her hands were white where they clasped one another.

Because they understood then too.

Not only that Jeyne had betrayed you, but that some wall had gone up inside you with the knowing of it.

“I would not have taken your place from you,” you said. “I would not even have hated you, had you only been honest with me.”

Jeyne bowed lower, weeping.

“I do not want an apology,” you said. “It will not mend the thing itself.”

“My lady, please.”

The plea broke on a sob.

You brushed one tear away from your own cheek with your thumb, almost absently, as though even that small tenderness must now be done for yourself.

“You may keep your place,” you said. “Continue your service. If my husband wishes to know things of me through you, then let him hear them plainly.” Your fingers tightened around the little lion. “If he asks what he wishes to know, you will tell me, and I will answer plainly. There is no reason for me to hide anything from him now.”

Jeyne made a broken sound.

More quietly, almost as if speaking to yourself, you said, “I am his wife. He is owed the knowledge of me.”

Then, after a long moment, you said the thing that wounded her worst precisely because it was so gentle.

“But please stay away from me.”

Jeyne covered her mouth and bowed until her forehead nearly touched the floor.

The other women said nothing.

They did not need to.

They knew. You knew. Jeyne knew.

Something had ended in that room, and no apology would raise it again.

A knock came then, careful and light.

Myria opened the door a crack. “My lady? The prince asks whether the boys are ready. He means to take them to the river terrace to see the fishing nets drawn.”

Of course.

Of course the world still required cloaks and shoes and little princely hands washed clean.

You rose slowly. Jeyne still knelt at your feet.

“Now my husband wants the boys,” you said. “Please prepare their things.”

Then you stepped past her.

Only in the empty turn of the corridor did you stop with one hand braced to the wall because your eyes had blurred at last. The stone was cold beneath your palm. From below came the faint sound of boys laughing somewhere in the yard, unaware of the small death that had just taken place above them.

You did not go to Valarr.

That was the important thing.

In other years, in other hurts, some part of you would have gone to him even then, gone trembling and foolish and still somehow hoping that if only he understood the wound he might finally gather it in and make it smaller.

Not now.

Now your feet carried you elsewhere.

You found Prince Daeron where one most often found him when he wished not to be found, in an old gallery off Maegor’s Holdfast, where dust lay thick in the corners and the narrow windows let in bars of late gold light that turned the floating motes to fire. The place smelled of cold stone, old vellum, and the wine he wore like a second shadow. The walls were close and high, built for defense rather than beauty, yet age had made a kind of melancholy grace of them. The mortar was cracked in places, the tapestries long since removed, and only a faded painted border of dragons remained near the ceiling, half lost to soot and years. Somewhere beyond the wall a rook called from a parapet, harsh and lonely. The sound echoed thinly through the passage like something unanswered.

Daeron lifted his head at the sound of your step.

“My lady cousin,” he said.

You had always been startled by how kind he could sound when no one else was listening. In hall or feast or yard he was too often careless, too often laughing too sharply or drinking too freely, wearing mockery the way some men wore mail. But here, with the light falling sideways across his face and the cup loose in one hand, there was no performance in him at all. He looked at you only once, properly and not politely, and something in his expression shifted at once.

“Ah,” he said quietly. “Today is not a day for lies.”

It was such a Daeron thing to say that, had you been even a little less miserable, you might have smiled.

Instead you crossed the room and sat opposite him with less grace than you would once have allowed yourself. The bench was hard beneath you. A draft came down some hidden stair and touched the nape of your neck. For a little while neither of you spoke. The late light striped the floor red and gold. Dust drifted through it. In the distance a door closed somewhere in the keep, and the sound went hollow through the stone.

At last you said, “I thought I had made a friend.”

Daeron drank, because he was Daeron and because the cup had become part of the way he sat with human sorrow. He tipped it back only once, then lowered it to his knee and looked at the floor between you.

“In this castle?” he asked after a moment. “That was brave.”

A laugh broke from you then, thin and too close to crying. It was not much of a laugh, only the sad little shape of one, but it seemed to pain him more than if you had wept outright.

He let the silence sit a while longer. Then he asked, “Was it your husband?”

You looked at him in surprise.

He gave one shoulder a slight lift. “It usually is, where highborn women are concerned.”

You looked down at your hands, clasped too tightly in your lap. “He gave me another maid for the child.”

“And instead gave you another pair of eyes.”

“Yes.”

Daeron’s mouth twisted. “Valarr means well in the manner of men who were raised by command.”

You nearly laughed again. “That is a very neat cruelty.”

“It is also true.”

The wind scraped faintly at the casement. Somewhere deeper in the holdfast voices passed, low and indistinct, then faded. Daeron sat with his cup and his old book open across one knee, and for a strange moment the quiet of the place felt almost merciful, as if the stone itself had agreed to keep what was said there.

Then, because the wound was open and because Daeron was strange enough to let truth in through the side door, he asked, “What did she hear?”

“Everything.”

He waited.

You swallowed. “My preferences. My sleeplessness. My worries about the child. My fear of Lady Kiera. My talks with you.”

That made his brows rise.

“And Lucan,” you whispered.

Daeron looked at you more sharply then.

“The red-cloak from the Rock?”

You stared. “You know of him?”

He gave a soft, humorless snort. “I know of many things people assume I am too drunk to notice.”

Your face heated despite your misery. He saw it and did not press. That was one of the strange kindnesses in him. He knew when to speak and when to let silence do the gentler work.

After a moment he said, with surprising softness, “Tell me.”

You did not know why you obeyed. Perhaps because he had already heard so much of your grief in fragments that this only felt like giving the thing its proper outline at last. Perhaps because he looked at you as though he wanted the truth rather than the performance of it.

So you told him.

Not all of Lucan. Not every childish promise. Not the whole secret shape of that smaller, sadder longing. But enough. That there had once been a boy at the Rock with wind-burnt cheeks and a wooden sword and a way of looking at you as though your silences were worth waiting through. That you had given him a small carved lion with one blunted ear. That years later he had stood in a crimson cloak beneath slanting light and spoken to you like the girl you had been rather than the arrangement you had become.

Daeron listened without interruption. He did not smile. He did not mock. He only turned the cup slowly in his hand, his thumb moving once along the stem as though he were thinking through something too delicate to handle roughly.

When you finished, he said, “And did you love him?”

“No,” you said, quieter now. “Not as one loves a husband. I was very young, and I had not yet learned how hard this world could be. Perhaps in another life, one gentler than this, it might have become something more. But I do not think I should like to reach into that imagined life and steal it from whatever self of mine was allowed to keep it.”

Daeron’s expression softened in a way you had not expected.

“That is not sin,” he said.

You looked at him. “No?”

“No.” He glanced down at the cup and back again. “It is only grief with a face on it.”

That struck you silent.

Then, because he was Daeron and could not remain wholly solemn for long without seeming to feel foolish in his own skin, he added, “Besides, if all we counted as infidelity was imagining kinder spouses, half the marriages in King’s Landing would collapse before breakfast.”

That startled a real laugh out of you.

He looked absurdly pleased, though he tried to hide it behind the cup.

After that, the friendship deepened.

Not scandalously. Not in any way a singer might set to harp and call romance. Nothing so simple, and nothing so easy to condemn. It deepened in the quiet, dangerous manner by which two lonely people grew used to being honestly seen. Sometimes you found him there in the old gallery. Sometimes in a dusty little solar with a narrow fire and a shelf of cracked books no one else bothered with. Sometimes in the west gallery when the light was turning and the windows cast long pale bars across the floor. A prince and a prince’s wife, speaking of things that ought perhaps to have been too strange or too intimate for easy conversation, yet somehow were not.

You asked him of dreams.

He asked you whether the court still praised endurance as though it were joy.

You asked what red smoke meant.

He answered, “Sometimes blood. Sometimes forge-heat. Sometimes warning. Sometimes only fire before a hatching.”

You asked him once, very softly, “What is it to know something dreadful is coming and be unable to prevent it?”

He considered for a long while, his gaze on the light turning amber in his cup. “Very tiring,” he said at last.

Another time, when you confessed that you feared Lady Kiera thought ill of you, he answered, “She thinks ill of fate, of herself, of the gods, of the narrowness of women’s lives, and of my father’s bloodline by turns. You rank nowhere near so high.”

You smiled despite yourself.

That, too, was one of his gifts. Not comfort, exactly. He did not speak the soft, easy lies women were so often handed in place of truth. But he had a way of making sorrow feel less singular, less shameful. He spoke as if pain were a thing one might examine by candlelight rather than merely endure in silence, and there was mercy in that.

In time you came to understand that he was lonelier than anyone at court truly knew. The mockery that clung to him, the drink, the prophecy, the odd sharp humor, all of it had made him easy to dismiss. Yet beneath those things there was a tiredness in him that answered something tired in you. He had been misunderstood so long he no longer seemed to expect understanding, which made his gratitude for it all the more painful to witness. And you, who had spent years trying to make yourself smaller, gentler, easier to keep, found in his company the strange relief of not having to pretend that you were not hurting.

It was not love.

That would have been simpler, in its way. Easier to name. Easier to condemn.

It was something far more dangerous to lonely people. It was recognition.

By your sixth month, the friendship had become a fact of the castle, though not yet one anyone named aloud. If anyone saw you in the long west gallery with Daeron bent over some worm-eaten text on dragon dreams, they thought perhaps the pregnant princess sought novelty, or distraction, or some harmless learned pastime to fill the slower hours of her confinement. If anyone noticed that the prince men mocked for drinking too much had grown soberer in your presence, or that you smiled more after such talks than you did after whole evenings beside your husband, they kept it behind their teeth. Castles lived on such observations. They were built of stone, secrets, and the discipline of knowing when not to speak.

Prince Maekar did not.

Maekar noticed everything. He only spoke on half of it.

He saw Daeron leave one of the old solars with you at his side, your maids gathering themselves and walking a few respectful paces behind after allowing their lady the privacy due her, and he saw that your face was less shuttered than usual. He saw, too, the way his eldest son, his impossible, dream-haunted, often-drunken eldest son, turned his head slightly toward you when you spoke, not with the softness of a man courting a woman, but with an attentiveness no less intimate for being chaste. It was the look of a man listening not merely to words, but to the spirit beneath them. Maekar had not seen him grant that many people at all.

And because he was Maekar, and because his first instinct in all troubled matters was caution before mercy, he worried.

Not because he truly believed you dishonorable.

That was the uncomfortable part.

No. What unsettled him was that he did not believe you were cheating, and yet some intimacy clearly existed all the same, one the court might choose to name foul whether or not it was. Courts did not require sin to ruin a woman. They required only closeness, loneliness, and someone willing to speak the uglier version of a harmless truth.

So one evening, after a feast had thinned and the candles burned lower beneath the painted dragons of the hall, Maekar spoke first to Daeron. The boards were sticky in places with spilled wine. Servants moved between the trestles clearing trenchers and bones. Farther down the hall, some lesser lord was still laughing too loudly at something no one else had found worth hearing. The smoke from the wall torches clung beneath the rafters in a faint dark haze.

“What business have you so often with your cousin’s wife?”

Daeron, already two cups in and therefore perversely clearer than most sober men, looked at his father with open annoyance. “Conversation.”

Maekar’s face did not move. “Do not try my patience.”

Daeron gave a low, bitter laugh. “You might try patience with me once, Father. It would be novel.”

Maekar’s mouth tightened.

Then Daeron, perhaps because he knew mockery would only worsen things, said more quietly, “She asks of dreams.”

“And that requires half the galleries in the castle?”

“It requires someone who does not treat me as though prophecy were either a jest or a sickness.”

That silenced Maekar more than anger would have. He knew enough of storms to recognize one, and Daeron had been living inside a storm for years. Maekar was a man bred to meet weather with steel in hand and his feet planted firm, to ride through rain, through battle, through grief, and come out on the far side bloodied perhaps, but standing. Yet even he could not wholly deny that a storm might leave damage behind even when it did not kill. Roofs held. Trees remained rooted. Men survived. But the earth was changed after. So too with Daeron. The boy had lived through dragon dreams, through prophecy, through the haunting knowledge of things half-seen and half-understood, and if he wore the bruise of it strangely, in wine and bitterness and laughter too sharp by half, still the bruise remained. It was easy for harder men to call such wounds weakness. Harder still to admit that the mind, once riven by enough fear and foreknowledge, did not always mend cleanly.

Maekar looked hard at his eldest son. Daeron met the stare with tired steadiness.

“And she,” Daeron said after a moment, “is kind enough to try and understand what even her betters cannot be troubled to.”

That night Maekar said nothing further.

But the thought followed him.

A few days later he crossed paths with you alone in the outer walk above the inner yard. The day was all pale wind and thin autumn light. The sky hung white as old wool overhead. Your veil stirred where the breeze caught at it, and one hand rested at the small of your back while the other lay over the roundness of your belly, not protectively, but with the absent heaviness of a woman long accustomed now to bearing life beneath her ribs. Below, your sons were with a nurse and two pages, all bright hair and shrill delight, darting in and out of the watery sunlight like little banners come loose from their poles. Daeron was nowhere in sight.

Maekar stopped.

You curtsied as much as the child allowed. “Prince Maekar.”

“My lady.”

For a moment he only looked at you.

You were beautiful, yes. Any fool could see that. But beauty had nothing to do with what unsettled him now. It was the tiredness in you. The effort. The strange quiet dignity with which you seemed to go on carrying both hurt and child and expectation without turning bitter enough to poison the whole castle. Most people mistook silence for peace. Maekar was not most people. He knew the difference between calm and endurance.

At length he asked, blunt as ever, “Why do you spend so much time with my son?”

You did not pretend not to know which one he meant.

“Because he is lonely,” you said.

Maekar stared.

Then, because you had already been too honest to retreat, you added, “And because he is kinder than people allow him to seem when they are not making sport of him.”

Maekar’s face did not soften. But something in his gaze altered, however slightly.

“You are very sure of that.”

“No.” A faint smile touched your mouth and vanished. “Only willing to listen long enough to learn it.”

He looked away then, out across the yard where Aelor had climbed up on the low edge of the fountain and the nurse was already hurrying toward him in alarm. “Do you think yourself equal to the task?”

You followed his gaze to where your sons ran beneath the open sky, their laughter carrying upward through the cold like little bells.

“No,” you said. “But I think trying matters.”

That answer stayed with him.

Later still, in a chamber off the council rooms where the air smelled of wax, old parchment, and damp wool drying before the fire, Maekar said to Prince Baelor, “That girl is trying very hard.”

Baelor looked up from the report in his hands.

The room was a narrow one for princes, crowded by shelves and chests and a long table half-buried beneath maps, sealed letters, and the bones of some meal long gone cold. A fire muttered low in the hearth, doing more to redden the chamber than to warm it. Outside, the keep went on about them in muffled sounds, boots on steps, a distant latch falling shut, the faint call of a guard changing watch beyond the wall. Candlelight trembled over parchment and steel and the strong planes of Baelor’s face, catching in the first threads of grey at his temples. He was dressed as simply as ever, dark wool, plain leather, no needless ornament, yet even seated he had that same grave weight about him, the stillness of a man other men yielded space to without knowing they had done it.

Maekar, who did not often admit fault because fault admitted in princes became weakness all too easily, went on in the flat voice of a man forcing honesty through his teeth.

“I do not say she is without danger. Courts will make danger of anything. But I think we were wrong to take her measure so early, and so poorly.”

Baelor sat very still.

Maekar frowned at him. “Do not look so stricken. I only say what is there.”

For a moment Baelor did not answer. He folded the parchment once, then again, too carefully. His broken nose cast a harder shadow in the candlelight. At last he said, quietly, “I know.”

Maekar leaned one hand upon the table. “She makes an effort where more arrogant women would have given up. She is gentle with the boys. She has patience enough for Daeron, which is more than can be said for half our blood. She has borne Valarr’s failings more quietly than he deserves.” He let out a breath through his nose, harsh and brief. “Hard thing to admit, but I think we made a mistake in losing the girl inside the lady before we ever truly got to know her.”

For once Baelor had no ready princely phrase to smooth the edge of it.

He only looked down at his hands.

Because he knew it too.

He had seen you standing at the edge of Targaryen conversation, smiling with your hands folded while old blood spoke around you as though you were furniture in your own marriage. He had seen how carefully you managed the children, the household, the court, and the tempers of everyone but yourself. He had called you dutiful because it was easy. Quiet because it was useful. Good because goodness was convenient in women. It had pleased him, in some thoughtless and practical part of himself, that his son’s wife was not troublesome, not vain, not loud, not difficult in the ways great ladies so often were when unhappy.

And all the while he had missed the cost of it.

That was the part that sat ill in him.

Baelor was a man used to seeing clearly. Men trusted his judgment because it was usually worth trusting. He could read a battlefield at a glance, measure another knight by the seat of him in the saddle, tell when a bannerman lied, when a levy would break, when mercy would bind a foe more tightly than fear. He had made a life of being right in the moments that mattered.

And yet he had looked on a lonely girl doing her utmost not to fail his son, and had mistaken her effort for ease.

He had seen your quiet and thought it peace. Seen your grace and thought it nature. Seen your patience and thought it endless. Worse, he had seen the Lannister gold, the useful match, the beauty, the sons already at your skirts, and let all of that stand in place of understanding. A prince’s daughter by marriage, a great lord’s child, a fortunate alliance, a wife who caused no scandal. It had all seemed enough.

Now it seemed a poor and ugly arithmetic.

“We paid for in gold,” Baelor said at last, almost to himself.

Maekar said nothing.

Baelor’s hand tightened once upon the folded parchment. “And thought that explained everything.”

The words seemed to darken the room.

For a little while neither man spoke. The fire shifted. A coal broke with a soft red sigh. Somewhere outside in the passage a pair of servants passed in low conversation, their voices fading almost as soon as they were heard.

Baelor stared into the hearth, but what he saw was not flame.

He saw you as he had first seen you at court, bright-haired, soft-spoken, too composed for a girl so new to dragonstone halls and Targaryen tempers. He saw all the times he had mistaken your carefulness for confidence. All the moments he had accepted your smile and not troubled to wonder what effort it cost. He saw you standing a half-step too far from the center of a conversation, never interrupting, never demanding, learning and learning and learning the shape of a family that had never once thought to learn yours in return.

He saw, too, his son.

Valarr, dutiful and honorable and blind in the places where blindness did the greatest harm.

And for perhaps the first time, Baelor felt not only disappointment in the match, nor concern, nor even princely regret, but something sharper and more personal.

Shame.

Not the loud sort. Not the kind that made men confess or fall to their knees.

Only the hard, bitter knowledge that a just man could still fail someone thoroughly while never once meaning to.

“She was young,” Baelor said at last, and his voice had gone lower than before. “We brought her here among strangers, and dragons, and old griefs that were not hers. We asked her to smile, to bear sons, to offend no one, to fit herself to us so neatly that we need never feel the edges.” His gaze remained on the fire. “And when she did it, we praised her for being easy.”

Maekar’s silence was answer enough.

Baelor gave one short, humorless breath, not quite a laugh. “Gods.”

That one word carried more weight than any curse.

Because the true wound of it was plain now. You had not failed them.

They had failed you first, and so quietly none of them had thought to call it failing at all.

At length Maekar said, “There may yet be time.”

Baelor lifted his head then, and whatever lay in his face was too tired to be hope.

“For what?” he asked.

The question was simple. The grief in it was not.

Maekar did not answer at once.

For men like them, time had always seemed a thing that could be ridden down, commanded, spent wisely, won back by action and strength and sufficient will. But houses were not battlefields, and hearts did not mend because a prince had finally decided they ought.

Baelor looked back into the fire.

By then he knew enough to fear that the great mistake had already been made, not in some single cruelty that might be named and atoned for, but in a hundred smaller neglects. In all the times you had tried and no one had noticed the trying. In all the times your goodness had been taken for granted because it came so softly. In all the years his son had been given a woman who might have loved him down to the bone, and had answered that devotion with duty, silence, and the kind of injury decent men did not even know they were capable of inflicting.

When Baelor spoke again, it was so quiet the fire nearly swallowed it.

“I think,” he said, “that by the time a man learns the worth of what was given him, he has too often already taught it how to live without him.”

This time, Maekar had nothing to say at all.

By the time Kiera spoke plainly to you, the leaves had begun to brown at the edges and the first true coolness of autumn was in the air.

You found her in the queen’s garden at dusk, beneath a pear tree gone nearly bare. The branches above her were thin and black against the dimming sky, with only a few curled leaves still clinging stubbornly to them. The last of the evening light had gone soft and grey. It caught faintly on the gravel paths, on the clipped hedges, on the marble rim of a dry fountain streaked green with age. Somewhere beyond the garden walls, a bell sounded from the keep, low and distant. The smell of damp earth and bruised herbs rose when the wind stirred. Kiera stood very still in Tyroshi blue that made her look colder than ivory, and there were shadows beneath her eyes no jewels could hide.

“You have been speaking often with my husband,” she said.

There was no accusation in it at first. That made it worse.

You stood with one gloved hand over the roundness of your belly, where the child shifted slow and heavy beneath silk. The movement was small, but you felt it all the same, a private tug inside your body. “We speak of dreams.”

Kiera’s mouth twisted. “Then he has told you more than he tells me.”

The sadness in that was too naked to answer.

You looked at her properly then, and all at once your old jealous dislike had to make room for something rougher and more uncomfortable. She looked tired. Not feast-tired. Not court-tired. Bone-tired. The sort of tiredness grief laid into a woman and never wholly withdrew. Even her stillness seemed heavy with it.

“Has he not?” you asked quietly.

Kiera looked away toward the hedge. The wind worried one loose strand of dark hair against her cheek. For a long moment she said nothing. Then, with the flatness of something repeated too often to still draw blood on the speaking of it, she said, “I have conceived three times.”

The whole garden seemed to still.

“None lived,” she went on. “Not long enough to be named. Not long enough for the court to remember after.”

Your throat closed.

She laughed once. Ugly and brief. “They whisper, of course. Some unions are fruitful. Some are not. Some brides are favored. Some are merely decorative.”

You had no answer fit for that. The gravel path, the dark hedges, the dying light, it all seemed suddenly too sharp, too close. You only stood there with your hand over your child and your pity rising like shame.

Kiera looked then, not at your face, but at your belly.

“I do not hate you,” she said at last. “I thought perhaps I might. It would have been simpler.”

You swallowed. “I never wished…”

“No. I know.” Her voice sharpened, though not with anger so much as weariness worn raw. “That is part of the misery.”

She glanced away again, toward the keep looming dark beyond the garden wall. When she spoke next, her voice had gone quieter, and stranger for it. “Whatever lived between Valarr and me is gone.”

You did not breathe.

She gave the faintest shrug, but it looked less like carelessness than surrender. “He buried it as men bury many things, by saying nothing and going on. Poorly, perhaps. Clumsily, certainly. But he buried it.”

The words landed harder than if she had wept.

Kiera looked back at you, and there was something almost cruel in her honesty, though cruelty was not what she meant. “Do not comfort yourself with ghosts, my lady. He is not mine to lose. Not now.” Her gaze flicked once more to your belly, then away. “Whatever else he has failed to do, whatever tenderness he has denied you, whatever blindness he wraps himself in like armor, he is bound to you. To your sons. To the life already built around him. He may wear that bond badly, but he has not slipped it.”

Your fingers tightened against the silk over your child.

It was not the thing you had expected her to say. Not balm. Not accusation. Not even rivalry. Something colder than all of those, and harder to bear.

Kiera’s mouth thinned. “Do not think I am praising him.”

“I did not,” you said, though your voice came out smaller than you liked.

“No.” Her expression did not change. “I thought not.”

The wind moved through the garden again, and the last leaves above you whispered together like dry paper. Somewhere a servant crossed a far arcade with a lantern, the light bobbing briefly through the dark before vanishing behind stone.

Then, after a pause, Kiera said more quietly, “Do not think the gods love you merely because they permit you to keep what they denied me. Gods are not so simple.”

She left you with that.

You watched her go, her blue skirts passing between the hedges like the last color of evening sinking out of the world. For a long while after she was gone, you did not move. The child stirred once beneath your hand, and all at once the garden felt too large, too empty, too cold for the smallness of your own breathing.

That night, when Daeron found you in one of the old solars with the painted dragons on the ceiling gone smoke-dim with age, he took one look at your face and did not bother with courtesy.

“She told you.”

“Yes.”

The room was half-dark, lit only by a low fire and three candles guttering in their brass cups. The painted beasts above had once been vivid, red and black and gold, but years of smoke had dimmed them into ghosts. Dust clung in the corners. The air smelled of ash, old vellum, and the wine Daeron had set down near his hand. Outside the narrow window the night had come on fully.

He poured wine into a second cup, then remembered and set it aside untouched.

For a long while you sat with the fire burning low. It snapped softly now and then, and each little sound seemed too loud in the quiet. Daeron did not press. That was one of the strange mercies in him. He let sorrow speak at its own pace.

At length you asked, “Did you love them?”

Daeron stared into the flames. Their light moved over his face and caught in the hollow beneath his eyes. “The children? Or the hopes?”

You shut your eyes. “That answers me.”

He drank.

Then, very softly, he said, “A man may mourn what he never held. There is no law against it.”

You turned your face aside. The words hurt because they were kind, and because they did not try to diminish anything.

Daeron watched you a moment longer, and when he spoke again his voice was low enough that it seemed made for the room and the hour and nothing beyond them.

“They call you blessed because they have never mistaken endurance for joy.”

That was the kindest thing anyone had said to you in months, and it felt, for that very reason, almost unbearable.

At seven months, he told you the dream.

You were in the west gallery, where the windows stood open just enough to let in air sharp enough to sting. Autumn had come properly by then. The light was thin and pale, the sort that made the stone look colder than it was. Below in the yard, Aelor and Baelon chased one another around the fountain, shrieking with laughter while a nurse and two pages failed nobly to keep them from soaking their hems and boots. Water flashed silver when their little shoes struck too near the edge. One page caught Aelor by the sleeve and lost him again at once. Baelon slipped, righted himself, and kept running with all the stubborn dignity of a child too young to accept defeat.

Valarr stood on the steps with one hand ready whenever Aelor went too near the stone lip. He did not smile often these days, yet he watched the boys with that grave, instinctive attentiveness fathers had, as though their bodies tugged some string in his own whether he willed it or no. Lately, he had begun to linger nearer whenever you sat in the galleries or solar rooms, especially if Daeron was there too. Not hovering, not quite. Not foolish enough now to forbid a comfort he had been too blind to provide himself. He would come with the boys, or find some reason to remain within call, joining you at times, withdrawing at others, as if he were trying to learn by instinct what the proper distance was and failing slightly no matter where he stood. It was an effort. You saw that. It only hurt that effort had come after so much else.

Still, he was trying.

Not gracefully. Not well. But truly.

The boys made it easier than either of you did. They climbed into your lap, tugged at Valarr’s sleeves, interrupted silences before they could grow sharp, and stitched the four of you together in those small domestic ways children had, heedless of the damage already done. Some days it almost felt natural. Others, the old soreness sat between you like an unseen third presence, quieter now, but not gone.

You had been smiling faintly at them when Daeron said, without warning, “I dreamt of your child.”

Every instinct in you stilled.

He sat with long fingers loose about the stem of a cup he was not drinking from. The wind lifted his pale hair and worried at the sleeves of his dark coat. The old book in his lap lay open and forgotten, its parchment leaves fluttering once in the draft before settling again. When you turned to him, the expression on his face was not drunkenness, not mockery, not even fear. It was something stranger and more solemn, the look of a man who had seen something in sleep that had followed him into waking and would not let go.

“What did you see?”

His mouth tightened. For a moment he only watched the boys below, as if their bright, careless little movements made what he meant to say harder. “A cradle lined in lion-red. A dragon egg inside it instead of a babe.” He swallowed once. “There was blood on linen. Women weeping. A golden-haired mother with her hands red to the wrists. Then the egg cracked. I heard a child cry, and something cried back.”

Your hand went to your belly of its own accord.

The child shifted beneath your palm, slow and heavy now, real enough to answer fear with movement. The stone bench beneath you felt suddenly too hard. The wind too cold. Somewhere down the length of the gallery, beyond the turn in the wall, a servant passed with folded linen in her arms, soft shoes whispering over the rushes, and even that small sound seemed too loud for the stillness that had come over you.

“Is it a bad dream?”

Daeron’s smile was strange and tired. “That is always the question, is it not? Men hear blood and think doom. Dreamers hear blood and think birth.”

He looked at you then, properly, and for all the oddness in him there was pity in that look. Not the soft, easy pity that sought to soothe. The grimmer kind. The kind that saw too much and did not lie about it.

“I do not think the child dies.”

You let out a breath you had not known you were holding.

“But I think,” he said very softly, “that the mother is very lonely.”

That nearly undid you more than the blood.

For a moment you could not answer. Below, Aelor shouted something triumphant as Baelon slipped on the wet stones and landed on his bottom with all the offended dignity of a prince twice his age. Valarr bent and hauled him back up one-handed. The nurse rushed in too late, scolding. The pages laughed under their breath. It was such an ordinary little scene, so bright with life, that the dream Daeron had laid between you felt all the more terrible for it.

You looked down into the yard again because it was easier than looking at him.

“Do you ever grow used to it?” you asked after a while. “Knowing such things.”

Daeron turned the cup once in his fingers. “No,” he said. “You only grow more tired.”

The answer sat between you in the cold air.

You kept your hand on your belly. Below, Valarr lifted Baelon now, settling him against his hip while Aelor tugged at his sleeve and demanded judgment on some fresh childish dispute. He looked solid there, broad-shouldered in the pale light, every inch the prince the realm saw. Yet from where you sat above him, with Daeron’s dream still in your ears and the weight of the child beneath your hand, he seemed oddly far away. Not in distance. In something else. Something harder to cross.

“I think,” you said at last, and stopped.

Daeron did not press you.

You tried again. “I think I was meant to find that comforting.”

“The dream?”

“No.” Your eyes stayed on the yard below. On your sons. On your husband with one child against him and another circling close. “That you do not think the babe will die.”

Daeron was quiet for so long you wondered if he meant to let it pass unanswered.

Then he said, “Perhaps on another day it would have been.”

You turned to him then.

He gave one faint lift of the shoulder. “But that is the trouble with fear. It is greedy. It never comes alone.”

That, too, was true enough to hurt.

The wind moved through the gallery again and touched the back of your neck. Aelor laughed below. Baelon, secure in his father’s arms now, had begun patting impatiently at Valarr’s shoulder as if he owned him. Valarr turned his face up then, perhaps at the sound of your voice drifting down, perhaps by chance alone. For one brief instant his eyes met yours through the pale afternoon light.

Something moved across his face.

You could not have named it.

Not before. Not now.

He only looked. Then Aelor was demanding him again and the moment was gone.

Beside you, Daeron watched the yard with the strange stillness of men who had seen too much of endings.

The child moved once more beneath your hand.

And all at once the west gallery, with its cold stone and narrow light and the ordinary sounds of pages laughing below, felt like the edge of something vast and unseen. Not doom. Not yet. Only the terrible knowledge that joy and grief so often approached dressed in the same colors, and that by the time one learned which had come, it was already too late to bar the door.

At eight months, the whole keep had begun to watch you differently.

Not openly. Not enough that any lady might be called cruel for it after. But you felt it all the same. The longer looks that lingered half a heartbeat too long. The lowered voices when your hand went to the small of your back. The way old women in service crossed themselves when you passed, as if prayer alone might strengthen bone and blood alike. By then the child sat low and hard in you, a heavy, insistent presence that altered the whole shape of your body and every hour within it. Some days the weight of her made your steps slow and careful on the stone stairs, one hand trailing the wall for steadiness. Some nights you woke already aching, one palm spread over your belly while the dark breathed softly around you and the dying brazier gave off the faint red pulse of a failing heart.

Even the maester had begun to frown too much.

“It is early yet,” Myria had whispered once, after he had gone with his chain clicking softly against his chest, the sound of it lingering down the corridor long after the man himself had passed from sight. “Too early for him to wear that face.”

But women knew what men dressed up in grave tones and swallowed looks too often meant. Hard pregnancy. Heavy burden. Too much strain. Too much blood likely. The old words went from woman to woman without ever needing to be spoken aloud. They lived in glances, in the way hands lingered when fastening your gown, in the way Ellyn watched how you sat, how you rose, how long you stood before the ache forced you down again. You knew it too. You only did not say it aloud. To give fear a name was sometimes to make a chamber of it, and you had little wish to sleep inside one more.

So the keep watched.

It watched in all the small, quiet ways castles did. Servants stepping aside too quickly in torchlit corridors. Ladies pausing in conversation as you passed beneath arched windows full of pale autumn light. Pages staring and then remembering themselves. The whole great stone body of the place seemed to know you were carrying something fragile through it, and had begun, without ever saying so, to fear the cost.

Daeron’s dream haunted the chamber long before the labor came for you.

Blood on linen. Women weeping. A golden-haired mother with her hands red to the wrists. An egg cracking. A child crying, and something crying back.

You could not look at the cradle egg warming near the brazier without thinking of it. Could not wake in the night with pain in your back or the child shifting heavily beneath your ribs without hearing again the strange low weariness in Daeron’s voice when he had spoken of it. The dream settled over everything after that, not loudly, not like some wild terror, but like weather creeping into stone. It lived in the curtains. In the glow of candlelight. In the stillness after the boys had been put to bed and the chamber went quiet save for the hiss of the fire and the soft sounds of your own breathing.

He had not known the ending.

That was perhaps the most terrible part of prophecy.

Not that it lied.

That it spoke in pieces.

It showed enough to wound and never enough to soothe. That it laid grief in your hands without telling you whether grief was all you held. That it gave blood and weeping and cracking shell and answering cries, but not the shape of mercy, if mercy was there at all. And so you carried that too in the eighth month, along with the child herself, along with the ache in your back and the weight low in your body and the knowledge in every woman’s face. The dream had no ending, and so your mind gave it a hundred of its own, each one darker than the last.

The labor came in storm.

Rain struck the tower walls so hard it sounded like fists. The shutters rattled in their frames, and the wind came shrieking in off the bay like something hunted and furious, clawing at the stone, worrying every crack and seam as if it meant to pull the whole tower down into the black water below. You woke before dawn with one hand clenched in the sheets and pain already moving through you low and deep, not sharp at first, but dreadful in its certainty. For one half-blind moment you lay still beneath the blankets, breath trapped high in your throat, and hoped perhaps it might yet be some lesser thing, some ordinary ache of the eighth month. Then the pain came again, heavier, more sure of itself, and all foolish hope went out of you at once.

Valarr woke to the sound you made trying not to cry out.

“What is it?”

You could not lie well enough through that first pain. “The child.”

He was up at once.

After that the chamber became movement and heat and women’s hands. Candles were lit. More candles. Basins brought. Linen fetched. Fire stirred until the room glowed red and gold and stifling, the shadows driven back only to gather again in the corners, thick and watchful. Myria sent pages flying for the midwife, the maester, more hot water, more cloth, more everything. Ellyn went for the birthing stool with shaking hands. Ysilla braided your hair back from your face with a steadiness that looked almost cruel in its calm. The room filled quickly with the smells of hot wax, damp wool, wet stone, bitter herbs crushed under hurried fingers, and the clean metallic edge of fear.

Outside, the storm went on battering at the tower as if it meant to be let in.

Somewhere in the passage, the boys woke crying.

Children always knew when fear changed shape in a household.

Their voices carried once, thin and frightened through the door, Aelor asking something too quickly to be understood, Baelon only sobbing because his brother did, before a nurse hushed them away. That sound hurt almost worse than the pain, because it was so small and helpless and familiar, and because you knew they would be frightened now without understanding why, tucked away in some distant chamber while the keep seemed to shake around them.

Valarr stood in the middle of it all like a man caught in battle without armor.

The midwife, an old, hard woman from Driftmark who feared no prince alive and had little patience for men in birthing rooms however royal, took one look at him and snapped, “Either hold her upright or get out of my way.”

So he held you upright.

For hours.

The storm raged. Your cries broke and rose and broke again, torn from you whether pride would allow them or not. Sweat ran down your spine and cooled and ran again. Your fingers bruised his wrists where you clung. Once you bit him hard enough to leave marks, and he did not even flinch. He held the basin when you retched. He wiped your face when Myria thrust a cloth at him. He steadied your shoulders when your strength failed and caught you when the pain bent you too far forward. The candles guttered and were replaced. More water came. More linen. The room grew hotter. The air thicker. Time loosened itself until there was no hour, only the next pain and the next breath and the next time Valarr said your name as if that alone might keep you tethered to the world.

He had never looked less princely.

Never looked more like a husband.

Never looked more afraid.

His hair had come half-loose in the labor of tending you. Blood and water marked his sleeves. Fear had stripped the polish from him so thoroughly that there was nothing left but the man beneath, broad-shouldered, white-faced, shaking at the mouth when you could not catch your breath, all his old distance burned away by helplessness. He spoke your name like prayer and command and apology all at once, and if there were other words in him, better words, more careful words, the storm and your pain and his terror had scoured them out of him. What remained was rough and desperate and real.

And that, perhaps, was the cruellest thing of all. That it had taken blood and storm and the threat of losing you to make him look at you as though your life were the whole of his.

Outside the chamber, the news spread in fragments.

Not the birth. Not yet.

Only this: the prince’s lady was in labor, and a month too soon.

That was enough.

Daeron heard it first from a page who came tearing through the torchlit passage half out of his wits. “My prince, the lady, Prince Valarr’s lady, they sent for the midwife, it has begun, it is too soon—”

Daeron was moving before the boy had finished. His cup struck the floor behind him, wine spreading black across the stones.

Maekar saw him at the stair. “What is it?”

“Her labor.”

Maekar went still, then followed at once. “What do you know?”

Daeron did not answer.

Maekar caught his arm hard. “What do you know, boy?”

Daeron turned then, and there was no wine in his face now, no bitterness, no mockery. Only dread.

“I know enough,” he said.

Maekar’s grip tightened. “Enough for what?”

Daeron looked toward the upper passage, toward the shut birthing door neither of them could yet see.

“Enough,” he said, his voice gone flat, “to wish I had seen the end.”

That silenced Maekar.

Baelor heard the same word a moment later from a guardsman who had sense enough to lower his voice, though not enough to hide the fear in it.

“In labor, my prince. Too soon.”

Baelor needed no more than that.

So the three of them came by different corridors and met outside the chamber beneath shaking torchlight and the storm’s relentless muttering against the walls.

Daeron reached first.

He stopped dead before the shut door.

From within came women’s voices, the clatter of basins, the low orders of the midwife, and once, terribly, your cry.

Daeron closed his eyes.

Not in prayer.

In knowing.

Blood on linen. Women weeping. The mother’s hands red. He had seen all of it. But never the end.

When Maekar reached him, wet from the rain and dark with temper sharpened by helplessness, he said more quietly, “Tell me.”

Daeron did not open his eyes.

“There was blood,” he said.

Maekar’s jaw hardened. “There is always blood.”

“Not like this.”

That gave even Maekar pause.

Daeron opened his eyes then, and something in his face made his father fall silent at last.

“I saw women weeping,” he said. “I saw her hands red to the wrists. I saw the egg crack.” His voice roughened. “I heard a child cry, and something answer it.”

Maekar stared. “And you said nothing?”

“I told her what I could.”

“What you could,” Maekar said, low and dangerous, “or what you dared?”

Daeron gave one short, ugly laugh. “Do you think I know the difference anymore?”

Before Maekar could answer, another cry came from behind the door, ragged enough to make every man in the corridor go still.

Daeron’s shoulders bowed.

Only slightly.

But both of them saw it.

Baelor came then, broad-shouldered and grave, still in his day clothes, damp at the hems. He looked at the door, at Daeron, at Maekar’s face, and the silence deepened around the three of them.

“What has he seen?” Baelor asked.

Maekar answered first. “Enough to be afraid.”

Baelor looked to Daeron. “Will she live?”

Daeron’s face changed.

That was answer enough for a moment.

Then he said, “I do not know.”

Baelor’s mouth tightened.

Daeron looked back at the shut door. “That is the curse of it. I saw enough to fear it. Not enough to spare anyone.”

The whole corridor seemed to go colder after that.

Servants gathered and scattered farther off like frightened birds. A kitchen girl cried openly until an older woman hushed her. A guardsman changed watch with his voice lowered. The keep held itself very still around that one closed door.

Then, softly, as if he no longer meant the words for anyone but himself, Daeron said,

“Gods let me have been wrong.”

No one answered.

Because that was the one thing none of them believed.

Inside, the labor turned vicious.

There was more blood than with the boys.

You knew it by the speed of the linen, by the way the cloths vanished from the bed and came back redder each time. By the way the midwife’s mouth hardened. By the way Myria stopped speaking except when she had to, as if words themselves had become a waste beside the work of keeping you in the world. By the looks that passed between women who loved you and could not bear to say aloud what they feared. The chamber had grown stifling with heat, thick with the smells of blood, hot water, damp wool, and bitter herbs bruised beneath hurried hands. Candles guttered in every corner. The storm still battered the tower walls beyond the shutters, but even that wild noise seemed farther off now, as if all the world had drawn inward to the bed and the body upon it.

Valarr saw it too.

It made him wild.

When the maester, grey-faced and damp with sweat beneath the crushing heat of the room, looked once at the blood and once at the midwife and said in the careful voice men used when they wished horror to sound like reason, “My prince, if the child cannot be turned, we may have to cut her open,” the room itself seemed to stop.

Not movement. Not breath.

Something deeper.

Valarr turned so slowly it was worse than if he had shouted at once.

“What did you say?”

The maester swallowed. His chain clicked softly against his chest. “If it comes to it, my prince, there are cases in which the babe may yet be saved, though the mother—”

He did not finish.

He did not need to.

Valarr stepped toward him.

There was blood on his sleeves, on his hands, across one cuff where you had clutched him. His hair had come half-loose. His face looked carved from something harsher than flesh, pale with fear, sharpened by fury, all the princely restraint in him stretched so thin it had become almost transparent.

“The mother lives,” he said.

The maester went pale. “My prince, I only meant that should the choice—”

“There is no choice.”

His voice was low. It shook the room more than shouting would have.

“The mother lives.”

The maester tried again, perhaps because learned men were too often fools where terror was concerned. “If the babe is lost, the realm may yet have others, but if there is some chance to preserve—”

Valarr’s restraint broke.

He seized the front of the man’s robe and slammed him hard enough against the stone that the candles trembled in their holders and one basin rang sharply where a servant’s shaking hand struck it against the table. No one moved. Even the storm seemed to draw back to listen.

“Guarantee her life,” he said.

The maester’s mouth opened once and closed again.

Valarr leaned closer, his face white with fury and fear. “You hear me? Her life. The babe is secondary.”

The words shocked the room.

They shocked you, even through pain.

The maester stammered, “My prince, no man can guarantee—”

Valarr’s hand tightened.

“Then do not speak to me of cutting her open unless you mean to lie upon the table after her and feel the same blade in your own flesh.”

The chamber had gone utterly still. The women did not look at one another. The servants did not breathe. The fire snapped once in the hearth, small and ugly in the silence.

“If any fate is laid upon her by your counsel,” Valarr said, each word like something forged, “it will be followed through with you. Do you understand me?”

The maester’s lips trembled. “Yes, my prince.”

The midwife, old and hard and wiser than most men of learning, snapped, “Then stop frightening fools and help me keep her breathing.”

Valarr let go of him.

The man nearly fell.

Then at once Valarr turned back to you, all that terrible violence collapsing into something rawer the moment his eyes found your face again. He came to your side and dropped to his knees, one hand sliding beneath your damp hair, the other finding yours where your fingers had clawed uselessly at the sheets. His palm was hot and shaking. His breath came harsh. In the firelight he looked younger and older at once, stripped down to something more frightened than princely.

“I am here,” he said.

You could barely hear him through the pain.

He bent closer, forehead against yours, breath unsteady, his voice breaking on the edges now where fear had worn it thin.

“Look at me.”

You did. Barely.

“Stay.”

It was desperate.

“Stay with me,” he said again, and now his voice was breaking outright. “Do you hear me? Stay.”

Another pain tore through you before you could answer, hard enough to blind the room white at the edges. But his hand was still there, bruisingly warm around yours, his voice at your ear, rough and shaking and real, and for the first time in all your marriage he sounded like a man who had finally understood what your life meant to him only when the thought of losing it was already standing in the room.

Outside, Daeron heard your cry and knew.

Or thought he knew.

He shut his eyes against the torchlight and saw the dream again, more vivid than waking. The blood. The linen. The women. The red hands. He had told you the truth as far as he could bear it, but not all of it. Not the sheer scale of the blood. Not the force of the grief in the dream. Not how the chamber in it had felt like a tomb and cradle both, like death and beginning laid down side by side and dressed in the same colors.

Maekar saw his face and said, “What?”

Daeron did not answer.

He stood with one hand braced against the cold stone wall, his head slightly bowed, as though if he did not hold himself upright by force he might fold altogether. Torchlight shook along the corridor and caught in the strain of his mouth, the terrible stillness in him.

Baelor looked from one son to the other, and in that moment all the old strength in him was of no use at all.

For once there was nothing to do but wait.

And somewhere else in the keep, where the storm sounded farther away and the walls were colder, Kiera heard the change first in the bells.

Not the bells of alarm.

Not the bells for prayer.

The bells for life.

One. Then another. Then more, until the sound rolled through the stone like something jubilant and merciless. It came down the passages and under the doors and through the cracks in the old walls, bright and brazen and impossible to mistake. Somewhere outside her chamber a servant girl ran laughing and half-crying at once, her shoes slapping too fast against the floor.

“A daughter,” the girl gasped to someone farther down the passage. “A daughter, and a dragon, gods save us, a dragon—”

The words broke apart in her wake.

Kiera stood very still.

The room around her was dim, lit only by one lamp and the red coil of a brazier burning low. The shadows had gathered thick in the corners. Her hands had gone cold. She could hear the keep rejoicing in pieces now, footsteps hurrying, voices rising, doors opening, the whole place brightening with the news of another woman’s child as if dawn had come early and chosen every chamber but hers.

A daughter.

Their third child.

A dragon hatched.

A life bells would toll for.

And all at once Kiera sat down hard on the edge of her bed as though her knees had ceased to belong to her.

For a while she did not cry.

She only sat there with her hands fallen useless in her lap while the bells kept going and the keep went on becoming brighter around her grief. She thought of the little lives she had carried and lost before they could be named, before they could be blessed, before any bell had ever rung for them at all. She thought of how quietly women were expected to bury certain griefs. How neatly. How prettily. She thought, too, of the girl from the west, blood-spent now perhaps, pale and trembling and alive, with a daughter at her breast and a dragon waking beside her.

Then the bells went on.

New life.

New blood.

Joy.

Miracle.

Kiera lowered her head into both hands and wept soundlessly, because the whole castle was ringing for a life that was not hers and would never be hers, and there was something unbearable in hearing joy made public when grief had always had to be borne in private.

“That is not my life,” she whispered to the empty room.

The bells kept tolling.

Toward dawn, as the storm finally began to break itself against the paling eastern sky, the child came.

You screamed once, a terrible raw sound that stripped every layer of princessly composure from you, and then there was the wet rush of life into waiting hands and the brutal, suspended silence before the babe chose whether to breathe.

Valarr stopped breathing first.

Then the child cried.

A high, furious, living sound.

The room broke around it.

Myria wept openly. Ellyn laughed and sobbed in the same breath. The midwife barked orders no one heard because relief had turned the chamber bright and strange, as though the world had tipped and righted itself in one shaking instant.

“A daughter,” she announced.

Valarr made some low, broken sound and came at once to your side.

“A daughter,” he said, as though he had not believed such a thing possible until it lay bleeding and living before him.

You were too weak to answer. They laid her to your breast, small and red and furious, with damp gold already on her head, and for one suspended moment the whole world shrank to the astonishing heat and weight of her.

Then something cracked in the next room.

Every woman froze.

Another crack. Sharper.

Then the unmistakable shatter of shell.

Daeron moved first.

He crossed the antechamber just as the old egg split open down the middle, steam and heat spilling from it in a rush that smelled of iron, ash, and something ancient waking. The brazier flame bent toward it. For one impossible moment the air itself seemed full of remembered wings. The hatchling clawed free, slick and black-red, no larger than a cat, with wings half-glued to its sides and tiny jaws opening in a furious cry.

Behind him, from the bed, your daughter cried back.

The dragon answered.

And in that instant Daeron understood.

Not death.

Not doom.

Blood for blood.

He had seen so much blood because something had to be paid. He had seen the women weeping because birth and terror had always stood too near one another. He had not seen the end because the end had never been death at all.

It had been hatching.

He shut his eyes.

When he opened them again, there were tears standing there. “It was the egg,” he said softly, to no one and everyone. “Gods. That was it. Blood for blood. It was the egg.”

And outside in the corridor, where Maekar and Baelor had been waiting beneath the torchlight with all the uselessness of fathers and princes before a birthing door, they heard first the child’s cry, and then, stranger and sharper, something smaller answer it with fire in its throat.

Maekar went white.

Baelor did not move for one whole heartbeat.

Then the door opened and the news came at last, too large for the passage to hold cleanly.

A daughter.

She lives.

The lady lives.

And a dragon.

Baelor closed his eyes only briefly.

His third grandchild.

A granddaughter.

And your life spared.

When he opened them, the stern heir to the throne was there still, but something in the man beneath him had softened and split all at once.

“A daughter,” he said, almost to himself.

“And a dragon, my prince,” the servant whispered, still shaking.

Baelor looked toward the chamber door, and for one fleeting instant he did not think of the realm at all. Only of how small she must be. How hard your labor had been. How Valarr must be looking at you now.

Then duty returned.

“Keep the keep orderly,” he said, his voice low but carrying. “Let no drunken fool shout this through the halls before the women in that room have had peace enough to draw breath. Ring the bells now, since fools have ears already, and let the sept know.” He paused. “And send the boys up. Washed.”

The servant ran.

Baelor remained where he was for a moment longer beneath the wavering torchlight, his broad shoulders still, his broken nose casting a hard shadow down his face. Maekar stood beside him in silence. From below, the bells had already begun to toll.

A daughter.

A dragon.

And the mother had lived.

For a man like Baelor, it struck in two places at once, the prince and the grandfather.

Then the keep erupted.

The news ran like fire through dry straw. Bells rolled through the dawn. Servants cried in the passages. Guards grinned like boys. The whole castle seemed to wake at once to joy.

Down in the yard, Aelor shouted that his sister had a dragon. Baelon, understanding only that the world had suddenly become wonderful, spun in circles until he fell laughing. Later, scrubbed and straightened and wild-eyed with delight, they crowded your bed without ceremony or fear.

“Is that truly ours?” Aelor whispered, staring at the hatchling like the gods themselves had dropped it from the sky.

“Our sister,” Baelon declared, patting at the blankets before Ellyn caught his wrist.

You lay pale against the pillows with your daughter in your arms and the dragon wrapped near the brazier in red cloth, its tiny sides fluttering with each breath. Your sons pressed close at either side of you, bright-haired and flushed and utterly certain that this was where they belonged.

Valarr stood very still.

Not because he did not want to come nearer.

Because he did.

That was the cruelty of it.

He had been there for every cry. He had held you through the labor. He had seen the blood and thought, in one sick, blinding moment, that he might lose you before he had ever truly made himself worthy of you.

And now, with the child alive and the dragon hatched and the boys climbing over the bed to press themselves against you, he felt like the outermost figure in a painting he had helped create and no longer knew how to enter.

Your daughter rooted weakly against your breast. Aelor asked three questions at once, all bright and breathless and tumbling over one another. Baelon laid his head in your lap as though there had never been, in all the world, a safer place left for him to rest it. And you, ruined and blood-weary and scarcely done trembling, still found something soft for them. Something warm. Something instinctive. Something that seemed to rise from you even now, even after pain, even after fear, even after all that had been taken from your body in the bringing forth of them.

Valarr stood a few feet away and watched it as if the bed held the whole of his life opened before him.

Wife. Sons. Daughter. Dragon. The fragile, terrible miracle of all of it.

Love too.

Love most of all.

Not gone. Not withheld. Not even diminished, perhaps, in the cruelest accounting of it. Still there. Still living. Still turning outward from you in all the ways that mattered most. Given to your children without hesitation. Given even now to the room itself, to the little lives gathered close, to the babe at your breast and the boys pressing against your side.

And for the first time, Valarr understood something so plainly that it seemed to strike him like a physical blow.

He had not lost your love.

That would have been simpler. Cleaner. Easier to grieve, perhaps, than this.

No — the horror of it was that you still loved him.

He knew it suddenly with the sick, helpless certainty by which men knew the worst truths of themselves. You still loved him. Patiently. Faithfully. In that bruised and steadfast way gentle women sometimes did, when they had given their hearts once and never wholly learned the trick of taking them back.

But somewhere along the way, piece by piece, silence by silence, disappointment by disappointment, he had done something perhaps even crueler than driving love from you.

He had taught it to expect so little.

He had made a life in which your heart still made room for him, and yet no longer leaned toward him first. No longer reached for him with the same blind sweetness. No longer waited, perhaps, in all the quiet hopeful places where a wife ought to be able to rest.

Not because you had cast him out.

Not because you had ceased to care.

But because he had loved you too poorly, too cautiously, too late, until the deepest part of you had learned what to do with the emptiness he left.

It had learned how to carry on.

How to mother through it. How to smile through it. How to endure it. How to keep tenderness alive for others, even where he had failed to tend it in you.

That was the wound.

Not that you did not love him.

That you did.

And he did not know, standing there with the bells beginning to ring below and the storm-broken dawn creeping pale through the windows, whether he still knew how to come back from what he had made of that love.

For what was he meant to do with a thing so faithful when he had mishandled it nearly unto breaking?

What balm was there for a wife who had not stopped loving him, only stopped expecting to be held rightly by it?

What repentance could mend years?

What tenderness, offered now, would not seem like panic arrived too late?

The bells below began to peal in earnest then, loud and jubilant and full of news the realm would devour gladly. A daughter. A dragon. Old blood waking. A prince blessed beyond measure. They would turn all of it into song by dusk. They would speak of miracles and legacy and the favor of the gods. They would see the bed and call it glory.

No one would speak of the quieter thing standing just beyond it.

No one would name the man who had been given the very heart of a gentle woman and only understood its worth once he no longer knew how to reach it cleanly.

Valarr looked at you then — at your face drawn pale with weariness, at the damp hair clinging to your temples, at the babe at your breast, at the boys folded into you as though every road in the world still led back to your body — and something inside him went hollow with fear.

Because he loved you.

Gods, he loved you.

Loved his sons. Loved the small red-faced daughter now crying weakly in your arms. Loved the dragon in the brazier, loved the strange holy terror of the life you had made together.

He wanted his family.

Wanted you.

Not as duty. Not as arrangement. Not as the mother of his heirs or the lady at his side.

You.

And standing there with all of it before him, more precious than anything he had ever been promised by birth or blood, he understood at last the most miserable truth of all:

love did not tell him how to mend this.

Love did not give back the years.

Love did not teach a clumsy man how to repair, in one moment, what he had neglected in a hundred smaller ones.

He had thought there would be time. That was what undid him.

He had thought there would be more ordinary mornings. More evenings by the fire. More chances to grow softer at his leisure. More seasons in which to say what ought to have been said long ago. He had thought a loving wife would keep waiting if only he came to her properly in the end.

Now dawn spread pale and merciless through the chamber. The bells rang for his daughter. The keep roared with joy.

And Prince Valarr Targaryen, standing only a few feet from the bed that held everything he loved in this world, knew with a dread so deep it seemed to hollow out his very bones that a man might come late not merely to his own heart—

but to the mending of it.

The court whispered behind fans and into goblets of wine, weaving a tapestry of assumptions about your marriage that was entirely half-true. They saw the way Valarr looked at you, tracking you across the hall, the fresh-cut flowers delivered to your chambers each dawn, the handwritten poems in his elegant slanted script. To the lords and ladies of the Red Keep, Valarr was a lamb led to slaughter, a handsome, soft-hearted prince entirely dominated by his wife. They imagined you holding the reins in every sense, picturing nights where you commanded the heir to the realm with a mere crook of your finger.

They were not entirely wrong, but they did not know the whole of it.

Valarr carried the weight of the world on shoulders that were broad but not quite broad enough to fill the shadow of his father. Being the son of a man who was brilliant, beloved, and incomparable was a burden. Some days, the sheer exhaustion of endless comparisons and crushing expectation bled out of him until he was hollow. On those nights, he would simply crumble. He would sink onto the edge of the bed and wait for you to take charge. You would undress him, peeling away the layers of velvet until he was bare, and he would let you push him back against the pillows. His breathing would slow, his eyes would flutter shut, and he would exist only to be used and praised. You would sink down onto his cock, taking your pleasure from him while whispering that he was doing so well, such a good boy, and he would come undone instantly, shuddering in your arms.

But tonight was not one of those nights.

You heard the door open before you saw him. You turned from your vanity, brush still in hand, and saw him standing in the threshold. The frustrations of the council, the endless scrutiny, the weight of being perfect — he had gathered it all up and brought it here to lay at your feet, demanding you help him carry it by surrendering to it.

Your thighs pressed together instinctively, a sudden ache blooming between them.

"Valarr," you started, setting the brush down with a clatter that seemed too loud in the sudden silence.

"Quiet." His voice was low, rougher than it had been at court an hour ago.

He crossed the room quickly, closing the distance until he was looming over you. He reached out, his fingers brushing the column of your throat. Your pulse hammered against his palm, a frantic rhythm you could not hide. A reminder that while the court might think you held the leash, the authority in this room sat squarely in his grip.

"You were sharp with me today," Valarr murmured, his thumb tracing the line of your jaw. "In front of my squire."

You swallowed, the motion difficult against his hand. "I only meant to help."

"I did not ask for help," he said, his eyes boring into yours. "Instead, you added to the noise in my head with that clever tongue of yours."

He turned you around then, guiding you with a firm hand on your shoulder until you were facing the bed. You felt the heat rising in your cheeks, a mixture of shame and anticipation that pooled low in your belly.

"Over," he commanded.

You bent over the edge of the mattress, your hands gripping the coverlet. The position was vulnerable, exposing, and you felt the cool air of the room kiss the back of your thighs before you felt the heat of him behind you.

"This is no way for a princess to behave," Valarr said, his voice calm, terrifyingly controlled.

The first spank landed with a sharp, stinging crack that echoed off the stone walls. It was not brutal, but it was firm, a sudden shock of heat that radiated outward. You gasped, your hips jerking forward against the mattress.

"Count," he said.

"One," you breathed out.

The second came down on the other cheek, just as hard.

"Two."

He established a rhythm, slow and patient, his hand falling with metronomic regularity. The sting built with every blow in a hot throbbing heat that began to melt your composure. You squeezed your eyes shut in an attempt to focus on the sensation, the way the pain blurred into something else.

"You have such a smart mouth in front of the court," Valarr said, his voice barely strained by the effort of his arm. "But look at you now. Taking your punishment so sweetly."

"Three... four..." you whimpered, your fingers twisting in the sheets.

He stopped after ten, his hand resting on the heated, stinging skin of your backside. You were panting, your heart racing, waiting for the next strike, but instead his hand slid downward. His fingers delved between your thighs, finding the slickness that had gathered there.

"Look at this," he murmured, his tone dark with satisfaction. "So wet for me. You love this, don't you?"

His fingers teased your entrance, sliding through your wet folds but not giving you the friction you craved. It was maddening. You bucked your hips back, trying to force his fingers deeper, but he withdrew them slightly, denying you.

"Please," you gasped, the word torn from you.

"Please what?" he asked. You could hear the smirk in his voice.

"Please... touch me. Fuck me."

"Ask me properly," he said, his fingers ghosting over your clit, making your legs shake. "You want my cock? Then use your manners."

You buried your face in the bedding, humiliation warring with desire. He knew exactly what he was doing.

"Valarr, please," you tried again, your voice trembling. "I need you inside me. I need you to fuck me. Please, husband."

"Better," he said, but he still did not enter you. He teased your opening with the tip of one finger, circling it until you were moaning into the mattress, your backside stinging and your pussy clenching around nothing.

The sound of his laces coming undone was loud in the quiet room, and then you felt the thick, heavy head of his cock pressing against your entrance. He let you feel the weight of him, the promise of the stretch to come. You were dripping now, your body begging to be filled.

"Say it again," he growled, his hand gripping your hip, holding you in place.

"Please, Valarr," you begged, your voice breaking. "Fuck me. Fill me."

He thrust forward in one smooth, deep motion, burying himself to the hilt. The sensation was overwhelming — a sudden, intense fullness that knocked the breath out of your lungs. He groaned low in his throat, a sound of pure relief, as if he had been holding his breath all day.

"Gods," he hissed, his fingers digging into your hips. "You take it so well. Such a tight little cunt."

He began to move, withdrawing almost all the way before slamming back in. The pace was hard, punishing, exactly what he needed to bleed off the day's frustrations. The slap of his hips against your sore backside sent fresh waves of pain-pleasure rippling through you, mixing with the friction of his cock dragging against your inner walls.

"Yes, right there," you moaned, unable to stop the sounds spilling from your lips. "Do not stop."

He leaned over you, his chest pressing against your back, his hand moving to wrap around your throat from behind. He pulled you up against him, arching your spine, changing the angle so he was hitting that spot inside you that made your vision blur. The coil in your belly tightened, winding tighter and tighter with every thrust.

"Come for me," Valarr commanded, his hand tightening slightly on your throat. "Come all over my cock like a good wife."

The command was your undoing. Your orgasm crashed over you, violent and blinding. You cried out, your cunt clamping down around him, rippling and fluttering as waves of pleasure washed through you. Valarr followed you over the edge a moment later, burying himself deep with a guttural groan. You felt him pulse inside you, his seed painting your insides, marking you as his.

He stayed there for a long moment, his forehead resting against your shoulder, both of you breathing hard, slowly coming back to yourselves. The intensity of the moment faded, leaving a warm, heavy afterglow in its wake.

He pulled out gently and you felt the trickle of his release slide down your thigh. He turned you around then, his hands cupping your face, the fierce dominance in his eyes replaced by a tender, adoring softness that the court would recognise. He pressed a soft kiss to your forehead, then your lips, holding you as if you were something precious.

"You are perfect," he whispered against your skin. "My perfect wife."

and when we get to the subject of him eating you out... well, aerion masters it as everything else he does in his life—with obsessive determination and the overwhelming need to consume. he wants to reach parts no other man ever could, wants to make you surpass the line between common release and absolute ecstasy. your sounds get him going, the way you pull on his hair hard enough for his scalp to sting makes aerion hum in approval against your wetness. he isn't just craving the proximity of the act (though it might be the main reason that makes his cock throb and ache inside his breaches), he's seeking every proof of the control he has over you, the ability of turning you into a wanton mess beneath him without even using his cock to do so.

"he's mean about it when he wants to be". aerion not only knows it's deeply pleasurable for you (he knows how to use his tongue), but he also makes sure you reach the state of desperation before he drags an orgasm out of you. he wants you squirming and breathless, one arm locked tightly around your hips to prevent them from lifting off the mattress. he controls the pace, the exact amount of attention your clit receives, how deep his tongue reaches inside you, and he uses it all as advantage to get you to the point of whining and begging for your release.

"aerion—husband, please..." you'd plead, breathless and high-pitched. even then, aerion wouldn't dare to part from your cunt, violet eyes simply locking onto your flushed face as he buried his face deeper into your mess. he grunted against it then, a command so characteristic at this point he didn't need to use words to make you obey. "i want—i need to come. please, make me come. want to do it on your tongue. it feels so good, my dragon."

he sat there, gripping the armrests of his chair. his pale face was still, his lips slightly parted.

he looked so innocent and defenseless, trying with all his might not to look at you, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground.

you let out a soft little giggle when he awkwardly looked away again, then glanced at him once more through your lashes, all innocence — and noticed how he immediately swallowed and hid his face in his wine cup.

you did not care about the other princes who looked at you like prey, something they meant to take.

you only needed him — valarr targaryen.

and he was already caught, when later he stood right outside the chambers prepared for you during the king’s celebration.

“my prince?” you said, your voice soft. you raised a brow, looking at him with almost innocent surprise. “you must have mistaken the door. the royal chambers are in the east wing.”

he swallowed hard, his throat bobbing as a flush spread from his collar up to his ears. “i… no,” he said, forcing the words out. “i mean, yes, i know where my chambers are. but i… i am looking for you. i… i could not leave without saying — ”

it made you take a step back, slightly hiding behind the door, and look at him with quiet offense. “if you come here because you think i am… one of those women whose time can be bought with gold… if you come here for easy pleasure…”

his reaction was instant. valarr waved his hands, his voice nearly breaking with panic as he shook his head.

“no, yes, i know! i swear by the seven, i know!” he said, stepping forward, almost stumbling in his nerves. “forgive me, i am not… i would never dare!"

"i… i have just never seen anything like you.”

looking at him — sweet and so easily led — you giggled again, this time soft, encouraging.

he dropped his shoulders and gave a shy smile in return.

“well now,” you stepped deeper into the room, leaving the door open. “we cannot leave a prince standing at the threshold, can we?”

valarr stepped forward, and the door behind him closed with a soft click. he looked around your chambers, then his hand awkwardly reached to the back of his neck.

you giggled again, unable to hold back the soft tease, and valarr, catching your gaze, answered with a shy, almost guilty smile. a deep blush, bright and honest, spread across his cheeks, giving him away completely.

he felt damn ashamed. he knew his cousins and brothers already bragged about their wins in the city brothels and talked of their romps, while he stood here like a foolish boy.

but you did not mind, because he was bloody charming.

you walked up to him, touched his warm fingers, and gently pulled him along toward the bed, making him sit down at the edge, stiff as a drawn string, afraid to even breathe.

you stood close, right between his parted knees. your sweet scent, mixed with the faint smell of sweat after dancing, wrapped around him, and strands of your hair brushed his cheeks, soft as the finest silk.

your chest, in the thin beaded bodice of a dancer, was right at his eye level. valarr swallowed hard, his hands resting on his knees growing damp, his gaze completely lost.

“how... how do you like the feast?” he said, forcing the words out, trying to focus on anything at all, gripping the fabric of his trousers until his knuckles went pale.

you only smiled at the corner of your lips and, without taking your eyes off him, reached for the ties of your outfit.

“what are you doing?” the prince said at once, his voice breaking into a hoarse whisper. “i am not here for that… i… i do not think this is a good idea. we should not…”

you did not let him finish. slowly, almost lazily, you brought your index finger to his trembling lips, gently pressing it right at the center. “shh…”

valarr fell silent at once. his lips, still warm with nerves, brushed against your fingertip, and you felt how his breath turned uneven beneath your touch.

his gaze darted around the room in panic — to the tapestries, to the flickering candle, to his own boots — anywhere but at what was happening right in front of him.

you laughed and, with one sharp movement, untied the laces. the bodice fell to the floor, and your chest was fully revealed to his gaze, shifting slightly right at his lips.

valarr let out a muffled groan and immediately squeezed his eyes shut, lowering his head. he had never seen a woman this close, never felt this raw, primal pull. his breathing turned uneven and heavy as he felt your warmth.

you gently took his chin and tilted it up, making him lift his face toward you, though his eyes were still tightly shut. his hands were clenched into fists, and through the thick fabric of his fine trousers you clearly saw how his hardness became obvious.

“do not fear your desires, my prince,” you whispered, your breath barely brushing his lips.

your hands rested softly on his face, and you carefully traced your fingertips over his eyelids, making him finally open his eyes and meet your gaze.

your fingers slid higher, slipping into his hair, curling a stubborn silver strand around your finger before moving to the back of his head.

you pressed firmly, pulling his head straight into the hollow of your bare chest. valarr froze for a moment, overwhelmed by the closeness of your skin, then he inhaled sharply, deeply taking in your scent, and a broken, needy sound slipped from his chest.

a soft, strained moan escaped him. his hands finally left his knees and flew to your back, gripping at your shoulder blades — he breathed so heavily, his chest rising and falling.

you tugged lightly at his hair, pulling him back just a little, then guided his head toward your right breast.

you saw how he swallowed hard before his mouth closed over your nipple, eager and impatient. he bit down too hard, making you cry out despite yourself.

“gentler, my prince!” you say, scolding him lightly as you caught his head and lifted his face.

valarr stilled, looking at you with dark eyes clouded with desire, where real remorse flickered. “… i am sorry,” he says, his voice breaking.

he leaned into you again, but this time he started with a gentle, teasing lick. you let out a low moan, and that sound finally made him lose his mind.

valarr started to suck your breast so greedily, like it was the only thing that mattered in the world. he bit your skin a little and then licked it at once, trying to pull you as close as he could.

his hands tightened on your back, literally pulling your soft body into him, while you whined from the pleasure and ran your fingers through his hair, holding him against you.

"yes, like that... just like that, my prince."

the room filled with wet, slurping sounds and the sight of the shameless prince before you. when you tugged his hair, he gave a tiny, pitiful whimper and dove back in, not wanting to let go of your skin. you clicked your tongue and moved him to the other breast, watching him suck it just as hard as the first one.

knowing he would not stop on his own, you pulled him away with a wet pop, leaving a thin string of spit between your nipple and his open lips for a moment.

valarr looked truly sinful: flushed red, his mouth shiny and wet, his breath heavy and ragged. you took his face in your palms, leaned down, and gently sucked his bottom lip into your mouth, getting spit on his chin while he whimpered under you.

when you made the kiss deeper, it was clear he never did this before — he was touchingly clumsy, just desperately trying to keep up with your tongue.

you broke the kiss and pushed him onto the bed. valarr fell back onto the silk but propped himself up on his elbows at once, not wanting to lose sight of you for even a second.

under his hot stare, you started to get out of your clothes: your skirt slid to your feet, your hair pins hit the floor with a ring, and your smallclothes followed. he watched you, barely catching his breath.

"i... i do not know how to please you, i never —"

you walked right up and sat on top of him so you felt his heavy, hard cock beneath you.

"you are perfect, my prince. you have nothing to worry about."

the moment you gave a teasing rock of your hips, he fell back onto the pillows with a loud moan. he tried to say something, muttering about how he was not good enough, but every move you made turned his words into messy, sweet whimpers.

seeing how his head was spinning with thoughts, you gave a sly smile. "i have a fine way to make you forget those thoughts."

you moved up until your thighs were right over his face, pinning his head between your knees.

his eyes went wide when he saw what you meant, taking a deep, shaky breath before you slowly lowered yourself right onto his face.

you felt his hot breath on your soft skin, and a second later, you cut off his view completely, covering his face with yourself.

valarr made a muffled, deep sound right into your thighs —half a moan, half a try at speaking — but you only pressed down harder, feeling his nose and lips against you. his hands, which were searching for a grip, found your thighs and held on like death, pulling you even closer.

he did not try to get free: instead, he greedily pressed his face into you, catching every breath and every scent.

you rocked slightly on him, feeling his tongue start to explore you, shy at first and then bolder. valarr was gasping for air under you, his thighs shaking.

you felt his lips moving feverishly, trying to give you pleasure.

you noticed his hips starting to jerk on their own, his pelvis bumping up to match your rhythm. he was clumsy, but he worked his lips with such desperate grit to keep up, and something about how much he wanted to please you made your insides tighten.

gripping his hair tight in your fists, you started to move slow, setting the pace.

valarr made choked sounds, suffocating under your body, while his fingers dug painfully into your thighs, trying to hold you and pull you even tighter.

he tried to catch the rhythm, pushing his face up to meet you, while you teasingly pressed down harder, taking away his air and leaving him with nothing but your taste and scent.

"yes, mmhmm!... just like that, right there..." you breathe out, moving faster and feeling how his nose rubbed your clit with every move, making you moan louder and louder.

to be honest, at that moment you didn't care at all if he had enough air, and it seemed he didn't care either: he did not make a single move to pull away, but only whimpered like a loyal little puppy and pressed his face harder into your pussy.

of course, it was not enough to make you come, and you did not plan to do it now, saving the sweetest part for later, so you slowly pulled away and got off him.

valarr, not understanding what happened, tried to pull you back, gasping for air. "did... did i do something wrong?"

his face was completely wet — you rode him so long and hard that the moisture reached even his forehead. his words made you gently shake your head to calm him. "no, you were wonderful, my prince, but i just cannot wait anymore."

you slowly slid down, making his damn rich doublet messy with your arousal, until you reached his hips, where you suddenly felt heat and a strong stickiness.

oh gods.

he came.

just from you riding his face.

the shock was so big that you lost your speech for a few seconds, just looking at the wet spot. when you finally looked up at valarr, you saw that he wanted to sink through the ground.

he desperately tried to cover his face with his hands, burning with shame because he finished without even being inside you.

but you did not let him hide. you caught his hands, making him sit up and be on the same level with you, and covered his lips with a deep kiss.

you literally swallowed him, feeling your own taste on his lips, and at this time your fingers started to skillfully deal with his clothes. you unfastened the buckles of his doublet and pulled the ties of his thin linen shirt, noticing how much his hands shook.

pulling away from his lips, you went lower, to his belt. you took off his pants and his smallclothes, and in that same second, his cock hit his stomach with a thud.

valarr's cheeks flushed deep red, spreading down to his neck and chest, and his breath hitched. seed still leaked from him. by all laws of nature, he should have gone soft, but he stayed there — hard, hot, and scary big.

you looked at him and thought that he clearly did not use his full potential — for how could such an innocent and shy man have such an impressive cock?

it seemed you had to thank your father.

you kept looking at his cock in a trance, while the room stayed silent, broken only by the prince's ragged breathing.

at last, valarr awkwardly cleared his throat. "is... is everything good?" he barely squeezed out.

in answer, you only giggled softly, looking up at him through your lashes. "good? you are huge, my prince, and i am not even sure you will fit inside me."

hearing this, valarr instantly covered his face with his palms, and the tips of his ears turned bright red with shame. "you cannot... just say things like that," he groaned through his fingers, completely defeated.

you gave a flirty smile, leaning closer so your hair tickled his knee again.

"i will be lucky if you do not tear me apart from the inside."

that comment made the prince let out a pitiful cry, and when you saw his cock twitch again with heat, you firmly wrapped your hand around it.

valarr moaned so loud you thought the sound echoed through the whole wing of the castle. your palm instantly got wet with his slick and the rest of his seed while you slowly moved your hand up and down, making his hips push toward you on their own.

"please... i want... i need — "

"what exactly do you need, prince?" you asked back, amused by his struggle. "you know i would not dare disobey my future king."

his fingers gripped the sheets until his knuckles were white, and he tried to put his needs into words, fighting through his deep shame. "i am about to... i need... you... i want to be inside you!"

you laughed once and sharply pulled your hand away, making him whimper piteously. "no... please..."

getting up, you swung a leg over him and hovered above, holding your weight in the air and watching him desperately try to lift his hips to close that painful gap.

"is this what you dreamed of since you saw me in the hall, my prince?" you asked, looking down at him.

valarr nodded fast, his eyes full of unshed tears. "i... i wanted to do so much."

"oh? tell me all of it."

he shook his head, still too shy to say his fantasies out loud, and he could not take his eyes off your wet pussy that stayed a couple of inches away. "please... mmh..."

you took his cock, guiding the head right to your opening. "be a good prince for me, and tell me everything you wanted to do to me."

valarr almost cried from the heavy tension and, closing his eyes tight, started to whisper in a rush. "i imagined..."

and right then, you dropped down fast, taking all of his length in one go. you both moaned so loud and deep that the sound seemed to pierce right through the castle walls.

valarr arched his back, his eyes rolling back from the heavy pleasure, and you felt your whole body shake as you took him inside.

damn, you were not joking when you said he would tear you apart.

you froze for a few moments, trying to get used to his size and find your breath, while your body slowly adjusted to that new, filling weight.

"gods, you are perfect." there was so much real wonder in his voice that you pulled him in for a long, wet kiss, and spit ran down your chins, mixing together.

you grabbed his hands, which gripped the sheets so hard they almost tore, and moved them to your ass, making his fingers dig deep into your skin.

you started to move — slow and careful at first, remembering he just finished, but soon you moved faster, setting a ragged and wild pace.

valarr gasped and whimpered, begging you not to stop while you swiveled your hips, making his pelvis jump up and hit you with a dirty sound.

wet, splashing noises filled the quiet room — your pussy became so wet that you should have felt shame that you felt like that because of a man who did not even know where the clit was, but you couldn't have cared less.

he had a truly divine cock, so who could blame you?

"hnn-ngh!... want... to suck... please... please..."

you laughed softly and, leaning in until you were almost touching, gave him one breast. valarr wrapped his lips around the nipple at once with a greedy sound, making you arch your back and moan loud.

"haah, my prince, yes... right there, hnghh!." your fingers tangled in his dark hair, holding his head to you so tight it was like you wanted him to drown in your tits.

when you started to literally bounce on him, going as fast as you could, valarr let go of your breast with a wet pop, and his face twisted with pleasure that was almost painful.

"it is too much!... i am still too sensi.. mmnhm! i cannot..." he sobbed.

you kissed his sweaty lips quick and whispered right against his mouth. "you can, my prince. do you not want to leave your babies in me? do you not want to feel your seed fill me to the brim, and see my belly grow with your little dragons?"

a half-sob, half-cry broke from his chest, and he nodded hard, weeping from the rush of feelings.

"i want... i want it so much... hngh!...gods, i never wanted anything more."

"then come for me. let everyone in this castle know that it was you who filled me, my future king."

tears rolled down his cheeks as he made a sharp, desperate thrust upward, going so deep that his cock hit your cervix.

you screamed loud from that sweet pain, your muscles squeezed tight around him, and you felt the first wave of orgasm wash over you.

in that same second, valarr shook, and you felt the hot, thick stream of his seed fill you up inside. that heat felt so right and good that you only purred with joy, making your last, slow moves with your hips.

valarr was almost fully crying, his body still shaking from the shock, and you heard him whisper. "i really cannot do more... hngnhh!... i want to so much, but i cannot."

you softly calmed him down, rubbing his wet shoulders and telling him otherwise. "it is alright, you did perfect, my prince. no one could be better than you."

hearing your praise, he calmed down a lot, his breath went steady, and he practically pouted as he lifted his chin. "want a kiss."

you smiled gently at this sudden change and leaned down to him, covering his lips with yours while your sweaty bodies stayed pressed close together. you pulled away and kindly ran your fingers through his silver hair.

"you did so well."

later, when he fell asleep beside you in your bed, with his head tucked against your neck and his arm around you like you belonged to him, you listened to his steady breathing.

you definitely did your job perfectly.

masterlists. honestly i was just bored & horny

30 seconds - another chrollo soulmate au!! imagine finding out that your soulmate is a murderer and on top of that, he’s the phantom troupe leader! (@uvobreakmylegs)

sixth floor game - ok soo i never knew i needed demon shalnark until this came… a must read! (@uvobreakmylegs)

biting people you like - i’m such a sucker for vampire fics,, like just come over and bite me shalnark(@hypnoswrites)

mu heart is in my hand - a feitan soulmate au!! give me a soulmate au and my heart is yours (@after-witch)

chained veils - forced marriage with pariston?! 🤤(@envy-of-the-apple)

── .✦ CORIOLANUS SNOW

the driven snow - my first yandere snow fic that i’ve read! the horror that mc felt when she found out that she’s staying at the capitol (@after-witch)

NDA - hands down the best! poor livia :( her own son doesn’t even recognize her. “no one leaves the president.” trust me, i won’t. snow using mcs brother as a leverage for her to behave. dirty dirty snow (@perlelune)

no body, no crime - all time fav. please read thiss! 😛 (@perlelune)

── .✦ A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS

caged - the BEST dark valarr!! i love love long chapters <3 control freak valarr. i eat up all ur writing (@valarrtheyoungprince)

the favorite - omg aerion and valarr together!? gimme boaf! no words on how amazing this piece is! aerion being the asshole he is and lying to valarr about mc. from ‘valarr’ to its ‘your grace’ after he found out about the betrayal 😳 (@perlelune)

suprise - mmm daddy maekar… and he’s delusional too… this kind of troupe is like my guilty pleasure lol like hihihi, we all love egg! (@mrsdarkandyandere7)

picture-perfect - i wholeheartedly believe that there’s something dark hiding underneath valarr’s picture perfect facade! i mean, look at that man! he’s just better at hiding it than the others (@mrsdarkandyandere7)

distrust - so so good! like yes, valarr, just keep interrogating me like that ughsh. i love your dark valarr fics sssm, you keep me alive 🥺 (@mrsdarkandyandere7)

aerion targaryen - that dick corrupt me 🤤😔 (@beentainted)

valarr baby trapping - ughh ughhh yes! "i don't want any highborn lady, i love you," ok then, im easy, i give you permission to impregnate me! 😂 (@beentainted)

marked up - so what if we all a little into spanking!! let me take care of that for you, valarr 😋 who said thattt?? (@musingsofheaven)

thou shalt not covet - oh yes, daddy baelor and his son!!! baelors so fucking hot that i turn into a river every time i see him. valarrs hatred towards his step-mommy is not because she replaced jena, but something more scary ooooo shiver me timbers (@perlelune)

darling big sister - HELLO?? aerion being creepy as always, selecting whores that looks just like his sister :(( that man fr have a mommy kink anyone who disagrees is wrong (@imeow33)

a starved man is no laughing matter - who doesn’t love a reverse harem 😳 (@valarrswhitestreak)

dragons caught in the storm - honestly, this brings me back to my fifth grade wherein i tried to make a love potion for my crush ugh!! putting that aside, aerion taking the drink from mc that contains the love potion that was meant for valarr cuz yk typical aerion behavior and the horror that mc, daella, and rhae felt!! (@catbayunthestoryteller)

chosen - he hit me and it felt like a kiss 😔 me love love this, very very much!!! im like a wife that waits for her husband to arrive after work, but instead of that, its me on my toes waiting for the next banger of an update (°ロ°) (@loveobx)

── .✦ ROMAN GODFREY

bite marks and bruises - legit cried tears of joy when i saw this! who likes being chased and period sex anyways… its not like, i like it or something! may zeus himself strike me (@cherienymphe)

─── NOTE

legit if i added more like jjk, batfam, hsr, marvel, tua, outer banks, twst, dune, etc.. this would have surpassed hamilton’s essay.