camille

Summer is doing something strange to you.

It’s not the heat. Well, it’s not just the heat, because you’re no exception to its heavy, vicious presence. The aircon tries its best, but when the sun reaches its apex and the streets radiate so hot you can taste the asphalt in the air, no one can escape it. You’re pouring sweat the whole walk home from campus. The second you step into the townhouse, your drenched clothes get stripped off and kicked into a sad little pile while you stand in front of the open fridge in your underwear and chug water like your life depends on it.

But then there are the dreams. Hazy, fractured, they stick to the inside of your skull like bits of wet confetti. You’ve started scratching lists into your journal first thing in the morning. An attempt to remember, to find meaning in the recurring symbols. Feathers, ink stains, someone’s hands all bloodied-up. Each night feels like a trip to some mysterious place that leaves you bone-weary and befuddled when you wake.

And amidst it all: Baelor. The lack of him winds itself into a needy cord around your neck. Strangles you while you retreat into your own mind during the long hours at the circulation desk. You’re more lust-struck than you’ve ever been in your life. Hands constantly scrambling to sate the need, each time you come around your own fingers you’re only deepening the void in your gut.

The evenings that Baelor doesn’t call spread like jam, thick and viscous. You languish in the muggy air, half-asleep, feeling an emotion you can’t put a name to. On the horizon: clouds looming heavy over Blackwater Bay. There’s a thunderstorm building, threatening to break.

You’re in the middle of a dream where your teeth are falling out when your phone rattles you awake. A groggy Hello? while your tongue prods the corners of your mouth, making sure that everything’s where it ought to be. The sheets have embedded little wrinkles onto your arms and cheeks. A sheen of sweat swaddles you while you peel yourself upright. There’s air humming through the vents and the overhead fan is doing its best, but you can tell the aircon is straining to keep up.

“Did I wake you, love?”

“No,” you mutter, blinking the sleep out of your eyes, “no, sorry, I’m awake.”

A little chuckle on the other end, probably him hearing right through your lie. “You work too much, you need your rest. I can call back—”

“No, please?” You can’t hide how needy you are. “Tell me about your day?”

You put him on speaker while you stumble downstairs, pouring yourself the tallest, iciest glass of water possible. He clearly didn’t take your commandment to have fun very seriously. Peer reviewing articles, editing syllabi for the fall term, helping his brother with business… his day sounds about as tedious as yours. You hmm and uh huh? while he talks, investigating the thermostat (which claims it’s about ten degrees cooler than it actually feels).

Funny, though. He sounds lighter. You’d go so far as to say excited, though nothing he reports seems particularly exciting.

“Can’t believe you,” you tease when he’s finished. “You know you’re allowed to take a break? No one’s going to kill you for it.”

“Work comes before play, you know that.”

“I’m not talking about play. I mean an actual break. Do nothing for a day, I dare you. Go stare at the clouds.” You’ve never seen him truly idle in all the time you’ve known him. Always fretting over a task, no matter how small: making tea, reorganizing a stack of papers, taking a call from one of his sons or brothers. The notion of him sitting somewhere, hands empty, eyes unfocused, is as strange and unsettling as your tooth dream.

“What about you, sweet girl?” He asks, oh-so-conveniently changing the focus back to you. “Did you use the money I left you?”

“Mhm.” You cast a sideways look at the untouched envelope on the kitchen table while you formulate some sort of story. “Um, I got my nails done.”

“Good girl. That wasn’t so hard, was it?” 

“Stop that.” It’s sinful, how cocky he sounds, praising you for spending his money. “D’you want me to bankrupt you or something?”

“You’d have to try awfully hard to do that, love,” he says. You can hear the smirk in his voice. Fucking rich boy. No matter how well he hides it, he’ll always be part of a class so far above you that he might as well live among the clouds. You, with your student loans quietly gaining interest and the odd collection of part-time jobs you’ve been working since you were fourteen… you’re solidly in the dirt of the world.

“You’d better start working on an airtight prenup, then.”

Fuck. Stupid joke. Your smile fades into thin air, skin prickling as if the room’s suddenly gone cold. You should know better than to use marriage as a punchline. It’s one of those lines you leave uncrossed with him, even if it hovers between the both of you like a loaded gun. Of course you’d be reckless enough to pull the trigger at some point.

“About that,” he says, in a tone that you can’t read over the phone. Heart pulsing out of control, your mouth goes dry and your brain comes up with a hundred possibilities for what he’s about to say next, each one more disastrous than the last. 

“Uh huh?”

“I told my boys that I’m seeing someone,” he says.

“Oh.” 

Genuinely dumbstruck, a long moment goes by before your brain fully processes what he’s said.

“Um, did you tell them that… like, how we met, or—”

“I said we met on campus. I think it’s best to leave it at that.” There’s a rumble of an inhale or an exhale. “But I told them that you’re a writer. That you work at the library. They’d like to meet you.”

“I’d love that,” you say so quickly, giddy with nerves, “I’d love to meet them, honestly. Anytime. If that’s alright with you.”

“I’ll figure out a time. Thank you, sweet girl.”

You’re not sure what to say. You’re not sure what to do with your hands. You’re standing in the middle of his kitchen, still bleary from your evening nap, feeling like a bomb just went off. Seismic tremors ripple through your bones. The sun glints off of your phone screen and casts a shiny, trembling reflection onto the wall.

The lie by omission doesn’t even bother you. You’d gladly play along with whatever story he wants to tell so he doesn’t have to admit that you were his student. You’re real. Not some nameless secret. Something more means that you’re someone who gets to meet his sons. His brothers someday, maybe. You’re someone who can fit into his life. Someone who might end up in one of those picture frames over the mantle someday. 

It’s all you wanted, really. A dream come suddenly, shockingly true.

There’s some sort of muffled conversation on the other end of the call. “I’m sorry, sweet girl. More business. I’ll call you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course.” You stutter through the big, stupid grin on your face. “Talk to you then.”

“Good. Good night, love.”

“Good night.” You say, and then: “I love you.”

There’s the briefest silence.

Your breath hitches in your throat.

And then the call ends.

Fuck.

You’ve said it before, haven’t you? Surely you’ve let it slip by now. Gods, you’ve probably thought it a thousand times. While you’re falling asleep next to him. While he’s inside you. While he’s making you tea and hmm-ing while he reads your writing. He’s called you “love,” but that’s different. You’d use that with children, with shy undergrads who are nice to you in the library, with a seagull, for fuck’s sake. But as you stand there in the stark stillness of the kitchen, wracking your brain, you come up blank.

Maybe he hadn’t heard you? You try to replay the conversation in your memory. How long had that pause been, between you blurting out I love you and him hanging up? It feels like a whole handful of seconds had gone by, but maybe you’re remembering it wrong. Maybe he’d hung up in the middle of you saying it. There was someone in the background, maybe he was distracted by them. Maybe you broke up a little.

Or maybe he heard you loud and fucking clear. And didn’t say it back.

“Fuck.” You hiss. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck!”

Your phone clatters to the floor. Typical you. Shattering all the happiness you’d worked so hard to build. Fucking idiot, you curse yourself, whole body slipping into panic. Hands shaking while you fetch your phone off the hardwood, you’re trying to avoid going into full cardiac arrest when you look down and see that it’s pulled up your emergency contact screen. 

Fucking hells. If this doesn’t constitute an emergency, you’re not sure what does.

It takes all of two rings for that familiar accent to greet you, bright and buoyant as ever. “Hey! I was just thinkin’ of you, isn’t that funny?”

“Dunk,” you warble, “I fucked up.”

“Winger!”

The pub’s packed tight. Saturday night, and there’s a football game on. King’s Landing Dragons versus Winterfell Direwolves. You bump your way past a stag party hogging the bar. The group of guys bang their fists and chant while the groom-to-be chugs his beer. The first daters, the uni friends, the girl groups mingling with the guy groups, all the usual suspects are there. 

“Oi, Winger!”

You follow the sound to the corner, because even in the middle of all the chaos, you’ve at least got the certainty that Winger means you. And sure enough, you find him there: Duncan, tall and solid as ever, wrapping you in the sturdiest hug you’ve ever felt as soon as you lay eyes on him.

“You grew!” You giggle while you’re smushed against his chest. Your go-to line for as long as you can remember. Maybe he has grown, you wonder when he finally sets you down. He looks different. Good. He’s grown his hair out, shoulder-length and shiny as fresh copper even in the low lights. But those blue eyes, that scrappy old flannel with the hole in the cuff… he’s the same Duncan who you met when you were eight, that lost puppy of a boy who latched onto you as much as you did him.

“Nah, only sideways,” he grins, patting his gut (where you’re absolutely certain there’s nothing but abs). “Hey, you alright?”

He probably knows the answer is no. You look as tired as you feel. You’d been on the phone with him until the small hours of the morning, ranting and crying and pouring yourself shot after shot of Baelor’s top-shelf whiskey. Even now, the smell of alcohol in the air makes your stomach turn. The fact that you’ve wrestled yourself out of bed and taken the ferry all the way to Dragonstone is a fucking miracle.

“I’m fine.” You shrug, which means not at all. 

“It’s fine if you’re not, y’know.” Mercifully, though, he changes the subject before all the weariness and heartache can claw its way to the surface again. “Hey, come meet my friends.”

He introduces you to Raymun—Fossoway, as in Fossoway Cider? you ask, and he just nods his mop of dark curls and blushes—and Raymun’s fiancée Rowan. Duncan fetches you a club soda while you get the full story about the whirlwind romance, the engagement, the wedding plans. They’re a funny couple. Finishing each other’s stories. Her correcting the details about how exactly he’d proposed. Him babbling about how he’d chosen the ring. You get a full slideshow of picture after picture of their baby, too: Rosie, three months old, apparently being fawned over by Rowan’s girlfriends for the evening.

“She’s Daddy’s girl through and through,” Rowan sighs, and Raymun just beams with pride.

“Aye, but she’s got her Mum’s good looks.” There’s a cheeky little look between them. Like they’re sharing a joke you’re not in on.

It’s sweet, though. How comfortable they are with each other. How they ebb and flow, how they tease and flirt. You’d be more charmed by it if you weren’t struck by the crushing question of whether you and Baelor could ever have it so easy.

Maybe you could’ve, if you hadn’t gone and royally fucked it up.

“So Duncan says you’re a writer?”

“Yeah,” you cringe internally, always so graceless making small talk about yourself. “Um, I’m in grad school at KLU. It’ll be my last year this fall.”

“Ugh.” Raymun catches himself. “Sorry. Nothing to do with you, I promise.”

“He’s got a thing about King’s Landing,” Rowan adds for him. “Hates the fancy folks. The Velaryons, the Celtigars, all them.”

“It’s the Targaryens mostly, but I—”

“Oi!” She elbows him in the ribs. “She’s fucking dating one of them, idiot. Remember what Duncan said? Have some class.”

“Oh! Right, sorry. No, I didn’t mean… it’s nothing personal, just, like, the principle,” Raymun scrambles sheepishly. You’re sure, from the looks on their faces, that you’ve gone a bit stiff. Residual pride puffs up your chest, even if today you’d gladly rant about the “fancy folks” and how much they tend to set your nerves aflame.

“That’s alright.” You manage a lopsided smile. “I get it. They’re not for everyone.”

Duncan, always your savior, swoops back in with another round of drinks. “Hey, pool table’s open. You want to play?”

“No mate, I’m shit,” Raymun insists, but he looks all too happy to be strong-armed into a game.

“You boys do that.” Rowan nudges you. “Fancy some air?”

Outside, you can hear the cheers and groans as the football game enters the second half. Rowan takes a hit of her cherry-flavored vape while the pair of you lean against the brick exterior and bask in the lukewarm breeze. Across the street, a pack of drunk uni boys whistles at the pair of you. Fuck off! you both yell back at the same time.

“Gods, sorry,” you wince. Rowan gives you a quizzical look, cocking a perfectly-plucked eyebrow.

“Sorry for what? They were talking to you.”

“What?”

Judging from the way she gives an incredulous little chuckle, you must look properly astounded. “Yeah, babe. I’m not their type now, am I?”

“Are you serious?”

You wonder if there’s something wrong with your eyes. She’s gorgeous. If someone told an artist to draw a beautiful woman, they’d draw her. Even under the dull streetlights, her curls are a bright, soft crown. Perfectly messy, perfectly twirled into an effortless bun that you could never, ever hope to achieve. The v-neck of her emerald green top frames her tits just right. Her jeans might as well be custom fit from the way they hug her ass. She’s a goddess, a vision, the kind of woman who you feel a little embarrassed standing next to, and you’re just… well. You’re you.

“You should be everyone’s type,” you offer, directing your gaze back to the concrete before you seem as perverted as those boys across the street.

“Aw, thanks,” she grins. “Sorry about Raymun, by the way. He’s from the Reach, you know how they get all territorial.”

“It’s fine. Really. He seems lovely.”

“Yeah, he’s a nice one.” You can feel her eyes on you, parsing you apart. “How’s yours?”

“Mine?” 

Gods, it feels strange to talk about Baelor like this: so casual, so open. Like your relationship is as typical as anyone else’s. You’ve spent a year having heart palpitations about the notion of anyone at the university finding out about the two of you, and now you’re calling him mine on the sidewalk for any of the tipsy passersby to hear.

“He’s good,” you reply after chewing on the inside of your cheek for a minute. “He’s away for the summer, actually. Visiting family and all that.”

“That’s too bad.” She offers you a sympathetic hit of her vape. “Nothing like reunion sex though, yeah? They’re fun when they’re all pent up.”

Coughing up a cherry-flavored cloud, laughter bubbles from deep down in your chest. It’s a strange sound. Something you haven’t heard in what feels like ages. Light as a baby bird, making your whole body sparkle with a nicotine-laced effervescence. Maybe this was what you’ve needed all along as the antidote to your hollowness: summer air, girlish giggling, conspiratorial smiles shared with a potential partner in crime.

And maybe it’s that lack of pretense, that clever warmth that Rowan has, that makes you blurt out: “I told him I loved him last night.”

“Oh?”

“He didn’t say it back.” You’re wincing at yourself, but the floodgates are open and the rant tumbles out all at once. “I mean, it was right before I hung up, so maybe he didn’t hear me? But I think he probably did. And just before that, he said he told his sons about me and that they wanted to meet me, so I thought… I dunno, it just slipped out, but I thought it made sense, you know?”

“Maybe you just shocked him,” she reasons. “It’s one thing to think it, it’s another to hear it, yeah?”

Well. It all sounds so simple when she puts it like that.

You gnaw on your lip for a long minute. “What should I do?”

“If I were you? Nothing. You’ve said your bit, it’s his turn to say his.” Rowan tilts her head. “Aw, hey. Does he make you sad like this all the time?”

“No!” You’re quick to protest. “No, he’s perfect. I really do love him. It’s just… it’s hard sometimes.”

“Yeah, well. That’s just how it is, ain’t it?”

A car rumbles by, boosted bass making the ground quiver beneath you. Craning your neck to look past the old rooftops, past the glow of King’s Landing shining from across the bay, you stare into the night sky and just breathe. Messy you. Foolish, fucked-up, poetic you, always entangling yourself in complications because it’s more comfortable for you that way. You’ve been drifting in the atmosphere of your confusion. Untethered. And beside you, Rowan tucks her vape back in her pocket, a friendship one hour old and already pulling you back down to the ground.

“Hey, c’mon. Enough of that.” She gives you a playful nudge in the ribs. “Raymun really is shit at pool. Want to do a round of boys versus girls? You look like you could use a win.”

Breathy laughter drifting off on the wind, you rally your energy and find it shockingly renewed. “I could.”

Neither of you are a particularly skilled shot. But true to her word (and Raymun’s own), he really is utter shit. Drunken blush every time the cue strikes a ball at an awkward spot, he endures Rowan’s teasing all while staring at her with the widest, most starstruck eyes you’ve ever seen on a man. Team rivalry gets forgotten somewhere in the banter. You all lose track of the score and whose turn it is. They’re magnetized to each other’s sides, lips on necks and hands on hips, a sort of public foreplay that would make your stomach turn if it were anyone else. You’ll give them a pass. They’re too cute to hate.

“Hey, there she is!” Duncan claps as you sink the four ball, even though he’d spent ten minutes helping you set up the shot. His palm’s sweaty when he high-fives you. Big, toothy grin on his face. In the din of pop music from thirty years ago and angry football fans howling at the TV, you wrap your arms around his tree trunk frame and close your eyes. So solid, so constant. Your Dunk.

“Thanks for this,” you murmur into his shirt. “I missed you.”

He nests an innocent kiss onto the top of your head. “Missed you more, Winger.”

It’s two in the morning by the time you finally rattle the key into the lock of Baelor’s townhouse. Drunk on nothing but happiness. Humming some synth pop song the pub had on repeat. You’ve got girls’ night plans with Rowan in the works. A promise to Duncan to come to a match for the boys’ rugby team he’s started coaching. Every little nook of your heart feels so full. You pull out your phone and find two missed calls and two unread texts.

Please let me know when you get this. I just want to know that you’re safe.

You tap out a reply and then toss your phone somewhere into the sea of bedsheets while you head for the shower.

i’m fine!

For once, maybe you mean it.

It’s not easy to do nothing. But you do it. Or, at least, you skirt as close to “nothing” as you can. A week later, phone on speaker propped against the mirror, makeup scattered across the vanity like a glittery bomb’s gone off, you don’t bring up that rogue “I love you”. You tell him about your plans for the night: mini-golf with Duncan, Rowan, and Raymun. You assure him that yes, you’ll pay for it with the money he left. You listen to his updates: his older son off to Tyrosh for an internship, his younger son invited on a beach holiday with school friends, his brother called into the city on business, all convenient excuses for him to shut himself in the library of his summer mansion and work until his eyes water. You let the conversation simmer in mundanity, pretending like nothing’s changed, like there’s not a needy creature pecking at your ribs from the inside, begging him to say it back.

“It’s good that you’re spending time with your friends,” he says. “I’m happy for you.”

There’s something taut about his voice. It makes your stomach flutter with nervousness. Are you? you’d push if you were bolder. I’m happy for you. I’m proud of you. I miss you. All these things he says, as if he’s steering toward a confession and slamming on the brakes at the last second. You bite your tongue while you swipe on another layer of your already-melting mascara. Silence has become your new accomplice. It stretches and stretches until it snaps.

“I should go.”

“Alright.” Disappointment dulls the excitement. “The aircon’s broken, by the way.”

“I’ll have it looked at.”

“Okay.” You wait for him to say something else, but he doesn’t. “Good night.”

There’s another pause. Breath held tight, you stare at the screen and wait. 45:05, the call time says. It ticks up and up. 45:06, 07, 08. You could say it again. Make sure he hears it. Double down, put all your cards on the table and dare him to make a move.

No. You’re doing nothing, you remind yourself. So you don’t.

“Good night, sweet—” is all you hear before you hang up.

There’s a man in the living room.

Still half-asleep, mouth dry, the margarita you’d split with Rowan last night making your stomach unsteady, you feel like you’ve stumbled into a bizarre little dream. Your detective instincts are slow to kick in. There’s no sign of a forced entry. He’s not shoving Baelor’s antique clock and silver candlesticks into a bag. If he’s a robber, he’s a fucking terrible one.

The stranger prods at the thermostat. Sleeves of his nicely-pressed white shirt rolled up, you have to stare for a moment at the sheer size of his forearms. Faint sweat stains make the contours of his biceps visible through the fabric. The aircon? you wonder, although he’s absurdly well-dressed. Maybe that’s just the kind of world that Baelor lives in, though. Even the electricians are clad in expensive watches and designer shoes.

“Hello?” You try your voice, finding it roughened by a morning rasp.

He turns, fixes you with a furrowed-brow look, eyes giving you a thorough once-over. A few strands of crisply-coiffed white hair cling to his forehead. He seems vaguely familiar, yet you can’t begin to think of who he reminds you of. You’re suddenly all too aware of the fact that you’re wearing nothing but a scrappy pair of panties and a three-sizes-too-big King’s Landing Dragons tee you’d dug out of Baelor’s closet.

“Ah,” he says. “The lady of the house.”

“Um…” your brain buffers. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting anyone this soon.”

“Clearly.”

That wakes you up. Fancy electrician with an asshole scowl and the snark to match. Subtly trying to smooth your shirt further down your thighs, you consider whether it’s best to scramble back upstairs and leave him to his work or continue your strange journey to the kitchen for the cup of coffee that’s singing your name.

“Can I get you something to drink?” You offer, stomach growling, coffee winning out. “Tea or coffee?”

“Whiskey on the rocks,” he says, and your nervous laugh dies in your throat as you realize he’s not joking. “What, is the ice maker broken too?”

He digs into his back pocket as he swaggers through to the kitchen. You follow like a wide-eyed lost dog, stuttering faint protest when he pulls out a pack of cigarettes and nestles one between his lips. Massive hands pluck a matchbook from Baelor’s collection on the kitchen table—silver, emblazoned with a hotel logo—and strike a flame while you stand dumbfounded in the doorway.

“Seven hells,” the stranger grunts, flipping through the cabinets, “where does my fucking brother keep his glasses?”

Oh.

It all comes together. The white hair, the looming frame, the annoyance oozing from every pore. A recurring figure in half of the photographs in the house. The man you know Baelor’s talking about each time he says my brother with a sigh, half-frustration and half-fondness. Maekar.

“Other side of the sink.”

Ah, he huffs, fetching himself a glass. You let him pillage the liquor cabinet while you brew a pot of coffee. There’s no way you’re about to have this interaction without any caffeine in your body.

“Baelor didn’t say you were coming.” You try to sound nonchalant while the machine burbles and drips. Maekar makes himself completely at home at the kitchen table with his glass of whiskey in one hand and cigarette in the other. 

“Used to be that I could drop in anytime I liked.” He drains half the shot in one sip. “But that was before you.”

Tucked against the corner cabinets, the air in the room feels impossibly humid and dense. It’s hard to read the expression playing out behind his well-groomed white beard. Accusation? Amusement? You feel like you’re going through the motions of your morning under a magnifying glass, cold eyes drilling into your every move. You know he’s judging your choice of attire. He’s probably judging which mug you choose from the cabinet: a hand-painted one that reminds you of the teacups Baelor had broken months ago. The almond milk you’re pouring into your coffee. The way you refuse to dirty a spoon just to properly mix the milk in, opting instead to just sip the too-bitter coffee while the white clouds settle to the bottom.

The more you stand there amidst the silence and the stares, the more you start to feel a sense of pride prickling at your chest. The townhouse has, for better or for worse, become the place you think of when you think about home. Your milk in the fridge. Your books strewn across the couch. Your hair getting caught in the drain of the tub. Maybe you won’t call him out on what this seems like to you—a nosy little brother taking advantage of a convenient opportunity to snoop—but you won’t shy away, either.

You clatter your mug onto the table, taking a seat and pointing at his nearly-empty pack of menthols. “D’you mind?”

“I won’t tell if you don’t,” he shrugs, sliding it across the table. You’re not a very well-practiced smoker, only ever indulging to look cool in front of handsome boys or to round out a night of drinks. Luck is on your side, though. You strike a match and take a drag without coughing.

“So was there a reason for you dropping in when you know your brother’s not here?” You dare to ask, meeting his steely gaze.

“Maybe I missed having a decent glass of whiskey.”

“Uh huh.” Doubtful, you tilt your head. “Like you can’t afford good whiskey?”

“I can afford it just fine,” he grumbles, “I gave this to him for his nameday. My fucking mistake, though. The distillery’s out of business now. Should’ve kept it for myself.”

Somehow, you doubt that. There’s a tenderness in the way he holds the bottle. A little smirk ghosts across his face. He seems like the kind of man who will whine and complain about wasting expensive liquor on his brother when really, deep down, he’s all chuffed with himself and his gift-giving abilities.

“Anyways. I thought I might do some investigating while I’m in the city,” he continues, blowing smoke sideways. “I’ve got this mystery, see.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“My brother.”

Can’t help with that one, you want to tell him. You’re still working at unraveling that particular mystery yourself.

Worry outweighs any clever remarks, though. “Is he alright?”

“He ought to be. It’s King’s Landing that usually makes him such a miserable old bastard, not Summerhall.” He quips. “Suppose that’s your doing, too.”

“You think he’s miserable?” Tired, you’d understand. Flustered, maybe, especially if he had heard your confession. But miserable… that makes you chew the inside of your cheek while your cigarette smoulders between your fingers. As much as you’re happy keeping Baelor at arm’s length while you wait for him to make a move, any move, you hate thinking of him wallowing his summer away.

“I think he’ll work himself to death if he gets the chance. And we don’t want that,” he raises an eyebrow, “do we?”

There’s a little guilt trip woven into that question. A hidden implication: that he’s only working as much as he is to distract himself from missing you. You’ve tried, you want to protest. It’s all you’ve been doing since he left. Gods, it’s a fucking bit between you two now. You’ve held up your end of the bargain, filling your evenings with Duncan and Rowan and Raymun instead of rotting away in the achingly empty bed.

Maybe you could’ve tried harder, though. Made less of a joke of it. Pushed him to put down the papers and the emails. Guilt twists your stomach in knots. Here you are, all proud of yourself for having a life beyond him, all while he’s shutting himself in a dark, lonely library like it’s a form of penance.

“Got any plans next week?”

“Hm? No.” Jarred back to reality, you rush to take one last drag of your cigarette before it burns out. Coffee washes the taste out of your mouth. Bitter replacing bitter. You can’t say that you have anything worth mentioning planned for the upcoming Midsummer holiday. With the University closed for the week, you were probably going to get drunk with Duncan and watch an obscene amount of reality TV.

“Come to Summerhall, then.” Maekar’s glass clinks as he sets it down, empty, the imprint of his lips fading on the rim. “At least the aircon functions there.”

“You’re sure that’d be alright?” You can’t deny the way you light up at the offer. Your mind conjures up images of rolling green hills, elaborate mansion halls cool and crisp even during the peak heat of the day, Baelor’s weight next to you as you fall asleep. It’s a tempting portrait.

“It’s my house, if I say it’s alright then it’s alright.” He coughs, forehead reddening. You watch him contemplating another glass of whiskey, ultimately deciding against it and pouring himself the dredges of the coffee you’d made.

“And I won’t be a bother? To your family?”

“Won’t be many of us this year.” No milk for him, but you could’ve guessed that. “His boys won’t be there, if that’s what you’re wondering. Me and him. My four youngest. Everyone else’s made a run for it.”

It’s exactly what you’d been wondering. Odd how those blue eyes seem to drill straight into your brain. You wish there were a book you could consult here. Is it alright to meet your maybe-boyfriend’s nieces and nephews before his sons? Is it acceptable to show up to his family’s summer mansion to stage a work-life balance intervention? When in this situation do you demand to know whether he loves you back?

“If you think he’ll be fine with it, then alright.”

“Good.” The way he says it makes you think that you didn’t really have much of a choice in the matter. “You do own trousers, I hope.”

“No, I walk around Uni like this,” you deadpan, fighting sarcasm with sarcasm. Under different circumstances, you’d worry about making a good impression. Defer to shyness. The way this morning is going, though, you’ll be lucky if he gets a lukewarm impression from you.

Maekar just scoffs. “Careful, girl.”

Room heady with smoke and coffee, you breathe deep and wonder what you’re getting yourself into. There’s a thick, threatening undercurrent in the air. Tense as a warm front before it snaps. Nothing about it feels careful.

It’s raining when Baelor picks you up from the train station in Ashford. He lets you tuck yourself into your arms, lets you linger there in the parking lot, lets the steady drizzle dampen his hair while he holds you. I missed you so much, you murmur into his shirt, relishing in the way he kisses you. So what if there’s only two other cars around? It’s delightfully public, deliciously normal.

“I missed you, lovely girl,” he says, his wide hands wiping rain off of your forehead. Even with dark circles framing his eyes, he looks at you with a kind of gossamer-soft glow that makes your heart ache from sweetness.

Once you’re settled in the passenger seat, he drapes a hand over the steering wheel while the other perches possessively on your thigh. “I’m sorry my brother maneuvered you into coming here. He shouldn’t have intruded like that.”

“I don’t mind. I didn’t really need much maneuvering.” You trace the tendons of his fingers while he drives. Ink stains decorate the outside of his pinky. His wedding ring occupies its spot on his ring finger. You try not to think about that. You try not to think about whether its constant presence might have anything to do with the fact that he hadn’t said I love you back, either. Keep yourself the fuck together, you’d chanted over and over in your head on the train. You repeat it now, to the rhythm of the windshield wipers as the rain comes down. Keep. Yourself. The fuck. Together.

Somewhere in the repetition and the downpour, you drift off. It’s only when you feel the car jolt from asphalt to gravel that you wake. Sun peeks through still-bulging clouds, making the whole world glisten. Everything you see is impossibly green. Impossibly lush. The trees that line the road are likely older than Westeros itself, aching under the weight of their own gnarled limbs. 

There’s a gate looming ahead, dragon motifs woven into the metalwork. Your one semester of Valyrian in undergrad doesn’t do you much good, but you try nonetheless to read what’s spelled out at the peak.

“Pez… perz…”

“Perzys ānogār,” he finishes for you, perfect rs rolling off of his tongue. “Fire and blood.”

You’d scoff at that, joke about how dramatic his family is, how he ought to get that tattooed, but then you see it. Summerhall. Framed by the rolling hills of the Stormlands, it’s a sliver of sun pulled from the sky. Afternoon light refracts off of the windows. Looming like a golden palace amidst all the greenery, you’re blinded by the finery, by the arches, by the sprawling, manicured grounds that seem like they’ve been ripped from the pages of a child’s storybook. It is a palace. A princess might as well be trapped in one of the tall towers that stands at each corner of the mansion. For all you know, there’s a dragon lurking somewhere nearby.

Baelor pulls up to the courtyard, where a man in a crisp suit is opening your door before you can process what’s happening. “Welcome, miss.”

“Will you have her bags taken to my room, please, Yorkel?” Baelor hands him the keys while you find your footing.

“Right away, sir.”

“Thanks,” you manage to say, jaw still slack as you stare at the exterior. 

A firm hand finds its spot on the small of your back. “Shall we, sweet girl?”

If you were starstruck by the outside, the inside is enough to blind you. Double staircases and a massive chandelier greet you in the entryway. North wing to the right, Baelor explains. Dining room, library, lounge, drawing room, sitting room (you don’t fully understand what the difference between the last three is). South wing to the left, mostly bedrooms. He guides you up the stairs, where a massive portrait hangs front and center: a man in a suit with a dragon brooch on the lapel, his hand on the shoulder of a seated woman in a rust-orange Dornish-style gown. You’ve seen iterations of their faces in Baelor’s living room and in the Sunspear villa. Daeron and Myriah. Young and regal. Like a king and a queen.

“Are these all your family?” You ask, gesturing towards the corridor walls that are bedecked in old, gilded frames. Distracted, you nearly run into a maid carrying a silver tray before Baelor manages to steer you out of the way.

“My apologies, miss,” she says, calm and classy, carrying on with her work before you can insist that you’re the one who ought to be sorry, not her. You feel like you should be apologizing for just stepping on the pristine floors and breathing the cool, lilac-scented air. All the faces in all the portraits leer at you. Intruder, they accuse silently.

“I’ll give you the full tour tomorrow,” he promises. “You’ll want to rest before dinner.”

He guides you down the halls, past the ghostly gaze of dead family members. Our room, he says at last, opening a door while you bite back a grin. The room in question is probably the size of your entire previous flat. Massive curtains have been draped back, allowing sunlight to filter through the bay windows and splash the sage green walls. Through a doorway in the corner, you can see a claw foot tub. There’s a four-poster bed, a crystal light fixture sparkling from the ceiling, a rug that probably costs more than the average house.

“You live here?” Is all you can bring yourself to say. There’s more you want to ask. You’re dying to unravel the stories behind the portraits, eager to peer around all the corners and wander through all the grand rooms. It’s a strange, surreal, sparkling world you’ve wandered into.

“Only during the summer,” he says, “and as long as my brother tolerates me.”

Right. As if that makes it humbler, somehow.

“I’ll be in the library. Dinner is at eight.” 

Pressing a kiss to your forehead, he lingers for a moment, as if he’s about to say something else. You meet his blue-brown gaze, breath frozen. But then he’s gone, leaving you to the intricate stillness, to the room that feels like a gaping mouth trying to swallow you whole.

You try to rest. Mostly, you flit in and out of consciousness. Fever dream snippets cascade every time your eyes close. You wander the halls in your dreams and wake, wondering how you’ve gotten yourself back to bed. You think you hear footsteps outside the room. Sometimes heavy, sometimes a faint pitter-patter. But when you stumble to the door and poke your head out, there’s never anything there.

Keep yourself the fuck together. Cool water and a quick rinse in the tub help. Not enough, though. Your head is still swimming as you touch up your makeup and tug on a slightly-wrinkled sundress.

It’s only a little frightening that you’d woken up to find your belongings all neatly unpacked, toiletries organized on the vanity and clothes hung up in the dresser next to Baelor’s. You don’t recall any of the staff coming in while you’d been in bed. Maybe they’re quiet, good at fluttering around unseen. Maybe the house is actually haunted.

Right down the hallway. Left to get to the entryway. After that, you’re less sure of where you’re going. You end up in the lounge (or is it the sitting room?), then the drawing room (or is it the lounge?), then a room that must be the library.

There’s a blur of white in your peripheral vision. You whip around, finding a little girl peeking at you from behind an armchair. Her pink dress is all aflutter, white hair coming loose from her barrettes. The two of you stare at each other for a moment. Ghost? You wonder.

“Hello.”

“Hi,” she says, and then scurries away before either of you can say anything else.

You try to follow, if only on the off chance that the dining room is her destination, but she’s long gone by the time you make it into the hallway again.

“Lost?”

“Fucking hells.” How is it that the most menacing man you’ve ever met can sneak up on you like a cat? “Yes, actually.”

Maekar snorts. “Are you certain you weren’t just spying?”

“That depends. Have you got something worth spying on? Secret dungeon, maybe?”

He gives you a long look from head to toe, probably trying to decide whether inviting you here was a mistake or not. You do your best not to shrink from it. He’s an animal of a man, quiet in the way he observes you but not less threatening for it. The kind of creature you might’ve been afraid of when you were little. He’s more afraid of you than you are of him, a grown-up might’ve said, even if you wouldn’t have believed it.

There’s a softness there too, though. Minuscule, buried in the lines around his eyes. It’s enough for you to see past the gruff facade. Enough to know that, just like his brother, he’s human.

“Come on, then,” he says at last. “Can’t have you wandering off.”

Of all the rooms in the mansion, the dining room might be the fanciest yet. It looks more suited to a banquet than a casual family dinner. Candlelight casts shadows over the vaulted ceilings. Maekar takes the seat at the head of the table, where a gigantic portrait of Aegon Targaryen hovers on the wall behind him. You’re fairly certain you’ve seen that portrait in history textbooks. Odd, how you’ve found yourself tangled up with a family whose fingerprints are all over the course of Westeros’s history. 

Baelor pulls out a seat for you, ever the gentleman. While the staff pours water and wine, four pairs of eyes stare at you from across the table. Two boys, two girls. The smallest: the same girl you’d encountered in the library. She’s giving you a sly grin, which you flash right back at her. 

“Aemon, Daella, Aegon, Rhae.” Maekar goes down the line one by one before he offers them your name.

“You’re Uncle Baelor’s girlfriend?” Daella seems incredulous. Twelve years old, if you’re remembering correctly, and probably the mirror image of her mother. Next to her, Aemon goes beet red and stares down at his napkin.

You shrug. “I’d say it’s more like he’s my boyfriend.”

Maekar snorts. For half a second, there’s an exchange of looks between him and Baelor, a language you could never hope to understand. Anxiety flares inside you—you’ve never called him a boyfriend before, especially not in front of other people—but he doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t correct you. Just squeezes your hand under the table, warm and strong.

In between bites of Northern-style roast chicken, you answer the barrage of questions from Maekar’s children. What do you do? What do you write? Are you famous? Have you ever read The Tales of Florian and Jonquil? What did you think of it?

“Well, what did you think of it?” You reverse the question at Aegon, who perks up immediately.

“I liked the dragon fighting part! The rest of it was a bit boring.”

“Finish chewing before you speak, boy,” Maekar chides, though there’s no malice in it. Just a tired, fatherly frustration. Sorry, Aegon mutters with a mouth full of green beans.

You’re keenly aware of Baelor’s eyes on you during your dinnertime deposition. And though he steps into the conversation from time to time—Not tonight, sweetheart, he asserts gently when Rhae demands you meet her beloved pony Morning—he lets you handle their inquiries by yourself. It’s impossible to shake the sense that you’re being tested. And even if you manage to play along, even if you earn a giggle or two, your heart’s beating faster than it did in any exam you ever took in school.

After the chocolate mousse (which ends up smudged on Rhae’s nose somehow), the staff clear the table like clockwork while Aegon and Rhae whine about being sent to bed. It’s Aemon who corrals them. He lets Rhae clamber onto his back, gives a dutiful good night, Dad, to Maekar, offers you a shy smile. It was nice meeting you.

Daella lingers, sly as a fox. “Can I stay up—”

“One hour,” Maekar grunts, “and don’t let me hear that TV.”

“Thank you!” And even though he puts on a firm face, there’s nothing but fondness there when she pecks his cheek before running off to join her siblings.

It’s strange, really. You feel like you’re in the dark of the cinema. That soft sternness, that familiarity, it’s utterly foreign to you. Fatherhood might as well be a fantasy film. Blinking away your wistful stare, you turn and meet Baelor’s gentle gaze. Opening you, reading you. His hand returns to your thigh, a comforting weight, a silent I know. You latch onto his fingers with your own. It’s been too long since you had the anchor of his body latching you into reality. How fiercely you’d missed him. There’s a needy tension in your hands. Don’t let me go, it says. 

Maekar lets out a long groan as he stands, rubbing his bearded chin. “Drinks and billiards?”

“Not tonight, I think,” Baelor says without breaking eye contact, the tiniest sparkle of suggestion surfacing. “Long day.”

“Yeah,” you lie. “Exhausted.”

You’re barely inside the threshold of the room when Baelor’s mouth is on yours. Lips on lips, teeth crashing against tongue, you stumble backwards while he swallows the laughter right out of your throat. This is what you were truly starved of. The heat of his body, the possessive clutch, the way he touches you like he could break you, like he’s just barely holding himself back.

“Perfect girl,” he rumbles in between hungry kisses, “beautiful girl, do you know how good you are?”

“No—” You gasp, shivering as he makes quick work of your dress. Your mind’s a summer storm, processing touch rather than words. His hands leave you bare in the moonlight before you even fully realize what he’d said.

“No?” He has to guide your hands to his shirt, your trembling fingers fumbling over the buttons. “Do you need me to show you?”

“Please.” 

Together, you undress him. He lets his linen shirt fall to the floor while you trace the contours of his chest. You savor the salt-and-pepper scrape of the hair that blooms over his pectorals, interrupted by those two jagged silver scars, thinning and trailing down, down, down, to where it frames his hardening cock. All the muscles in his hips and thighs roll like marble, chiseled and smooth. Your eyes drink in the veins that run down the length of his cock, the moisture that gathers at the tip, the way it pulses to full erection under his white-knuckled fist. He’s a vision. A statue of a god you want to pray to.

He presses you toward the bed, and you let your legs part as your back hits the velvet comforter. The room of your body is a place you’ll always let him in. Baelor hovers over you, wolflike and wanton, eyes fixed on your exposed cunt. 

Beautiful, he repeats, a little whisper. Heart hammering against your ribs, your breath comes in shy stutters as he traces the glistening folds. His fingers prod and caress every little nook. There’s no demand in his touch. Just quiet exploration. As if the warm, wet flesh of you is some precious thing.

“Look here.” He notches the tip of his cock at your weeping entrance, waits until your eyes fixate on the joining of your bodies. “I want you to watch.”

“Oh, fuck,” you gasp, burning at the sight, watching him split you open with a slick, sinful sound, “oh, fuck—”

A wide hand claps over your mouth right before your voice elevates to a shout. Shh, shh, shh, he hisses, halfway buried inside you. Addled by lust, you forget you’re not in the safety of his house where you can cry and moan as loud as you like. You’re like a pair of teenagers. Horny as beasts, biting back the obscene sounds that bubble up. He keeps you muzzled like that for a long, painful moment, until the vibrations in your vocal cords die down.

Fuck. Oxygen deprivation sends an electric shock straight to your clit. Slowly, trembling, you wrap your fingers around his wrist. He lets you slide his hand down, over your chin, until it’s perching around your throat. The tendons in his jaw tighten once he realizes what you want.

“I can take it,” you rasp, “I want it.”

“Gods, you’re…” he’s muttering, “fuck, sweet girl, I can’t—”

“I want it.” You whine, squeezing his wrist insistently. “Hard. Please.”

“Fucking hells.” Composure entirely lost, he tightens his grip and presses his cock fully inside you all in the span of a single second.

There’s no pause. No chance to adjust to the stretch or the squeeze. He fucks you fast and fierce, setting a brutal pace that sparks your entire body alight. The slap, slap, slap of skin echoes off the walls, dulled by the blood pounding in your ears. Either he doesn’t know his own strength or he’s being rougher than he’s ever been. You don’t care. You cant your hips up to meet each thrust, mouth agape, gasping for air while he ruts into you.

“There… there you are, sweet thing, good girl,” he praises you, though there’s a sharp edge to his voice, one last vestige of restraint. Tension builds and builds low in your stomach. Your mind is screaming even if you can’t use your voice. I love you, you tell him with your body, with the drag of your tongue over his, with the scrape of your nails down his back, with each needy clench of your cunt.

You get ridiculously, indecently wet before you come. You can feel it staining his pelvis, ruining the sheets. The sound fills your foggy head: a sickening, gorgeous song. Oh my gods, you’re mouthing, jaw dropping open, all the tension coiling tighter and tighter. 

Baelor kisses the corner of your mouth, your cheek, your brow. “I—fuck, I feel it. There it is. Let it happen.”

And how can you deny him? How can you not fall to pieces as he keeps his persistent, ruthless rhythm, fucking you just the way you like, keeping you powerless and pinned beneath him? His cock and the way it fills and bruises your pussy is only half of what sets off your orgasm. It’s the look in his eyes. The possessiveness in his palms. You’re his, every particle of you.

Scream cut off by his pressure, you writhe and sob while you come, feeling the wave of it all the way down to your toes. His beard tickles your chin while he mutters filth and sweetness. He brings you through it, only increasing his pace when you’re soaked and slack beneath him.

With your head lulling back on the bed, you’re faintly aware of the light from the hall slipping through the gaps in the doorframe. The door itself is just barely ajar. You can’t tell if it’s just the blurriness of your vision, but you think there’s a shadow there. Tall, broad, faint. You blink. Tears invade your eyes. Maybe there ought to be panic rising inside you, but all you can process is how badly you need Baelor to come.

“Come inside me?” You whisper, raking your hands through his hair. It’s a cheap trick at this point, a surefire way to get him to finish. But you want it as much as you’re sure he does. Weeks apart mean you don’t want to waste his come on your belly or in your mouth. You want it deep. Careless. Spilling out of you like a secret.

“You shouldn’t—” he chokes out a strained laugh, “shouldn’t let me keep… doing that… gods…”

You just smile, all weak and watery. “I’d let you do anything to me.”

And then Baelor’s grip is going iron-strong as he comes, staining your vision with black spots. A ragged, animalistic sound bursts from his chest. Thick, hot warmth floods your core. Gods, it feels good to be claimed like this. To be so full of him.

Summerhall is suffocating. The air felt thicker here. It reeked of honeysuckle and sun-scorched earth, blown over from the rolling Dornish marches. The gardens were sprawling and luscious, once attentively kept by your husband’s lady-mother, Dyanna Dayne. He never spoke of her to you, but you knew about the traditional funeral practices of the Daynes of Starfall—that his mother’s corpse was most likely wrapped up in a chrysalis of lavender and left on the summit of the Red Mountains to be feasted upon by vultures. The servants tend to her thickets of moon-blooms now. You suppose that responsibility may one day fall to you when Daeron’s married off to some heiress of a great house and is made lord of all she holds dear. 

You swallow that thought down and it bobs viciously in your throat. You have no interest in being the lady of Summerhall, nor languishing in those sweltering gardens surrounded by the lilac buds nursed by a dead woman.

Home was even in the periwinkle thread you were using to stitch waves into muslin. Embroidery’s one of the only past-times you had left. When you miss the shallow waters of Driftmark lapping gently at the nape of your ankles, you put a needle to cotton. When the feeling of sun-warmed sand between your toes seemed like a different lifetime ago, you sit in the bay window of the chambers you share with Aerion, practicing your cross-stitch as you listen to the winds whistling through laburnum trees. 

Today, you’re sewing the pale stone outline of High Tide. 

“Another hard day spent, wife?” Aerion muses when he returns to your chambers after supper, draping today’s cloak over the back of the chair at your vanity. 

You look up from the embroidery hoop in your lap, briefly glancing over that small smirk and the half-lilt of his brows. “If you say so, husband. And you?”

“The hunt went well. Daeron fell off of his horse, but…” He shrugs, “that was to be expected after downing a gallon of wine.”

His mouth twitches, and he’s looking at you as if he’s expecting a similar, amused kind of reaction from you. The best you can manage is a wan, pursed smile that might’ve looked more like a grimace. 

“I’m glad your day was fruitful, my lord,” you offer diplomatically as his smirk melts into a rattled scowl.

“Hmph.” He’s displeased by your lack of reaction, but not surprised. He then gestures lazily to his crimson doublet. “Come. Help me undress, wife.”

This was something he’d make you do every evening since your wedding night. Whether he considered it a form of intimacy or control, it became a relentless part of your routine regardless. 

You sigh, putting your embroidery down beside you on the cushioned window-seat and standing, straightening out the creases in your silks before crossing the room to him. As soon as you were an arm’s stretch away from him, Aerion knocks his chin up, jutting his jaw the slightest bit. A muscle twitches there in his mandible as you step up to him, almost toe-to-two. Your skirts whispered faintly against his legs. His fingers flex at his side, reaching out just enough for his fingertips to touch at the soft satin of your gown.  

“You ought to wear more red,” he says quickly when you begin to work on the buttons of his doublet. “They’re your colours too now, after all. It is proper for a wife to represent her lord husband’s house.”

You bite into your tongue. You have no interest in donning scarlets and blacks to satisfy your husband’s ego. Aerion’s heart bleeds fire and blood so ravenously, he expects everyone to be so fanatic. Especially you, it seems, often regarding the sea-green and teal of your dresses with contempt. But, for a woman hundreds of miles from her home, your clothes were some of the last autonomy you had. Swathing yourself in blood-red would feel like the last bit of rebellion you had left in you rotting away.

Still, you bowed your head demurely and continued to undress him. “Very well, husband. I shall fetch for a seamstress, so they might get my measurements and fashion me something worthy of your noble house.”

If Aerion hears the sarcasm seeping into your calculated response, he doesn’t care enough to acknowledge it. Instead, he lets the corner of his mouth curl viciously and counters, “Well, not before long, this seamstress shall need to take a different set of measurements…to accommodate for the swell of your belly, of course.”

Your fingers went still against the ringmail-vest underneath his doublet. Another fascination of Aerion’s was the idea of you being round with his baby. 

The first time he bedded you, it was as tradition follows. Your consummation had been a private thing, per Aerion’s insistence. He’d bargained with his father that the maester might wait outside of the room until the two of you were finished, to only enter after the deed was done to ensure that you’d bled. After a day of feeling like you were dressed as some prized pig for the slaughterhouse, you’d taken this as a sign of chivalry. You’d almost thought that this marriage would be something you could stomach. 

That night, Aerion undressed you. Working slowly at the laces of your corset with your back turned to him, murmuring to himself about the humiliation of his family that night—Daeron drowning in his cups, his cousin Valarr’s peacocking as he twirled his Tyroshi wife under his arm, and his younger siblings constant nattering. You let him complain. You thought the longer this part of the night was prolonged, the less daunting the act itself would be. But the four-poster of your marital bed lingered in your periphery like some kind of beleaguering ghost as Aerion moved your hair over to one shoulder and started tracing chaste kisses along the trembling line of your shoulder.

“You’re scared, wife,” he’d muttered in observation, fingertips coming to feel the goosebumps along your skin.

Wife. You’re his wife.

“No,” you had scrambled to say, voice catching shallowly around your frantic lie. “Not scared, only…” You shuddered at the feeling of his mouth against the top of your spine, “nervous, that is all.”

“You’ve heard the whispers then. Brightflame. The monstrous second son of the king’s youngest son. So cruel, so capricious.” He slipped one of your arms out of its sleeve, then the other, and his chest rumbled with an amused laugh when your hands reached instinctively to clutch the material at your chest to your breasts. “Do you believe the whispers? Do you think me as frightening as they say?”

You couldn’t say what had possessed you to say it. Perhaps it was the unnerving sensation in your stomach that everything was slowly getting away from you—your dignity, your self-control, any sense of knowing your place in the world. 

“I know that my father did not want me to marry you,” you’d blurted, hands still grasping your gown to your chest. “I know that he would’ve rather married me off to your drunkard brother, but the court whispers that you longed for a Valyrian bride. That you long for Valyria itself. Though, the King wants to leave the days of marrying Targaryens to Targaryens behind. So, your grandfather and Prince Maekar compromised. They offered you me…” The thickening silence behind you had been startling. You could still remember the pounding of your heartbeat against your ribs as he said nothing at all. You’d swallowed and continued in spite of yourself, “Though, we lost most of our coin after the Dance…and, since Queen Daenaera married the Dragonbane, our dynasties have seemed to forget our old alliance. Until today.”

Aerion hummed contemplatively, the knuckle of his forefinger moving down the rosary of your spine over silk. “Until today.” 

“So no, I do not find you frightening because I think you are some cruel, erratic princeling,” you carried on. “I do wonder what you thought you could get out of a marriage with an almost penniless house from a lonely island across Blackwater Bay.”

“I assume the maester of High Tide taught you about Valaena Velaryon?”

You stilled again. “Valaena…?” 

“Let go of your dress,” said Aerion quietly.

“Excuse me?”

“Your dress.”

Taken aback, you felt the hold on the brocade slacken. Aerion hummed in satisfaction, reaching around you to firmly close his hands around your wrists and move your hands from your breasts. The satin of the bridal gown slipped down your body as seamlessly as water, pooling at your ankles and leaving you in the silk chemise your lady mother had commissioned for the wedding. It was lacy around the neckline and hem, intricate but dainty. It left the lengths of your arms and most of your legs bare and exposed to the cold air of your marital chambers.

The hairs on the nape of your neck stood tall, and you went on instinct to cradle your palms to yourself to emulate some semblance of warmth, forgetting that Aerion’s fingers were still clasped around you. The small thrash made him press both of his thumbs into the hollows of your wrists.

“Pretty,” he’d said. It made your throat swell. He then went on, “Valaena Velaryon was the fairest bride of her time, they say.” Your husband’s hands started to move up from your wrists, over your elbows, and up to the skimpy straps of your chemise, teasing his index finger under it to feel at the skin there. “A true beauty of Old Valyria. She married my namesake, did you know that? Lord Aerion Targaryen, lord of Dragonstone during the Century of Blood. He was the last rider of Aegarax. They had a fruitful marriage, Lord Aerion and his lady wife from your lonely island across Blackwater Bay. Do you know why?” 

All words and breath were lost to you. You were acutely aware that Aerion stood behind you, fully-dressed and entirely in control, whilst you were with your back to him, vulnerable and dressed in only a scrap of silk.

“I can’t remember,” was all you could muster.

“Hm.” He didn’t sound particularly disappointed, nor pleased, by your answer. There was no malicious edge or self-satisfied grunt at your haziness. He appeared to be entirely collected. Then, just when he began talking again, he started to pull the flimsy straps of your chemise down your arms, “Aerion and Valaena had three babes. A girl, first…” 

Aerion did not let you cover yourself this time. As soon as the straps were gone, he merely batted your arms away and hooked his fingers into the scooping neckline at the back of the slip, taking his sweet time in pulling it down your torso. 

“After their daughter, a son…” 

When the silk caught at your hips, Aerion let out a quiet, appreciative sound, stroking his thumb over the dip in the small of your back, before tugging it over the swell of your ass. Your breath hitched at the exposure, at the cold draught whispering from the open window. 

“After their heir, a final daughter.” 

The silk hit the floor, joining the shallow sea of your satin bridal dress with a murmur. You were entirely naked.

“Aegon,” you choked then, not even bothering to attempt covering yourself again. “The Conqueror and his sisters. Visenya and Rhaenys. Lady Valaena was their mother.”

“Clever girl,” he praised, half-mocking. “Lady Valaena, of your almost penniless house from your lonely island, birthed the three-headed dragon. Her womb made the Targaryen dynasty what it is today.”

Not a fraction what it was a century ago? You yearned to bite at him, but somehow had resisted the urge.

“And you think I am Lady Valaena born-again, to bring you forth three babes on the birthing-bed, so they might be conquerors?” you asked him. 

“Not conquerors, wife,” Aerion mused, kissing the curve of your shoulder again, “dragons.” 

Before that night, you’d heard horror stories about consummation. Of splitting pain and cruel, selfish men, pawing at breasts like raw meat or spoils of a hunt, emptying themselves into their ripe wives like grunting boars. 

Aerion was not like that. He did not mount you like some stable mare, fuck you brutal and short. It was a methodical art, the way he took you that night. He told you, between heated kisses, the filthiness of his mouth dragging against yours, that he’d had dreams of a three-headed dragon. Of flames, and the sky torn open, bleeding a comet of blazing red, as the night sung with the songs of dragons once more.

He laid you out on his bed, all bare and goose-flesh and shivering, and let the kisses move from your swollen mouth to the valley between your breasts. Your sternum arched from how you shamefully arched out of the crimson sheets and into his hunger. His mouth followed down to your abdomen, lingering over the swell of your lower-belly. He’d looked ravenous, you remembered. As if he could already picture your womb full of him. 

“You’ll give me dragons, wife,” he’d told you, moving himself lower, and lower, until he was brushing his spit-slick lips against the sensitive juncture of your thighs. 

His hands came down to your hips firmly when you started to jerk them, feeling tender and unfamiliar as your cunt started to ache. 

“Three of them.”

Then, he kissed your cunt how he’d kissed your mouth. Insatiably, dirtily, perfect. He licked at you, that tongue of his curling against a particularly tender spot of you that you’d only clumsily felt at yourself when you could not sleep. There was nothing clumsy about the way he handled you. 

A sound came out of you that might’ve been a sob when he sunk his index finger inside of the warm heat of you. He curled it with some kind of second-nature to a sweetness within you that made you needily buck your hips and finally move your hands from where they’d been balling up fistfuls of duvet into them.

“The maesters don’t want lesser men to know this,” he’d murmured against you, opening you up, coaxing a second finger into you, all the while tasting you and sucking at that pearl of yours, “but a woman’s pleasure is just as important as a man’s. I think Lord Aerion treated his lady wife right, do you? Old Valyria did not treat fucking like some sin.” 

You could barely listen to what he was saying, his fingers stimulating a part of you that felt so deep, so intense, and so good, that it felt like it belonged to him rather than you.

“Lord Aerion took care of his Velaryon bride. He fucked three dragons into her and they united all Seven Kingdoms.” 

He met your eyes then, his own so dark with lust and narrowed into almost slits that he almost looked like one of the beasts himself. His mouth left your heat for a brief moment, slick with your arousal and his own saliva.

“I shall do the same to you,” he’d promised.

Your moon-blood had arrived twice since your wedding, and you’d thought that might deter him. But his aspirations remain steadfast, and so does he. Your husband means to make some vessel of prophecy and magic out of you.

Every other night, he’d have his mouth on your cunt again. His fingers filling you. He’d make you unravel at least twice before unlacing his own breeches and taking you however he saw fit—bent over the edge of your bed, sprawled across the sheets with a pillow propped under your hips, you riding him. Each time was pleasurable as the last, and you’d be a liar if you said that you didn’t enjoy laying with him in such a manner. If your husband was anything, it was a good lover. 

But he was also cold and waspish. Cruel to his younger siblings, and derisive to his elder brother. He treated servants and guards alike as if they were animals. He rarely asked about you, rarely acknowledged you as little more than the future mother of his babes. He did not care that you hated the heat of Summerhall, that you missed the sea, and the salt-air, nor that you longed to feel the sand under your feet. He did not care that Driftmark haunts you when you sleep, girlhood laughter, and chasing your brother over the beach, tiny feet splashing through the waters. Your dreams weren’t deemed as important as his. If Aerion were to wake up in the middle of the night, sweating and thrashing after some nightmarish terror of cities burning or dragons slain, he’d wake you up too. You’d try and ask him what was wrong, be the attentive wife, stroke your fingers through his short strands of silvery hair. He didn’t want comfort. 

He’d ruck up the cotton of your nightdress, sink into you, and mouth at the column of your neck as he spoke about fire and blood, slaughtering Blackfyres, the ways of Old Valyria, and how beautiful you’d look pregnant. 

“I pray to the Mother every day that I will one day be worthy of bearing your child, my lord,” you say then, smiling vacantly up at him as he stands there, shirtless and frowning.

He’s so handsome, you think. Handsome in that otherworldly kind of way that only really existed now in his bloodline or across the Narrow Sea in whorehouses. You wish that he cared more. That he’d notice your homesickness, the way you gaze so longingly out of your window as you look eastwards, and offer to visit Driftmark with you. Or at least sit next to you and ask about your home, about yourself, about what you liked to do. You hate embroidery. Your fingers are calloused from needle-pricks and unbuttoning the stiff fastens of his doublet every day. You miss horse-riding. You miss running. You miss talking about things other than Valyrian histories.

You have this grotesque, needy want in you for him to just want you back, not for some royal womb, or incubator for a three-headed augury. You want to be his wife in the same way your mother was your father’s, and Lady Dyanna was his father’s. Mayhaps then you’d care more for the gardens and being lady of Summerhall.

“Such pretty, obedient words,” croons Aerion, his knuckle caressing over your cheekbone. “I almost believe them.”

This makes your eye twitch, but you say nothing. You’re not sure Aerion expects you to, because he’s sweeping past you and over to his wardrobe to find some night-clothes to change into. You glance down at your own dress, then out at the pinkish sunset, and glide over to your own. Pointedly, you slip into a blue shift. You hear a disgruntled sound getting stuck in his throat as he watches the loose material of it all fall over you, but remain silent to start unbraiding your hair. 

Aerion would prefer that you have a maidservant to do these kinds of things for you, such as ready you for bed, and do your hair. He’d rather you do nothing at all but sit somewhere, looking ornamental and pretty all day, as he hunts and spars and spits cruelties to the small folk, then returns to you, so you might open your legs like a good little wife and do your duty. You prefer keeping whatever little of your self-government you have left since becoming a princess.

He waits for you on his side of the bed. He has the levelled look of a bored princeling in his expression, but those eyes of his can no longer deceive you. He’s cross with you. Impatient, for whatever reason. It might’ve unsettled you a moon ago, but now it only makes you languish more to prepare yourself for bed. The sun’s swallowed by the peaks of the marches by the time you climbed in next to him, smelling like the sprigs of lavender you rub against your pulse-points every night.

“How will you have me tonight, my lord?” you ask drolly, folding your hands sensibly over your lap.

Aerion squints at you, affronted. “You make it sound as if it is a chore.”

“It’s a duty,” you correct.

“Oh, so dutiful, when you’re moaning like a wanton whore in my ear for it,” Aerion snarls. He doesn’t like it when you’re short with him, nor when you get righteous about sex. “If you do not wish to be bedded tonight, wife, you need only tell me.”

You scoff. “That’s all I need-do, is it? Simply tell you?” 

“I am not some common brute. Some beggar-raper. I am your lord husband,” sneers Aerion, as if you could ever forget. “If you don’t want me to fuck you, say it. You have a tongue, don’t you? A mouth?” 

“Noticed, have you?”

“Clever girl, aren’t you? So full of wit and bite.” The malice in his eyes darkens when you stare stubbornly back at him, unflinching. “Go on then, what is it? What has upset you so? Are your days spent doing your embroidery and eating lemon-cakes so trifling, wife? Does my right as a husband to expect heirs from you upset you?” 

You feel incensed, wroth stirring in you with a heated sensation not too dissimilar from want. “I do not begrudge you for wanting heirs, Aerion. I understand what it means to be a woman in this world. I know my place. But am I such a frivolous fool for wanting, just once, for you to return from whatever sport you’re spoiling and talk to me?” 

“I am talking to you! I talk to you plenty!” he returns defensively.

“You don’t! You never do. You make snide remarks and ask me to undress you. You’re gone most mornings when I awake. We rarely break our fast together. When you do lower yourself to talk to me, it’s about seeing me round with child,” you seeth, a stinging in your eyes now. “I say child, but you do not want that. You do not want a son to teach how to be chivalrous, or a daughter to protect. You want me to labour three beasts, so you might return your house to its former glory. I knew even as a little girl that I would end up brood-mare to some lord of some castle, Aerion, but I never thought he’d only deign to converse with me if it’s to talk about your thirst for some hatchling to rip me open!” 

Aerion stares at you then, and the moment that ensues is long and filled with tension. The look he gives you is almost indiscernible in its multitudes. Wroth, bemusement, a hint of arousal. He likes you like this, and you know it. He loves the bite, even if he mocks it. He likens it to fire, but you know that it’s the sea. Vicious, still at times, but its belly is as ravenous as a dragon’s. 

“Feel better now?” he then asks, cruel and grinning lopsidedly. 

The steadiness of his voice is like nails against bone. You feel sick with anger and it makes the candlelight reflecting in his eyes resemble flames.

“You’re incorrigible,” you tell him, hurt.

“Next time you do not wish to lay with me, wife, just say it. You needn’t waste your precious breath with touching speeches such as that,” Aerion drawls, shifting to lie on his side all haughty and complacent. 

It made you feel so humiliating and wretched, but Gods, you wanted him to fight with you. To yell at you, just how he yells with his father and Daeron. It’s a ghastly longing, to wish that your husband would shout at you, but it was yours all the same. You remember arguments between your parents when you were growing up. Your father is temperamental as the waves that crash against the slates of Driftmark’s rockery, and your mother, a Stark, was as brittle as winter. Their spats would oft send High Tide splitting into factions. But when they would make up, they were perfectly happy. Your mother would press her lips to the stubble on your father’s jawbone and he’d kiss her brow, and love felt uniquely real. 

Now, silence torments you. Loneliness scabs over your skin like old wounds. You feel perverse for enjoying sex with Aerion when this rotten throb in the pit of your stomach yearns for more. Even if it was ugly. 

“Is that really all you have to say?” you utter, disconcerted as you stare at his turned back. “It is not just about not wanting to lay with you, Aerion, it’s—” 

“Sleep, wife,” he interjects coolly, “I’m sure you have another tiresome day in the morrow of needlework and staring out of your window.”

Do you know why I stare out of that window? You want to shout at him. Do you know what has been taken from me? 

But he doesn’t care. If you were to tell him about how homesick you felt, how alone and uncomfortable in your own skin, he’d surely make some crude remark about how a babe would surely make you busy enough to forget all about how forlorn you were. You did not want to be belittled anymore tonight, so you turn over, back facing him, and bury your cheek against the satin pillow. Under your skin feels so hot and nettled from your upset, but the satiny material cools it just enough for you to steady your breathing.

The window’s on your side of the bed. Your window, Aerion called it. 

Hundreds of leagues of grassland, moors, and plains splay out beyond the palace. Here, you weren’t far from the Red Mountains, crimson at sunset, soaked with the spilled-blood of old enemies. If you were to flee west, you’d reach Blueburn river and Grassy Vale, where House Meadows preside in a flowery keep on the banks. You did not know much about House Meadows, other than that they were sworn bannermen to House Tyrell, who’d surely send you right back to Summerhall, fawning sycophants that they were. South of here was Blackhaven, with its black basalt walls and a bottomless, dry moat. It might’ve been a good place to abscond if it weren’t for it being the seat of House Dondarrion, kin to your good-uncle Baelor. Further north was just miles upon miles of fertile land, rife with farmers and livestock. 

East, then. Storm’s End, at Durran’s Point. The Baratheons had no love for your husband’s bloodline. Their lord paramount, Lyonel, would take you under his wing. He was fond of your mother, having even named her Queen of Love and Beauty at a tourney in their shared youth. He’d feed you, offer you a bed, and extend you an olive branch of refuge all without sending a single raven to the Targaryens. He might find you a ship and send you on your merry way back to Driftmark before word even reaches Summerhall that you’re gone. 

You wait. 

Stars gather and twinkle in the sky. Each inhale, practiced to sound levelled and sleep-like, is taken like communion. 

You glimpse over your shoulder to the curve of his skull. He’s sleeping, you can tell. From the small sliver of his face you can see, there’s softness and an absence of his usual strain. His sleep is dreamless tonight. 

Good, you think. At least he won’t take up, muttering frantically about fire-scorched earth and prophecies. At least you have a head-start. 

Leaving the castle was easy enough. Summerhall’s a royal retreat and only lightly-fortified. The guards stationed at their posts were dolts, at best. They saw you, the mad prince’s wife, treading over cold-stone in your almost-translucent nightdress and just about had it in themselves to straighten their spines and avert their eyes respectfully. 

The gardens were luscious and thick with purpled flowers. Lady Dyanna lived in each flourishing bud of lilac. As you waded through knee-length sweetgrass and herbs, you felt a nastiness gnaw at your insides. A strange kind of jealousy, for the dead mother of your husband. Lady Dyanna was loved. Maekar loved his wife. You try to picture her as you move to the edge of her gardens. All that springs to mind is a saintly vision, of terracotta skin and angelic, violet eyes. In your mind, Lady Dyanna’s radiant and fascinating. Maekar would never let her rot in a window-pane, yearning for Starfall as she makes threads of plum-purple into the Palestone Sword. Why could they not have made their son in their image? 

Your two-faced husband, of perversions and filth when he’s got his mouth on you, who becomes disillusioned once he is spent. 

There’s a thicket of dense wood surrounding Summerhall. Your slippers traipse over splintery twigs as you move through a barren maze of red cedars, sentinels, and wormtrees. The night sky nips at your bare arms and you curse yourself for not bringing a cloak. You try to defend yourself, thinking about Aerion back in that blasted bed, and the odd uneven floorboard in your shared chambers. He could be a light sleeper at times. You couldn’t have risked it creaking underfoot and stirring him. 

The wood around you feels like a wet-breathed, living creature, slipping through the silk of your shift, lapping its roughened tongue over your bare calves. Blackberry brambles snag at the hem and leaves rustle in knotted branches. 

You think of Lyonel Baratheon’s silver streaks in his wiry, black hair and the way he laughs from his belly. Of salt spray, of the damp smell of a ship. It spittles against your skin and catches in your head. You think of that peace and nothing but. 

Certainly not the bed you’d left warm. Anything but the man inside of it. 

And yet…

“I hope they have your eyes,” Aerion told you one night last week, one of your legs hiked up to his waist as he cradled your face. “Our boy. Our girls. Our dragons.” 

A pale-blue tendril ribbons around your sternum, back through the woods, around the stems of Lady Dyanna’s moon-blooms, through the slumbering corridors of Summerhall, and to the very place you slipped away from him. Tonight’s the first night he didn’t fall asleep with an arm around your wrist, chin tucked into the crook of your neck as he mumbled sleepily into your hair. 

“Impudent little wretch,” you snarl to yourself grumpily, breaths rasping into tendrils of white before you as branches whip by in convoluted shapes.

Above, peaking through foliage, the sky’s a chipped, silver stag.

Lyonel, you try to think about instead. A warm hearth, a bowl of broth, a tankard of ale, and someone who thinks of you as a living girl rather than a walking womb. 

Just when the air starts tasting less like the incense Aerion likes to keep burning, that thick, earthy, leatherish smell, you hear a sound that’s not yours. Footsteps, the measured kind. Unhurried and somewhere behind you. 

No. No, no. “Shit.”

You don’t glance over your shoulder to decipher whom, or what, it is that is advancing. Your heart’s a hummingbird against your ribs, and you have the frantic, mindless sort of terror of a chased rabbit or hunted fox. You run.

The fur-lined slippers on your feet slide in damp loam, splattering up the back of your calves. Sweat starts to bead from your pores, making the silk of your nightdress cling to your thighs and collarbone. There’s nothing but the husk of your own frightened breaths and slippery footsteps. You fool yourself into thinking it’s gone—that whatever was chasing you grew sick of the hunt and trudged away. 

Until, “Wife.” 

There’s no wroth in it. The voice isn’t even raised. It scares you more than if it was a yell, torn through the sentries.

It makes your stumble, one of your slippers catching in the mud. You abandon it in your pursuit. One of your feet bare, the unearthed twigs and rocks scratch at the sole of it. You barely feel the sting. You run harder. 

It’s him, you know it. You can’t even hear a company of other footsteps. It’s just him, following after you with unhurried, fluid steps that sound deceptively calm.

“You’re making this worse for yourself,” he calls out to you. 

His words make a whimpered sob lodge itself in your throat. You try and pick up some speed, but the muscles in your legs are burning. Everything feels hot and suffocating. Since your honeymoon, you’ve been cooped up in Summerhall like a caged bird. This is the most you’ve moved in two moons. Those girlhood days of racing your brother and the steward’s son are gone. You feel sluggish, and exhausted, and—A root catches your foot. Your remaining slipper is wrenched off, and a cry tears through you.

The world morphs into a blur of snarling trees and dirt. Before your knees and jaw can slam against the filthy earth, a hand closes around your upper arm. It’s bruising and rough. It’s him. 

Your spine slams into rough bark so hard that your breath abandons you, skull thudding in tandem. Tiny white stars cloud your vision until his face emerges from the fog.

Your husband, your man, chest rising only faintly as if the hunt hadn’t been an inconvenience to him at all. His silver hair’s mused from sleep. No guards flanked him, no cloak rippled in the wind from his shoulders. He’s still in the fine-cotton of his sleep-shirt, eyes mirror-bright from the moonlight. He’s beautiful and terrifying. As pale as pearls and all yours. 

Neither of you speak. 

Shamefully, your breaths are the only ones that come out panting. You struggle to level them, chest heaving so hard that on the inhale it swells out to brush against his. Your teeth are chattering violently. All of your senses feel spiked and sharpened. You think you might be able to hear the footfall of a small creature from a mile away.

Aerion lowers his dilated gaze. Your bare feet are cut and muddied, wet leaves clinging to them, and the hem of your shift is torn. You’ve got your hands behind your back, fisting against the sticky bark, as if you’re protecting the last bit of yourself you can from him. It feels futile when his eyes return to yours and he has that mad, hungry look of a man who knows exactly what you’re thinking.

“You run poorly,” he says quietly.

It hits you like a blow. “You,” your voice is hoarse, wounded, “you followed me.”

His head tilts. “You didn’t think I would?”

The hatred in your flares hot and cancerous, spreading into every vein. “I hate you.” 

An emotion twitches in his expression but you’re too frightened to understand it. He raises one of his hands and the motion makes you flinch so violently that your shoulder slips against the bark, scratching at your skin enough to splinter. It only makes him hesitate for a moment, fingers flexing in the space between you, before it flattens the palm against the trunk beside your head.

He’s everywhere now. You feel in him your lungs. This somehow feels more intimate than sex. He’s in your marrow. 

“I dreamt of you. Of a nursery, bright with sunlight. I woke,” he says, darker, “and your side of the bed was cold.” Aerion’s jaw hardens, his lips so very close to yours. All hot air and want and fury. “Do you know what that felt like, wife?” 

You stare at him, still breathing heavily. You have no words to give him. Your own blood is trying to speak to you as something vile coils around your organs but you can’t make heads or tails of it. It’s an ouroboros that stifles you as his other hand snakes out to press your hip deeper into the tree.

“No,” he answers for you, “you don’t.” 

The cedars tremble as you do, and you’re weak enough to think about Driftmark again. It’s absurd but it’s yours, and you can almost hear the vicious breaking of black-water waves against slate. You remember being small and childlike but it’s nothing like this feeling of fragility. You want your mother and her lap, her hands combing through your tresses. 

Your eyes start to well and you hate yourself for it. Strangely, it’s more than you hate him.

“I wanted to leave,” you confess.

“I know.”

“I meant to reach Storm’s End. Ser Lyonel.” 

Aerion blinks. “And that he might find you a maiden ship that would send you back to your lonely island? Away from here. From me.” 

Your heart’s in your ears, your throat, it beats and pulses everywhere. “How do you…” 

You didn’t think he knew about your homesickness. You didn’t think he cared. 

“You talk in your sleep,” he tells you.

It’s enough to make you dumb. Marriage is a peculiar thing. You were so sure he didn’t know anything about you and yet he knows this. That your slumbering mumbles are of home and the sea. 

Gods, you wish things were different. In another life, you might spend your days swimming and wading through shallow coves as he spars and hunts. You’d return to him happier in the evenings. He’d kiss the salt off your skin and you’d mouth at the swollen bruises on his knuckles. You’d each taste of sea and fire; he’d love you completely, and you’d love him the same. 

“You would have frozen before dawn,” Aerion remarks at your shivering. “You wouldn’t even make the next village over.”

“I’d rather freeze than burn in your stifling palace,” you spit.

“Brave girl,” he taunts. His thumb strokes over your hipbone then and it makes you jolt. The way he smirks at you is maddening. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think he’d want to splay you open and crawl inside. “Dragons don’t burn, wife. Haven’t I told you this?”

You want to scream in his face. “I’m not a dragon. I’m a Velaryon by blood. Salt and sea.” 

“Addam of Hull rode Seasmoke,” he challenges. 

“The Sowing of the Seeds as an abomination,” you sneer viciously. “The mythology of House Targaryen being pure-blooded and closer to Gods than men died the day Rhaenyra let bastards claim dragons. Vermithor and Seasmoke died at the Second Battle of Tumbleton. Silverwing died alone in the Red Lake after that useless oaf, Ulf, got himself killed. No one even knows what happened to Nettles and Sheepstealer.”

You thought that he might be angry at you for talking back to him, but that smirk of his softens into an amused curl of the lips.

“You’ve been reading our histories,” he muses fondly, thumb caressing lower from your hip, down to the hollow above your thigh, where the flesh is tender and sensitive. 

“There’s little else to do in your prison of a castle,” you say defensively. 

“Oh, I’m sure,” Aerion croons lazily. 

His entire hand shifts then to cover the entire expanse of your lower belly. Underneath, you feel a mad, ugly stirring. You almost choke.

“You’re vile.”

He bares his teeth. “Am I?”

“And cruel.”

“You fled my bed in your nightdress and slippers,” he reminds you. He presses the slightest bit into your stomach, relishing in the wicked way your face betrays you. “Without so much as a cloak to warm you.”

You glare at him nastily. “I left in haste.”

“No. You did not take a cloak because you feared the floorboard near the bed would creak,” he states. Your lips part in shock and his own widens into a grin. “That loose board by the window—third plank from the foot of our bed. You stepped over it.”

“That doesn’t mean you know me,” you seeth.

“No?” he says. Arrogance bleeds from him. The hand that’s next to your moves too, knuckles grazing along the curve of your torso until they brush the frayed rip of your shift. He toys with the torn threads and looks at you as if you’re a meal. “You stare east every sunset. You rub lavender at your wrists before bed because it reminds you of spring. You sew pretty waves into your embroidery when you’re lonely. You mutter for your mother in dreams. You like it when I fuck you from the behind…so I cannot see how much you’re enjoying it. It makes you feel in control.”

Breath hitches in your throat. 

Sensations invade you. The palm of his hand, greedy and warm, on the small of your back as he gets you when he wants you. The contrasting coolness of your own arms folded under your head as you gnaw on your bottom lip. Sometimes, he’ll kneel for you. A kiss to each hemisphere of your backside, the backs of your thighs, on your heat. Others, he isn’t as patient. He’ll have kissed your mouth first in these instances, after having you unbutton his doublet and peel away your own clothes. He’ll know that these devouring kisses would’ve left you wet enough for him. 

It’ll be as if he wanted to intertwine your body with his, those nights. Like he wanted to swallow you and spit you out onto his bedsheets. His fingers will reach and grab at any part of you he can find. 

You hate yourself. You hate him. 

“You do not ask me,” you manage to say gravelly. “You do not ask me anything.” 

He rolls his shoulder. “I notice.” 

“You have a grotesque way of showing it, husband.” 

You snarl it as an insult but hearing the title makes him smile. 

“Do I?” he mocks. “You wanted a fight tonight. You wanted me to shout at you, to get angry. To prove that I want you. Is that not grotesque to you, wife?” 

Tears gather and the sight of him wobbles in front of you as if seen through water. “You don’t know what I want.” 

“I know what you think that you want. You think you want that lonely island across Blackwater Bay.” Aerion shakes his head then, hand finally daring to slip under the rugged hem of your nightdress. A strangled sound escapes you when his fingers press into the flesh of your thigh. “But that’s not what you really want, is it? Not deep down. Not in here,” he emphasises, the fingers splayed out on your womb moving to linger over your heart. It thuds treacherously against him. “You want the same as I.”

You somehow have it in you to scoff at him. “Dragons, born-again?” 

“Maybe not yet. But you want this marriage. You want me,” he says, and it isn’t even arrogance now that he imbues. It’s just the self-assured confidence of someone who’s uttering a fact. As if he knows all of your wants and deficiencies. 

“You think very highly of yourself, my lord.” 

His teeth are pearl-like in the moon’s glow as he smirks. “Maybe.”

“Your ego is larger than the Red Keep,” you insult. 

“Go on.”

“And you are mad,” you rasp, feeling the heat of his fingers just over your cunt, not quite touching. “You treat the small folk as if they’re not even human, looking down at them in disdain. You think you’re leagues above the whole world, as if you’re still on dragonback. You’re addled with delusions and nightmares, I do not think you even know what is real.” 

“You,” Aerion says darkly, finally letting his fingers touch you, his index and middle slipping between your folds, where you want him, where you’re wet. “You’re real.” 

You keen as his thumb finds that sweet-spot of yours. “Fuck,” you grit, one of your arms untucking from behind you to grasp at his wrist. Startled, you realise your slip-up and look up at his hungry eyes. Chagrined, you correct the mistake, “Fuck you.”

“You want me to?” he asks, grinning. Gods, you hate him. His fingers sink into you, both at once. The stretch is enough for you to whimper, nails biting into his skin. All the while, he keeps his eyes on yours. “You want Driftmark, wife? I’ll find the finest captain and his best ship, I’ll take you. You want the sea? You’ll have it. You need only ask. The dragon ought never let his rider want for a single thing. I want you happy and mine. Let me?” 

His fingers curl then, reaching a part of you that makes you curl into him, forehead kissing his chest that finally feels like it’s at least a fraction as unsettled as yours. He drags them in and out of you at a deliciously slow pace, but your knees are weak with it. Both of your hands grasp at his arms now. He feels strong and unmoving. His mouth pecks at your hairline reverently.

“You’re evil,” you sob. “This is all I am to you. This is all you ever want.” 

Aerion merely hums. Rather than giving you reassurance, he presses an open-mouth kiss to your cheek, dewy and spit-slick. It’s all filthy.

“I want more.” 

Desperation wracks you. More what? You don’t even know. But you’re rocking yourself against him, grinding down onto his hands, and you want the hand that’s still on your heart to move the slightest bit down to grasp at your breast. 

He delivers another kiss, this time to your mouth as he nudges his forehead against yours to pry you away from the cover of his chest. He groans against your mouth, swallowing your own sob of pleasure depravedly. It’s a messy kiss, sloppy and shameless. You’re only distinctly aware that you’re still in the dead of the wood.

“Can you take another?” he checks. 

Your head shakes violently. “No.” 

He smiles against your mouth. “I thought you wanted more?” 

But he listens regardless, crooking the digits already inside of you just right, making you arch and moan brokenly. 

“I hate you. I hate you, I hate you, I—” 

“Show me how much, wife.” 

You come on his fingers, a single tear rolling down your cheek. His tongue catches it, then it catches yours, and it tastes of salt as they tangle in an even dirtier kiss than the last. It tastes like home. He works you through it, kneading comfortingly at your hip as your hips jerked against his at the overstimulation. So gently, he slips them out, holding your gaze as he parts his lips and tastes you. The sound he makes is obscene. 

Bonelessly, you slump against him. His hand, the one that wasn’t just inside of you, shifts to cradle the back of your head against his heaving chest. He smells of smoke and you. 

“I want to go,” you pant, cunt dully aching between your weak thighs. “I don’t want to sit in that room, waiting for you every night.” 

“Then, don’t.” 

“What would you have me do? Tend to your lady mother’s flowers? Sit in your solar, gossiping with the other well-bred ladies, who all titter over how handsome you are?” Jealousy drips from your tongue and sanctifies him. You feel his smirk against your temple, and the only kindness is knowing those wretched lips of his taste like you. “What is it, husband, you think I do whilst I wait for your dragons to tear me open?”

Aerion waits. Thinks, perhaps. He squeezes at the flesh of your hips, rolling them closer to his. He hums again, more contemplative than the last. Then, he draws his wet mouth to the shell of your ear, and speaks,

“Run.” 

Your eyes blow open, gaping at him. “Pardon?”

“I want you, wife,” he says, suddenly letting go of you and stepping back, leaving you on fawn-like legs and shivering, “to run.”

“Is this a trick?” you demand indignantly, one of your eyes twitching.

“It’s no trick. I want you to run,” Aerion repeats. “I want you to prove to me how little you want to be the lady of Summerhall. How all of that court gossip bores you. I want to see how much my pretty wife misses the sea.” 

You’ve just finished on your hand. You can still feel the slick of it between your thighs and a throbbing for more in the bottom of your belly. And yet he’s telling you to run.

“Run,” you echo. 

His expression oozes a bright, fevered certainty. “Yes.” 

There’s no mockery there or even a challenge. It’s hunger and interest and he wants you to bite. He loves your bite, you remind yourself. 

“You mean to make sport of me. As if I’m some wild boar or feral stag,” you accuse.

His mouth twitches. “Perhaps.” 

“You’re sick, Aerion.” 

“And yet you’re still here?” he teases.

This is madness, but you indulge it. “What happens if I run?”

“I follow.” 

Terror waltzes along your spine. “And if I escape?” 

“Then you prove me wrong,” Aerion replies simply, daring you.

It feels like a trick, despite his reassurance that it isn’t. Though, you’re sea-born enough to want to reach the horizon he’s dangling in front of you, however much of a mirage it might be.

“You’d let me go?” you say in disbelief, prayer-like. 

Your husband’s gaze dissects you like you’re an animal as he remarks, “I’ll let you try.” 

“This is a game.” 

“Isn’t everything?” 

He makes an unbridled rage swell inside of you. “Fuck you.” 

“Is that what you want instead of running?” Aerion laughs. 

“You speak of me as if I’m an animal!” you yell at him, appalled.

Aerion doesn’t seem unnerved. “Are you going to do it or not?” 

Your heart’s in your mouth again, leaving your ribs hollow enough for dread to make itself wretchedly at home. It tucks itself away in a layer of rot as your feet move without leave. One step, then another, until a third makes a twig splinter in half under you. The pain lances through you, brief and startling, but you turn and run regardless. 

Aerion does not come after you right away, or maybe you just couldn’t hear it, for the blood that rushes in your ears and the woods that seem to swallow everything in its eerie stomach. 

Air bludgeons you as raw as a gut-blow. The terror you feel is primitive and thrilling. It makes your body unearth a scion of girlhood from within you that dusted over after your wedding in Baelor’s Sept. Outpacing your brother over wet sand, horse-riding along Driftmark’s cliffs, the first morning your father took you out to sea aboard his favourite ship. The gulls caterwauling above you and the entire world opening itself at your feet as if you mattered. 

Bizarrely, an hysterical laugh nearly breaks you in half, like a wishbone. 

He’s driving you to madness, is all you can rationalise. Rumours spill through the Seven Kingdoms about the madness of Targaryens—but what of their wives? Does the coin flip for them, too? How oft do the Gods hold their breaths for the brides of dragons?

The outstretching branches of trees catch at your arms and surely cut them to ribbons. You dread to think about the sorry state of the soles of your feet. As a child, splattered in sea-water and dirt, your mother would scold you for trekking dirt through High Tide’s hallowed walls. She’d clutch at the pearls around her neck to see you like this, soiled and brutish as you run through the woods away from your husband.

Your husband.

“Do you feel alive, wife?” he calls out to you then from within the dark, as if he knew that the thread that binds you had just given. “Do you feel in control?” 

Hearing his voice again excites you. A sick part of you hopes you both get lost in this forest. That the rest of your cursed marriage is spent like this. You would never have to hear the gall of a courtier again, or a buttinsky maestar fussing over your moon-bloods. It would just be the two of you. You’d like that, you think. 

“Tired yet?” he taunts. It’s as if he speaks through the trees. Omnipresent and haunting. 

He’s to you what Valyria is to him.

“Come, wife. Answer me.” You curse him as you run. How is he not out of breath? “I want to hear you. How does it feel? Do you still feel like an animal?” 

“You’re a monster!” you shout hoarsely. 

The trees laugh with him, you swear. It intermingles with the pursuit of footfall, spiking your panic. He’s close. You feel him in your bones. He’s in your very soul.

Your head turns to find him too late as something hits you from behind, hard enough to make the world pitch and eat you whole. You think it’s his name that you wail as you go down into damp leaves and loam. It’s only earth for a moment, your chest flush to it. You feel like a corpse in the dirt, alone and cold against the unending body of it. All that’s gone when a weight settles over you. 

Aerion rolls you onto your back in one effortless motion before you can scramble or grab purchase at tufts of soil. Your hair cascades across the forest floor, torn shift twisting around your thighs. You must look unseemly. 

Still, Aerion straddles you, knees bracketing your wildly-bucking hips. At last, his breaths struggled too. The moon ensnares him in this feral halo that can only be Targaryen. A smirk takes shape, the way a dragon must’ve once looked feasting on its prey. 

There was a dragon over a century ago they called the Cannibal. Aerion must be him in living, human form. The membranes of his wings now exist as Aerion’s arms that snap out to catch both of your wrists and pin them above your head against the moss and foliage. Sinews and tendons strain at the column of his throat, and he’s every bit of those beasts that he longs for. 

“Get off,” you spit, hips jerking up. 

He grinds his own down to meet you halfway. He’s hard. Had he been this whole time?  

“Careful. You’ll make me think you enjoy this,” he says condescendingly.

Your glare is as filthy as your nightdress. “You tackled me!” 

“I caught you. I won.” 

“That’s cheating!” you protest.

Aerion blinks. “We didn’t agree on any rules.” 

“As if you’d even bide by them if we—shit.” 

He moves your wrists into one hand and slips the other between your thighs again. Of course, you’re still wet. It’s smeared and messy, and he teases the tips of his fingers through it, catching them at your pulsing entrance, before quickly moving them up to your clit. He’s relentless in his desire to make a madwoman out of you.

“Look at you,” he says fondly, “my beautiful wife.” The hard length of him presses through his breeches and against your hip. “You look better like this than you did on our wedding night. You were a pretty bride but prettier prey, I think.” 

“What is wrong with you?” You can only marvel at his perversions. You wanted him to want you but this overwhelms your senses. Is this how he wants you? A heart thudding in fear, silk tattered, cunt slick, all as his fingers tease you. 

“Everything that is wrong with me is wrong with you,” he tells you as he leans in to breathe in the scent of your neck. Lavender. “Blood of two, joined as one…” 

Your spine arches away from the earth to press your breasts against his chest. It’s enough to make his fingertips stop teasing you, settling over your clit with a delicious pressure.

“Hen lantoti ānogar,” you murmur against his mouth, repeating the same words to him in Valyrian, “va sȳndroti vāedroma.” 

His pupils dilate, the violets of his eyes lost in seas of insatiable black. “You’ve been learning the old tongue?” 

“I read about Valyrian wedding traditions,” you tell him offhandedly, as if you didn’t do it to impress him. 

He looks at you as if you’re everything he’s ever wanted and suddenly shifts his hips so that his cock presses against your slick, aching heat. The rough fabric of his breeches rubs against your bare, tender folds. It makes you writhe wantonly. 

“And what other research have you been doing, wife?” Aerion asks. He’s released your wrists entirely now and his other hand comes to palm at the soft swell of your breast. His index and thumb find your nipple deftly, rolling it between the digits. “Tell me you haven’t been touching yourself during your lonely afternoons, imagining it was me.” 

Your mouth curls into a sneer. “When you leave me for hours on end, you mean? To slip away into boredom? So what if I did then, husband? So what if I let my hand wander—” 

“And touch what is mine?” he interjects darkly, eyes narrowing at you. He grinds against you again. His breeches must be soaked from you. “My filthy wife, slipping her pretty little fingers inside her dripping cunt. Do you think of me? Is it my cock you want when you get greedy and rub at yourself, or is it my tongue?” 

Heat ravages your body with a fever and you cannot reply to him. Your hips wiggle, seeking more stimulation. He does not give it to you. 

“Both, most like,” he wagers, lust roughening his voice as well as the pinch of his fingers around your nipple. “I bet you fuck yourself thinking about me. You’re not bored, are you, wife? You’re empty.”

“I’m not some whore from Silk Street that lives and breathes cock, Aerion. I want my husband,” you tell him raggedly. 

His lips twist into a pout of feigned sympathy. “Poor girl. I’ve been neglecting you, haven’t I? What a cruel husband you have. To spend his days hunting when he has the prettiest of prey right there in his bed, waiting for him.” 

His degrading words make you dizzy. Is this what you even wanted? You wanted him to want you, yes, but this? The ache in you is for him, but it feels so wrong and perverted that you have to believe that there’s more you want. There has to be. You are not so debased as to think this is all you want from this marriage. You’re of the sea. There must be more.

“I want you to talk to me,” you say, bucking your hips up again, moving your heat against the tent of his cock. “I want you to ask me about my home, about my day. I want us to break our fasts together, after you’ve woke me up with your mouth on me. I want the whole castle to be sick of us when we fight and fuck. When they hear raised voices, they’ll know you’ll soon want me. It isn’t just your cock I want, Aerion, I want you.” 

It’s so painfully earnest that you feel even more humiliated than you did when he fingered you against that tree. 

But he doesn’t smirk at you in sick amusement or delight in your vulnerability. Aerion stares at you, just as desperate. 

“You terrify me,” he says, and it’s the last thing you expected, though you understand it perfectly. 

That terror is part of the want. It’s a limb in this living thing that exists between you. An amorphous mass of it that’s cancerous and obsessive. He looks fascinated by you and you hope he never loses that. You never want to be something that bores him. 

The idea of returning to Summerhall’s tedium makes you taste bile. 

Abruptly, Aerion’s moving from off of you and settling onto the forest floor at your side. He pulls you with him, arranging you as if you were a ragdoll until you’re draped heavily across his chest, head pillowed on the lean muscle beneath his sleep-tunic. His arms embrace you and you’re all his. 

“You’re right,” he admits (this must kill him). “I will do better. I’m sure Lord Aerion broke his fast with his Lady Valaena. If you’re to give me my three dragons, I ought to give you whatever you ask, hm?” 

You’re not sure what to say to that. You knew better than to think that madness would ever leave him, or his dream of a three-headed dragon. A sick part of you didn’t even want it to. As long as he thought of you as otherworldly as him, you were content. Both of your wants made something salvageable out of this marriage and you’d cling to them.

He tilts your chin up then and his gaze is as deep as the ocean, though far less volatile. There’s a tenderness to him that you’ve never seen in him before. 

“Tell me about the sea, wife.”