RVEN⊹♡

“Fine,” Suguru hissed, hesitantly pulling out of you but not before throwing Satoru a heated glare. 

“I can keep your concubine company,” she smiled, blue eyes sparkling with satisfaction as Suguru unceremoniously shoved his cock back inside his pants, storming past her to go off and search for an advisor who was likely already tucked into his bed. 

He would just come back for you once he figured it out. 

But by then, Satoru was sure she could kill the mood enough that he wouldn’t get to have you tonight. 

Not without her in the room. 

“I’m sorry,” you softly apologized once he was gone, hastily pulling your dress down, embarrassed that she’d seen you so exposed. 

As if it wasn’t the first time. 

She was well aware of her husband’s preference for you to not wear any undergarments when he was planning on seeing you. Had walked in on the two of you in their marital bed more times than she could count. 

At first, she thought it was better you than her. 

Held no interest in having sex with him herself or making any heirs, no matter how much the court tried to convince her that it was necessary. 

Why would she ruin her body for a man she could barely stand? Who she was forced into a political marriage with? 

Lately? 

She was growing tempted to just take her clothes off and offer herself up if it meant Suguru would go a single day without insisting on having sex with you. Even if she’d be resisting the urge to gag and roll her eyes at every one of his groans.

“I’ll return to my chambers, Your Majesty,” you respectfully murmured, averting your gaze with faint shame creeping into your fair features. You were trying to not make this strange or strained, smoothing out your dress as you pushed your palms off the blanket. 

“How many times must I ask you to call me Toru, hm?” She teased, breaking the tension with an easy laugh. 

It used to be breezy to be around you. 

Before he snatched you from her grip. 

Back when you were both girls growing up together, as a princess and her maid. Your delicate hands brushing her hair and working all the knots out with nimble fingers at the end of every day, chatting about the scullery gossip before Satoru would pull you into the blankets and demand that you sleep next to her. 

To keep the nightmares away. 

Everyone always let Satoru do what she wanted. 

Except for having you. 

Sure, she could drag you around, take you everywhere she went, but instead of simply being hers, you were more of an accessory. 

The most you could be was a maid. A servant. 

Not a lover. 

Satoru tried to be content with that. Truly. 

Accepted it from an early age that you weren’t going to be hers when she was destined for a political relationship and your stare often lingered a little too long on knights instead of ladies.

She told herself that at least she got to bring you along to this palace to be by her side for this marriage, but the moment Suguru saw you standing next to her, he stole you. 

Made you his concubine within the week, put you in your own room and dolled you up in gowns and gems. Satoru had been sneaking blue dresses in your new closet, replacing the jewel tones and purples with the shades of the sky, of the ocean rather than the rich hues he had such a proclivity for. 

But it didn’t make much of a difference when you were tending to him now instead of her. 

“Toru,” you said her name so sweetly, chewing the inside of your cheek now as you reluctantly met her stare. “I’m sorry you had to see that.” 

“You are not the one who should apologize,” she exhaled, shrugging her shoulders as she walked over to where you were sheepishly staring at the blooming flowers. 

Skimming a delicate hand over your arm, appreciating the warmth of your skin as she stopped just shy of your shoulder, tracing a little heart with the edge of her thumb as she soothed you. 

“Come with me,” she murmured. 

Your head snapped up, your eyes wavering and wide. Unsure. “Where?” 

“My room,” Satoru hummed. “Like old times.” 

Back when the only hands that ever had the fortune to brush over your body were hers. When you belonged solely to Satoru. 

Funnily enough, you were still sleeping in her bed. Just with her husband. 

What would she have to do to keep his calloused palms off her prize? 

“Are you sure Suguru will be-” 

“No man would complain about two beautiful women in his sheets,” she rolled her eyes, interlocking arms with you and pulling you forward. 

It wasn’t exactly true. 

Suguru would have plenty to grit his teeth and groan about when he wouldn’t get the chance to put his dick inside of you. 

But you were naive enough to not realize that, smiling back at Satoru the way you used to, leaning against her arm and sighing with relief, relaxing once it struck you that she wasn’t upset with you. 

“I’m not nearly as beautiful as you,” you wistfully mumbled under your breath, and Satoru’s heart soared. Pale cheeks heating up at your compliment, squeezing you reflexively as she laughed. 

She knew she was beautiful. Blessed by the gods in nearly every aspect from the moment she was born. 

But even when they had given her a face any male would love, they had cursed her with a heart that could only belong to a female. 

To you. 

Had been stamped with your name and sealed to be yours from the first day she found you. 

It wasn’t fucking fair that Suguru got to just reap everything she sowed. 

Got to be the one inside you, on top of you, beside you. Who could just openly want you with no repercussions. 

If his smug smirks and sly remarks weren’t enough for her to loathe him, Satoru still would have hated him for that fact alone. 

“I think you are far lovelier than any of these lousy flowers,” Satoru spoke softly, tilting her head around the garden she’d grown to only feel disgust for too. 

It had been beautiful at first. A work of art she’d taken to walking the winding paths through in the evenings to calm her chaotic mind when the two of you first came here. 

But all it had taken was to walk in on Suguru mounting you on a patio table the third week in for every last petal and blossom of this place to become tainted.  

He was making a fucking fool of her. 

Freely flaunting how much he adored fucking you wherever he wanted, whenever he wanted. 

No doubt she wasn’t the first to catch the two of you. 

“You flatter me,” you blushed, turning away from her as you picked up the pace. 

You already knew the way back to her marital room.

Even if she wasn’t the one you usually came there for. 

Satoru had separate chambers, of course, ones that were made solely for her, but she knew that Suguru would retaliate in some petty fashion if she brought you there instead. 

“I am merely being honest,” Satoru hummed, lips curling up in an easy smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. 

She knew you well enough to know you were too embarrassed to respond. That you weren’t truly taking her seriously. 

Shouldn’t you know by now that the only person she saved her sincerity for was you? 

“I find myself missing you more and more,” Satoru slowly added, heart thumping so hard she was sure it would somehow end up lodged in her throat as you looked back at her with those big, apologetic eyes. 

Guilt-ridden. 

Weighed down by the obvious worry you carried for fucking her husband. 

“I miss you too,” you murmured quietly, lip curling up in your best attempt at a smile before it immediately fell again. 

“You seem tired,” Satoru observed, reaching over with her free hand to brush the hair away from your face. Treasuring the few seconds her fingertips skimmed across your soft cheeks. “Let’s get some rest.” 

“But Suguru-” 

“Do me a favor,” she purred, offering her most reassuring grin. “Do not worry about him.” 

She could deal with it. 

It was worth whatever trouble would come to watch you trade your dress for one of her silky blue nightslips, staring at the bare expanse of your exposed back as you bent over to shimmy it on, holding her breath as you turned around, looking absolutely delectable. 

The sweetest dessert she could ever dream of. 

And the only one she wasn’t allowed to taste. 

“Do you want me to do your hair?” You asked, fiddling with your fingers as you nervously looked around the room. 

Satoru wished she could wipe your anxieties away. 

“I would never say no to that,” she said instead, putting up a far more carefree front than she truly felt. 

Perching on the edge of the stool of her vanity, passing you her hairbrush as you slowly pulled all of her long, silky white strands back over her shoulder. You took your time brushing it out, carefully separating it as you went and making sure there were no tangles before you slowly began to braid it, nimble fingers working to twist the parted hair. 

She could see your reflection in the mirror, the way you bit your kiss-swollen bottom lip, brows pinched together tightly in focus as your practiced hands made an easy job of it. 

“There you go,” you hummed once you finished, tying a white ribbon at the end as you looked in the mirror back at her. “Do you like it?” 

“I like everything you do,” Satoru replied on instinct. 

Except for Suguru. 

Your face flushed, smiling as you stepped back away from her, glancing over to the bed. 

“Good night then,” you muttered. 

“Good night,” Satoru replied, shoving down the lump in her throat as she tried to discreetly dry her clammy palms on her own nightdress as she stood up. Snuffing out a few of the candles so that the only light was from the flickering fire, crawling into bed after you, pretending to be unaffected by your proximity as she got under the sheets next to your body.

But she wasn’t quite as good at it as she used to be. 

Unable to slow her breathing, chest rising and falling far too fast as you tossed and turned, the short hem of the slip riding up on your thighs under the covers as Satoru desperately stared at the ceiling of her four-poster bed and ignored the heat ignited in her core. 

A steady pulse, an irritating throb straight to the center of her, speeding up each time your leg brushed against hers, or your hand accidentally grazed along her arm. 

“Sweet dreams,” she belatedly whispered, but you had already fallen asleep, soon snoring on one of her pillows like you once did so long ago, hair sprawling out that Satoru couldn’t stop herself from softly stroking. 

Her pretty maid, right where she belonged once more. 

But for how long? 

When would Suguru do something that would fully free you of her? 

God, what the fuck was she going to do if he knocked you up? Forced you to bear his heir? Make you raise a whole brood of miniature hims? 

That asshole would surely move you to a separate palace, maybe claim that Satoru made threats or something equally absurd to justify giving you a title or some security. 

Satoru refused to let any of that happen. 

You were more than just a breeding mare. 

More than just a pawn to be played with – no matter what her husband attempted to turn you into. 

Like she summoned a demon, the door swung open, and Satoru immediately removed her hand from by your head, sitting up in bed to stare at the intruder.

The real interloper here. 

Suguru scowled at the sight of her next to you, his lips pressing in a thin line as he peeled off his expensive robe. 

“Return to your private chambers,” he dismissed, irritation heavy in his voice. 

“This marital bed is mine too,” Satoru retorted, patting the spot next to her to gesture for him to join. 

She’d prefer not to spend the night suffering the masculine scent of his cologne, but she supposed she could just roll closer to you to inhale your much sweeter smell. It was always light, flowery, like some intoxicating summer bloom she wanted to pluck and preserve.

He laughed at the idea of sleeping together too, a low and cruel one. 

Satoru wanted to snarl back that if she were a man, if they were both vying for your hand, you would have chosen her without a blink. 

But she just had to bite her tongue and stare at the one person who had everything she wanted. 

“Funny that I only find you in here when it’s with her,” he knowingly scoffed. 

“Is it?” Satoru feigned ignorance. “I was the one who brought her here.”

Her husband didn’t care though. 

No, he just walked over as if she had no place in this room, no right to her spot in the bed beside you, stripping his shirt off before removing his pants, as if a little bit of nudity would scare Satoru off. 

“What do you think our love would do if she knew you lusted after her even more than I do?” Suguru mocked, barely making an effort to disguise his thinly-veiled threat. One corner of that irritating mouth of his curling up in a crude smirk, casually dismissing the weight of her affection for you to a simple sin. 

His love? 

Satoru almost laughed back at him. 

You were hers. Had always been. 

And would be once again. 

“Shall I tell her?” He asked, tilting his head towards your sleeping figure as he pulled back the blankets to get in too.

“She would think it’s just a jest,” Satoru rolled her eyes, her nose scrunching up as he actually got in next to her. 

It didn’t matter how obvious she made it to you. 

You were blissfully unaware. 

Clueless to the hunger she harbored in her heart to chain you to her. 

“I suppose we’ll find out soon,” he muttered under his breath, and despite the shield she’d prepared, it splintered with sheer panic at the thought of you taking his word. 

At the risk of you being repulsed by the realization, rejecting her and refusing to exist in the same space for the rest of her life. 

That wouldn’t do. 

Suguru was already a persistent problem. 

But now it appeared she had no choice but to solve it before he could screw her over. Before he could wreck what she’d spent so long building. 

She’d prefer to prepare a guillotine for his cock, to punish him for the crime of being inside you, but she refused to be the one put in prison for it. 

No, Satoru needed a plan. A foolproof way for this to end with you in her arms. 

Perhaps some poison to put His Royal Majesty in a grave while she was at it.  

ε✿з

“Morning, beautiful.” 

You wondered who your king’s groggy morning voice was meant for. You? 

Or his wife? 

Your true master. 

“Good morning, husband,” Satoru replied, her usually sweet voice cold and clipped. 

Of course.

You weren’t exactly surprised. 

But what did throw you off was the two very different arms strewn across your waist, one thick and muscled slung low towards your hips while the other far daintier one was delicately tangled just below your breasts. 

Somehow, you had ended up in between them. 

Rather fitting, wasn’t it? 

“I wasn’t speaking to you,” Suguru scolded her, and your stomach just curdled at the annoyance in his tone. 

The weight on your midsection disappeared, and you tried to roll on your side, to pretend you were still asleep, but then he was pulling you against him, and you could only bite the inside of your cheek and focus on the taste of blood on your tongue to hold it together as something hefty and hard pressed into your spine. 

It was just wrong to do this in front of Satoru. 

You didn’t understand what Suguru saw in you anyway. 

It wasn’t like you truly were stunning. Not compared to her. 

You weren’t blind. 

You’d always been rather plain put next to Satoru’s perfect face.

She was the one people stopped to stare at when she walked in a room, the subject of whispers and wishes and fools willing fate to just give them a single chance for the pleasure of one conversation in her presence. 

And beneath her beauty was the sort of one-of-a-kind soul someone could spend the rest of their life searching for. 

Even now, when you were sleeping with her husband, she was still being sweet to you. 

Swearing that she knew you couldn’t do anything about being his concubine, bringing you back to her bed for a sleepover like she hadn’t caught you having sex with him. 

You didn’t deserve her. And you really couldn’t comprehend why Suguru wouldn’t want her. 

Yet, she always tried to spare your feelings. 

Sent away any maid who mocked you and scolded any staff member that attempted to tease you ever since you were children. 

Going from dismissing any knight that tried to flirt or feel you up as teenagers to stripping some lower noble of her rank simply for speaking ill of you two weeks ago over suggesting that she should punish you for trying to steal her husband. 

You hadn’t asked for any of it. 

All you wanted was to watch her fall in love. To stand by her side and see her find her happily ever after. 

Instead, you were embroiled in an affair with the man she married. 

And now the guilt was gnawing through your bones, shame shattering you every time she saw you with him. 

You sort of felt like your life could be divided in two groups. 

Before Satoru. After Satoru. 

She saved you. You were born into servitude, to parents who worked in the worst kind of noble homes. The ones where the money was passed down with generations, belonging to spoiled gamblers and drunks who didn’t know how to do anything other than spend it — and couldn’t care less about their staff members. 

You learned how to scrub baseboards and sweep instead of how to read and write. To never speak unless spoken to. To make yourself smaller than a speck of dust just to survive. 

It didn’t matter. 

They had a son a year older than you. 

One that was particularly fond of pulling your hair and ripping up your uniforms every time you hung them out to dry. 

Who found a passion in pushing you down and pretending to his family that you had committed every variety of petty crimes against him. 

Your life was a living hell. 

Until your angel showed up. 

In a pretty white dress that matched her soft hair, the sun shining on her pale face as she blinked down at you with big, blue eyes. She was visiting with her parents, supposed to be attending a play date with your personal tormentor, only to walk in on him attempting to cut off a chunk of your hair with a knife he’d stolen from the chef. 

He had accidentally cut you with it, a thin streak of blood trickling down your throat as you sobbed hysterically, unable to stop yourself as you curled up against the tree he cornered you against. 

“Drop that,” she commanded, an air of authority to her even when she was still a child. 

He did, even though his obedience seemed to surprise him. 

“You’re not the boss of-”

She was already stepping forward though, kicking the knife away before graciously approaching you, unbothered by the sniffing mess you’d become, just squatting down and drying your tears with her sleeve. 

“You’re coming home with me.”

And you did. 

She had half-dragged you inside, forcing herself to fake tears of her own before crying to her parents that he had attacked her, and that you’d gotten hurt defending her. 

They believed her lie. 

And she bought you from the hellhole you were born into. 

You would probably be dead without her. 

Starved or beaten for not performing your duties well enough, discarded like some cheap possession instead of a person. 

The boy was punished, his family’s status revoked — although you never learned what happened to them after that. 

At least with Satoru, you could be her doll. 

Someone she dressed up and dragged around to tea parties and meals, forcing everyone to have a chair for you like it was normal for a mere maid to dine with royalty. 

She grew out of it when she got a little older, when people began to look down on you for her behavior instead of her. 

But when they announced her marriage, she still refused to go unless she brought you with her, insisting that she wouldn’t adapt without a familiar face before whispering to you in private that she’d never leave her favorite friend behind. 

Did she regret that now? Wish she never took you in to begin with?

You felt like a nuisance.

It was impossible to ignore the whispers of the court here, the constant discussion of the heir that didn’t currently exist. All of it felt like your fault.

Surely, if you weren’t here, if you weren’t imposing, then Satoru might have already gotten pregnant, or perhaps have even had a child already. 

As far as you knew, they had yet to even consummate their marriage. 

You used to whisper about what it would be like to have sex. So sure that she would be the one to experience it first. Giggling under the covers about how the whole thing seemed sorta gross. To let a guy stick it inside of you and listen to him grunt and groan?

Honestly, you never thought it would be you giving up your virtue before her. 

Sugugu hadn’t been shy about the fact you were the only one he was intimate with. 

Turning his nose up and scoffing when you inquired about the status of their relationship, the same way Satoru did, as if it was simply absurd that they could ever have a baby together. 

And now his royal advisors had started whispering suggestions that he should plant his seed in you instead, murmuring that if Satoru was too stubborn, he must secure his line another way as if you weren’t in the same room when they said it. 

As if your loyalty hadn’t always lied with her. 

But she wouldn’t listen to your warnings. 

How were you supposed to convince two people who acted like they couldn’t stand each other to not only have sex, but create a child? 

You knew you were a fool. Naive to still presume that there must be some way to make this work without making Satoru suffer. But you couldn’t stop trying. 

“I would like you to leave,” Suguru snapped at her, and years of experience had engrained the instant impulse to protect her in you. 

To interrupt and insist that she had every right to be here too. 

Even if Satoru had never once needed you to defend her. Not the same way you needed her. 

“Will you drag me out if I do not?” She cheekily returned, and you finally forced yourself to start to stir, to stop the argument already in progress as they both immediately fell silent. Satoru’s soft hand skimmed over your forearm, delicately dragging her fingertips up to your shoulder before yawning, “Good morning, sleepyhead.” 

“Morning,” you muttered, slowly cracking your eyes open and beginning to sit up just for a second hand to shift to the small of your back. 

“Did she bother you with all her tossing and turning?” Your king asked, concern veiling his contempt for his wife as he peered down at you with those dark purple eyes. Devoid of the light you were used to seeking, swirling with something you weren’t quite comfortable enough to name. 

Sometimes, you wondered how much he wanted you, and how much he wanted to piss her off. Equally unhappy at the situation he’d been thrusted in, forced to marry a stranger he didn’t know or want and finding refuge in pissing off the one person that was also innocent in this. Taking it out on her instead when he had no way to punish the system he was stuck in. 

“Satoru never bothers me,” you answered honestly, still doing your best to mend the bridge between them as you peered up at him with an expression you hoped would earn some empathy from him. 

Or at the very least, get him to not toss her out before she even stepped foot out of the bed. 

“You’re too sweet,” he muttered, sitting up straighter to let the blankets fall down around his bare waist. Tenderly caressing your cheek as you stilled, thinking of what he seemed to leave unsaid. Too sweet for whom? Him? Or her? 

You supposed you were just overthinking it, blinking nervously before he leaned down to kiss you on the lips right there in front of her, pushing his tongue in as you tried not to scrunch your nose up at the thought that he had yet to brush his teeth before slipping his tongue in your mouth. 

But you returned it, accustomed to going with the tides instead of swimming against them, allowing him to possessively splay his fingers across your back as if Satoru’s fingers weren’t still sinking into your shoulder. 

And by the time he pulled away, you had collected yourself enough to smile sincerely back at him when he rested his forehead against yours. 

It wasn’t that you disliked him, or harbored any hatred for him. 

The feeling swirling in your stomach was closer to pity. You felt bad for him. 

He felt like a flip side to Satoru. Reminded you of her in his own strange way when he spoke to you like you were more than just a maid. Even if he only saw you as his own accessory instead of hers.

“Meet me in the gardens at noon,” he instructed, slipping out of his bed as you both stared. His back muscles flexed as he bent over, only throwing a look back to wink at you while Satoru made a quiet gagging noise next to you. 

You nearly giggled, only holding it in when his dark brows pinched together in a glare back at her. 

“Of course, Your Majesty,” you murmured, nodding dutifully as his chest puffed back out with pride. Finishing redressing quickly, his mouth twitching down at the two of you in his bed, but he didn’t say anything to disprove Satoru’s theory about men and beautiful women. 

“Alone,” Suguru added, starting towards the door before Satoru could add something snarky. 

The moment he was out the door, you could hear his voice calling through it for a servant, and you already pictured the way a few were likely stationed at the end of the hall, ready to accompany him and do whatever he wanted.

“Meet me in the gardens,” Satoru mimicked him, rolling her bright blue eyes as her long lashes fluttered dramatically as she twisted you back around to face her. “He’s so insufferable.” 

“Satoru,” you said her name, face heating up at the way the syllables felt rolling off your tongue, still strange to address her so intimately when she was so far above you. “It worries me-” 

“No,” she interrupted you sternly, your shoulders slumping at her unexpected scolding. “There is nothing for you to worry about.” 

“But the two of you-” 

“I know,” she sympathized, knowing what you were about to protest before you had to say it. Seeing through all of you the way no one else ever did, or probably ever would. “But you should just keep doing what he asks.” 

Like you couldn’t see how much it hurt her to even suggest that. 

Satoru was more sensitive than she’d ever show. Feelings hidden under her carefully crafted shield, always pretending to be the perfect princess on her towering pedestal, protected by some impenetrable glass that never let you touch her. 

She could say she couldn’t stand Suguru. But who wouldn’t be hurt at the man they married so blatantly disrespecting them?

“I just want you to be happy,” you softly said. 

“I will be. Eventually,” Satoru stiffly said, dragging her thumb over your bottom lip like she was wiping off his kiss. “We just have to grin and bear it for now.” 

“And things will get better?” You hopefully asked, reaching up to clasp her hand. Feeling a little bit like a child again, looking up to her with blind trust, faith that she could fix problems that seemed far too big for you. Imagining all three of you a few months from now, getting along and grinning over lunch in the garden, sitting underneath the shade of an umbrella and snacking with Satoru on one side and Suguru on the other. 

“I promise they will.” 

There was nothing you craved more than for her to be correct.

But your blind belief in her started to fizzle and fade when the days refused to stop dragging on while you rarely got to see her. Only catching glimpses of her from across the room, usually when one of you was being flaunted on Suguru’s arm and the other was left to stand on the side and stare. Barely getting a chance to speak to her when the king you were both supposed to obey had decided you were better kept in your bed chambers or his private office, away from the wife he pretended didn’t exist around you. 

You tried to tell yourself what she had. 

To just bear it. 

Comforting yourself with the handful of smiles she snuck you, reassuring yourself that you didn’t have to be wracked with guilt every second you spent with Suguru. That you shouldn’t hate yourself for the moments with him where you found yourself actually enjoying his company, or genuinely giggling at a joke he made. 

It didn’t make it easier to stop loathing the parts of you that liked the attention. Being doted on and deemed deserving of more than just the monotony of being a maid. 

Underneath it all, you still knew what was coming. 

A girl like you was only measured by what uses she was good for. 

Could taste his expectation in the air long before Suguru delivered the curdling news over tea, sitting there like a brainless doll as he informed you that he had the maids brew the kind that helped fertility. 

Casually suggesting that you make a fine mother as you feigned agreement, running off to a bush to throw it up the moment he left to attend to other business. 

You couldn’t do that to her. 

No, you wouldn’t. 

You refused. 

It wasn’t like you had any idea how you would refuse, not when you were sure he would be back in your bedroom tonight. Stripping off his robes with that easy smirk of his, placing his crown on your head as he buried his cock in you, probably already planning on no longer pulling out but plunging himself deep enough to make sure the seed he planted was sowed. 

That it would sprout into an heir he could use as an excuse to remove any power his wife politically held. 

You puked again. 

Bile rising that you couldn’t push down, getting sick until you finally managed to suck in enough deep breaths to pull yourself together, wiping the corner of your mouth and standing back up on trembling legs, looking around to make sure no one had seen you. 

But a few maids were standing nearby, wide-eyed and whispering to each other before scampering off in a hurry once your stare caught theirs, surely off to spread rumors about what they’d seen. 

You were stumbling away too, walking back inside the cobbled halls and hurrying through the twists and turns, ignoring the pointed looks you received from staff members and guards passing by. You weren’t sure where you were going until you were there, nervously tapping your knuckles against the door to Satoru’s office, hardly able to keep your breathing steady until you heard her call out in an annoyed tone, “Come in.”

You pushed it open, holding your breath as you peeked inside to see her head hanging down behind her desk. Her cheek resting on her hand, silky hair falling around her shoulders as she sighed and scribbled something into a thick book. 

“What is it-” 

“I’m sorry,” you half-whispered, your voice coming out as a croak from your sore throat. 

She immediately stopped what she was writing as her head snapped up at the realization it was you, shutting the book and placing her palm over it. Her blue eyes were razor sharp, freezing over in a flash under furrowed brows. 

“What happened?” She demanded to know without a pause. Ready to go to war with just two words. 

“He wants me to have his heir,” you blurted out, still panicking as you looked to her like there was something she could do about it. 

In all the years you’d known her, the only other time you’d seen the expression that was on her face now was the day you first met her. 

Focused and flat at the same time, not betraying anything as she just blinked at you once more. 

“Tell me you don’t want it,” she requested, completely serious as you struggled to tear your stare away. 

“Of course I don’t,” you answered, shaking your head as your fingers nervously clutched at the skirt of your dress, fiddling with some of the fine embroidery as you struggled to catch your breath, the taste of vomit lingering in your mouth as you thought about what your life would look like a year from now if you did. A black-haired baby on your hip and a hole punctured straight through your heart. 

You almost added that you had only come here for her, but you couldn’t bring yourself to when all that had resulted in was you warming her husband’s bed. 

What would her life have been like had you stayed behind? Would you have been kicked out of the palace you’d spent years by her side in? Left to start over in some quaint village, maybe starting a small farm or working in a local shop instead? 

You would choose any of it over being the reason she was suffering. Even if it meant struggling and scraping by all alone. 

“I will take care of it,” she stiffly said, her nose upturned in the air as she pushed a plate of cookies someone had left on her desk away from her. “You should go now.” 

A piece of you shattered. 

Some deep internal wound ripping open at her quick dismissal, despite your instinct to believe that her words were more binding than any oath. 

“But-”

“Trust me, princess,” she softened her tone, smiling now, like you couldn’t see how tight of a line her mouth made. Using a nickname she hadn’t called you in years, back when she tried to make you feel better about the difference in your status, late night promises that you could be her princess and she could be yours. 

“Toru,” you murmured back, watching her eyes crinkle for a second before she shook her hair and pointed a delicate finger towards the door. 

“Please leave,” she asked, and you had never been good at disobeying her. 

Feeling like a mutt that had been thrown out in the rain, tail tucked between your legs as you walked all the way across the palace to your own chambers. Pacing the floor there in a panic, wringing your hands and wearing out the carpet as you tried to think of some solution. 

Stupid nobles and their moronic obsession with bloodlines. 

Why couldn’t they just adopt a child and raise it correctly? 

You would have his child if Satoru asked you to. If she said she didn’t want to do it herself. 

But you were scared for her. Terrified that she would somehow end up thrown out if you had an heir and she refused to. 

Maybe it would be easier if one of them were less stubborn. If Satoru was less prideful and Suguru more agreeable. 

Was that asking for the impossible? 

Just an idiot jammed between a rock and a hard place and wondering why you couldn’t squeeze out? 

You prepared yourself that evening anyway, going through the motions of putting on the thin style nightdress Suguru preferred, but picking one in a soft shade of blue that reminded you more of Satoru. Carefully applying a thin layer of makeup, exhaling at your reflection as you wondered to yourself where the girl from a few years ago had gone. 

She probably would have strangled you for suggesting sleeping with Satoru’s king, no matter the circumstance. 

And right now, you would give just about anything to go back to those days. Where the most important thing you had to worry about was how to style Satoru’s hair the next day, or what would be served for breakfast in the morning. 

“You’re wearing blue.” 

Your head turned to find Suguru standing there in the doorway, his lips turned down as his hazy stare slid over your body. You hurried to stand, forgoing spritzing the fancy perfume he gifted you across your skin as he strode over to you. Ready to fake moans and feign devotion. 

“Is this not one you gave me?” You innocently asked, tilting your head to the side. 

It wasn’t like you could purchase your own dresses. 

Truthfully, you had no idea what even happened to the funds you saved up before Satoru brought you here. She had said she would take care of the transfer, but within days of coming here, you were being whisked off your feet and away from her by the man in front of you now.

“I guess it doesn’t matter,” he muttered, his fingers plucking one of the straps off your shoulder and pulling it down with a sigh as he ignored your inquiry. “I’m taking it off of you anyway.” 

His hands shook while he removed it, his fingers unsteady for once as he tried to shimmy your panties down your thighs next. He kissed you, but the sour taste of wine was still on his lips, and you ached to pull away. 

To ask him to reconsider what he wanted from you. 

Even if you knew that wasn’t your place. 

To your surprise though, he retreated first, your mouth still hanging open as he let out a low groan. You knew something was wrong at the sound of it. How guttural it came out when you hadn’t even touched his cock yet. 

You blinked up at him only to see red. 

Blood dripped down his lips as he stared at you without really seeing you, fear glittering his dark eyes empty in the candlelight as your own fingers reached out to wipe it away. Had you bitten him without realizing it? Was he hurt? 

Before you could even touch it, he coughed hard, and your face was suddenly wet.

Your hand was still outstretching towards him the moment he collapsed. 

Someone screamed, but it wasn’t until servants began running into the room that you realized the horrible sound was coming from you, ripped from the back of your throat as the scene immediately morphed into a mess. Maids shouting for doctors and rushing around to try and stop the bleeding that was still pouring from his mouth, propping him up. But even if his eyes were open, they weren’t blinking. 

Had his soul already separated from the still shell he left behind? 

Something damp hit your palm, your fuzzy vision struggling to focus as it belatedly struck you that you were still dripping with the red, your palms shaking, refusing to stop twitching at the unnerving sight of it. 

Steady drops begging to drop down to your bare breasts, staining your skin as you stumbled back, running from the inevitable as your shattered gasps wouldn’t allow enough air into your lungs. 

This wasn’t happening.

It couldn’t be.

This must be a nightmare. Some awful dream you’d gotten dragged into as you tried to wake yourself back up, desperately wiping your face as you struggled to get it clean, but nothing was working. Nothing was changing. 

Hyperventilating as a maid shouted, calling in guards while your back hit the wall, your fingers trembling as you buried your face in your hands, as if you could hide from what was happening. 

“Is he still alive?” 

No. No no no. 

If he was gone, what the hell would happen to you? 

There were too many people in the room, too much going on for you to focus on what was happening in front of you. Your ears filling you in no matter how much you desperately wanted to shut it all out. 

To rewind the clock, even if it was just for a few minutes. Bring it back to where everything was still normal. 

The palace doctor arrived out of breath as you peeked back up at your world unraveling only to find him shaking his head as he checked the limp body on the floor’s pulse. 

You knew it before he said it though. Had from the moment he coughed and collapsed. 

“The king is dead.” 

The only person in power now was his wife. 

Someone was probably on their way to get Satoru now, to shake her awake from her bed and notify her that her husband was no longer among the living. 

Even if you didn’t want to have his baby, you still never would have chosen this. 

Curling up with your bare knees to your chest, staring at your blood-splattered blue nightdress left in a crumpled pile on the floor, eyes wild as you watched people rush in and out. 

Guards filing in, one of them ripping you up from off the ground with a rough grip on your arm, barking some question you didn’t understand as you tried to shake your head, dragging you out of the room as you got one last glimpse at Suguru’s still form staring up at the ceiling. 

“Did you do this?” 

“What?” You blinked, turning back with disgust as you rebuffed it. “I-I wouldn’t-” 

The guard wasn’t listening, pulling you out only for you to nearly run into someone else. 

Your pounding heart stopped the second you realized it was Satoru. 

Her pretty face pinched up with disdain, long hair loose and cascading down her back, an intricate amethyst-colored gown draping over the cobbled hall as she looked down at you, her mouth twitching as her gaze drifted across your exposed skin. 

You were about to beg her to tell them that it couldn’t have been you, bottom lip trembling as you tried to get the words out, but she cut you off, looking to the knight by her side as she solemnly shook her head. 

“Lock her up.” 

She couldn’t mean it. 

It honestly felt more far-fetched than Suguru’s sudden death. Unable to understand those three sharp words that left her lips until another man was yanking you away, pulling you down corridors. 

Humiliation burned through you as the initial shock started to fade and the reality of your situation began to sit in. Being dragged naked across the palace until you were led up a long spiralling staircase to a tower you’d never stepped foot inside before. 

Spared the cruelty of the cold dungeons only to be shoved inside a tiny room at the top, a heavy door slammed shut as your eyes struggled to adjust to the darkness surrounding you. A barren space with only a small bed pushed against the wall, a small window that was only big enough for you to peek out of, the bitter night breeze blowing in through it as you stood there, waiting for, well, you weren’t sure what. 

Satoru to show up and swear this was all some awful joke? To tell you that she didn’t mean to scare you and that everything was fine? That this was all a part of some plan of hers? 

Wishful thinking, wasn’t it? 

If they thought you were responsible, that you somehow killed him, you would be executed within a month. 

Maybe not even offered a trial, just dragged out to be hanged or beheaded without a chance to defend yourself. 

Who would have sympathy for a traitor? 

A poor maid masquerading as a concubine, one who truly should have never had a place beneath the king to begin with. 

All you were was an ignorant idiot that was born to take the blame. No matter your innocence. 

And yet, when you finally heard footsteps approaching your lonely room, you were still rushing towards it, ready to plead your case to whoever showed up. 

When you heard Satoru’s voice, you nearly sobbed. 

She must be coming to let you out. To explain everything away and bring you back to her room the way she once had. Whisk you away and remind you with that charming smile that she had told you not to worry. 

Satoru wasn’t your knight in shining armor. She was better. 

A hero with her white-haired halo, your blue-eyed angel in a gossamer gown. 

“Toru, please,” you called out, peeking up to discover a rectangle carved out of the thick wood of the door, wide enough for you to look back out into the barely-lit hallway. 

“Make sure no one comes up here,” Satoru coldly instructed the knights outside, your heart stalling as you stared at her through that thin slat. The heavy click of several additional locks followed while her sharp eyes watched you back, your heart shattering into even tinier bits with each one. 

And then Satoru did something that stomped on all the remaining shards of it. 

She left. 

You broke down, sobbing on the floor until there wasn’t anything left in you to cry out. Curling up on the frigid ground instead of the bed, unable to even summon the strength to get up and crawl towards it. 

At some point, you supposed you fell asleep like that, because when you woke up to a fraction of the sun slipping in through your tiny window, there were clothes and food delivered, along with a cold bucket of water and a washrag. 

Too numb to feel thankful, as if someone had scooped every part of you out as you ignored the food in front of you, about to cup a handful of water and drink it before you looked down at your hands and saw all the dried blood still staining them, your stomach shifting once again as the memory of Suguru’s face before he died floated up in your brain. 

You scrubbed your skin, washing Suguru off of you until the bucket had run red, staring at the liquid sloshing around. Refusing to stop until you were certain there were no traces of him left, your hands raw and trembling when you dropped the rag back down. 

Putting clothes back on didn’t make you feel any better. 

Not when you had traded the fancy dresses you had just begun to get used to for a plain one, the material scratching your skin as you finally managed to get yourself up into the bed. 

But even just trying to go back to sleep didn’t work when a knight came barging in to conduct an interrogation. 

Which essentially just meant hours of him asking the same questions and getting angry when you kept giving him the same answers? 

“Did you conspire to kill the king?” No. 

“Did you poison him?” No. 

“Did you have any reason to want him dead?” Yes. No. 

It didn’t matter what you said though. 

As long as it didn’t align with what he was hoping to hear, he wouldn’t give any of your words credence. 

And by the end of it, you were being dragged back to your cell, waiting for a fate far worse than simply being the mother of the future heir to the kingdom. 

Even if you used to think there was nothing worse than betraying Satoru. 

Being abandoned by her was the cruelest sentence of all. 

A raw throbbing ache taking up residence in your chest, reminding you of her absence with every short breath you sucked in, no blankets to curl up and hide under as you waited for the inevitable. 

You knew what the cold felt like. How brittle it could be when it settled into your bones. Knew how starvation felt when your body started to break down bits of yourself for sustenance. 

But knowing her warmth, how full she could make you feel, only ate at you more. Shoved off the pretty pedestal she placed you on, no longer sparkling or polished as you stared at your bitten-down nails and numbly craved pieces of her you knew would never be yours. 

Perhaps this was punishment for dreaming too big. 

For ever thinking that you could have her while you were still catering to Suguru. 

A day passed. 

And another. 

The hours slipping past you in a dull daze, food delivered that you refused to take a bite of. A little voice in your head that was quickly growing delirious suggested that it could be poisoned, and it was the only thing that tempted you into taking a small bite. 

But then you thought of the fear in Suguru’s eyes when he died, and you dropped it again, returning to your uncomfortable bed, curling up to stare at the same wall you’d been studying the cracks in since you first crawled into it. 

You were losing it. 

About to start speaking to yourself just to stop the silence from driving you crazy, only your thoughts to keep you company as you tossed and turned, no energy left in your exhausted limbs as you tried to think of all the ways this could end. 

Unable to come up with a way out of this when the only person you ever found worth living for had decided you weren’t worth it anymore. 

Satoru had told you to trust her. 

But you never had anything to offer her other than loyalty. 

And what good was that when you would’ve had her husband’s baby if he hadn’t died? 

She must hate you. 

“Oh, princess.” 

Great. 

You had lost it. 

Were you hearing things now? Sanity slipping away with every day you decided not to eat? 

“Won’t you at least look at me?” Satoru’s sweet voice called out to you. 

You weren't going to, stubbornly keeping your head forward until you heard the locks actually unlatching. Sitting up on the thin mattress and turning just in time to see the door opening, and your angel returning to you. 

An easy smile curling up on her glossy lips, her ethereal eyes sparkling in the fading light of the day drifting in from outside, a white dress softly fluttering around her frame as she leaned against the wall like she was waiting for you to get down on your knees and thank her. 

“I didn’t do it,” you breathed, almost automatically. 

You needed her to believe-

“Sweetheart,” she softly shook her head as she sighed. “I know.” 

Then why did she throw you in a tower and lock you up like this? Leave you a broken mess, laid bare and bloody? 

“I just had to take care of a few things,” Satoru cooed. 

You didn’t move. Couldn’t. 

Unable to speak when you stared at her, feeling like a stranger in your own skin as you studied her back. 

“Did you think I would just let you rot?” She teased, as if you weren’t still a prisoner while she tilted her head to the side, appraising you like you were some fruit she had finally decided to pluck. 

It hurt. 

A small wound ripping open beneath the surface, one you were quick to bandage up and come up with excuses for. 

Almost immediately telling yourself that surely, she came to you as soon as she could, relief washing over the fresh sting at the realization she truly didn’t think you were behind Suguru’s death. That she hadn’t abandoned you after all. 

“Don’t just sit there and stare at me,” she huffed, sick of your silence, folding her arms across her chest and frowning at you. 

“Toru?” You croaked out her name, wanting to trust that it still had a place on your lips as you waited for her to disappear. Standing up on unsteady legs, muscles sore from how little you’d used them lately as you took unsure steps forward. A piece of you still convinced that you might be imagining this, or drifted off to some pretty dream where she played the same role she always did. 

Your savior. 

But when you got to her, hesitantly reaching out to touch her face, your fingertips trembling as you touched her cheek to discover it was solid. 

Soft. 

“I missed you too,” she murmured affectionately, reaching up to hold your hand there. Relaxing into your touch as you felt something inside you instantly crumble at the tiniest show of regard. 

And before you could stop yourself, you threw your arms around her neck, tears welling up as you inhaled the sweet scent of her perfume, burying your face in her throat as a rough sob escaped you. 

She let you. 

Didn’t push you off or give you that look like you had overstepped some boundary. 

No, she just slid a hand over your back, holding you closer and letting you cry into her collarbone. Stroking your hair, slowly picking out the tangles and knots in it as your body shuddered with the force of your tears. 

You didn’t think you had anything left in you to cry. 

But apparently there you weren’t dried out yet, and she held you through all of it. Murmuring soft words into your ear, coaxing you to calm down as you struggled to piece yourself back together after you let it all fall apart. 

“I swear, I would never do anything that could put you at risk,” you added, anxiety still swirling around your thoughts as you shook your head. 

“Don’t worry,” Satoru purred, squeezing you as another shudder wracked through your body. “The right person will be imprisoned soon.” 

As terrible as it sounded, you couldn’t find it in yourself to care who had done it, or even why, as long as it meant you and Satoru would be safe. 

The rest was just noise. 

You could go back to being her maid. Waiting on her hand and foot if it meant you wouldn’t have to be away from her side again. 

And if the court tried to take her crown, or shipped her back to her own palace after the rightful king had been killed, well, you both could get through it together, couldn’t you? 

“I thought you left me,” you mumbled, your voice cracking as she tenderly hummed your name.

“I would never,” she swore, petting your head as she pulled you into her chest, your shoulders slumping at how tightly she held you.  

“Promise?” You hopefully asked, needing to know. Needing her to say she wasn’t going anywhere. 

Simply needing her. 

“I promise.” 

You believed her with just two words. 

Under her spell in a handful of moments, your heart pounding in your chest when she eventually pulled away, cupping your face and wiping away your tears like it hurt for her to see you crying. 

“Come with me,” she spoke slowly, her thumb skimming lightly over your cheekbone.

You would follow her anywhere. 

Across the kingdom. To another, or even over the sea to some small countryside village. Any place was fine. 

As long as she wanted you there. 

Skipping down the long stairs after her, your pulse thrumming in your eardrums as you waited to get stopped by some guard, for a knight to pop up and point a sword at you for absconding with their queen. 

No one else was around however, the halls barren and silent as her soft fingers interlaced through yours, tugging you ahead as she navigated through them with ease.

“Were you starving yourself for my attention?” She half-whispered, her voice hushed and husky as she threw you a look you didn’t understand. 

Was she disappointed in you? 

“I haven’t been hungry,” you mumbled, shaking your head. You never thought she’d come check on you. Or even be keeping tabs through whoever came to drop off the food for you. 

“That’s no excuse,” she softly scolded you. 

“I’m sorry,” you automatically apologized, hanging your head lower as she opened a door and ushered you into a room you’d never been in before. 

It looked like it was actually fit for a princess. 

Ornately designed and filled with expensive furniture you couldn’t fathom the cost of, your body freezing just two short steps inside as she shut the door behind you. Quickly making herself comfortable, slipping off her short heels and walking over to the massive bed against one wall, looking back at you with barely concealed excitement, searching your face to see if you shared

“You can stay here for now,” she whispered, winking at you as she ran her palm over the soft fabric of the blankets adorning the bed. “It’ll be our secret.” 

Your secret. 

The words echoed in your head, unable to shut your open mouth as you struggled to take your eyes off of her. 

“Much better than that dingy tower, hm?” Satoru goaded, pride glittering in her brilliant stare. 

“What is this?” You asked, looking around at the intricate tapestries hung on the walls, the plush carpets laid over the floor, the carvings into the wooden dressers and the canopy of the bed. 

“Your room,” she happily hummed. 

“My-” You couldn’t even say it out loud. 

It had to be a joke. 

“There’s a warm bath waiting for you,” she murmured, nodding towards an adjoining door you’d been too overwhelmed to notice before. “And some fresh fruit on a platter by the tub. Your favorites.” 

What were you meant to make of this? 

Her belated apology for locking you up for days? For leaving you behind to handle affairs far bigger than you? 

Something itched at the back of your conscience, telling you to second guess this gift. 

But how were you supposed to listen to your better judgement when everything left of your sensibility had been broken? 

“Please eat something,” she added, and all you could do was nod your head like a moron. 

“I will,” you dutifully answered. 

Who were you to disobey your queen? 

“Do you need help getting out of that?” She asked, glancing towards your dress, nose wrinkling at the dirt on it before she dusted herself off like perhaps you’d gotten her filthy too. 

“No, I can do it,” you insisted, slipping into the bathroom before you could somehow end up even more self-conscious. 

But your muscles were already aching for relief, a throbbing pain beginning in your shoulder when you lifted your dress up and over your head. 

One that was thankfully soothed by the still warm water in the tub, a welcome relief to the frigid water buckets you’d been sticking using the last few days. Flower petals floating on the surface, bath salts mixed in as you sank yourself in neck-deep. 

True to her word, there was a platter of food set up by the tub, and you forced yourself to take a few bites, nibbling on just enough to satisfy her request. 

Satoru was trying to take care of you. 

Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Offering your shoulder for her to cry or cling to after her husband died horrifically? Of course, you knew she didn’t like him. Or well, more accurately, she loathed him. But his passing put her in a precarious position, her own life most likely hanging in the balance when she had no heir to guarantee her safety or status here. 

You didn’t know what she was going to do. 

Which also meant you had no idea what you were going to do. 

A piece of you wished you were born a man. That you’d been given the chance or opportunity to learn swordsmanship, or got to train with the knights. That you would be able to protect Satoru, shield her from these petty and cruel court politics instead of getting caught in the crossfire. 

Washing yourself of the last few days did not help quell your feelings of inadequacy, or solve a single one of your problems, no matter how soothing it was to soak and scrub yourself clean properly this time. 

You didn’t linger in the tub. 

No matter how much you might have liked to, a far greater part of you longed to be around Satoru. Craving her company after you’d been deprived of her presence for so long. You wanted to curl up in her lap like you used to, back when you were children and she’d be the one to comfort you over every skinned knee and scraped elbow. 

Stepping out of the tub with a heavy sigh, squinting when you discovered something wasn’t quite right. 

“Toru?” You called out, glancing around the small room searching for something that was evidently forgotten. “There’s no towel.” 

Or change of clothes. 

Nothing but your discarded dress from before to cover up, although you weren’t exactly inclined to pick it back up. 

You thought she’d just open the door and toss something to put on. 

Not just swing the door open and saunter in a second later, not even blinking as her eyes swept over your bare form. Lingering on the swell of your breasts and the way the water droplets were still rolling down between them. 

“The maid must have forgotten,” she hummed, dragging her stare off of you to do a courtesy sweep of the room. “Give me a moment.” 

You were overthinking it. 

Nodding obediently as you glanced down at your legs, shuffling on your feet as heat rose to your cheeks, thankful for the soft thud of the door shutting. She returned a couple minutes later, a towel in one arm and a white gown that looked an awful lot like a short version of her own in the other, passing both to you with that practiced smile of hers she usually saved for when she was up to something. 

“There you go,” Satoru chirped. “I’ll wait for you.” 

It wasn’t like she hadn’t seen you naked before. 

But this felt decidedly different.  

And you didn’t know what to do about the strange fluttering in your stomach at the idea of her watching you dress, at the way her eyes had drifted so dangerously slowly over the shape of you. 

Was this a dream? 

Were you still asleep? Still stuck in that tower? 

Wishing for something you had never once been able to admit to yourself that you wanted? 

You took an extra few minutes to dry off, adjusting the way the dress hung over you five times too many before you paused to brush your teeth in the mirror, avoiding your reflection as you spit in the sink, watching the tinged pink drool disappear with a soft exhale. 

Satoru was pristine. Pure. 

And what were you? 

You opened the door, fiddling with the hem of the dress she’d given you as you nearly ran straight into where she was waiting right outside of it. 

“I was getting worried,” she lightly joked, and you were brushing past her, a painful surge of panic bubbling back up. 

“Why are you doing this for me?” You asked, hyper aware of how undeserving you were as you padded barefoot back into the overwhelmingly lovely room. “It’s too much, I-” 

“You should know by now that nothing is too much for me when it comes to you,” Satoru chided with a soft chuckle. Refusing to let you step away from her, grabbing your wrist before you could slip away. 

She was so close. 

That familiar scent of her lulling you back in, daring you to breathe her in again. 

And god, you wanted to. 

Satoru said your name, and before you knew what you were doing, you were leaning up on your tip toes and pressing your lips to hers, impulsively planting a kiss to her strawberry-flavored mouth. 

You knew within half a second that you shouldn’t have done it, but you couldn’t stop yourself, deepening it as your fingertips tenderly grazed her impossibly perfect skin. It took every ounce of self restraint for you to pull away from her, shaking your head as you tried not to cry at the thought you would never get to do that again. 

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, immediately wishing you could take it back, sure that she would throw you back in the tower for the crime of presuming you could possibly deserve anything as sweet as her lips. “I shouldn’t have-” 

But before you could so much as finish your sentence, Satoru was cupping your face and pulling you back in, her nose nestling against yours as her blue eyes sparkled with something you’d never seen in them before. 

“Do it again.” 

ε✿з

You were kissing her. 

For a moment, Satoru was sure she had died and this was heaven. 

How often had she scrawled into diaries her deepest dreams of getting to experience the taste of you on her tongue? 

Your gentle hands on her face and your heaving chest pressed against hers, lips slipping between her own with desperate affection. 

You. Desperate. For her. 

Her brain only conjuring her small words and short sentences, too overwhelmed by the sensation of your soft mouth to think straight. 

God, you tasted so good. 

Fruity and sweet at the same time, your delicate fingers sifting through her hair as you let out the quietest squeak Satoru immediately wanted to hear over and over, sure she’d never get sick of the sound. 

And behind the lovestruck haze, a jealous voice scoffed that she should’ve killed Suguru far sooner for getting to taste you like this first. 

Slipped the poison in his cup the moment he set his sights on you and made his intent to steal you clear. 

Of course, cleaning it up would’ve been much messier, but red hot jealousy coiled and cut through all her cold logic when she thought of his massive mitts manhandling you instead of treating you like the rare flower you really were. 

Satoru was the one who spent her life watering you, taking care to tend to the soil and fertilize it, making sure you’d bloom so beautifully for her, and he tried to rip your roots out like you wouldn’t just wither away without her. 

“Satoru,” you whispered her name, sucking in a sharp breath as you pulled back, eyes shining with surprise. 

“You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for you,” she swallowed hard, spit pooling in the back of her mouth. 

From the day you looked up at her like some wounded lamb, you had been hers. 

Perhaps it had just taken a little separation for you to see that too. 

“You were waiting for me?” You repeated, that dazed, dreamy look in your eyes as you looked up at her, as if you thought she was going to change her mind. 

“My heart has always been yours,” she proclaimed, although the confession she used to imagine came out far more shaky than it had in her head. Not nearly as cool or collected or calm as she pictured when your cheek was so warm beneath her palm. 

Praying that you wouldn’t change your mind now that she had no way to take back the words. 

“But I’m-” You were about to put yourself down. To diminish the light inside you that she loved so much. 

“You’re mine.” 

And no one else’s now. 

Before you could protest, claim something silly about the difference in your status, she was pulling you back onto the bed, your form landing on top of hers as the feathered mattress cushioned the fall. You tried to wiggle back, but Satoru simply gripped your waist, refusing to let you budge as she pushed her bottom lip out in a pout you immediately softened for. 

“Say it for me,” she requested. 

“I have always belonged to you,” you acquiesced, and Satoru wanted to bury herself inside of your heart to make sure there really was no space for anyone else inside of it. 

That it was wholly hers the way you already occupied every nook and crevice of her body and brain. 

She was craning her neck up to kiss you again, your mouth meeting hers a little slower, more hesitation creeping in as your body began to melt against her. A possessive hand sliding up your spine, already annoyed at the fabric separating your skin from hers. 

Needing to feel you properly, for your soft flesh to dimple beneath her fingers, to leave lovebites scattered across every inch of you that you offered. 

“It killed me to see you with him,” she muttered, chest seizing at how vulnerable the confession came out. 

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, shaking your head before she abruptly flipped you over, pinning you beneath her and pushing your dress up to expose-

Oh fuck. 

Was every part of you so pretty? 

Your pussy glistening as she nudged your thighs further apart, her pulse pounding in her ears as she finally got to see all of you up close. Presented perfectly for her, your nose scrunched up like you might be scared she could possibly find something wrong with you instead of being awestruck by the simple sight of you splayed out for her. 

She might not have a cock, but Satoru was sure she could make you cum hard enough to forget about any petty insecurities that might be plaguing you. 

“Take your gown off,” Satoru instructed, only realizing how stern it came out when you faltered, hesitating as you bit your bottom lip. “Please.” 

Before she had to break down and beg for you to strip. 

Satoru sat up and started lifting off her own dress as well, watching the way your eyes hung onto the heave of her breasts, how they kept shyly flickering back up to her face as your fingers slowly moved to remove the fabric. 

You weren’t girls anymore. 

Not kids playing husband and wife, or king and queen. 

Exploring each other for keeps, hands tepidly traveling across hips and thighs and breasts at first, although it didn’t take much time for the touches to turn needy. 

Hungry for something you’d both been starving yourselves of for years. 

Could you really blame Satoru for not being able to stop herself? 

For hooking one of those soft thighs of yours over her shoulder and dragging her tongue along the inside of it before the last little tendril of self-control she possessed snapped? 

She had to have you. 

Slipping two fingers inside you slowly, feeling the way you squeezed around her digits, your mouth forming a delicious little ‘o’ she wanted to kiss again. Already shaking before she even began to swirl her fingers around inside of you, barely able to contain the heat rolling through her core just watching your reactions as she pushed in deeper. 

You whimpered, and every single thing that led up to this in Satoru’s life was suddenly worth it. 

The mocking, the marriage, every mistake she made on this meandering path, she’d do all of it again if you were waiting for her at the end of it. 

Your lips swollen and kiss-bruised as you let out soft sounds of pleasure that were because of her. Your naked form shivering in the same bed as you reached down to run your fingers through her hair, holding it back as she found herself half-delirious with lust she couldn’t hold back. 

Slotting in a third finger the second she thought you could take it, watching your eyes widen and start to water as they rolled back, your hips bucking up to drive her fingers as deep as possible. 

“My princess can take more,” she purred, spreading you further apart, greedy eyes gazing on your stripped bare body, the thin sheen of sweat sticking to your skin as you moaned her name. 

“S-S’toru,” you cried out, and she was a little tempted to just do this for hours and count how many times she could make you say it precisely like that. 

Satoru must have imagined this moment a million times. What your face would look like all scrunched up, how you would shiver and shake as she swirled her fingers in, feeling for all those sensitive spots that had you immediately trying to squirm and wiggle away. 

Pushing and pressing into them while she pleaded for you to stay put in her sultriest voice. 

“Be a good girl for me,” she hummed, and you nodded, loyal as ever. Itching to please her as badly as she wanted to please you. “Let me love you.” 

Let her hold you. 

Fuck you. 

Make you cum as many times as you could in a single night and then give her the rest of them. All your nights. All your days. Everything. 

Satoru had always been greedy. 

And you satiated her sweet tooth more than anything else ever did. 

Sinking her teeth into the inside of your thighs just because she could, feeling your muscles twitch and spasm as you gasped, caught off guard. 

You didn’t stop her. 

No, you let her bite and lick and kiss, her mouth latching onto your swollen clit, swirling the tip of her tongue over it as you let out a raw noise. As if someone had just ripped it from your stomach, pulled it out of you too fast for you to soften it. 

Her fingers continued to thrust in while she nipped at your clit, just for your body to confirm what she suspected by clenching around her hand like you wanted to trap it in there. You were cumming for her already. 

She’d seen you do it with Suguru. 

But this one was so much more visceral, no dramatic or drawn-out moan, just your body melting into a puddle for her to mold as you fell apart for her. 

You were shuddering, limbs trembling, as you tried to pull her back by her hair. 

But you had never been good at telling her no. 

Even when she was driving you right to the brink of overstimulation, and then pushing you well past it, greedily sucking on that sensitive bud, pressing her tongue flat against it as she pumped her fingers in-and-out, finding a steady rhythm to ruin you too. 

Satoru had never had sex before. Her purity protected well into the marriage she was supposed to save it for. No experience of her own to truly compare this too. But she’d touched herself and pretended it was you enough times to have an idea of what would make you unravel just right. 

Operating on instinct, on need, peering up at you from her position between your thighs as pretty tears welled up in your eyes. Satoru wanted to soothe your ache, to kiss them away and drag her tongue over the streaks they left on your cheeks. 

Perhaps she should’ve planned a little better, found something bigger to stick in you, to make you moan and murmur for mercy with, watching you fall apart while she teased and toyed with your body now that you had finally given yourself fully to her. 

You were so beautiful like this. 

Being brought to the heights of pleasure, worshipped the way you should’ve been from the start, her tongue and fingers working together as she clumsily made out with you, only pulling off to drag the thick muscle over your slick folds for a better taste.

“I-I-” You hiccuped, your voice half an octave too high as your thighs clamped down around her head, your own thrown back as you wiggled your hips, chasing a second climax. “I c-can’t-” 

“You can,” Satoru hummed, rubbing her own thighs together to soothe the aching need between them. “Want you to cum for me again, princess.” 

You wouldn’t deny her. 

You never did. 

Desperately groaning as you gave in, sweat making both your bodies sticky as you tried to not to tug too hard at her hair, still holding back to not hurt her as you crumbled into a crying mess. Tears slipping out that she was quick to climb back on top of you and wipe away, kissing your lips to swallow your whines, enjoying the way you fit so nicely beneath her until you started to come back down. “You look so pretty like this,” she softly complimented, tracing her thumb over your lip, already missing your kiss the moment your mouths were apart. 

“Toru,” you whispered her name, and she was sure that she would never get sick of hearing it. Far fucking better than the way you used to say Suguru. 

“Mhm?” She hummed, chewing on the inside of her cheek as you stared straight through her. That fuzzy look in your eyes fading as understanding replaced the daze. 

Like you’d suddenly gained some clarity.

“It was you, was it?” You asked, and you didn’t need to say what when you were both well aware of what you were accusing her of. 

Were you really just now considering it? 

Was your judgement clouded from your unconditional love? So devoted that you were deluding yourself into ignoring the obvious? 

“No,” Satoru lied, still in the habit of hiding the truth if it meant sparing your feelings. Refusing to lose you after she just got you. “It wasn’t me.” 

ε✿з

You were flying far too close to the sun. 

You knew that somewhere deep inside of you as Satoru snuggled against your collarbone, her warmth wrapped around you as she burned you up. Her scorching touch seared into your skin as she refused to let even an inch separate the two of you. 

Sooner or later, your wings were going to fail you, and send you tumbling out of the sky back to the ground. 

Would she catch you when you crashed?

Or would you be left to stare up at her until she was just a beautiful bird flying high out of your reach? 

All you were doing was damning yourself by dreaming of a happy ending with her. 

You guessed you should just be grateful for what you had while you had it. 

That she hadn’t cut your tongue out for daring to slip it between her lips.

It hadn’t been the first time you had thought about it. 

But even entertaining the idea of her choosing you had always been so preposterous you pushed your budding feelings down deep, refusing to let them devour you no matter how often she occupied your dreams. 

Your life had been built around the pristine pedestal you placed her on.  

Your world revolved around her smile, her laugh, hearing your twinkling voice in your ear and feeling her soft fingers brushing over your skin. 

Everything you’d ever done had been for her. 

So why did it feel like you’d just gone from warming one ruler’s sheets to another? 

As if you were just in her bed for the comfort she brought, the security of her position. 

You hoped she wouldn’t think that. That she understood that if she asked you to run away with her today, you would accept without hesitation. 

Next to her now, her sleepy eyes fluttering open as she hummed your name, it just made you think of how stupid you were not to have been doing this all along. For not seeing this for what it was sooner. 

“You’ll be safe here,” Satoru murmured, snuggling against you as you rolled onto your side. Keeping herself glued to you, her lips lingering on your skin with a content sigh. 

“What happens next?” You murmured, watching the morning sun beginning to rise through the stained glass window, slowly chasing the dark away as your personal sunshine faltered for a moment. 

“They’re still investigating his passing,” she mumbled, refusing to say Suguru’s name. Or call it for what it must have been. An assassination someone wanted to make you the scapegoat for. “You haven’t been officially cleared yet.” 

And still, she’d showed up for you, hadn’t she? “But I will be?” You hopefully asked, your heart thrumming at the thought of this being ripped from you too. 

“Nothing will happen to you,” she swore. 

You had given her your heart. Your soul. Your body. 

Those were all you really had to offer. 

But handing her your trust? 

That was…tricky. 

Especially when she wouldn’t offer any more details about your detainment as the minutes melted into hours and the hours twisted into days that just kept passing. 

In the dark moments, a cold voice suggested that you should at least consider the chance she could have done it. Orchestrated it from the shadows. But she had told you she hadn’t. 

She would’ve confessed it if she had. 

Suguru had his fair share of enemies. Disgruntled rulers from other kingdoms, angry nobles and dukes who wanted more power than he allowed. 

It wasn’t like it was outrageous that one of them had grown sick of his antics and took matters into their own hands.  

So you tried to be content too, Satoru trading your tower for more comfortable quarters, her trusted knights stationed outside the room you caught glimpses at when she slipped in-and-out, leaving you to attend to her duties most days. 

She brought you meals, insisting on hand feeding you half the time, murmuring under her breath that you couldn’t be trusted to do it yourself before she had you for dessert. Hands spreading your thighs apart as she lapped and licked you up, refusing to pull off until you had cum on her tongue or come undone with her fingers, falling apart for her to mend back together. 

Still, it had started to feel like you were becoming more a part of her schedule than like her partner. 

Perhaps that was wishing too much though. 

Wanting more than you had any right to ask for. 

At the end of the day, you would still always be a maid in everyone’s eyes. 

Her pet. 

Her people wouldn’t exactly be pleased to know that their queen was more interested in women than securing another king or providing them an heir? 

Were you a price she was willing to pay for political control? Would there come a day where she would remarry another man? 

Was it already being arranged while you wasted weeks lounging around in her bed and longing for her to join you, smelling her scent on the pillow and aching for her return? 

The worst part was how Satoru was so hesitant to let you hold her, doing everything on her terms as she came up with excuse after excuse to keep your hands either bound behind your back or tethered in her hair instead of tracing over her soft skin. 

Did she think you were too dirty? 

That you would stain her supple flesh if you so much as squeezed her close? 

No matter how much it stung, you still shoved down your discomfort. Told yourself that you should be grateful for what she was giving you and ignore how much she withheld. 

You had to plead with her just to be allowed to visit her office during the days to keep yourself from going insane. A trusted knight always had to accompany you there, a shawl hiding your face as they carefully took you there when no one else would be around. She stocked extra books for you, a basket left next to one of the armchairs with embroidery supplies, sometimes making you write letters for her that she couldn’t care to do herself to foreign kingdoms and nobles to settle their unrest. 

And after a month, you began to settle. 

Setting aside old foolish hopes and accepting your new routine. 

Waiting for her to join you in her office, curling up in one of the other chairs as you tried to tell yourself that she’d come back soon. She had run off to attend some important meeting, patting your head and telling you that it was nothing when you tried to ask what it was about.  

So what if it made you feel a little pathetic for waiting around like a poor puppy dog abandoned by her owner? 

Satoru would return to you. 

And she made all of it worth it. 

Your body was beginning to fall asleep though, pins and needles pricking your limbs when you stood to shake it off, walking around in a circle and wondering if you were just destined to be on her leash before you decided to slump yourself in her chair instead. 

It smelled like her. 

Your body relaxing at the scent, already trained as your eyes skimmed over her cluttered desk space, papers strewn around from the hurry she left in before. 

Curiosity pricking at you as you found yourself slowly opening up drawers and peeking inside to see if there was anything interesting hiding from you. And slipped underneath thick ledgers and blank papers was a plain black leather-bound notebook you’d seen her writing in before. 

You pulled it out, a not-at-all small piece of you hoping that maybe it was a secret diary as you started flipping through it, that you’d find your own name scribbled down with hearts drawn next to it. 

It turned out your name was there. 

But it was the words that were with it that sent your stomach through the floor. 

The contents of it were cold. 

Sharp. Each word punctuated so deeply that the ink bled between the pages. 

The confirmation that she loved you was there. Just sandwiched between white hot anger that someone else had gotten to touch you first. To fuck you in the bed you belonged in with her. 

Queasiness slowly building in your core, something thick and slimy coiling around your heart as you skipped from the earlier entries to the more recent ones, knowing what was coming before you found the entry for the day Suguru died. 

And there in between the lines, the truth stared back at you. 

She had dinner with Suguru. 

Shared a meal together right before he went to join you that she never once mentioned to you. 

No.

This couldn’t be right. 

Satoru couldn’t have-

Or well, if she did, she wouldn’t have framed you for it. 

She loved you.

Swore that you were hers and that she’d never let anything awful happen to you again. The idea that she’d put you through hell just to have you all to herself was crippling. 

Maybe she didn’t outright admit that she’d done it, maybe you still didn’t know precisely how, but you knew it was her with a scary sort of certainty. 

Your body freezing as you read and reread the five short lines in front of you detailing her evening, forcing yourself to turn the page and read ahead, to see her absolutely unaffected as she offered just a single line about Suguru dying. Images of his face, that awful look in his eyes before he collapsed floating back up as you choked on the stomach-churning memory of him. 

An awful thought crept in that she left it here for you to find. That some part of her hoped you’d be nosey enough to snoop and come across it. 

For you to see all of her. 

Was it a test? 

Her attempt to see if your devotion to her was strong enough to stay despite what she’d done. 

You closed the book, shoving it back where you found it and standing up as the knowledge started to sink in, to seep through and cast a darker shade on your days together as you rushed to return to your chair. 

What if it had all been designed to keep you firmly in your place beneath her? Confined to her chambers and chained to her heart? 

Didn’t she already know she didn’t need to do any of it for you to stay? 

The door opened with a creak, and you were reopening the forgotten book you’d been reading before you found the forbidden one. 

“Hi, beautiful,” Satoru greeted as she walked over, bending over to press a soft kiss on your cheek before breezing past to her desk. 

“Hi, Toru,” you echoed, pretending to be absorbed in the book in your hands, hoping she wouldn’t notice you were holding it upside down. 

You closed it, placing it in your lap as you looked up at her with easy obedience, praying she wouldn’t pay any mind to the suspicion now lingering underneath it. 

“Was I gone long?” She earnestly asked as she slid into her seat, scooting it up close to her desk and leaning across it as her blue eyes focused solely on your face. 

“It felt like it,” you confessed, swallowing hard. 

“I must make it up to you tonight then,” your Toru teased, her perfectly cruel mouth curling up as she delivered a cute wink. 

She did make it up to you. 

But it didn’t make you forget what you found. 

What were you meant to do about it? 

Pretend you hadn’t? Pray that no one else would ever discover what you had? 

You wished she would abandon this. Abdicate the throne and take you away somewhere warm. 

But it was Satoru. 

Hadn’t you learned already she refused to give up anything once it was hers? 

The privilege, the power, the promise of a gold gilded future with you waiting on her. 

She would never let it go. 

It was you that didn’t know how to move forward. That could figure out where to go from here when she didn’t seem to notice your indiscretion. 

You spent two days torn over it. Treading softly with her, feigning that you were fine overnight until she left you again and you unraveled in her absence. 

Opening the bedroom door an hour after she left, already knowing who’d you find on the other side. A brute of a man standing guard, his back to the opposite wall as his ruby red eyes narrowed at you with pure annoyance. 

“No.”

You hadn’t even spoken yet. 

Eying him with the same irritation he showed for you, nose scrunching up as you stopped yourself from huffing. 

Most of the guards she had stationed outside your room changed, unaware of who they were even protecting, a rotating roster of men ready to keep you from breaking free. But not him. 

He was always the one posted directly by your door.

Dark pink hair falling down in his face, scarred and marked skin always creased in a stern scowl when he caught you staring at him, one foot about to fall forward before he shook his head.

“Stop,” he grunted as you peeked out of the door, and you feigned innocence, shrugging your shoulders. 

“I just want to go to her office,” you pleaded, and he glared at you, refusing to even entertain your request.

“No,” he deadpanned. 

But there was something underneath his rude facade that you didn’t like. Your brows pinching together as you tried to pout at him, to come up with something persuasive enough to change his answer. 

Before you could, there was the click of heels, and you glanced back to see Satoru returning, a platter prepared with desserts. Her pretty face was pinched up with obvious displeasure though, her mouth twitching down as you hurried to step back inside your room. 

She was slamming the door shut after you a few seconds later, half-shoving the tray into your hands as she turned to you with a disgruntled hiss. 

“Why were you speaking to him?” Satoru snapped, and the only thing you could properly think about was how pretty she looked when she was jealous. 

The downturn of her lips, the way her blue eyes glinted with unfettered annoyance, blowing air out of her nose as she tilted her head to the side all dramatically. 

“I wanted to see you,” you murmured, cupping her face just for her jaw to clench. 

Torn between taking you at your word and questioning it. 

“You know I would be here with you all the time if I could,” she softly said, despite how cold her stare still was. Her hands still held warmth for you though. Delicately picking up a slice of a cake she must’ve requested the chef make, bringing it up to your lips. 

You opened up for her. Holding her stare as she pushed it through, taking a small bite as she watched you swallow it. 

“I worry about you,” you confessed as she wiped the icing from the corner of your mouth. 

“Don’t.” 

You never thought Satoru could possibly ask too much of you. 

But that was simply impossible. 

And the longer you went without any answers, the more you found yourself starting to spiral. To unravel as you waited and waited for something to change. 

What could you do? 

It wasn’t like the court you’d never found any friends in would support what the two of you shared. Satoru had kept you completely clueless to what was happening outside of the two rooms you could be in, ignorant to how much trouble she might be in with no husband to wear the crown. 

Truthfully, you had no plan. 

No magical solution that struck you in the middle of the night. 

But you wanted to help. 

Peeking back out into the hallway a week after you first found her book, ready to prod and press her knight for more information on what you’d been missing, but to your surprise, the hallway was empty. 

No sign of anyone as you slipped out, your heart thrumming loudly in your chest as you started down the familiar path to her office. 

It was a short walk, but every step made your chest constrict, pulse pounding so loud you were sure someone had to hear until you were finally there, her office door cracked open just enough for you to steal a glimpse inside. 

The knight was there, his brows knitted together tight as he looked through all the books lining the shelves, walking over to her desk and carefully looking through the documents on it with that permanent scowl of his. 

Searching for something.

Oh no. 

You had a feeling you knew exactly what he was hoping to find. 

He was going to betray her, wasn’t he? Looking for proof of what she’d done 

His hand reached for the drawer her notebook was in, and you were pushing the door open before he could discover it. 

Your suspicions were confirmed with how straight he abruptly stood, acting as if he hadn’t just been snooping. 

“What are you doing out of your room?” He snarled at you, his voice hoarse and harsh as you refused to tremble or back down. 

“What are you doing in here?” You returned the question, throat constricting at the intensity of his glare.

You weren’t brave. Not nearly as strong or stubborn as Satoru.  

It wasn’t like anyone would ever be intimidated by you. 

But you would try for her.

He didn’t answer your question, just grinding his back molars as he stepped out from around the desk, starting to stomp over as if he planned to drag you out and toss you back into your room. 

If he did that though, he might just come back and find precisely what he was looking for. 

So while he started towards you, you walked the opposite way around to where he’d been, a lie slipping off your tongue like you were used to telling them, “I just wanted to grab some books I left in here.” 

“Hurry up then,” he scoffed, biting his tongue, probably not pushing it so you wouldn’t go and tattle to Toru about him being in here. 

He thought you were stupid. 

Just a brainless fool who was only good for getting fingered and fucked. 

Not batting an eye when you grabbed a couple books you’d set aside on Satoru’s desk before pulling open the drawer and grabbing her diary, sliding it in the middle of the pile as her knight impatiently looked outside the door. 

She would notice it was gone. 

And you would have to fess up, admit that you’d read it enough to know to take it. 

You’d rather her be mad at you than to get caught for her crime. 

Stoking the flames in the fireplace the second your guard half-pushed you back into the room you were supposed to be in, ripping out the incriminating pages first and using them for tender before tossing the rest of the book in. Watching it go up in flames, ashes sputtering out as it turned to dust in front of your eyes while you paced the floor and planned out the speech you would give her. 

Or would have given her had she actually returned for dinner.

The sun setting and the moon replacing it through your window as you waited and waited for her to come for you. Debating and drowning in your anxieties over what could be taking her so long, your eyes compelled back to the burning papers, using the fire poker to keep the flames going before you were finally forced to face the reality that Satoru might not be showing up tonight. 

Climbing back under the freezing covers, the bed so much bigger without her there to curl up against. 

It didn’t matter how silky the sheets were or how comfortable the mattress was. 

You couldn’t sleep anymore when there wasn’t the scent of her perfume and the softness of her skin to comfort you.

Was she upset with you?

Had something awful happened to her? 

To make everything worse, you started to hear a…commotion on the floor below you. Voices and the sound of things moving around, shouts and scuffles that only served to heighten your nerves. 

You almost opened the door to go find out what was going on. Sneak out again to search for the truth, but every time your hand settled on the knob, you couldn’t bring yourself to turn it. 

Ignorance could be bliss. 

But the truth would come out sooner or later. 

Curled up on the edge of your bed, hands clasped together as your eyes stuck to the door, shadows dancing across the floor as the sun rose once again. 

When it opened again, you were immediately standing, wiping sweaty palms on your nightdress as your breath got stuck in your throat, a hot lump forming the moment Satoru actually walked through. 

“Hi, sweetheart,” she softly greeted, exhaustion obvious in the dark circles betraying her beautiful face. 

“What happened?” You asked, studying her features for some clue, heart slamming into your chest as you tried to figure out what the chaos beneath you could possibly be. What could’ve taken her so long to come to you. 

“They discovered who killed our dearly departed king,” she said, a faint hint of amusement shimmering before she turned away to lock the door behind her. 

“What?” Your throat closed up, the word coming out as a stunned squeak as your brain tried to add together everything you knew. 

The person who killed Suguru was standing in front of you. 

If they knew that, she would be on her way to the gallows. 

Not turning around so you could undo her corset. 

You automatically stepped forward, fingers trembling as you undid her dress out of habit. 

“One of the knights slipped poison into his wine,” Satoru apathetically huffed, as if it was a waste of time to even talk about it. 

“One of the knights?” You echoed, reaching for something you didn’t know if you were confident enough to confront her about right as you unlaced the final part. Satoru stepped out of it with ease, her perfect body on display as she twisted back around to look over her shoulder at you. “Which one?” 

“Does it matter?” She scoffed, arching up an eyebrow, clearly unhappy with your question. 

But you still had one more left. 

“Why?” 

Her hesitation to answer gave you a different one. 

“You know as well as I do what he was like,” she said, a little too snappy as she squinted at you. 

But the moment the words were out there, you could see she regretted her response, her fingers skimming over your waist and squeezing you tenderly. “It’s all over now.” 

You stared at her. 

Satoru was lying to you. 

You didn’t know why it surprised you. Couldn’t explain why it left you so shocked, staring at her in silence as you struggled to find something to say that wouldn’t give away what you knew. 

“The knight was executed over night,” she added, your heart stilling as you realized the toll had risen to two. 

But could you be upset when the other option was one, or maybe both of you taking their place? 

“How did-” 

“He stole something of mine,” Satoru muttered, and you knew what must’ve happened without her offering anything else. 

She must have returned to her office first and realized her journal was gone.

And there were only two people she trusted enough to have access to the office it was kept in. 

So she pinned the blame on her knight and beheaded him before he could speak about any of its contents or piece together what she’d done for you. 

“He didn’t,” you breathed, your lungs shrinking as you struggled to get any more air in. 

One of you had to be honest here.

She blinked at you, not comprehending what you were saying. 

“What?” “It was me,” you admitted, stiffly shrugging your shoulders. “I saw him searching your office. And, I, um, took it and threw it in the hearth.” 

“You burned my-?” 

“I read it,” you swallowed hard, that hard lump still there, still choking you up as you avoided her stare. “Before. I know-” 

“No,” she cut you off, grabbing your chin and forcing you to tilt your face up to meet hers. “You, you were supposed to stay out of this.” 

You knew in an instant all she wanted was to protect you. To shield you from the nasty politics and petty games these awful people liked to play. 

But you couldn’t stand the idea of her doing anything at the expense of herself. 

“You should have told me from the start,” you insisted. “I-I would’ve-” 

“Your hands were supposed to be clean.” And your head empty. 

Did she think you wouldn’t have loved her if you knew what she had done? 

And now you had helped her conceal it. 

“We could have-” You started, about to tell her that as long as you were together, you could work out the rest. 

“If I told you before, you would have said there was another way,” Satoru solemnly said, her eyes narrowing as her fingers tightened around your wrist. 

You couldn’t really argue that. You would have said precisely that. Told her it was too risky. Tried to dissuade her from taking drastic measures and attempting to convince her to run away with you. 

You used to wish that the two of them would find a way to work it out. That you could find a happily ever after where everyone would get along. 

What would your reaction have been if she touched your face and told you that she was going to murder her husband? 

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” She pressed when you took too long to reply, her fingers pinching your chin to draw your attention back to right now. “I was not about to let you carry his child.” 

It wasn’t like you could have hers. 

Even if you’d do that in a heartbeat.

“He would have just kept putting babies in you and pushing me away from you” Satoru hissed, jealousy and anger rolling into her raw voice. “I couldn’t-” 

“I know,” you interrupted her this time, softening as you leaned into her.

“Now it’s just us again,” she whispered conspiratorially, pressing a clipped-short nail against the tip of your nose. 

How were you supposed to be mad about that? 

You held your breath though, still searching for anything that could stand in the way.

“These people, they are not going to just let you rule forever,” you whispered, thinking about what could befall both of you if her treason was ever discovered. Sure, she’d found someone to blame, but there must be other loose ends. Whoever she obtained the poison from. The subjects who never supported her as queen to start with. “If they find out or-” 

Satoru pressed her finger against your mouth, stopping you while you spiralled. 

“Princess,” she murmured, clicking her tongue as her initial emotions swirled into that cocky confidence of hers. Pride returning as she realized that you weren’t going to condemn or curse her, but that you were concerned for her. “Don’t you know me?” 

You hoped that meant she had already considered every side of your fear and took care of every conceivable problem. 

“I love you,” you offered instead, your voice trembling as you put your trust in her hands. 

“His throne is mine,” she smiled softly. And his concubine. 

“What if someone else challenges it?” You pressed. 

“There’s going to be a baby born with dark hair and purple eyes in a few months. His child. The mother doesn’t want the child, so I made a deal. She gets her own estate. We will get our heir,” She explained, speaking in short sentences like it would make the revelation easier to swallow. 

“Someone else was pregnant with his child?” You breathed, taken aback. 

When the fuck did he have the time to plow someone else’s field when he pretended to be so preoccupied with you? 

It was wrong, especially when it wasn’t like your heart had ever wanted him, but it wounded your own pride a little bit at the idea you hadn’t been enough for him.

You supposed you should’ve suspected it, if Satoru wasn’t enough for him either. 

“You weren’t his only-”

“Whore,” you finished for her, the word coming out a little strangled as you saw the situation for what it was. 

All you’d been was a warm body to Suguru. 

You were both disposable, to be used and discarded when his interests drifted. 

“We’ll tell everyone the baby is yours,” she added, as if she had already planned every last detail out. “And until the child is old enough, I can still rule as a regent.” 

Was that why she’d been hiding you away? 

Faking a pregnancy instead of keeping you prisoner? 

“Do you think they’ll accept a child they think is a bastard?” You asked, needing her to say yes. 

To assure you that your fears were unfounded. 

That she’d take care of you the same way she always had. 

“I will give them no other option.” 

When she spoke like that, that cold look icing over her eyes as she steeled her resolve, you knew she would. That she would do anything necessary to make sure of it.

“And what? We live happily ever after?” 

Say yes.

You needed it. Craved her confirmation. 

Looking up at her as your trembling fingers reached out to trace her waist, holding your breath as she nodded slowly. 

“Forever.” 

Your angel was standing in front of you promising you everything you ever wanted.

How were you ever meant to say no? 

Even if she would lead you straight to Hell. 

“You can be my queen,” Satoru murmured, giving you that pretty puppy dog pout you always fell for, placated as she leaned down to leave a soft kiss to your forehead like it was all settled.

Regret still lingering in your body as you ached to actually be that for her. Wishing your circumstances had been different from the beginning. 

That you were never cursed to be so far below her, and in the body of a woman that could never wear a matching ring or recite wedding vows to her. 

“I wish I was a-”  

“Do not,” she scoffed, shaking her head. “You are perfect precisely the way you are.” 

“Then why don’t you let me love you like you love me?” You asked, almost immediately annoyed at yourself for sounding a little whiney. 

But you wanted to be inside of her. 

To feel her squeeze and squirm around you, to hear her dissolve into messy whimpers and whines because of you. 

“W-what do you mean?” She stuttered, her white brows arching up high as her lips got stuck in the sort of ‘o’ that made you itch to slip your tongue inside of her. 

“I want to make you feel good,” you simply said, cheeks heating up as you swallowed the spit pooling in your mouth. 

You had never seen Satoru nervous before. 

Her mouth opened and clamped shut a few times before she started trying to ramble off reasons that she was better at giving, but you were sick of them. Sick of all the stupid things that had kept you apart. 

All the years you could’ve spent in her warmth that you missed out on. Mourning what both of your lives could’ve been if you were born as other people. 

But she had sworn you were enough for her. 

Was it wrong to want to show her how she was far more than enough for you? 

“I-I just like the way you taste and-” 

You kissed her mid-sentence, shutting her up before she could stall this any longer. 

Grabbing her this time, guiding her back to the bed one step at a time, tangling your fingers in her soft, silky hair as your tongue slipped past her lips, tracing the sharp tips of her canines until her back hit the mattress. 

And god, the moment you climbed on top of her, straddling her soft waist and pausing to peel your nightdress over your head, you hated yourself for not doing it sooner. 

For missing out on the view you were currently taking in, eyes slowly drifting over the swell of her breasts, the pink peaked buds of her nipples as she sucked in uneven breaths, staring up at you with those dazzling blue eyes. 

“You’re so beautiful,” you whispered, the words ripped from you as you struggled to keep yourself steady. 

It felt like you were defiling something holy. 

Her sacred body below you, your fingertips skimming over her pale stomach, swirling slowly across her nipple as you bit your bottom lip. 

If she was an altar, a god, you’d pray to her every day. 

Swear your faith and undying devotion, shower her with offerings and pray for just a sliver of her favor. 

You couldn't believe she was yours. 

“I’m a virgin,” Satoru suddenly blurted out, your fingers freezing as you drifted them back down below her belly button. 

“Oh,” you blinked. 

You suppose it should’ve been obvious. 

But you had never really thought too hard about it. 

You never exactly prized your virtue. But hers was different. 

Special. 

“Do you want me to stop?” You tentatively asked, about to climb back off of her before her hand gripped onto your hip to hold you there. 

“No,” she answered a little too quickly. 

So you came up with another solution to, ah, quell her nerves. 

The ribbons you used to tie her hair with now strewn all over the bed, a long one in your hands as you adjusted her head forward. 

“I’ll be gentle,” you promised. 

Even though she practically jumped at every tiny touch you delivered to her skin, shivering at just a brush of your thumb over her nipple and when you leaned close enough for your breath to ghost across her throat. 

You wrapped the ribbon around her eyes, excitement tingling between your fingers as you fixed the silk ribbon into its proper place, tying a pretty bow around the back, careful not to get her hair caught in it. 

“Can you see?” You asked, humming softly with satisfaction as you lifted her wrists up next, positioning them above her hair as she writhed in the sheets. 

“No,” she echoed, her voice shaking a little no matter how cocky she still tried to sound. 

“Good.” 

You tied her wrists next, watching the way she tested how strong the knot was by flexing them as you smiled to yourself. 

“You know, you’re so mean,” you murmured, tracing your fingertip across her sharp features, brushing your thumb over her defined cheekbones before drifting down to her soft lips. “It’s only fair I get to play with you too.” 

“I’m never mean to you,” Satoru huffed, and you were a little tempted to grab another ribbon and gag her with it for playing dumb. 

“I hate it when you hide things from me,” you muttered, shaking your head with a soft tut of your tongue. 

“I do it because-” 

“You love me?” You asked, slowly shuffling down her body, pressing kiss after kiss across her heaving breasts down her slender abdomen.

Hoisting one of her thighs over your shoulder, sucking in a breath before you leaned in to leave on the most sensitive spot on her body. 

“S-so much,” her cute voice cracked, nearly crumbling at the soft contact.

All her strength quickly melted into a puddle of pure need, her hips bucking up when you shifted down to start sucking on it, a gorgeous whimper escaping her – and immediately making you greedy for more. 

You never thought Satoru would be at your mercy. 

Her pretty pale body shivering, perfect skin glistening with sweat as she shuddered for you, her soft thighs trying to close around your head as you dragged your tongue down across her soaked cunt. 

You didn’t think anything could ever taste so goddamn good. 

No better than a man, wiggling your own hips down into the mattress to chase friction you couldn’t find, pushing your tongue in-and-out as her muscles twitched and tensed beneath your fingertips. 

Suguru had never gotten you half as wet as her. 

Never worked you up like this, left you soaked and squirming without even being touched. Your thighs pressing together to push down the heat stirring in your core, your pulse pounding so hard you nearly couldn’t hear her whining over it. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, I-I-” 

You knew Satoru loved to chatter. 

But once you were inside her it was like she physically couldn’t shut up, stammering and stuttering out curses, straining against the binds on her wrists and whining about not being able to see you. 

“P-please, wanna see you, want to, oh god,” she begged, the beautiful arch of her back nearly breaking your resolve as heat soared straight up to cloud your head. 

And before you could stop yourself, you were twisting around, angling your hips down to put your own pussy perfectly above her mouth, shutting her up by giving her something to lick and suck instead. 

“Oh, fuck, ngh-”

Her words traded in for another heated moan as she shoved her tongue inside you, swirling it in with a desperation you found yourself quick to succumb to. 

It really wasn’t fair that she was so good at everything you tried. 

But you still refused to completely lose yourself, working harder to make her cum first, slipping your thumb up to her clit, only pulling off to start cooing and condescendingly coaxing her into coming undone, copying the same methods she so expertly pulled on you. 

“C-come on,” you murmured, dragging your thumb in a slow circle as she shifted to suck on your clit just right, driving you right to the brink with her eagerness to give you everything she had. “Show me how much you love me.” 

Preferably by falling to pieces on your tongue. 

Sweat practically dripping off her, her moans reverberating through you as her body began to shake. On the very brink of breaking, pushed closer and closer as she started to cry out your name. 

Her soft voice was music to your ears, a soft purr that made all the knots in your stomach pull tight instead of making them curdle like Suguru’s sometimes had. 

You slipped your fingers inside her, feeling the way her walls squeezed down on them, trying to keep you in as you worked her oversensitive bud. She made a cute little squeak, her tongue lolling out as she began to babble again, “S’too much, I-I-” 

“Shhh,” you murmured, pressing your tongue down as she spasmed and whimpered desperately at the sensation. “Can’t you cum for me?” 

You glanced back over your shoulder to see the sight of her nodding hard and fast, the blindfold slightly crooked and her hands clawing at the pillow as she chased her climax. 

“Put that pretty tongue of yours to better use,” you softly suggested, ignoring the initial discomfort at your reversed roles as you grinded your hips down on her face. 

Apparently, your Toru could be a good listener too when she tried. 

Doing her best to devote her tongue to you right up until the moment she couldn’t hold herself together anymore, cumming with a cry into your clit as your fingers found a sweet spot right below her cervix, pressing on it as you teased her swollen bud with the tip of your own pink muscle.  

She was trembling, her legs twitching and toes curling as she let out devastated little whines that it wasn’t fair, squirming as you cleaned her up, enjoying the way she whimpered every single time your tongue dragged over her skin. 

You could spend eternity buried between her thighs. 

Or with hers between yours. 

So what if it might be too much to ask?

She would make the universe give it to you anyway. 

ε✿з

“My pretty princess.” 

And her not terribly ugly son. 

Satoru traced your face with her fingers, sighing to herself as the morning sun kissed your face, bathed you in beautiful warmth – oh, and the baby in your arms. Both of you snoozing softly, drool leaking out on your nightdress as you slept on your side, blissfully unaware of the outside world. 

You made a pretty mother. Loved the little bastard Satoru did her best to tolerate. 

Cradling an infant that neither of you had to carry, kissing his forehead and proudly showing him off to the other members of the court after he was born. 

He’d never know he wasn’t yours. No one would. 

Satoru would make sure of it. 

His mother had been more than happy to take the estate. Especially when she knew the alternative would be Satoru taking her tongue to ensure she’d never talk. 

She was still keeping tabs though. Just to be safe. 

To make sure that this happy little family of hers would stay that way. 

The nobles had protested. Insisted that she had no place as queen with Suguru dead. But his son, with his soft purple eyes and dark hair, well, that was enough to buy her eighteen more years. 

Of course, there were still whispers. 

Rumors swirled that she quickly snuffed out, either with quiet compensation or cold force. So what if a few more people had to be poisoned to protect your life together?

Rewriting history hadn’t been that hard. 

No one needed to remember how much she hated Suguru. Or how rocky the marriage had been. 

She got to be the mourning widow. The gracious wife still honoring her deceased husband by letting his bastard child be the heir. Raising him with a concubine instead of throwing both of them out. 

That was how she’d be remembered.

“Good morning,” you yawned, slowly cracking your eyes open as you smiled at her. 

“Sleep well?” She inquired, tempted to pick up the baby and place him back in his cradle so she could be cuddled instead. 

You still had nightmares sometimes. Ones where you’d thrash around and she’d have to scoop him up and call for a wet nurse to take him until morning. 

Waking you up to soothe you, stroking your hair and pretending not to know she was the reason for them. 

And yet, you looked at her like she hung the sun in the sky and shined bright enough to chase away all the shadows. To bury the skeletons somewhere you’d never see them. 

“Mhm,” you hummed, affectionately glancing between his chubby cheeks up to Satoru’s persistent pout as she puffed air into them. 

“Have any attention left for me?” She pleaded, craning her neck over them to dramatically wait for you to press a gentle kiss to her nose. 

“Always.” 

Scorched by a burn down the throat of Dragonfire – though not in flame, but the aftertaste of it, he sinks; orange veins through black, smoke threaded deep into his lungs with the craning roar of Vermax long since vanishing from his ears through the crushing depths around him.

There is no color left now, not enough to discern banner from banner or hull from hull, scale from scale. Bizarrely, what remains is red, and it lingers both in the water and his mouth; And soon, true as the gods and their cruelties, it is also drifting in thick ribbons from his shoulder.

Though he is well submerged in water, in an instinct at the basest of his kind’s nature, Jacaerys inhales.  

Choked immediately by the force of salt down into his very being, Jacaerys tastes iron and brine and something scorchingly distant, the residue of dragonfire made to liquid, swallowed back down into the deep as it tugs at himself, too; rolling in fizzing bubbles of fire and thundering waves overtop his back. 

He does not remember the fall, and he hardly remembers the splitting of both sky and earth; Only that glassy world between the two, reflecting in depths and in minds alike, echoing the sound of groaning hulls and roaring beasts and the warbled screams of dying men. 

It is a deep descent, crushing with a searing pain that emanates in the ribbons of red that float out from him, flying leathers heavy, dragging him down, down, down. 

He is learned enough to cease his useless inhales as the salt hardens and grows deeper, meeting that which flows through his veins, dizzying his mind until water and salt and blood are all he tastes. The fire of war becomes a distant thing high above his sinking body as his consciousness loses him for what might be the last time. 

Indeed, he hardly feels it when the sudden, ripping jerk tugs his body; up, or sideways, or some elsewhere – through something darker than anything he’s ever known.

WHEN HE WAKES, JACAERYS BLINKS AGAINST A SKY FAR TOO VAST. 

The smoke of battle has thinned into a distant smear upon the horizon, a notion he gathers only after coming to and completely emptying his stomach of kelped water, scraped with barnacles and blood and shipwreckage splintered into his throat in their ascent from his guts.  

A length of broken timber presses beneath his spine, which is his second gathering; Perhaps a spar from his grandsire’s fleet, or perhaps merely the rib of some lesser ship cracked open like a carcass to be feasted by the vulturous gulls of the Narrow Sea. 

When at last, sluggish and stinging, his eyes open – they do so with a fluttering knot of long lashes, and he must squint into the vastness above and around him, feeling the wilt of hope dying like a low wyck in his chest. There are no sails near him now; nor cries, nor banners. 

Jacaerys well and truly and fully floats alone. 

He lets himself stare, just for a moment, to gather himself. A fine day, by any standards less measured with the smoke and searing screams of both sky and sea, the sun hanging upon its bright band in the heavens and oppressive enough to give Jacaerys need to close his lids once more. Gulls circle lazily in the distance, a sole sign of life in a deserted plane of rocking water.  

Well, then. He is far from the Gullet now. 

Indeed, he is far from anything, as indicated by squint of his eye; The sea rocks him on his raft like the cradle of a cherished babe, horrible but lulling as his mind drifts further than his body. He lies flat upon it, cradled by splintered wood that dips and sways with the sigh of the sea. 

Perhaps it would be a gentle thing, if not for the arrows lodged deep through the flesh of his shoulder and chest.

He had not felt their strikes, though now he indeed feels them. Each shift of tide drives the shaft in his shoulder deeper, grinding splintered wood and barbed iron into bone and muscle alike, a searing ache that permeates each stretch of his being. The shallower one, Gods be true, lies in the fleshy muscle of his chest, lodged but loose enough to flounder like a babe newly-horsebacked with each shift of wave. Because of this, breath fractures into something ugly and thinly agonized, pressed by cheek against the splintered wood beneath him. 

He does not give himself more than a moment with this unceasing pain; instead a hand rises, weakened and trembling and searing with the protest of barbed metal against bone, to tug at the wood protruding from his chest. The shoulder, he knows, is no use to try and save now; but the nearly insouciant rhythm of the shallow arrow upon his chest mocks him with its pulsing agony, and thus he tugs at it with all the dwindling strength he may remain. A roar rips from chapped lips, burning with the taste of bile and dragonsmoke; and still he pulls, the sinewy rip of arrowhead as it dislodges itself from its shallow grave and frees, violently, into the salty air. Jacaerys lets out no more than a whimper at the gaping, pulsing pain now ebbing from his wound; the arrow in his grasp is listlessly cast from his palm, down into whatever depths now lie below him.

The wound pulses with every faint heartbeat, and though he should surely press it to fend too much loss, he finds himself weakened with agony and exhaustion. Water still lives there, salty and ancient, in his lungs; he feels it with each inhale he takes. A warmth both viscous and determined seeps sluggishly down his side and crawls into the dip of his collarbone and throat, pooling in a glistening ruby shimmer before diluting pink into the endless blue beneath him. 

Jacaerys watches the darkest parts of him go with not so much a single sound besides wafery breaths delivered sparsely between groans of aching ribs and short, wet coughs.  

A prince should not bleed so quietly, he thinks. 

Though it is for hours Jacaerys floats like this – if he is so to believe the lies spun by the sun in the sky – shifting upon agonizing weight every few moments, feeling the life of him seep out with every weak pump of his tremored soul. He floats limply, one weakened boot dragging in the cold water beneath his torrid liferaft of broken war.  

It is too lonesome for a boy like him, perhaps. All that emanates from his brain is an ache of heart, the memory of screeching; of the jerking strike and dragging descent, such a slow death. Jacaerys floats for hours and hears wailing; sees the final glance of his lifelong companion, his truest friend; feels the sinking again, the horrible moment when he and his Vermax were swallowed beneath the surface. He wonders, in that dim place between consciousness and sleep, if there are those looking for him. If Rhaena and that wild beast are back on land; if Corlys and Baela and the rest are safe, dry perhaps, unscathed; if his mother remains still untouched by danger. It was a fair trade, he thinks. Their lives for his own. 

The agony in his chest and shoulder grows as the sun slips into a smoky horizon. He is blistered by the sun and drained of half his life, memories of his drowning roving sluggishly in his mind more as sensation than coherence: A sharp tugging, far less than natural, from the very depths of the sea. He recalls, only faintly and through some hazy delirience, that he did not resurface, nor did he pull himself rightwards onto this very raft; He has hardly the strength to move his arm at all, and knows best that he did not, indeed, save himself from the death that found him just hours ago in the Gullet. A horrible thought pulses just beyond coherence; the sensation of wrongness permeates the prince as he lies, motionless and alone, in the middle of a silent sea. 

Jacaerys falls in and out of the world with heavy, tear-laced eyelids and a ceaseless ache in his torso.

WHEN HE NEXT FINDS HIS CONSCIOUS, THE SUN HAS BEGUN TO DANCE VIOLET AND ORANGE ALONG THE GLISTENING RIPPLES OF SEA. 

He stirs not from pain nor hunger nor any kind of distant tremoring sound; instead, he is roused by the sensation of something brushing his ankle. 

Unable to do much else, he only stiffens; The water beneath him is darker than it ought to be, sheared in half by a bright and burning glint reflecting from the horizon, a shifting pane of glass so v ery fathomless and swallowing in its wholeness. He squints at the burning orange searing the water and lives, for a blissful for moments, in the belief that it is only delirium of a dying man that makes him feel the brush against his boot, surely only the blood clotting his sight into the watery depths which his leg splays into. 

But then he sees a flicker. 

Silver, or perhaps its more shyly shimmering cousin; some reflective thing which catches the light, winking like ancient dragoncoin beneath sand, glinting against the oppressive glare of dying sun splitting his vision in half. 

Blinking salt and dying sun from his gaze, he lulls his cheek back upon the raft, tasting his blood as it resides within the grain of wood and the split of his lips alike. His wounds are near dried now, though he is no fool. He suspects the Stranger will visit him quite soon. 

But then, a drifting, long-winding vision once more through the water, near his boot beneath the shifting of his splintered raft. Long and swirling like weeds at sea, it coils and slinks just out of sight; though still, Jacaerys is given a startled pause. 

Hair?  

A squint against the sting of salt in lashes, hazeled eyes catch not the jerking dart of fish, nor the rolling glide of a seal or any such beast. It is real – perhaps only in the way visions might be real to one on the brink of death – though real all the same as the arrow through his shoulder or the wound in his chest. 

Whatever it is, it circles.

His pulse thunders weakly, and in a delirious moment recalls stories of pirates across the sea who leak from the cracks of the Stepstones and surface from the sea itself; men who swim upon unattended boats to thieve the pockets of men who lie shipwrecked. 

“Go,” he rasps madly, though his voice is hardly more than wind over broken mast, matted with pain and expiring life. It takes the last of his very soul, the raw and trembling memory of green scales sinking into the sea, that he presses.  “Please. I’ve…I’ve nothing left to steal.”

And a tragic truth his words are. The sea answers the Prince with a soft lap against wood, echoing gently as a kiss against his cheekbone; and then, as though relenting, the shape vanishes. 

Wildly, perhaps madly, Jacaerys laughs once; though the salt and brine have made a home in his lungs, and blood slicks his lip now. Yes, death will find him quite soon, it seems. He tastes himself again, metallic and fading. If this is death, he thinks, it is far quieter than he imagined.

He lets his head fall back, and the sky blurs.

HE DREAMS OF WINGS BURNING.

Or something of the sort. Scales which rot, boys with laughter like bubbles in the depths, a garden with a rusting gate and a fog that seeps into his mind and twists his feet until his boots are gnarled roots; he dreams of dragons sweeping in from the skies, of an ancient beast swallowing an entire dragon in its maw, of fire upon fire, claws tearing and blood weeping over entire ships until the whole ocean lay rubied and burning. He sees odd things, indeed, in his dreamy death: girls trapped under ice, brides kneeling at empty graves, men growing into trees; he sees moons and suns dance, he sees women with sharp teeth and soft skin, he sees tears that fall like moonlight. He sees poisoned teacups, singed butterflies fluttering out of spiderwebs; black cats slinking like shadows around breathing roots. 

It is peculiar, perhaps, that he dreams so many deaths so vividly, and yet Jacaerys wakes only after their horrors subside. 

He jolts to consciousness violently to find that the sky is enormous above him, a vault of black pricked with viciously indifferent stars. His wake comes body-first, mind trailing behind as the residue of sleep melts away, fading thoughts of smooth skin giving way to coyish glints and roaring waters and sighing voices. 

And there, nearly indistinguishable from above or below, the sky’s twin yawns in a stretch, that dark mirror – the sea. He watches that glassy expanse breathe slow, tidal sighs against the splintered timber that keeps him from sinking. 

For a moment he does not remember where he is, only that the world is vast and he is very small within it. 

But then it is when he takes a breath, and in such a daring intake, shifts his shoulder just partially; then true, raw agony explodes down his arm and across his chest. A broken noise spills from him before he can swallow it back, dampened only by the largess of the world around him, the depths swallowing the pain of one mere boy. 

The pain, it seems, tears more than breath from him. Memory follows, from the expiring mind: of smoke and fire and ships and men dying and women screaming on dragonback. The moment comes to him far too soon and with it, a wash of agony so raw and true that he suspects the last time he felt such a way was when he lost his brother. 

“Vermax,” he calls, throat raw and cracking, and like a boy he waits, tears slipping and burning against his sun-scorched visage, staring up as though a shadow might pass over the stars. As though green wings might descend from the heavens or surge up from the starry depths below. He knows, though, that even beyond the horizon – beyond wherever he is, now – there does not remain a dragon searching for him. 

The sob which escapes him is restrictedly delved in searing pain from his wounds; his cries die on the water, so unlike a prince, as he whispers the name once more into the dark, followed only by a weak call for his mother.

The name is swallowed there, along the starry water, as is his grief. 

In a turn of mercy, the pain surpasses enough to render him lack of thought; after only a final hitching breath, Jacaerys is stricken mind-numbed with a plaguing grief, tamped only by the unending agony haunting his form. A turn of cheek presses a metallic mouthful of seawater through sunscorched lips, and he coughs it back out into the deep with tormented effort. 

The glint strikes him, then, as he coughs his blood back into the sea. 

Across the glassy pane of stars, just an arm’s reach away: A lurking thing, reflecting back whatever meek light survives the night’s breath across the sky. 

He cannot make it out fully, but it ceases his mind cold with a sharp turn of familiarity, that lingering horror of nails trailing down the back of one’s nape or the draught of chill in an empty graveyard. 

Jacaerys blinks at it with that same low strike of horror; At first he deems it merely the moon fracturing the water’s skin, some trick of depth and distance. He blinks once, slow and heavy, as if that might wash the vision clean; But the shape does not break. It lingers there until the doubt in him thins, until even his certainty of illusion begins to feel like a falsity he has begun to assure himself for the sake of breathing; and only then, in that false security, does he come to understand what the shape truly is.  

Eyes. 

Eyes, true as the gods, fixed upon him and tilted upward from the depths below, bewilderingly catching the moonlight instead of merely catching it. As the raft dips in a slow wave and relevels, he catches the curve of a forehead, too – and then, gods, the slow inky spread of salt-threaded hair; he sees it then, flowing out its tendrils like weeds of the sea towards the measly splinter of wood upon which he lies. 

Panic surges up raw and ancient in Jacaerys; older than any crown or dragon or war, something buried deep in marrow that recognizes the shape of a predator in the basest part of a man before his mind might dress it in the common tongue. 

There is a woman in the water, a strange thought comes to him, lucid in its stillness, and he begins to wonder whether delirium has perhaps granted him some courtesy of idiocy. A woman, where no woman should be.

A lurch of the body, called upon by sole instinct; Every lesson beaten into him since boyhood demands that he rise and reach for a sword no longer hanging at his hip, that he make himself larger than his fear and meet such danger standing rather than waiting for it to devour him. 

Instead, agony flowers white through his shoulder and chest, so bursting and complete that his limbs answer with little more than a miserable tremor, feverish and vitiated, and his near-valiant effort dies unborn. Among the shards of moonlight glass shattering the sea, he is pinned not by rope or chain, but by his own ruined flesh and the arrow lodged deep within it. Should this woman – this creature – wish to come for him, there is naught left with which to refuse her. 

His eyes, ambered in the brightest of his days but now sooted with the grim ash of war and loss, do the only thing left to do; stare back. And this creature, this nightmare, this woman – whomever she may be, she remains there in her pool of ink and watches him in patient return.

And so, time sifts. 

The moon lays a narrow road of silver across the water, and in that thin illumination he conjures only fragments of her horror as she finally nears; the smooth curve of forehead breaking the surface, a sharpened gleam fixed upon him, so unnerving in its patience; the breath of cheekbone and brow, far too fine to belong to any storm-battered sailor’s daughter. When the sea parts, next come her tresses, which fan outward along the surface like ink spilled in the dark night, water-darkened tendrils drifting and coiling as the lulling coax of kelp swaying in the tides. 

Perhaps Jacaerys has gone mad. For, as he stares helpless as a babe unto a descending knife, he comes to understand that she is beautiful. 

A vision of moonlight upon ruins: she is jagged, obscured and sharpened only where soft sighs hide themselves away; though he is not a man wholly mad-made yet, for her beauty – however intrinsic it might be – does not beget the wrongness of her presence, the impossibility of eyes at this hour, in this emptiness, so far from shores that even gulls have long abandoned him. 

His pulse stammers painfully against his ribs, and the sharded arrow in his shoulder throbs in time with it, each beat threatening to unmoor him from the fragile raft entirely. Though fear licks itself in shivers of agony across his spine, he dares not move again. 

Eyes – those glinting coins so mad under the grace of moon – do not blink once. 

The prince swallows against a throat flayed raw by salt and smoke and swallowed seawater, and his lengthed voice is scarcely more than wind dragged over broken wood.

“Are you real?”

A question which drifts uselessly into the air, swallowed by stars both hanging in the sky and swallowed in the depths below; she nor the sea answers his question, only rippling and sighing, only her eyes ever-staring, unceasing. 

She remains still for so long that Jacaerys begins to blink out the thought of the eyes at all, wondering if his mind had tricked him into conjuring up company in the middle of the world where there is none. 

Perhaps that is all there is to death, Jacaerys thinks: some slow unspooling of the mind, a final merciful trick where pain and terror are softened into symbols and story until what remains is merely a dream stitched together from drowning thought and fading blood. 

What strange mercy, he thinks distantly as consciousness slips from him, that the mind, standing upon the threshold of oblivion, should choose not horror but a beautiful woman waiting beneath the water.

HIS DREAMS, IT SEEMS, DO NOT CEASE EVEN ONCE HE WAKES. 

When he stirs again, it is to a sky rinsed pale and enormous above him. And, he registers in turn, to her.

A startled jerk drives a battered back to jerk faintly against waterlogged wood; an agony of dying-man’s pain ripples from sunscorched lips which part in raw, pulsing horror. Fire explodes through his shoulder; his ribs protest with a sickening ache; his vision burst in lurching lashings of white, until sea and sky become one blinding smear which remains even when his lids sew shut. 

He breaths out a disbelieved sigh. Cursed as they are, Jacaerys always thought dreams to be faithless things, ones which vanish with coming daylight. Though here one lies, lurking in the dredges of nightmarish deep waters even in the forgiving breath of day. 

A petrifying thought, which permeates his sleep-laced mind with a strike of cold deeper than the sea itself: She remains here, in the silver light of dawn, as though she had kept watch through every pained unconscious hour. 

He finds the strange woman half-emerged from the deep blue waters, elbows resting lightly upon the broken spar of wreckage which keeps him from the deep. Her chin is balanced upon interlaced fingers in a posture nearly – gods preserve him – nearly girlish; the pose occurs so absurdly innocuous that, in any other place or perhaps upon any other woman, he might have mistaken it for idle curiosity. 

Though there is nothing idle about this creature, no thing innocent at all in the incessant bore of her gaze; a luminous thing, glowing like mother-of-pearl and flashing deep as his stare of horror meets her own hungered one. 

Then, with the flow of tresses across a bared shoulder and the sharp flash of a blinding, pearly smile, she speaks. 

“Am I real?” 

The fear finds its home burrowed beneath the wounds of his chest, the splintered wounds seeming suddenly to send dark roots through his body, tendrils of fever and terror winding together in a spreading, helpless dread. He stares, and stares, and stares; a gaping thing, a helpless thing, marooned upon a floating shard of war with a woman he believes is far too beautiful to belong anywhere land might dare reach. 

Jacaerys finds no words to offer; instead a gaze skitters in disbelief, lower and lower, until it dares the water itself. 

The tide, it seems, remains loath to surrender her entirely from its foamy grasp; yet the dawn has stripped away the moon’s deceptions. Jacaerys sees, in its bareness, the horrible line where soft flesh churns into something iridescent and blooming; a vision of scales delicately breathing down curve of hip, only to vanish beneath the shifting blue. Light fractures there, living colors or breath – silvered coin to heavy moss to bruised violet; it is the sight of crushed old jewels and of forgotten gods, a thing from so deep it seems to swallow the sun. 

Within his ruined chest, a fevered breath snags. 

The stories conjure to him in a half-breath’s moment, swirling in his mind with the faintness of memory; His father's voice upon the deck of a ship as he taught his sons to read the currents and to never hearken singing over open water. 

His grandsire’s grim tales at Driftmark, softened by the spray of ocean as he told how the sea keeps daughters as well as tides. There too had been stern faces of septas beneath vaulted ceilings of that keep of Red, with their hands folded within sleeves and eyes far too sharp for jest. There are creatures whom the Stranger did not intend for the land.

There were things in the sea, they all said; things older than the kingdoms who watched ships and learned of the longing which laced itself into the weak fabrication of human hearts. 

Old stories shake loose from childhood until they drift before him like wreckage: Sirens whose bellies hung swollen with the flesh of drowned men; whose true faces, septas insisted, belonged only to the daylight: slack with rot, mouths split too wide for any mortal smile, eyes filmed pale by the abyss; and yet when the moon pours itself across the sea, that same cold light becomes their greatest deceit, veiling evil beneath impossible loveliness until lonely sailors mistake hunger for some kind of beauty. 

He remembers an old captain, spoken of as though he had once truly lived, who abandoned his helm to answer a woman's laughter floating over calm water; how weeks later they found him cast upon the strand, tangled in flowering kelp with his body bloated white and his eyes pecked hollow by gulls unwilling to look too long upon whatever he had seen beneath the waves. 

There were darker tales still: Of fishermen, taken whole into the green-black depths, where the sunlight and the Seven alike surrendered their potency; of merchant princes lured ashore into hidden coves by women whose songs promised warmth and whose mouths promised kisses, until those same hands opened a man from throat to belly and peeled apart their ribs like the bars of a cage. 

It was said, too, that sirens slept inside the hollowed remains; nesting deep within the boned ruins of the men they lured. 

There had been a time that Jacaerys had laughed at such tales. After all, there is little room for fear of monsters in the heart of a boy who commands one of his own; though now, upon a broken raft with death bleeding slowly through his flesh, he finds the old tales returning with only sufferance. 

He lifts his eyes to her once more. 

But he finds that, despite the tall tales which ebb and flow within his fevered mind, she is not the grotesque nightmare promised by septas; he finds no slack-jawed carrion thing crowned in weeded sea nor whale bone.

Indeed if anything, the dawn is crueler still – for it reveals that her beauty belongs only to her. 

Her hair, lighter now with the glint of early sun and lacking in distortion of depth, spills over her shoulders, threaded with strands that catch silvery and oddly pearlescent when the light tilts just so; wet tresses cling to the graceful hollow of her throat, to the slope of her collarbones, garnering affection from the droplets of seawater which gather there greedily before falling one by one upon the weathered timber. Her eyes are clear, no longer luminescent but merely intent, fixed upon him with an unwavering and unsettling stillness.

Jacaerys stares at this creature because he cannot do otherwise. 

She is the only solid thing in a world that hours ago dissolved into blood and brine; and those eyes, wide and reflecting and sweet and hungry, watching him back without embarrassment, without coyness, as though he is the creature newly risen from myth and she has been only patiently waiting; stilled in predatory wait for centuries, to examine him. Perhaps he should feel stronger fear than has settled into his bones; Perhaps he should scream, or merely attempt as much, with what little life he has left to fight.  

“I’ve died,” he says instead. 

His voice is thin, scraped raw by salt and disbelief, and it falls along the flat plane of sea that stretches around him farther than the eye can strain. From his rather blunt observation blooms the faintest crease between her brows, a consideration almost scholarly in its descent over so sinless a visage. For a moment her eyes travel along the span of his ravaged, waterlogged riding leathers, the ripped remnants of war – then up to the lick of his exposed, blood-beating skin; Her gaze deepens. He feels his heart, a slow-march but suredly still there, thump within the mass of his chest’s swollen flesh. 

But then a slight intake of breath breaks loose from her parted lips in a sudden laugh. 

The sound is the quick silvered cry of a gull cutting across morning air, not dissimilar to those harkenning echoes of song which wailed across the sea in the darkest hours of night past. Shivers rise beautifully along Jace’s chest at the sound and he watches her eyes follow their trail over the exposed skin of his neck. The echo of her laugh stills the salt air and cloudless sky high above; and, though it fractures the heaviness between them, it does not fully dispel it – for it rings chillingly and yet entirely captivating nonetheless, a note plucked from the sweetest, coldest reaches of the sea itself. 

“No,” she sighs just then, a tilt of head to expose a curve of throat, the water which lives there so sweetly in the junction of neck and chest. The water pearls, too, where her palms cradle her chin. Her eyes do not blink. “Though… you nearly did.”

Her voice is wrong, he thinks, for a nightmare; for it falls so incredibly soft, so full of wonder and voracious low-buried hunger, and he finds himself more unsettled by it than any shriek might have rendered him – though still, some low-reaching part of his gut shivers in an expression less than fearful. Hungry, he thinks faintly. 

And she is wrong, he thinks; indeed, the proof of it is there, in the souring wound of his chest, in the blood which has begun to seep once more from the arrow lodged firm in his shoulder upon his startling wake and the feverish haze which has crept through base of skull to linger front-of-mind. No man survives such wounds. 

No man survives drowning.

Breath grows shallow from both injury and the vastness of what he does not understand – and then comes the growing churn of unease within his stomach that might possibly be starvation, too. Might a dead man starve? 

“What are you?” he asks faintly; the question trembles upon that string of reverence and accusation and she studies him with an unsettling seriousness, lonely only to the wake of lapping waves. It is too quiet for far too long in that solace of sights, rocking upon his death. 

“Hungry,” she answers at last.

The word slips into him and coils low in his gut once more, birthing a horrid sensation which is not wholly fear but perhaps something darker and more unknown, the basest of human instinct sacrificed to churn instead some anticipation he knows not how to tame. 

Though accompanied with a bitter, half-delirious laugh, his voice carries a fragility; the cadence of a man who has already crossed one threshold and suspects another waits nearby. 

“Have you eaten me, then?” 

That same laugh touches her mouth again, soft enough to be swallowed by the very foam of the sea which cradles her, and it sends a new jolt of shivers through his whole being; though seared pain chases those quivers immediately. The moan of suffering he lets out at the shifting of his shoulder draws her gaze to the faint rust-colored pond of the junction of his throat, where his blood has pooled and since half-dried into a congealed offering before the sea might fully claim it. 

Her head tilts with the rocking of the raft. “Not yet.”

It is a thing that would make a sane man recoil. 

He knows he ought to perhaps demand whether her teeth hide long and sharp behind that gentle curve of lip – whether she means to devour him and take his bones to whatever cathedral of wreckage lies beneath her domain; But the sea around them is impossibly calm, stretched glassy and infinite to a horizon so distant it seems to play more of a trick of eye than any such reality, emptied of sails and smoke and war and left only in calm. 

There is nothing but the prince and the siren and the fragile slab of driftwood that, in this moment of death and between, binds them bizarrely together. 

Perhaps from his startle, blood has begun to leave him once more in streams; little rivulets this time, which twist down and drip in lurches onto salt-swelled wood. Jacaerys’ head grows heavy, and the dizziness comes creeping through like fog at the corner of garden gates, slinking through the darkening edges of his mind, rendering him aired and heavy in the same labored breath. 

“It was you, then.” The words come as wreckage to rocky shore, splintered into odd sensations of memory into near-coherence, laced with strange visions of women with teeth lodged within their cheeks and talons long as his own sword; of bubbles swallowing a massive beast and the shock of sharp chill as his own body sunk to a watery grave in the Gullet’s roar. “You pulled me from the deep.” 

When his eyes open once more, he finds hers resting upon him with that same patient stillness.  “No.”

A crease grows upon his brow. His neck slackens against the splintered timber, too weary now to hold itself upright, landing below with a weak breath of expiring life. Above him the sky yawns open without end; he imagines it swallowing him whole.

“I promise you,” her voice comes, a soothing balm, so very cool where the sun has left him burning. “I kept you from it.” 

He might have responded, in another life. Though now, pain has ceased to belong to any single wound; It wanders him now, crawling beneath skin – living fire, it finds fresh places to bloom and scorch until he can no longer remember what it felt like to possess a body untouched by suffering. 

Somewhere beneath the fever, Jacaerys accepts that his consciousness will soon be lost; to either the tide, or the Stranger himself. 

The knowledge, as it comes, is strangely peaceful. So in his last moments, Jacaerys lets himself mourn as he stares at the strangely beautiful woman in the water, at the dawning sky and stretching sea behind her.  

His mother's face comes first, as it always has; followed by his brothers, blurred by memory until laughter and quarrels and childhood become indistinguishable in his slogging mind: and Baela, Rhaena, Joffrey, Aeg and Viserys; all of them, in the breath of a moment. The sea rocks him in agony as he thinks of Dragonstone rising black from the sea, of Vermax banking through cloud and soaring through breathless air; of the long hall of the Keep, of the salt upon Driftmark’s shores; of the gleam of Ser Steffon’s blade when Jacaerys squired for him in that final tourney; of his grandsire’s knee, upon which he perched on that throne of swords and heard the promises he’d been deigned since birth. 

Whole kingdoms rise and vanish behind his closed eyes; wars begin and end, lives he has lived and those which he will never reach – hundreds of deaths and hundreds of lives split apart and seal themselves in the seams of his mind, all in the space of a single trembling breath, before dissolving into the tide.

His cheek settles once more upon the weathered wood, eyes drowsy in the pale-lilac of early morning. You pulled me from the deep. The fight in him is nearly gone; only one question remains upon his tongue. 

“Why?”

A shift below the depths as she pushes upon the raft with flattened palms, and Jacaerys watches in awe how water yields so willingly round the soft flesh holding her ribs; the sensation of the war-battered raft tilting him down, tantalizingly closer to those singing depths hardly breathes across his mind. 

A tongue passes thoughtfully across glossy lips. “You were sweet,” she murmurs at last, a chill of breath crossing over his own cheeks, loosing a wave of shivers through his spine. He can only watch as her arms give way once more to sink down, as the sea – so resentful to lend even this much of her to daylight – claims all but her shoulders and head.

There is blood in his mouth now; he tastes iron upon tongue as his eyes fall shut, a spinning sensation conjuring to his mild the felled taper of a feather, fluttering to lie at rest upon a pond. An odd death for a prince, indeed. His voice escapes him as little more than a frayed whisper. “S-sweet?” 

He can think of no stranger a word to be labeled in those last moments of battle. Sweet. His eyes slide beneath their lids, a slogging thing in their sun-dried, salted shells, laced shut with exhaustion and perhaps delirium. 

“Your blood,” her voice murmurs, and it has become near enough now that he can hear the movement of water bubbling when she breathes; a lulling sweetness which sticks to his teeth and dances upon his tongue. Just a taste, he thinks just then, rather absurdly. 

“It tasted of the sky,” comes that voice once more, a bubbling wet sound as though her mouth has descended to taste whatever now leaks into the water. “And… I wished to know you.” 

Nausea finds him at the thought. “You tasted me,” he grunts through pain-wired teeth, delirious, odd visions of swimming scales and lace-frilled fins skittering from outreached hands. He imagines that river of blood seeping from him now, flowing into an open, hungered mouth. 

“I did.” 

This pain is too much for life, he believes. It consumes him, so intense it has numbed him, bled a fever into his mind and stretched the tendrils of infection through each last vein in his body. 

“Then I am dead,” he decides quietly. For what else would he be? 

The water stirs, and when he feels her presence once more his gaze strains to return, blurry and searing when he pries his lashes apart. 

She leans close enough once more, close enough that he might smell the sweetness of her, something so peculiar for mid-sea; breeze and softness and shadowherbs lace through his inhale and stir some hollow hunger in his gut, a piercing, ravaged thing that brings a bout of nausea to return. 

“If you were dead,” her lips are glossed with the sea, “you would be far below me.”

His pulse answers in a hare’s pace, quickening beneath skin rotting and infected and plagued with a slow death. “Then,” his tongue darts out to soothe the pain upon sunscorched lips, but instead is met with dry air and dripping blood, slicking from his mouth. Her eyes glint at the sight, an observation which twists unease deeper within his gut. “...Where am I now?” 

The smallest smile touches her mouth – a thing soft enough that once more, upon another countenance, it might almost have nearly been kind.“The sea,” she says. “Of course.”

Of course. Heavied, his head falls once more against the weathered timber, a movement slow and borne from exhaustion; drowsy eyes gaze into the endless blue where sky and water seem forever to pursue one another without meeting. Here he lies suspended between them all the same: neither upon the land nor surrendered to the abyss, neither wholly living nor yet claimed by death, merely adrift upon that trembling boundary where one world dissolves into the next.

The woman watches him stare out at the expanse for another long while before speaking again.

“You must rest, Prince.”

The title bears itself foreign upon her tongue; Jacaerys wonders, with a rather dislocated peculiarity, how she might know it belongs to him at all. In three-and-twenty years, he has never once heard a tale in which a siren urged a man to sleep for any purpose save to ease his passage into her hunger; though still, true as the gods, fever laps at the edges of his thoughts. 

His eyelids descend by degrees, each blink lingering longer than the last against the shimmering yawn of morning, until the daylight begins to disappear between his lashes, swallowed by that other abyss. “If I do,” his breath utters weakly, wondering to himself whether he asks from futile hope or some simply morbid curse of curiosity. “Will I ever wake?” 

His vision is betrayed; all which he knows are the steady rock of his rotting raft and the ache of his agonized body. The plaguing sun scorches one side of his visage whilst the sea cools the other; and he thinks, as his lashes flutter again sun-oranged lids, that he hears a voice once more through the waters: 

“Perhaps.”

THROUGH HIS UNCONSCIOUSNESS, JACAERYS STILL FEELS. 

Peculiar enough that his mind churns even as it once did when he lived on land and rode through the sky; And yet it is more peculiar still that he so faintly in his fever registers himself being turned; dips with the wreckage as it tilts beneath him, feels the lick of sea shift its grasp upon his failing, limp body. An interruption of the boiling heat; some chilling presence pressing firm against his chest and splaying over the slow, weakened pulse of his heart. Agony is a memory, a faint pulse like the outer ridge of a bruise or rime over spring fields in the Vale. 

While Jacaerys dreams of a hundred deaths, he dreams, too, that the arrow in his shoulder leaves him without the violence of pain. 

There is no fresh burst of agony as when he’d expelled the first one, no sharp white flare behind the eyes; It is as though the wound inhales and exhales and then merely forgets its own carved carnage, the blood that had been pulsing from him like a rubied river beginning to reverse its direction. 

The deaths come to him in fits not unlike the rolling pangs of arrow wounds: He dreams of Vermax dragged from the sky, of Luke swallowed by stormy sea; of his mother’s crown dripping and glinting red as fresh meat. 

Most peculiar yet in this sluggish purgatory between slumber and awake, he feels something freezing and dragging against his throat; lapping, like the waves upon the shore. He feels, too, how that chilling sweetness spreads within him in a foreign rush, coming as nothing so familiarly savage as dragonfire – that blaze he has known since childhood – but instead as something slower and stranger, a cooling calm which seeps instead of burns, which travels along his veins like tides instead of flames.  

Only then does he wake once more. 

THE SUN, THAT GREAT OPPRESSOR, HANGS MIDDAY WHEN HIS EYES OPEN. 

For several moments Jacaerys mistakes waking for dying once again; Light pours over him, molten vast sheets which strike the water until the sea becomes a field of shattered mirrors, the sky above a merciless blue, immense and empty as eternity. He lies upon the slab of rotting wood and wonders if this is what remains after death has finished with a man. 

Though grief, such a fickle thing, sneaks itself back through his weary bones, tearing with a force that casts his mind about and settles where fever once lived. Only then does he become aware of his body: a shift in his chest as he lets a small sound escape him, ragged as he wakes. 

He swallows, bracing instinctively for the agony of grinding iron lodged in bone; but there is nothing. 

It occurs then that his shoulder is bare to the slight seabreeze, and wholly unburdened. The arrow is gone; the wounds which had poured him into the sea exist now only as faint blushes of new skin, smoothed and unbroken with the passing of months which could not have passed in the space of a single night. Even the salt-burn that had left his skin raw and flayed has disappeared, flesh warm and sun-browned rather than blistered and fevered. 

Impossible. His riding leathers are gone; everything above his waist has vanished entirely – save for the leather riding boots which sit propped sidelong near his breezed, salt-laced trousers – left only in bared skin and a scattering of freshly silvering scars. Wonder and horror mix within his gut as fingers flex experimentally, braced for pain which never comes, save for a faint weariness of tightened muscle. 

It does not occur to him that this was anything else but the work of that creature from the water. And so, habit asserts itself; for he is still Prince as much as he is castaway, it seems, and dragonlord still before any such prey. 

“Show yourself,” he commands to the shards of mirrored ocean, voice hardened with some falsity of health he has yet to fully take to mind – for he knows, indeed, that this was no immaculate recovery of mercy from the gods. 

Though the fever has left him, weakness remains; he cannot yet sit wholly upright, the cords of his stomach quivering with an insatiable hunger and exhaustion. 

The day lives on silently, for a moment, and within him grows an impatience sprouted by nerves; he is healed, miraculously so – and in those odd, faint memories of dying rest, did he not feel touch, feel that chilled drag laving over his very skin as a parched hound might a fresh pond? 

The sea stirs and then, only after another moment, she surfaces several yards away. 

With her comes no violent breach of the surface nor shrieking gulls; she comes to the glassy glint of eye with the sea parting its dark skirts, water streaming from her in glistening threads to cling to the lengths of long tresses and running in shining rivulets over bare skin of sunbreathed beauty. A sight to be seen – particularly for a prince so lonely. 

Jacaerys stares once more, stripped of every certainty and left with only wonder and dread to keep him company. A wonder it is, her bareness hinted only by the breaking surface of reflected pools at the soft turn of her chest; and Jacaerys draws away his eyes in some gathered lucidity of shame, no longer coaxed to desire by fever. He swallows back a hoarse laugh, cheeks heated by not merely the sun’s glare but her beauty so raw and unmodest in front of him. 

She waits for him, all those reaches away, watching with a peculiar apprehension as though he might perhaps take her down to the depths instead to give some odd, murky end to her own life. 

“You healed me,” he says at length, accusation and gratitude so closely twined in his words that neither might be separated from the other. The sea seems to breathe for her, and it trembles with some unknown nerves. 

Her head inclines by the smallest degree, that odd glint in her gaze once more. “Yes.”

The simplicity of it disturbs him, he believes, far more than denial might have done. “You admit it so easily,” he says then, because he can think of little else to say. 

A flash of a pearled, glinting grin that brings even the sun-kissed sea to shame. “You wished to know.” 

As though this were answer enough; As though all truths are equally plain to her and require no ornament nor human ceremony of explanation. Jacaerys draws a slow breath, tasting salt and sunlight and the faint metallic tang of his own fear lingering upon his tongue. 

“I was told sirens drag men to their deaths.”

She, it is no denying, has floated closer to his small raft of living death. Her eyes watch unblinkingly; a chin tips until only the soft peaks of shoulder and bottom lip peak out from the murky sea. Her visage has gone dark with some horrible hunger. 

“We do.”

There comes no hesitation in her reply, nor turn of trick, and the honesty of it brings him no refuge in disbelief. His stomach seems to fall away beneath him; for it rings with it the realization that he is alive, indeed. He is alive, yes, only stranded – a castaway clinging to a forgotten shard of war in the middle of an endless sea; alive only because a creature of the deep has chosen, for reasons he cannot yet fathom, to keep him so.  

It leaves him strangely breathless. “Why?” he asks, roughened by salt and disuse. “I was – I was dying. Y-you could have taken me.” He is unsure what compels him to remind her of her own nature, though fear laces itself tight around his abdomen. 

For several heartbeats she only regards him, and in that silence there is something so old and fathomless that it makes the skin along his arms prickle. Then, at last, she speaks.

“I’ve known of your war for some time,” her voice comes low. “One drowned sun past, I watched your great beast’s fire swallow the men who have hunted me and my sisters for eons. I watched you kill those men and leave them for my sisters below.” Silence comes between them, save for the gentle dripping cascade of water from her countenance to return to the sea. “And I saw you as you fell.” 

Jacaerys’ eyelashes flutter in a sudden sting of salt and memory, though he dares not speak. 

Her tongue sweeps once more over glossed lips. “The cries of the men upon the hippocampi ships said that you are a prince,” she murmurs, leaning closer as though a thought too reverent to speak aloud, “a son of both salt, and fire.”  

How wrong she might be, he thinks – for he is not son of salt; Velaryon blood runs not through his strong veins, though still the words are cold water poured over a fevered brow, spoken with a strange and almost reverent note. 

“My sisters have told stories of your kind,” she says, and her eyes drift briefly toward the horizon as though somewhere beneath it lay the endless kingdom from which she had come. “Those humans whose blood carries flame, who ride the sky upon winged beasts. We have watched them for longer than your kingdoms have stood.” 

A faint smile ghosts across her lips, and it is haunting as it is ethereal, glinting in the sharp edge of teeth. “I had never seen one close enough to taste.” 

Her eyes glint, and he feels the familiar churn of unease. “I wondered” A tilt of her head, studying his bared chest and visage with a curiosity so untouched by human shame. “If the sea claimed a son of fire,” Her gaze drops briefly to where the arrow once buried in his shoulder, “...would he burn beneath the water?” 

Despite himself, despite the bewilderment and discomfort threatening to steal him away once more, a breath quite near a laugh escapes him. “I’ve disappointed you, then.”

She, it seems, is quite unfamiliar with the mortal crutch of humor. “You’ve done no such thing,” she assures dazedly, though her gaze has unsettlingly drifted toward the bare expanse of his chest once more. Jacaerys stiffens in nature, his own hand rising without thought to his throat; The touch of something wet and careful in memory, the blood which had gathered at his neck and collarbone, laved away, cleaned with a voracity which only bordered on tender. 

He nearly recoils at the thought. It had been her, indeed, who tasted him again. With it comes another bout of nausea; though quieter, and more treacherous still, is the hungry and awed way in which he cannot cease his staring. 

She is beautiful – in the line of flesh so cool beneath the water, such swirling, glinting eyes and gentle turn of cheek; that glint far below, silvered as mother-of-pearl and strange iridescence as she moves with the tide. 

It is perhaps this trance, this pull of fate or of fools, in which he extends his fingers – weak still despite their healed wounds – towards the very water which clings to her shoulder. There are glinting marks there, some half-scaled beauty, and he moves slow enough for her to vanish into the depths if she wishes. 

She does not move – only watches him nearer with a stillness so harrowingly unnatural. 

His fingertips brush her shoulder, so very cool to the touch; enough so, such a respite from the beating oppression of the midday sun, that Jace lets some strangled breath loose from his throat, a half-relief at the sensation of cooled, glinting flesh so sweet against his burning palm. 

She, in turn, leases a short inhale, chilling enough to send ridges of thrill across his bare spine. The noise which leaves her is none he has known of man nor beast; a sound of glistening shores and soaring seas, of sunkissed reaches and tidepools swirling in slow wakes. 

A jolt from his touch, swallowed of regret and instead burgeoned by a sharp motion, her fingers perhaps tightening somewhere below the greened depths of the mirrored sky. Glossed lips then tremble, eyes flicking to his and down to the slip of wood which separates his warm shoulder from her sea. 

“I’ve brought you something,” she says gently, and when her elbows beach themselves as they had yesterday upon the edge of his raft, he finds her palms abound with bounty. 

In one hand comes a small, dripping bundle of greenery – dark fronds and pale, tender shoots which look as though they sprouted from some moonlit cavern far beneath the waves; in the other she bears a cluster of oysters and other mollusks, their shells slick with salt and glinting beautifully in the sun’s breath. 

Jacaerys watches in startled awe as she lays them before him upon the raft, visage painted with some odd, nearly unnatural shyness about her. His lips part, though the tearing, churning hunger persists violently within his stomach; she offers food to him now, as she keeps him alive and afloat. “You must eat.” 

Her voice is a sound which bubbles gently against the lapping of water over her elbows, bare skin warmed only by the sun. 

Jacaerys does not waste a moment more. 

It is an effort, indeed, to rise himself to his elbows; hauling himself upon rippling, quivering muscles into a position where he might grasp the kelp and seaweed by the handfuls and tear at their stringy flesh with his teeth. He eats them handful by starving handful. 

A savage, he must be; for he does not so much as turn his mind over as he swallows the pale stalks tasting of pepper and brine, nor do his lashes flutter in the slightest when she bends her head and, with the sharp glint of nails he hardly glances, pries open the shells one by one. 

The meat of them lie glistening and large, singing with a gentle grace of saviour to his ears as he finishes the greenery in mere minutes. 

Her nails, nearly claws, rip through shell seams as though they’re merely sheaths of parchment; the sound of it sends shivers through him and goosepimples along his flesh, lets his voice splinter in a half-moan of hunger as she pierces into them as though shell and flesh alike are no obstacle to her will. 

In her clutch comes the first scallop, offered to his lips. 

He eats from her grasp as though he has not tasted food in weeks, perhaps longer; he tears at the meat with a hunger never felt before, brine running down his chin and slpping onto his chest. Still he scarcely pauses, too ravenous to care for such things as propriety, and all the while two glinting eyes watch him with such concentration it nearly feels like a touch. 

For a long while they remain suspended between sea and sky as the prince gathers strength one careful mouthful at a time; the siren only lingers beside the raft, elbows anchored lightly upon the weathered timber. The tide whispers in patient breaths as sunlight wanders across the waves, reaching her face and fracturing into shifting gold upon her damp skin. 

“Gods,” his voice nearly cracks only once the remains of broken shells and the trails of oysterjuice track down the sun-browed skin of his chest. His finger graces over the oystershell nearest his knee as he half-sits, energized from the sustenance. “Thank you.” 

She smiles at this; a bizarre yet gentle thing, just a breath away, with her own elbows perched upon the raft. His fingers brush the shell again, tracing the smooth curve worn soft by the endless overchurn of the sea. 

“It is a shame,” he finds himself murmuring absently, “that there was no pearl within.” With his words come a strange bashfulness, an emotion so foreign upon him that he’s struck to hear it at all. There is little left of the prince in his voice now; Only a boy adrift upon broken wood, speaking to a creature who should belong only to nightmares. “I would have had something to give you in return.”

A dip of brows upon her ethereal visage; an expression enough to rouse a dusting of heat to his cheeks. 

“We give pearls as gifts,” he explains quietly, watching the blank confusion linger across her countenance. “To those who are…special.” The words catch faintly, tumbling in sheer awkwardness as he wonders faintly if the fever ever truly left his mind. “I suppose it is not the same for your kind.” 

The sea dips them; her coiled hair, shining with the remnants of the deep, curls over the broken timber where the ship’s remains have since become the expanse of this strange world. His hand rests near it, close enough that the strands occasionally brush against his fingers when the sea moves. 

She stares at him, always so watchful; Even as saltwater slips over her lashes and gathers upon her gleaming eyes, she does not blink.

“Have you gifted pearls before, my Prince?”

Heat touches his face, caught entirely unprepared. He looks away with a faint, embarrassed breath that might have once belonged to some other boy – some boy who’d not fallen from the sky, nor stared at the starry sea of death and found a woman waiting beneath the waves.

“No,” his voice is far softer than he’d endeavored. “I’ve not.” 

This, it seems, affects her. A strange flicker warms her expression, fleeting as first light of dawn; not human, but recognizable in itself as Jace watches her lashes dip over her pearled eyes. Shyness, he thinks wondrously. A creature who could drag ships beneath the waves and rip men open whole; and she is shy. 

I’ve gone mad, he thinks, and the vision of her is so impossible under the midday sun that he nearly smiles. The sea rocks them gently upon the raft, the movement drawing her hair away from her shoulders which gather sunlight in soft, golden sighs; Jacaerys realizes he’s been staring for farr too long and casts his gaze upward, half-closing his eyes to feel the sun true and warm upon his countenance once more. 

For some time, they remain like this: the prince regaining his strength, the siren floating beside the raft, the smell of the seabreeze between; The water whispers around them in secret sounds, and when Jacaerys tips his gaze to levy her once more, he finds the sunlight trembling over her features, rendering her unreal in the golden shimmer of warmth. At last, very quietly, he speaks.

“You are quite kind, I think.”

The words seemed to startle her even more than his touch had; her eyes dart, skittish things, from his propped elbow and down towards some unseeing depths which linger far beneath them. Still, he continues. “You saved me. You healed me, fed me.”

Marked by the silence of the sea, Jacaerys lets his head fall back to hang upon a stretched neck, exposing his throat to the open air, to the sun, to the salt; there is a prickling awareness there, of her gaze upon the pulse beneath his flesh, though he does not, for once, return her stare. 

“If you mean to drag me beneath the waves one day,” he continues – and he is mad, surely, for there is now a faint, unsteady amusement in the curve of his mouth, “then perhaps I am a fool.” 

He glances back toward her to find surprise glinting so slight and fleeting over her visage; a small trace of humor lingering in her own curve of cheek.  

He shrugs, a half-boyish thing belonging to another lifetime. “But you are kind nonetheless.”

The silence which follows swallows; it is full of her watching, and of the sea breathing around them. Kind, that word conjured once more – she acts as though perhaps she’s unfamiliar; As though no one has ever looked upon her and chosen any name but monster.

Then, for the first time since he had seen her rise from the depths of the murkiness the night past, she truly looks away – and before he can ask what he has done, she slips beneath the surface entirely. 

The water closes over her, merely a shadow of shoulder and hair lingering like shadow before it is all swallowed by the blue – a final glimmer of silver follows, that glint of treasured coin; and then she is gone. She leaves behind only the trembling of ripples and the bright, indifferently gilded sunlight scattered across the vast expanse of sea, a blinding thing now that there is no beauty to obstruct its harshness. 

The tide shifts beneath his raft, and for the first time since he fell into the water, Jacaerys is well and truly alone.

HIS SIREN, SHY AS SHE MIGHT BE, RETURNS WITH THE SUN THE NEXT DAY. 

And, indeed, the same time the day following. Habit grows within this drifting life so quietly that Jacaerys notices it not until it has rooted itself far within him; for three days pass in the very same rhythm, churning with the slow grace of heat and then chill, shivering and sweltering, some warmth in his skin which bleeds not and sheds not but always persists in hunger, if not for sustenance than company, or its more wretched and unknown twin. 

The sea becomes his tell of time; tides mark the hours better than bells ever had, and somewhere in those long hours between sunset and moonrise, she always appears. 

Sometimes he finds her instantly; that coy shape glittering in sharp glints beneath dark water, silvered scales catching and vanishing amongst the waves. Sometimes she watches him first, a sensation which comes to him as a strange awareness upon the nape of his neck and deep below his stomach, lingering as though some odd thing awaits for him across the water. 

Always, though, she brings him food. Bounties of shellfish, mollusks, fish gleaming like polished coin, strange seafruits and vegetation which taste of figs and peppers and salt and brine; once she returns with an odd brown-haired hard shell, which contains within it not only a sweetly hardened white fruit but also water – a sugary kind, which drips itself across his thirsted flesh and dries tacky until the next morning he wakes to his skin laved fresh and clean once more. 

There are many things he learns during this time. Most of all, he learns that questions mean very little to her; and answers, perhaps, mean even less. 

When he asks how far they are from land, one morning as the sun rises soft and pale over the endless blue, she only tilts her head. “The sea touches many lands,” she provides in response, a notion which is incredibly uneasy as it is exacerbating. Jacaerys discovers then that the creatures of the sea do not measure distance as men do; They do not count leagues or days or the fading hope of a distant horizon finally appearing, for the ocean is no obstacle to them, but a home.

There are other times in which her companionship is close as he can remember to any other; She learns of him through the little movements of his human visage – captured things, the pull of amusement at his lips and the lowering of sadness at his eyelids. He catches her watching him often, studying these small betrayals of emotion; One afternoon, as the sun dances upon her bared back, she attempts to replicate his amusement upon her own ethereal reflection. 

A near imitation of a smile grows too intentional and solemn, reflecting a study of joy yet not yet a true wielder of it in the flesh. The sight pulls a laugh from him, boyishly bright, doubling him from the waist in amusement. 

She, at his outburst, reflects a ture smile – not forced or painted but merely grown of inordinate pride that she might create something so bright within him. It is the first instance, perhaps of many, in which he finds himself watching her lips with a very specific intention of curiosity. 

Days pass, or weeks; Time behaves strangely upon the sea, and he watches suns rise and fall, tides come and go, no stretch of land or ship or life in any distance. 

THough each day and evening she returns, and eventually he learns the sound of what passes for a name amongst her kind. It is a sequence of beautiful notes which his human throat cannot wholly reproduce; and each time he attempts it, she only laughs, a sound somehow more beautiful than what she is called, and it rises and falls like water spilling through caverns. Eventually, with some fond exasperation, she allows him a shortened thing, a simpler name which his tongue can manage. In return, she learns his; and she calls him Jacaerys in that watery lilt of hers, so low and fresh and pulling. 

One night, as she brings him a supper of squid and weeded sea, she requests something of him in return. 

“Tell me of your kind.”

He looks up from the small task of fastening reeds and torn netting together, a distraction made for himself to tear his eyes away, for at least a moment, from her cloyingly alluring countenance. His nose scrunches against sun-kissed freckles, tipping his head. “Men, you mean?” 

Her tresses are floating tendrils in the near-dead sun, so different from their glimmer of day, and he watches in entrancement as she shakes her head; Another human instinct she’d learned from him in days past. “Your kind,” she repeats, coming closer to the raft. He no longer recoils at her proximity; now, when she approaches, his first instinct is dizzying anticipation instead of fear. “The ones whose blood tastes of fire.”  

His stomach finds a chill at her words, though he only leans back upon calloused palms and glances up and the nail-sliver of moon peeking through bruise-crushed curtains of sky. 

He tells her, then, of Old Valyria; of dragons filling the sky and empires of families, the dredges left of them who crossed both Doomed ash-shores and poisoned seas, carrying the last embers of a dying civilization. When he thinks he’s finished, or that she might tire of his voice, she only asks more – starry eyed and curious, leaning her head against the wood and asking how it feels to fly upon the sky. 

It’s only after the sheer blackness of night has found the sea that he speaks of Dragonstone. He murmurs of his own family, too; he tells her of soaring towers black as dragonglass and fields of lurching green which become swallowed up by jagged volcanic breath, of his mother and the war in her name. He whispers of his Usurper uncle; of Luke and Arrax – and that is when words truly start to tremble. He does not realize he weeps until he tastes the salt of them, until she lifts a cool finger to wipe them away and taste them instead upon her own tongue. 

He whispers the rest – of Meleys and her rider; then of Vermax and of the end in the Gullet. And when he finishes, she remains silent for a long while.

Her voice comes in the watery traces of a whisper. “You have been lonely.” 

He does not respond to her. 

He couldn’t have, even if he’d wished to; there are truths too large for the mouth to carry, and this is one of them. 

So he turns his face away, letting his gaze drift over the restless dark of the sea, over the silvered shiver of moonlight trembling upon the water’s skin. But she has watched him long enough to understand despite this, and the glint of her is dimmed under the blackness of the sky, that mirrored world broken only by her sweet form half in the glassy depths. 

“I have sisters,” she says then. “I know I’ve spoke of them to you before.” 

And though she’d indeed mentioned it days past, still it is odd to think a woman like her – if she is to be labeled such a thing, so swathed in tide and shadow – might have a family at all; His eyes find her and try to conjure the thought of a life down below. Within him he finds something curious and tender. “Do you have many?” he asks, because it is the easiest of his questions.  

She nods, a spill of hair along her shoulders. “Yes.” 

“How many?” he asks then, shifting upon the raft to lie closer along the edge, his bared shoulders freckled even beneath moonlight, their faces so very close. 

And so with a dip of her chin, she tells him in turn of the hundreds of sisters which live down in the depths, of the Mother-sister which birthed them and watches them, and of the ribbed-world of bleached bone and darkness which she came from. He asks her of her childhood, and of her people; and when she gives him all in kind, he finds himself pondering – with a distant recall of dragonseeds and countless nameless silver-haired visitors to the island – how abundance itself can be another kind of exile.

ON THE EVENING FOLLOWING, SHE COMES TO HIM WOUNDED.

He had waited for her through the expanse of the day. It was a strange thing, he thinks now, how he had once every morning begun with thoughts of war and strategy, of what ravens might arrive and what battles might be waiting beyond the horizon. Now, he wakes with the sun and listens for the sound of water changing. 

He’d fashioned something resembling a task for himself; a crude thing, a boy’s invention against the endless boredom alone at sea; With reeds and pieces of his torn trousers and the remnants of salvaged seanet, he has rigged a small tether, a foolish little snare which occasionally lures fish close enough for him to catch if his hands are quick and his luck is kinder. Still; after exhausting himself upon the empty bounty of fish his game provided him, he’d waited for her for far too long. 

When she comes, it is in the glint of moonlight which catches red upon the curve of skin, and his heart thuds once within the cave of his chest when he finds the long, horrid lacerations crossing one shoulder like clawmarks across her flesh. 

“What did that?” he asks her sharper than intended. She only watches him; She has brought him a handful of shells, gathered carefully in her torn and bloodied fingers, a sight which churns painfully in his chest. She has come to him injured, and still carrying gifts. “Are you all right?” he attempts again, kinder this time. 

It is silent for far too long as she dips her head, working open the few shells for him with jagged nails, which he takes hungrily, though not distracted enough to forgive the strained stiffness of her normally voracious movements. At length her voice comes in a quiet tense, low as a groan. 

“My sisters are displeased.” 

It is enough for Jacaerys to study her, those lacerations and such sweet skin ripped apart, and understand enough that the wounds have something to do with him and, indeed, with the food she brings to the surface each turn of sun. Perhaps, too, with the sheer notion that he still breathes at all. 

“Because of me,” he whispers, and she says naught but a small trembling sigh; though when his knuckles raise to tenderly trace along the marred flesh of her shoulder, she does not turn away. A churn of water, she keens to his touch, coming nearer until and she is close enough to drop a weary, shivering cheek upon the cloth of his thigh. Heat burns there, roving from the seeping chill of her bare cheek upon his pant. She gazes up at him once more from his lap, a reflective but morose thing, as though she doesn’t quite understand why he sees her suffering as so horrible; as though perhaps it is merely the price of wanting something and keeping it. 

He whispers to her then, when she asks – tales of Princely youth and sailing upon the sea with his father; and she whispers quietly of her own life, of the schools of fish which keep her company and guide her to the most treasurous depths of the sea. 

And that night, after she leaves, he lies awake and watches the stars. 

They are cruel things, stars – so beautiful and yet unreachable. And the songs, as they always do, begin sometime past the hour of Ghosts, reaching him across the water from the odd-hazed distance; the song of her sisters, he’s come to understand. He lies upon his raft and wonders if she will return tomorrow – and then, if she might one day decide he is no longer worth the trouble, worth her pain.

He thinks then of his mother, and of Dragonstone, and all those who must believe him dead; who have likely carried on in the war that he has so reluctantly left behind. 

And beneath it all, in that endless sky of stars, there remains one true wish upon his tongue: that his siren might come back unharmed.

TWO DAYS PAST, AT THE EDGE OF THE BAT’S HOUR, SHE FINALLY RETURNS TO HIM. 

She reveals to him in a depth of shimmer, dancing upon a surface of purple and orange which streaks his tanned skin and curls his hair with salt and warmth, still in the early eve of the day. Water warms him; the sunset bleeds crimson across the horizon and Jacaerys sits at the edge of the wreckage with both legs dangled within the sea. 

She surfaces soundlessly between his knees, an appearance so sudden he nearly startles back; with a glint of amusement she stares, brows ticking upwards in an impossibly human expression. Jacaerys, warmed through his unease shock, lets his lips curl in a fond relief. 

In an urge so boyish; a thing laced with sheer hope and solace, he forgets himself and, indeed, the weakened state in which she’d appeared to him two long nights past. 

“Hoping to drown yourself?” he jests before he remembers himself. 

She – having since learned the human habit of jesting and recently found herself one for the same sharp wit he often bears – only tips her glinting, glimmering eyes skyward in a roll of vexation, a thing she’s also long learned from him to do. 

“I cannot drown,” she chides, voice like seafoam, amusement leaked so warmly through her mouth that he nearly forgets the glint of teeth which live just beyond those sweet lips. 

“No,” he, solace at last to have his siren returned unharmed, only smiles. “I suppose you cannot.” 

Her hands settle upon the timber, mere breaths from the outer line of his thighs as he leans back upon palms to regard her fully. “Are you well?” He wonders – and then, with a faint heat upon his cheeks that grows not only due to the dying sun, “I worried for you.” 

It casts something bright upon her eyes and twitches the coltish smile which belies her lips; and the shimmering is there once more, so evergreen in her beauty as she pushes only closer to him, her cheek ghosting that giving fabric which clothes his inner knee. 

For a moment he merely gazes down upon her visage, raining with beauty and dripping still with that unsettling stillness. Her eyes glint only faintly in the dying day, so beautifully lit between his thighs. 

“You should come in,” she says in response. 

To this, Jacaerys laughs. It is not the first offer; indeed it is a thing she’s supplied in more than a handfuls – when the sun reached its blistering peak and he winced at the searing upon his flesh, when the moon made whatever hides below her hips in the depths glow, even when the breath of conversation dwindled in the easy laze of the heat, the water so inviting as it kissed over her skin. 

And Jacaerys might, these days, be a mindsick – or lovesick – fool; but still, he knows better. 

“You hide it well,” he murmurs, only partial in his jest though some lace in the back of his mind truly yearns to yank himself from the pull of those depths, to coil away in fear of the creature between his legs. “But you cannot trick me, siren.” 

She does not particularly enjoy the name; though still she only tilts her head, a coy thing he resents only so far as it makes the urge to slip into the water even stronger, to feel her skin between the warmth of the water and his own salted skin, cooled by the depths below. 

“I only wish for you to join me,” the words rise from her with the hush of tidewater slipping through black stone, soft and inexorable, the sea itself speaking so longingly through her mouth.

There is little mirth in the laugh he gives once more. He mirrors the tilt of her head boyishly, curls tangling with lashes. “And be dragged into the depths?”

The levied gaze upturned against the glint of dying day does not waver from his visage; in the dimming light her eyes hold such strange, fathomless brightness, submerged stars peering at him through leagues of darkened water. “ I would not drag you.” 

It is so sweet, the lie; and perhaps it is not inherently such a thing, but instead borne from those odd, coiling natures which juxtapose her very being – to tear flesh and to soothe it, to lave upon fear and to charm it away. She is kind, and she is, despite it all, sweet – though yet, Jacaerys remains uneager to discover yet whether her self restraint survives immersion into the sea. 

Nonetheless, he cannot help his faint tick of a grin, amused perhaps only at the absurdity of it all. 

“I am not eager to test your limits,” he confesses. 

A ribboned smile, lurking against the water as her hands grasp the wood beside his knees. Something in the depths brushes his ankle; boot against something stronger, faint and fluttering though still startling enough to ridge his bare spine. She hums. “Do you think so little of me, Jacaerys?”

It is a song, to hear his name from such lips. The sea rocks impatiently, and he feels the leverage of his hips tilt just so against the tides. She rocks with them, a gentle flow that splays tendrils of hair across bare shoulders, glimpses of sweet skin lower than his eyes dare dip. “I think,” he says with a wettened lip, “you have already admitted to dragging men beneath the waves.” 

She finds amusement in this, it seems, and she gives a small tilt of head. “Men.” Such emphasis comes with a tightened flutter across his chest, and his brow lifts, emboldened so as to lean forward until their breaths meet the same stretch of salted air. 

“Am I no man to you?” he wonders. 

Her eyes, those unblinking lives of dying stars through the last breath of day, flare with some kind of heat from the expiring sun. “You’re far more than that.” 

In her wake washes aboard his wooden raft a fresh kiss of sea, straining her bare chest against the expanse of plank between his thighs; the movement is a gentle rocking, though it brings them keenly close, so close indeed that Jacaerys is rendered dizzied by the sweet smell of her once more, of the cloying honesty in those deepened, reflective eyes. 

Jacaerys has lived a life told of titles and beings; prince, son, rider, piece upon the board of kings and queens, bastard and heir, all of the muddled things which lie between old bloodlines indistinguishable from myth. 

He watches that myth now, splayed before him, and silently marvels at her tangibility. So he says her name, her common-tongued name, and tips his head boyishly. “You say such strange things,” he murmurs. 

Her head tilts in a mirror, one which makes his heart skip over itself faintly, the lick of warm sea against his knees lapping over the salted air. Her skin glows under the red-streaked sun, a thing of marvel and unconfounded beauty. “As do you, prince.”

A laugh escapes him, bubbled from the space between them as it rocks, the sea yearning for the two hearts which beat not together nor on the same natural track but instead in some odd counterbeat of each other; and Jacaerys lets the water dip him forward just so, enough to see the iridescent lines shimmering upon her cheeks. Her face is so very pure in the setting death of sun. 

He tips his head sidelong, somewhat intrigued by her words. “And what strange things have I said to you?”

She, who never blinks, is overcome with some minute breath of shyness, a mirror memory of nights before, and her gaze drops to the fire-streaked water before looking to him once more. “You call me kind.”

Of all things, the prince thinks; Of all the impossible, absurd madman things she has witnessed him do: speak of dragons, bleed upon the sea, command her to rise from the depths as though he still possessed a court and the shadow of a crown to succeed – this is what remains with her.

“You find that so strange?” he shakes his head faintly, letting his lip lift slightly. “You have spent every day proving it.”

She says nothing; The silence between them is no longer the terrible silence of their first meeting, for it is now laced through with those more sweet things, a vulnerability shared through salt-laced glances and small smiles.  

“You healed me,” he continues quietly when her voice still shies away from sound. “When there was no reason to. And you fed me when your own kind would sooner have fed upon me. You listen when I speak, though I imagine my life must sound terribly unexciting beside yours.” 

This, at last, coaxes a small curve of glossed lip to her visage. 

His smile is slight, too, though still he continues. “And when I grieve...” He lowers his eyes toward the darkening glass slipping between the broken planks, thinking of ancient wings and smoldering waters. “...you still care, even if my troubles seem so minute to you.” 

The sea breathes around them in spilling sighs of waves; She studies him with that unnerving patience once more, until she asks, in a voice so soft he almost mistakes it for the tide, “is that truly kindness?”

His brow knits, struck at once by both her honest bewilderment and, too, her capacity for tenderness. The breath which slips his lips is one of wonder.  “What else would it be?”

Her gaze drifts beyond him, toward the place where the sun has nearly drowned itself beneath the world’s edge, and her head tilts in that learned habit, a small mirror of his own. 

“My sisters sing until men forget they are afraid. And then they feed.” she says after a long while. Her fingers trail idly through the water, and the sea bends around them as though eager for the touch. “When I first saw you upon your beast,” Her eyes lift to meet his once more, startlingly bright. “I thought I might do the same.” 

His heartbeat stumbles; a thought which should bring terror but, in its absence, only reminds him how very alive he still is. She speaks before he can dare. 

“I do not know why I did not.” A draw comes upon her brow, a tremble of her lips. “I only know that when you sleep...” she murmurs, almost wonderingly, “...I do not wish to leave you.” Her fingers curl and he watches them catch upon the pearl of sea. “When you laugh, I wish to hear it again, and when you hurt...” Her voice catches upon something. “...There is… pain in me, also.” A shake of tresses, bewildered. “I have never known that before.”

A burgeoning warmth spreads across the very fibers of his being. The last breath of day lingers across the water between them, red as banked embers beneath ash, and Jacaerys stares at the woman who saved his life, wondering how she has gone a whole life without ever hearing a gentle name spoken of herself.  

“I should think,” he says softly, scarcely above the whisper of the tide, “that whatever name your sisters would give such a feeling…” His heart skips its own beat within his chest, watching how her eyes dance with the light of late eve, “…among my people, we would simply call it affection.”

The evening deepens around them; she does not respond but instead leans closer to him, just slightly so, her bared beauty brought higher momentarily. The sun has nearly swallowed itself unto the horizon, leaving only the last remnants of gold bleeding beneath the line between sky and sea; the water beneath his knees is dark and glassy, reflecting the first early stars as they begin to appear one by one. 

“Affection,” she repeats, a sweet thing from lips so parted, wondering. Warmth spreads boyishly across Jacaerys’ visage, and he only nods gently. 

It is this very moment that she chooses to spill her grace onto the palms steadying her between his legs; he watches her rise higher from the sea, arching until the water gives way to the scaled glow beginning below her hips. 

Early moonlight pours over her as though it has waited all evening for this very purpose; and his gaze follows the hush of young moon over the sky of deepening violet, tracing how beauty glows through the curve of her breasts as she breathes shakily in the salted air. Lower still, with heated cheeks, his eyes fall – down where human shape surrenders into luminous impossibility. 

He must have stared too long, for her mouth parts in a chilling breath. “You stare at me often, Jacaerys.” 

“You are difficult not to.” It comes from his lips with no such reservation of courtly politeness nor intent to charm; it is a simply known truth, one he’d likely repeat with each breath, if she so wished to hear. “Surely, you know such things.” 

Seabreeze breathes the wet strands of her hair in damp kisses across her cheek; the sea rocks gently beneath them as though to lull him closer – though he needs no more encouragement than the sight of her alone.  

“I truly wish you would come in,” she chides, and her voice – a thing nearly lost beneath the hush of the water and the gentle streaks of dead sun; a confession of sorts, some private form of longing which spills from glossed lips into the air of hunger between them. 

Her breath ghosts upon his cheek as she leans impossibly closer between his thighs. “Though, I suppose I must come to you instead, prince of the sky.” 

A quiet smile ghosts across his mouth, a jilted thing borne from nerves and, perhaps, fate; If such there is a thing. And there, beneath the youngest stars of the sea’s early night – after days of floating in the wide expanse of nothing – he kisses her. 

Her lips are cool as water beneath shade; rainfall upon fevered skin, and from sugary lips comes the faintest breath of her surprise. She presses against him with an eagerness bolstered by uneven weight, a lamb unstable upon fresh legs, some sweet hunger that calls to him louder than the songs of her sisters which have already begun to leak over the surface of the horizon. 

Lips shift, sliding salty and sweetened with hunger. The raft shifts beneath them at her eager lurch; Jacaerys’ hand comes to steady himself upon the wood as his hips cant, slipping further towards the edge of that abyssal water, and still he does not resist, he merely lets his other palm, the one so hungrily pressed to the flesh of her collarbone, slide upon wet skin. Her own ripple upwards like waves upon shores, threading like rivulets through his curls and the other casting her chilled palm over the warmth of his pounding bare chest. Webbed, he thinks faintly, as her fingers splay over his skin; The stars above seem to tremble upon the water in her rippling wake as she presses closer still. 

Tongues prod and slide, a slow dance neither is particularly familiar with though the beat alone brings them closer, breaths melting into soft sighs and gentle hiccups of need. Her lips are of brine and sweet seafruit, and he finds himself insatiable to the taste. 

His hand, hungry and of its own mind, slides past supple flesh; he squeezes only where her sighs come out with faint sounds of enticement – exploring where the deepest keening of her throat meet his own, whilst her own exploration tugs at his scalp and grasps sharply at his warm skin. Hunger and that deeper urge mix deliciously within the basest instincts of his manhood; though his hand pauses at the place where her skin changes, where the familiar ends and the sea wholly begins. Perhaps, days ago, he’d have recoiled at such a sensation – though the man he is now only feels wonder. 

And so he pulls her closer, close enough to taste the brightness of her tongue, so cool and familiar in his memories of his bloodied flesh, so hungered and placant still. And when she pulls back, hardly enough to breathe, her forehead presses cool against his. 

“You taste of fire,” she whispers, a trembling and insatiable thing. 

A smile touches his mouth, and he imagines she can feel it all upon her own lips. “And you of salt.”

For the first time, she laughs against his mouth; and the sea, ancient and endless, carries the sound away. 

JACAERYS IS NOT LOOKING WHEN THE WORLD RETURNS. 

Indeed – as has become the quiet habit of these strange and borrowed days – his gaze has long since abandoned the horizon in favour of the creature beside him. The world has narrowed these days to a single pair of luminous eyes and a curve of shoulder which rises with the tide; to the silvered wake she leaves whenever she slips, laughing, beneath the glassy panes of water and vanishes into whatever hidden depths lie beneath the waves. He watches her instead, the compass by which all mornings begin and all nights fall. 

Seamist sighs over the Narrow Sea in wandering veils, drifting along the horizon and stitching the heavens to the waters with threads of pearl; The sun has drowsily set itself an ascent, still seeping pale across the panes of water, when she grows suddenly still.

“What is it?” He inquires, voice still syrupy with the dredges of sleep. He lies upon the swollen and salt-rotted board, one arm draped lazily over the edge of the raft, fingers absently threaded through the cool silk of her hair so unable to ever fully dry from the cloying breath of sea. 

She does not look at him, nor answer; a glossed gaze remains fixed upon the immeasurably distant horizon. Perhaps, if he were not drunk with the drowsiness of morning laze and early heat – if he’d not given up the hope of such sights days ago – he’d have turned and looked with her. 

Only after so long a silence that he almost repeats himself do her lips part.

“Land.”

This, indeed, sobers the prince entirely. He rises at once, the raft pitching beneath him as he lurches quickly upon one knee. Fingers, still caught amongst her hair, loosen hurriedly lest he pull her with him; He shades his eyes against the low morning light. 

Afar stretches the same rolling sea, thick with mist and silent as a phantom, that horrible blue which has swallowed days and weeks from his life. His eyes strain, a sharp sting of salt and sun, though still he soon makes it out.

It’s a far distant thing – far beyond the rolling waves, hardly more than a shadow painted against the morning; despite such meager an observation, Jacaerys lets out a breath through laced teeth. A miracle, a blessing answered by the gods who had watched him drown and then live in the same eve. 

How many nights had he whispered it into darkness? When his fever burned, and the sea seemed endless, when the empty sky swallowed the empty sea and rocked him, lonely and stranded, in a cold nothingness. 

Land.

For the first time in what could be weeks, or months – or perhaps merely some strange lifetime lived entirely between one sunrise and the next – Jacaerys feels the world opening again, yawning back into a wide berth of cliffs and coves and spine-ridges mountains, of valleys and lakes and beaches and forests. 

And an odd thing passes him, then. Jacaerys has now lived so long suspended in this place, so far between water and sky, between continents, between worlds; how odd to remember a life, as though peeking into a jarred, seaside old bottle-scroll of another man’s dream. 

When he lowers himself again, it is not the distant shore that once more first claims his attention. 

She has drifted nearer without his noticing, borne gently upon the breathing swell until her face nears the side of the raft, a glint of silvery tendrils curling just beneath the sun-shattered surface. His boots, which lie at the end of the disintegrating raft, dry in the early morn; she leans a cheek drowsily upon the sun-warmed wood near his knees, and he has a mind to trace the soft curve of her there, that sweet expanse of skin. Though her words come before he might even think to lift his palm. 

“I will bring you there.”

The words are gentle, and only after he takes time to study her face does he discern it: Shine glistens there, upon her cheeks – no seawater nor salted spray, but some pooling glisten of silvery glum. It pools there, clinging to her lashes for a final moment before it slips soundlessly along the delicate slope of her cheek, falling unto the weathered timber between them where it shines for one heartbeat before the thirsty wood drinks it away. Another follows, then another. She is crying.

The sight unmakes him. 

Though not one to ever endure the tears of any woman so disheartened, this proves impossibly more grievous: This creature of the deep, born of sea and darkness, who he once believed belonged only in stories meant to frighten babes – weeps now with all the helplessness of any mortal girl. The tears which fall from her eyes catch the light of morning; pieces of the moon itself, dissolving upon her skin.

A man at his very core, his words come foolish, perhaps. “Why do you weep?” His hand rises to instinctively brush away the shining path glittering beneath her eye. 

“It is foolish,” she murmurs, a thing so nearly human that Jace forgets himself; wrought, momentarily, with visions of some garden back on his Island, of curling tresses and sweet fruits and quiet whispers and gentle laughter. 

“You’re no fool,” he insists with a whisper of her name, quiet as the waves coaxing them closer to that distant promise on the horizon. Jacaerys soothes beneath her eye as one rescues dew from the petal of a flower; his signet glinting upon his thumb though he possesses neither dragon nor kingdom here. Touch has grown familiar now, a thing he’s been gifted to explore for the better of four passed days together, natural as the sunrise. 

“There are those who still wait for me,” he says quietly, a sprout of hope tugging at his chest at his own words; and though her visage remains sweet as the sunlight, lashes tangle and loosen a small wave of silvered sorrow onto the wood. He leans upon elbow now, so close he might feel her chilled breath upon his own lips. “My mother, m-my family, my people, my… my home.” 

At this, her eyes flutter open, kind as she is understanding. “You belong to the land, Jacaerys.” her lips wilt with the beautiful breath of shared sorrow. “I have long known this.” 

He, unable to help himself, searches her face; a twinge of desperation, that old thing, tugs within his chest. His eyes sting. “And you?” 

A curious sadness enters her expression then, a flicker of some emotion Jacaerys thinks is, perhaps, not fully known to man. She says nothing again, and in this silence, his gaze flickers toward the scars that still cross her shoulder – though the wounds have begun to close beneath whatever strange grace lives within her blood, they remain angry against her skin. 

The sea moves around them and it churns restless, unhappy; dangerous as the land in the distance, roving and hungry as those ancient creatures who lie in wait, far beneath. His lips part in a horrible fear. “Your sisters.” 

At the flinch of her visage, he only cradles her further in his palm, tipping his face to find her gaze watery, silvered even in the breath of morning. His own gaze swims with tears. “Will they hurt you, for what you’ve done?” 

Her gaze remains on his, and the reflection of them brings a small mirror of his own sorrow. “There will be no place beneath the water for me as there was before,” she breathes, as though exile is merely another current she must learn to swim against. “Though I knew this the moment I chose to take you.” 

The words ache all through his marrow, coiling tenderly in the notches where once arrows had struck through him. She speaks of it as though kindness is a betrayal; some selfish thing instead of the most selfless thing a creature might ever do.

It is a horrible moment in which Jacaerys looks toward the distant shore, voice imbued once more with the memory of smoke and fire, of burning ships and dragons swooping from clouds. A lifetime, it seems, has passed. 

He takes her hand, that webbed softness which boasts tender flesh and frilled wonders of silver, and when she takes him in kind, the feeling is still just as strange and wonderful as the first time he felt her under his palm. 

“I cannot remain upon the sea forever,” he says. “There is a war waiting for me. A life.” The taste of salt upon his lip; in the distance, a swooping shadow dives toward the pane of sea, and Jacaerys sees the first gull he’s seen in days. “But..” he murmurs, and a faint smile touches his lips. “There could be a life waiting for you, too.” 

There is some gleam in her eye, a terribly sad thing. Her cheek lifts from the wood to near his own visage, sweet and chilled by the breath though none the less warm in her unending kindness. 

Her lips curve into a watery smile. “You promise impossible lives, Prince Jacaerys.” 

“I promise the only one I possess.” He only pulls her closer, lifting her hand between both of his. "Dragonstone rises from the sea; Every stone of it knows the tide. If there is a place in this world where sea and fire have ever learned to live beside one another…” His smile, though weary and water-laced, has found him at last. “...Surely it is there.” 

Hope is perhaps too dangerous a thing for a creature such as her to possess. He wonders, fleetingly, whether she has ever known it at all. She looks at him then, and he finds not hope within her gaze but something gentler, infinitely sadder: the aching desire to believe him, shining there with its silvery terrible nakedness. Very quietly, she asks, “And if the sea wishes for me back?” 

Jacaerys rests his forehead against hers, and her skin carries with it the scent of salt and deep places untouched by sun. His own lashes flutter shut. 

“Then it may ask.” A faint shake of his head, voice scarcely stirring the morning seabreeze. “It has taken enough from me.” 

He feels the tremble of something across her lips; and then, before the shore can steal another heartbeat from them, she rises just enough for her lips to find his. 

He turns instinctively to meet her, his mouth yielding beneath the cool sweetness of hers, tasting of salt and seafruits and sweet residual of those peculiar sweetwater shells. Her hand comes to rest against his chest, splayed lightly over the place where once an arrow had sought his heart; his own disappears into the silken weight of her hair, drawing her nearer. A sighing thing, the sea, as it lifts their joint mouths and sways Jacaerys closer still to the depths she hales. Wood sighs beneath their joint weight, small waves claiming its splintered sides; the morning is still, water softly hushing around them. There are no birds in the sky. 

Jacaerys thinks, for a moment, that if the world were to end now, it would do so quite gently.

WHEN LAND FINALLY CLOSES AROUND THE RAFT, IT SWALLOWS THEM WITH A FUNEREAL QUIET. 

In the very last stretch of current, spurred by both tide and whatever ethereal tail lies below her hips, the sea narrows gradually; great walls of black stone rise from either side as they float nearer to the shore, until the open world is swallowed behind them into a small opening, a breath of sunlight through the keyhole of some grand door. Jace sits upon the wreckage, watching the horizon as that endless breathing vastness that had carried them for so many days retreats into a distant strip of silver; When the land swallows the last of the abyssal sky, he is finally welcomed by the first breath of shaded light he has felt in what might be ages.

It is a balm to his being. 

An old-born tyrant, weeks beneath the sun’s gaze has tanned and chapped him; Salt lives in every crease of him, wind has carved into his bones. A sigh of seeping shade crossing overhead, the looming shadows of the cliffs are cool, rich with the scent of stone and moss, and Jace draws a breath so deep it begins to ache in those places where the arrows once lived.

Passing into the mouth of a cave the size of a small ship, the rock shoots high overhead, blacker than any rock he’s yet to see in his three-and-twenty years; The slate slices sharp from the water, scarred and riddled with smaller caves whose mouths yawn open toward an emptier abyss further within the dark. Some are no larger than doorways, though others crack open high to the heavens, large enough to swallow entire fleets. 

Jacaerys finds himself staring at their scars; the sea has gnawed these caves for a thousand years, and its teeth marks rake through sharp stone everywhere. 

Soon, the cove opens around them, and the water becomes clear; and there, so close he could perhaps dive and swim to it, the water yields to a rocked edge of beach. 

Breath catches within his throat; a stretch of black beach, soft as velvet to the eye for a slope which turns flat with slabbed black rocks, warmed by the breath of sun but cooled by the deep cavernous chill. Pools gather within them in fragments of captured sky; He looks into them and feels a tremendous relief. 

It is only then, that his gaze falls upon the bones.

Lying strewn among the rocks is a whale’s skeleton, half-entombed, the great spine twisted through the stones; ribs arch upward in weather-worn curves, bleached white as old moonbone. The wind moves through them with a hollow music, a sound so mournful it brings shivers cascading down Jacaerys’ bare spine. 

As they near the cove’s shore, there reveals more bones beyond the whale’s shattered being – and these are not the bones of beasts. With the creeping dread of a fever dream, the cave peels back its own skin: A skull half-buried in stone, empty sockets filled with shadow and crystallized salt; A yellowed hand thrust up through the earth, still crawling itself towards the spot of dripping sunlight from high above; Fragments of a spine tangled in driftwood and root. Jacaerys feels that cold thing so long past creep over his chest once more. Death has not passed through here and moved on; indeed, it has become one and the same with the cove – one with the rocks and caves and tide pools. 

His breath only ceases entirely when he finds the skeleton laid beneath the nearest cavemouth. Ribs have been forced apart; shattered not by storm nor time but instead pried wide apart with care, a doorway of the corpse, a nest. 

A gaze lies upon its mangled shape in horror as those same old stories of youth now rise in him like bile; His stomach tightens, mouth stuffed of cotton and pulse pounding within his chest. 

Nearby – scattered among the rocks as though left by pilgrims or fools, lie offerings of silvered halfgroats and Tyroshi copper, greened with age; strings of fine stones dulled by salt, salt-rotted silk, fragments of pottery, even a rusted gilded dagger. 

Jacaerys feels, once more, impossibly small upon the broken raft. How many men have stood where he stands now, trembling before the dark; How many had crossed black waters with pockets heavy from gold and bellies full of fear, believing that beauty might yet bargain with death? 

With a flick of fear, his eyes shift to the glistening clear waters. Beside him still, she watches from the shallows, and he finds that she remains beautiful as the sea when it means to kill a man; floating in the clear waters, visage kissed from pearled ripples, entirely at home among the bones as though she has spent all her life here with the dead to keep her company. Perhaps she has. 

Old as it is, still the fear returns to him, surging to his throat at the sight of the pried ribs, to the trail of finger-bones littering the nearest tidepool, to her. And, after all, Jacaerys is only a man. 

“Are you going to eat me?” His voice calls out quiet, but in the wake of silence, it rebounds through the cave – a sonorous thing, not trembling though surely frightened the same: eat me, eat me, eat me. It falls dead after its repetition, laying to his expanse of bare back a cool whistle of breeze which sets the hair upon his nape on end. 

Her eyes still in the water, as still as the day he first caught glimpse of her. What comes next is a minute shift; a fall of gaze, some learned softness drawing away as a crab takes to its shell, and the cove falls still. Even the water ceases, for a breath, its incessant lapping at the black-beached shore. 

“The death of so many suns,” comes her voice at last; a thing scarcely louder than water finding a path along the sand. “And birth of so many moons.” Her eyes lift, and within those wisps of lashes, so sweet and salt-clinging, he finds only that very moon she speaks of, reflected so deep, so sharp and luminescent. “And still, you fear my mouth.”  

Jacaerys opens his own to answer; though worse still is the breathless thievery of his chest – the lack of words which crawl to his throat yet remain perched upon his tongue. Words gather there, frightened birds against the bars of his ribs, yet refuse to fly – because he knows not what he might say. 

For he has spent weeks dying in the water with her hands upon his skin, her voice in his ears, her lips upon his own; with her keeping breath inside his ruined body. And perhaps he could tell her that still, beneath all such tenderness, a frightened boy remains – that the songs of his childhood are carved too deeply into him; that men are weak creatures who inherit fear long before they inherit wisdom. Silence answers for him instead. 

His gaze returns to her, then. 

And he finds that here, in the lucid water of the cove, nothing is so softened by darkness; the sea renders her wholly to him now, silver scales glinting as hammered mail and stitched from both woman and abyss alike. Fins, a near translucent thing, taper along the delicacy of hips and fold in the current of a dreadful languor of tail; a strong shing, a terribly powerful thing which scatters ribbons of light across the cave walls as she shifts. 

Her gaze rests upon him, so eternally unblinking, and a faint smile touches her mouth then – a smile made of frost and moonlight, beautiful and dangerous and far too sad to any longer be called kind. “I could have eaten you when your blood first touched the tide.” 

The sea stirs around her hips as she shifts. Her gaze does not leave his own. “I could have eaten you when your fever took your senses and you hardly knew your own name, when all you could do was cry out in the dark.” Tresses curl, tendrils cloying towards the edge of the wood. “I could have eaten you when I drew the wounds from your flesh and cleaned your blood.” 

Eyelashes burn as Jacaerys watches her, helplessly foolish to hois own nature; he traces how her visage shifts under the reflections of the shimmering waters. 

“I could have eaten you when you first laid your mouth on mine.” 

His breath catches in a shamed flush to his cheeks, for memory betrays him all at once: her laughter beneath the stars, the cool sweetness of her lips, the shy turn of a smile after a handful of shells were deposited upon his lap. That she should speak of it all now, with such resentful sorrow – a horrible emptiness within him gapes further. 

“But you ask now,” eyes lift to him once more, moonlit and wounded even in the light of day. “even after I have done each kind thing you once praised of me?”

Regret coils ugly within him. He lurches toward the water without thinking, knees upstable upon the disintegrating salt-logged wood. “Wait,” he calls, hand outstretching in some boyish fit of desperation, as though command might counter the hurt he’d levied. 

She only slinks away, velveted water swallowing more and more of her. 

Sorrow, that horrible thing, falls deep within him at the sight. “Please.” The word breaks from him then, raw with a desperation he cannot hide; The cliffs catch it and throw it back at him once more in a hundred dying echoes – please, please, please – the cove lamenting his grief. 

Her eyes shimmer with unspilled silver. “I know you do not wish to fear me.”

It is then that she lets herself fall back into the sea. Scarcely a small sigh of water; Jacaerys is helpless to himself as the dark swallows her, absorbing the shape of her glinting scales as completely as though she had never existed at all. 

He is left quite alone. 

Silence occupies not just the ear but his bones themselves; Jacaerys remains kneeling where she vanished for some time, a hand suspended foolishly above the water in hopes the tide might, struck by some late compassion, yet choose to return what it has taken from him. Water kisses the edges of his boots and the splintered ruin he floats upon, and only when the last warmth of day has wholly bled from the cliffs lining the mouth of the cove does he at last force himself to move.

His limbs, it seems, have long forgotten the labor of belonging to him; For weeks they had been sustained by the cool touch of her palms against burning skin in the dead of night – that curious miracle by which each waking day found him a little less dead than the evening before. 

Rising upon his feet calls forth a strength he’s not attempted in what feels like true moons. 

Boots sink into the black sand; Solid earth has haunted his prayers through endless nights upon the water, yet now it feels strangely faithless and wholly dead with its lack of sway and ease. He walks because standing still becomes unbearable in both his limbs and mind. 

Slowly the prince wanders the little cove she had chosen for him. He threads first between the vast white arches of whale skeletons; then, fingertips drift across stone polished smooth by centuries of tides. Here and there the sea has driven whole ships into the stone, timber petrified into the bones of the earth; Human skulls peer from beds of mussels, seagrass growing through the hollows of their eyes; And yet nowhere among these countless things might he find the single thing he seeks. 

In time, night paints the caves into a black mouth, moonlight catching to glow horribly upon saltbleached bones. Jacaerys could leave; There is land beneath his feet, a miracle for which he once would have traded kingdoms, and somewhere beyond these cliffs there must surely be roads or villages with harbors and living men.

He does not go.

Instead he returns to the water’s edge and lowers himself among the abyssal sand, and tells himself that he will wait only until morning, when either his siren returns or daylight might reveal some path for him inland. He makes no fire, for the darkness feels less lonely when it remains unbroken; hips upon land and back against sharp rock, Jacaerys stares at the shifting current with broken regret. 

And when dawn finally begins to silver the eastern rim of the cave, washing the black water pale as beaten steel once more, bleeding with that softened lilac, Jacaerys is still there, watching with sunscorched eyes for any hint of silver within the waves. 

JACAERYS WAKES TO COLD. 

No chill which lives in the memory of his bones – not that of blood seeping from a dying body; he wakes to the roll of the frigid tide reaching calves, just where he’d collapsed upon the sand. Water laps over his boots and retreats again, a chilled thing as eyelashes unlace themselves from their salted hold upon his consciousness. 

For several breaths he reposes where he is, suspended in that memory of sleep and waking. A turn of head, pressing cheek to softened volcanic sand; and then his eyes open in memory, a lurch of disorientation at the sensation of land beneath him. 

What he finds, instead, are eyes. 

They are waiting for him from beyond the dark shelf of rock where the cove deepens suddenly into black water, faintly luminous now beneath the gentling dawn. He is struck with such immense relief that he laughs before he knows he has done so.

He croaks out her name, carrying with it all the lonely hours of the night between them as he rises swiftly, stiffness of limb protesting with the neglection of weeks upon the raft. His balance falters upon the uneven stones, though he crosses the cove as swiftly as the gods allow, ducking through whale ribs to where she waits where the black stone falls sheer into fathomless water, only her shoulders and head above the tide, hair spreading behind her. 

Jacaerys lowers himself carefully onto the warm volcanic rock, stretching close so he might lie upon his stomach along its edge, one arm hanging over the precipice towards her watchful countenance. The tide slips lazily between her tresses, coiling shyly.

“I was cruel.” He murmurs, gentler than the lick of tide which coaxed him awake though the words scrape against his throat. “I have no excuse.” 

She studies him without expression, unsettling enough that he cannot tell whether she means to forgive him or leave him once more. 

“I am so sorry,” he whispers, one last offering cast into the cove alongside the coins and daggers and futile silks of drowned things long past. Nothing answers him but the crashing wave, coaxing the glint of purpled crabs alongside the underbelly of his rock. 

Only then does her arm emerge from the water; with an upward reach, she glances up at him – and there he finds a bewildered heartbeat of hope that she might touch him again. Instead, her fingers unfold; in the glint of morning glare, Jacaerys blinks upon her palm, leaning further once more to find there, resting in the center, something shining. 

A pearl, fresh and small enough to disappear beneath his thumb. Morning gathers itself there upon its surface, a stolen captured piece of dawn pale as milk and luminous as mist-laced moon. 

Lashes flicker momentarily as the breath catches within his chest, a small laugh of absurd affection rising sweet and sharp in his throat as his eyes burn with emotion. 

Hesitation sits so strangely upon so beautiful a creature; her eyes glisten with those silvery tears, too, as her lip trembles. Her voice comes between pressed lips, a rather bashful countenance among the waves. “I wished to bring you one before you left me.” 

Her palm, he registers, trembles with the small thing, a glinting haze of the cave; affection burns bright through him as Jacaerys takes her palm with his own, closing her fingers gently around the pearl. 

“I don’t wish to leave you,” he says instead, and the confession comes before pride can catch it, before the careful walls built by a lifetime of crowns and expectations can remind him that princes are not meant to plead with the sea. His fingers remain around hers, warm against the strange coolness of her skin, the pearl hidden between their palms as though they have together captured some tiny fragment of the moon itself. “I wish to stay with you,” he whispers wetly. 

Her eyes swim just as the ancient, beautiful tail of shimmering silver does beneath the waves; currents curl and fold, and she remains utterly quiet for one moment, hand trembling within his own. Her gaze lowers briefly to the pearl still enclosed between them, then lifts again.

“The place you spoke of,” her voice ripples along the whisper of the tide. “The stoned castle that watches the sea, the home you say waits for you beside the water.” A lip trembles before it is speared with sharpened, pearled teeth. “You would truly bring me there?”

Dragonstone. He thinks of black towers rising from volcanic earth and halls warmed by fire, his mother’s chambers and dragons circling above cliffs where the wind wails. 

“Yes,” he says, lacking any such hesitation of a prince with the duty of war still looming upon his back. “I meant it. Truly.”

Something changes in her face then, though still he leans closer, lowering himself further over the stone until the water nearly reaches his bared visage, nearly kisses his chest. But before he might let his body follow that burning instinct of his heart to slip into the water after her, her hand slips from his own to disappear into the water. 

The pearl lies in his own palm; He watches her once more leave him. 

“Wait,” his voice tapers, though his disconcertion grows so completely that he remains frozen upon the rock, watching as the sea carries her not away this time, but instead towards the shore. 

It is only once she reaches the sand, long taloned things grasping in wounds through the dark, that the prince snaps upwards, heartbeat thundering upon his throat. A grieving veil, the dark water shifts and folds along her body, so unwilling to surrender what it has kept for longer than most men have had names for their gods; glassy folds climb her skin and slip over the silvering scales which remain among her sun-breathed skin. 

The unnatural grace begins in a wail of tide; a large crash of seafoam submerges Jace, his lungs filled once more with burning salt and unforgiving sting; when he surges to, upon his knees against sharp rock, he hears it: a wailing horror, splintered as shards of bone snap against echoing cave walls. His siren screams. 

Salt slides in drips from his vision, though still he finds the horror, a darkened sea of shimmering deep – no color of mortal blood, but perhaps an open vein in the ocean itself which spills a piece of its darkness upon the sand. 

The stories return once more of the she-creatures coming to land to nest; and, for the first time, the sound that leaver her is not some haunting sweetness meant to lure men closer. 

It is sheer agony, and it jolts him to action quicker than any war bell. 

Screams echo through the cavern, horrible and dragging; and hands catch the sharp of rock as Jacaerys descends, a scrambling desperation of fear as his knees strike the cold sand and stumble twice. The strength that has carried this far was never his own; it has always belonged to her and the breath she gave him, the kindness of a creature he once feared. Now, he spends what remains of it reaching her. 

He rears the largest rock just as the last of the blooded dark water retreats; waking itself only in foam and silver upon the shore. 

And just there: His siren lies still upon the sand. 

Upon reaching her, he falls to his knees. He finds, in trembling breaths, the sea’s remains upon her: laces of that old magic, shimmering scales along her skin; a strange elegance to her form, a brightness reflecting in her gaze, so akin to mother-of-pearl. 

She is no ordinary woman, but his woman.  

A trembling palm rises to brush away the remnants of foam and weeded sea, clinging to her as a dying man might his lover; and she only meets his own watery gaze, a small puff of air passing her lips. “I told you, I wished for you to come in.” 

The words undo him, loosing a laugh helpless in its wonder and grief, watery in bewilderment. Glossed lips curl, that same old glimmer in her eyes as she whispers next: “I suppose I once again had to come to you instead.”  

A hitch of his breath, swallowed in a rush of thrill as a palm comes to cup his own jaw, soothing as fingers spread along the curve of his cheek. “My prince of the sky,” she chides, her eyes carrying pools of the very same, that broke-open expanse of light high above the cavernous dark. Fingers brush away his salt-laced curls. 

He gathers her to him wholly, and she comes so very willingly, no longer divided by anything so  distant and unknowable as the sea.

A simple miracle; for she is warming, a living thing against him, breath trembling and falling in ripples of warmth along the bare of his shouldered back. Here she is, in his arms. 

Jacaerys presses his face against damp tresses and closes his eyes, overcome by the strangeness of the world having allowed such a thing to happen; and she in turn tightens her grasp round him in a gesture so truly human that it nearly brings the sting of tears to eye. The cove roars louder now, perhaps distraught with its loss; the water thunders along their bared legs, and at length, Jacaerys slowly pulls back. 

Slow, his gaze drops to her legs – the unfamiliar grace of twitching tissue and flesh and muscle and bone beneath the morning light; concern touches his heart and perhaps, too, his visage.

“Do they hurt?” he asks softly, tipping his head to catch her eyes. “Your legs.”

She looks down as though considering a question yet to be occurred within her mind; and then at length, she lifts one supple foot and nudges his side with a shy, almost playful firmness. A gesture moves through him, lips curling in a gentle affection at her nudge. 

“I have had them before,” she reminds him then, in hint of faint pride and amusement. He only smiles, no longer afraid of what she has been before him, what she is. For she is his, too – and he, hers. 

“Does it feel the same?” he wonders, gaze lingering over each sweet part of her, so real upon the shore. 

For the first time since she came ashore, she falters nearly unconfident; a startling transformation which renders Jacaerys marveled at such bashfulness. Her gaze slips away from his, and when she answers, her voice is barely above the whisper of the tide.

“No,” she hums, a small thing; and her fingers tighten faintly against his bared shoulder, nails blunt but sharp still. He can see how warmth touches her cheeks, how her lip catches upon sharp teeth. “This… feels far better.”

Jacaerys smiles then, a hand falling tenderly upon her face. A thumb brushes the dampness at her cheekbone, the silver traces still glimmering there like moonlight caught so stark against the real nature of her skin. 

And then he kisses her, slow as fate; a warmed mouth lingers against hers, patient and gentle, her hands rise to his back solidly to grasp at his warm flesh; the sea groans behind them, and the wind howls through the bones along the shore. 

Her breath catches when his hand slides to the sides of her – and he feels the shiver that passes through her then, not of fear but of sensation, an old recognition of something newly awakened. It answers in him at once, too, so low and bright and aching.

She leans closer once more, and he meets her there. 

The kiss deepens unhurried and tender; fingers curl in the muscle of his back, his own palm reaching the strange, living warmth of her skin, the quickening pulse there, the breath of her body now made real in his world. When she makes a small sound against his mouth, soft and startled by her own response, he draws back only enough to look at her. Her eyes are wide in a dawning tide of astonishment, swimming with the same heated thing that kisses across that sweet skin which once never knew the true touch of warmth. 

Jacaerys rests his forehead against hers and smiles, his own breath uneven now, his heart no calmer than her own within their beating cages. “Are you alright?” he murmurs.

Her answer is to kiss him first. Jacaerys makes a low sound against her mouth and gathers her closer once more, one hand at the nape of her neck, the other spreading along her waist, feeling the tremor there as though her body is remembering itself once more upon land. It is a sweet thing, a tangle of tongues languid, enough to perhaps remind her that tenderness can be just as fierce as hunger.

She moves against him with a wonder that undoes him; She has known desire, he can see that in the way she breathes, in the way her fingers tighten at his shoulders, in the bright, startled heat of her gaze, the memory of muscles when he shifts to press himself hard along the line of her own wanting body. Indeed, she is not one who hesitates; She knows the language of wanting better than he does, and he is not ashamed to learn from her now. 

When he draws away only enough to look at her, her lips are parted, her eyes dark with a confusion that is almost pain. 

“Tell me if you want me to stop,” he says softly, the words trembling with nerves that guide her closer to him still. “T-tell me if you do not want this, please.”

Her hand rises to his face, and the touch warms across him, spreading down trembling throat and quivering chest, far lower, igniting some spark within him. 

Her thumb brushes his mouth, and there is a smile which graces across her own. “I want,” she says, and the ocean crashes itself against their shore, folding over their hips as though it, too, wants.

He swallows, his body already hard with his own wanting; his voice comes lower, hungry for the sweet softness beneath his palms. “What do you want?” 

Her gaze holds his. “You,” she says, helpless to the unnatural flow of tresses which still seem to float gently round her beauty even left of the tide. “Only you, Jacaerys.”

Eyes shut for a heartbeat, if only in effort to steady himself; and when they open she still watches him in that patient, unsettling way.  

“Please, let me be careful with you,” he whispers, nearly desperate. She only nods, so ethereal under the breath of faraway sunlight, and her words come in the same tremble of needed breath. “Let us learn of each other.” 

And so he leads her from the waterline of the softer black sand and up where the dawn has begun to warm the flatter, kinder stones. And there, beneath the pale opening sky, he eases the salt and cold from them both. 

Fabric, fear, distance - one by one they fall away from their entwined forms until there is nothing left between them but breath and the bright, trembling ache of wanting. He lays her down with care, and when he follows her onto the sand, his mouth finds her throat first, then the hollow beneath her ear, then the place where her pulse leaps beneath the skin. She arches into him at once, a soft gasp breaking from her when his hand slides over her waist, then lower, learning her with a cruel patience.

“Jacaerys,” she breathes, a plea, a praise which makes him shudder. He answers only by kissing her harder, one hand threading through her hair, the other braced beside her head as he lowers himself over her. Her fingers clutch at his shoulders, then rake along his back, unsure whether to pull him closer or hold herself steady; He gives her both – indeed, he gives her everything he can. 

His mouth moves over hers, then down again, tasting salt and warmth and the faint sweetness of her breath, ghosting over the tantalizing flush of skin upon her breast, teeth scraping only softly. When she trembles, he stills at once, looking upon her with salt-kissed lashes. “Too much?” he inquires gently.

Her eyes are dark, her lips swollen from his kisses, and she looks nearly frenzied at the though of ceasing. 

“No.” The answer is breathlessly hungry and he smiles against her skin, slower now only because he wants her to feel every stroke of his hands, every tendered bite of teeth, every careful press of his body against hers. Her hips lift to meet him; it sends a sharp pulse of heat through him which coaxes a soft groan, lost to the plush of her skin, and she startles – perhaps at the effect she has on him. 

“Again,” he begs, guiding her with his hands though his lips leave their marks upon silver flakes along her skin. 

She moves once more; the black sand clings to their skin and the morning wind cools the sweat at their backs. 

And when he finally joins her, it is with a groan that feels torn from somewhere deep in his chest; she tightens around him in a surprised thing, melting into wanting, then wholly his in that moment. He pauses only long enough to look at her, to make sure she is with him; and when she nods, brow knit with a pleasured desperation, with her fingers digging into his shoulders and drawing half-moons of red, he presses into her warmth nearer to worship than any prayer that’s ever left his lips. 

First, with the wash of waves, it is a slow thing of breaths and shaking laughter and trembling moans – though it grows deeper, growing a heat that builds and builds until the air between them seems to crackle with it, until his pleasure rolls over him in heavy immense pressure, until her own gasps sharpen and their fingers fall, entwined together, to find the spot upon her which coaxes her eyes back in ecstasy. 

Her head falls back against the sand and lips part upon a sound that is half-gasp, half-plea. He drinks the song, kisses the line of her throat, the curve of her breast; finger turn, pressing gently in a caress along the trembling place where her body meets his, and each touch draws another shiver from her. She is beautiful like this, so flushed and undone by pleasure and trust alike; the sight of her makes him impossibly harder still, makes him want to give her everything, makes him want to keep her here in this moment forever or keep her upon a throne or wherever she might wish to be. 

“Look at me,” he begs, a broken sound.

And the sight of her eyes on his, dark and dazed and full of him, is enough to make him lose the last of his restraint. He moves with a steadier rhythm then, one hand at her hip, the other braced beside her head, grasping along the smooth rock, his mouth returning to hers whenever he can bear to leave her skin. She meets him with such growing fervor, hands roaming, learning the planes of his muscled back, the line of his jaw, the taper of his hips, the damp hair at his temples. 

Pleasure gathers tighter and tighter between them; The sea roars in the sonorous echo of two exiles making a home of one another. It is only then, as she pulls his chest upon hers and lets out a soft tremble of sigh, that they find the peak of their ecstasy in harmony. 

It rolls within him as tide turns stones upon the shore – sun-drenches and ebbing, his pleasure tumbles, his groan falls into a taper of her name, or that which his tongue can form; and she, in turn, with trembling legs and wettened eyes, smiling at the bewilderment of such earthly delights. When he comes to lie beside her, when their sweat and sand-laced skin sticks gently to one another in a lazy, sweet whispering sigh of exhaustion, her eyes meet his once more. 

A shared laugh, one of relief and bubbled affection, curls around their small cove. It is not untouched by grief, nor lacking in the gods’ cruelty – though it drifts out still across the water, and echoes only in sweetness as their foreheads press.  

And when at last he draws her down with him, when the last of the morning light spills over them and the cove becomes all hush and salt and the soft ruin of restraint, it is not hunger that remains between them but love – deep, astonished, and newly named. 

For some time, the waves come and go. 

It is when the sun fully glints through the clear tidepools that his siren rises, and offers her palm. When they gather themselves from the rocks and sand, pearl stowed within the pocket of battered sunbleached riding leathers, Jacaerys finds pieces of old silks among the bones; he wraps her in them, a first garment for a woman who crossed from one world to another. 

She laughs when he fusses over the tie of her new dressing, attempting in gentle adjustments to ensure it bothers not the scars which still stretch across her shoulder; the sound of her laughter follows them as they move away from the shore. 

The path upward out of the cove is narrow and ancient, carved through stone by years of rain and wind and the endless pummel of waves. They walk slowly, dually unsteady beneath the unfamiliar weight of land, rendering both their bodies unsure; for once, neither belonging to this world but both traversing it, sharing in stumbles and laughs and small conversation. 

At the top of the path sunlight finds their skin, and the world opens; horizon stretches wide before them so endless. In the breath of the world once more around him, grief and death melt; water dries upon warm skin and his siren lets out a breath of shock, of wonder. Jacaerys holds her palm as her other runs over the tall wildgrass swaying around them in a tide of seabreeze, holds her tightly as she throws her arms round him with bubbling laughter. 

It is only then that the shadow passes in the distance. His breath catches, her own coming only a moment later; For far along the coast, beyond the cliffs and the rolling sea mist, something enormous moves through the sky, massed and raining shadow upon the earth. Even at a distance, even as only a shape against the morning for, he knows. 

He remembers the curve of the wings and the weathered roar even before it meets their ears; knows the glint of faint gold and rubied heart along the breast of the great beast as he knows the back of his palm.

His mother’s dragon.

And so together, with splintered breaths and wettened eyes, hand in hand, Jacaerys and the siren run toward the shadows in the distance, unaware of the rising smoke and distant screams beneath it.

whew! that was long requests open. starting new taglist; pls lmk if you'd like to be on it. masterlist

There are certain feelings adulthood never managed to kill. You can become famous, wealthy. You can become the most recognizable person in the world. and build kingdoms out of your talent alone. But then your father looks at you a particular way, and suddenly all of it feels like decoration. Suddenly you’re not a man standing in front of property you pay for your girlfriend to live in. You aren’t a provider. You’re his son again, a boy again. A little boy waiting to see what kind of mood his father is in before deciding what version of himself is allowed to exist that day because everything depended on it.

“Who you talking to, boy?”

The question makes him turn color. He’s spent his entire life knowing this exact question—the verbiage, the tone. It’s not meant to be answered, but to be reacted to. It’s a challenge, a warning and the reminder. The absolute demand to remember where he came from and who made him. Who’s in charge.

Michael hates that his heart is beating so hard. Hates that his palms feel warm. Hates that fear still comes before anger in his heart. Fear first. Always fear first. It embarrasses him in ways he can’t explain. Embarrasses him because he’s standing beside the woman he loves and is supposed to protect as the man in the relationship. It embarrasses him because his brothers are watching. Embarrasses him because some part of him thought he had outgrown this years ago but, deep down even he knew he’d never be able to escape this feeling.

Beside him (Name) feels the shift happen without fully understanding the nuances. She’s seen Michael sad, anxious. Seen him overwhelmed and collapsing into himself under pressure. But this feels different, older somehow. The fear isn't coming from the conversation they’re having now because it’s coming from hundreds of conversations that happened before she was ever in the picture. A hundred moments she wasn’t there to witness or protect him from. The awful history between a father and a son fills up the space around them until it feels impossible to breathe through.

“I said who you talking to?” The question isn’t really a question anymore, it’s an invitation. An opportunity to back down.

An opportunity to apologize and make this easy.

Michael knows that too. Become smaller, submit to his father’s intimidation and make things easy.

But he can feel (Name) beside him. He can feel her holding onto him and through her touch he can feel her fear. Thee choice becomes unbearable because backing down no longer belongs solely to him. If he shrinks now, he leaves her standing there alone and Joe gets to keep treating her like she’s a cancer to the family name instead of his person.

“I’m—I’m talking to you, Joseph..” His voice is quiet. Not brave in the slightest but it is honest. It’s the honesty people stumble into when they’re too exhausted to lie anymore. And Michael is tired.

Something changes in Joe’s face, its recognition. He’s seeing a version of Michael he doesn’t particularly like. A version that belongs to himself and not Joseph Jackson, his father.

Because that’s the thing Joe never seems to understand. Fear and control are not the same thing. Michael is afraid. Everybody standing here can see that he's afraid. But for the first time in a long time, he isn't letting that fear make the decision for him.

The realization seems to irritate Joe almost as much as the answer itself.

“My girl is not the problem.” Michael says it before he can lose his nerve. “So please.. leave her alone.”

The statement simmers between them.

He’s saying he’s not ten anymore, saying he knows what he’s doing. He’s saying he loves her.

Joe never takes his eyes off Michael.

“Oh, that’s where we at now? You gon’ tell me what to do?”

“I’m asking you not to point at her..”

The argument changes speed when Joe looks at (Name) again.

Up until now, it’s been about rehearsal. About Michael being late, Joe being angry. Familiar territory everyone standing in the driveway has seen before in one form or another. But then Joe’s attention settles on her, a cold chill slides down her spine. Before he even opens his mouth, she knows where this is going. She’s spent weeks carrying this secret around like a live wire, convincing herself there would be a better time to tell Michael. A calmer time. A private time. One more day. One more conversation. One more chance to figure out how to say it without watching his entire world collapse around him.

“Did you handle your business yet?”

Michael doesn’t understand the question. It sounds strangely vague to his ears. He glances toward (Name), expecting her to answer immediately, expecting this to be something small and unrelated to him. Instead, she goes completely still, the stillness that comes from panic. The kind that arrives when the lie (by omission) you’ve been telling up and abandons you. Michael feels it instantly—that shift. The fear. The way her grip on his arm changes. And all at once, a terrible feeling begins creeping into his stomach. He’s not understanding, at least not yet. But the sensation that he’s standing at the edge of something he doesn’t know about but should.

The silence stretches far too long and becomes an answer all on its own. Joe watches her without blinking. Waiting. Michael watches her too with his brows pinched in the middle, now aware of how terrified she looks. And now remembering the strange conversations they’ve had over the last few weeks. Every question she never fully answered. Every moment she seemed on the verge of saying something before changing her mind. The pieces aren’t fitting together yet, but they’re moving.

Joe nods slowly.

“I’m gon’ ask one more time.” The driveway feels smaller as all the brothers have gone quiet. Even the morning doves have seemed to have stopped singing as Joe’s voice lowers.

“Did you handle your business yet?”

And when (Name) still can’t answer, when she just stands there staring with tears gathering in her eyes, Michael watches confirmation settle across Joe’s face. The silence told him everything he needed to know. And standing beside her, Michael feels very afraid of whatever conversation everyone seems to be having except him.

(author’s note: hello! stop reading here if you’re particularly sensitive to manhandling and heavy themes! or maybe even take a break! 💗)

Joe’s hand closes around (Name)’s wrist before anybody fully realizes what he’s doing. One second she’s standing beside Michael on the porch, clutching his arm so tightly her fingers cramped, and the next she’s being pulled down the front steps so abruptly she misses two of them entirely. Her foot catches the edge and she stumbles hard, a startled cry tearing from her throat as she nearly goes down. The concrete scrapes across her bare knee when she catches herself. The sting is hot and sharp. By the time she regains her footing, her skin is already scraped raw.

“Joe, let go of me!”

The driveway erupts all at once with Tito and Randy shouting. Jackie moving so fast he nearly collides with Joe trying to intercept him. Somebody keeps saying Joe’s name over and over as if the repetition alone might somehow break through whatever decision he’s already made. None of it matters. Joe keeps walking and dragging her forward with certainty of a man who has already decided he’s right. The more she resists, the more inevitable it feels. Michael’s voice cuts through the chaos somewhere behind her, the panic she hears from him makes her stomach drop. She’s never heard anything quite like that from him before.

“(Name)!”

She digs her heels into the pavement while ger other knee slams against the driveway when she loses her balance again. Pain shoots up her leg and tears flood her eyes. Fear—this is real terror she’s experiencing. The rear passenger door gets yanked open and now this isn’t just an argument anymore.

“Please!” She sobs. “Joe, please don't—”

“Get in the car.”

“No!” She twists violently, trying to wrench herself free, but his grip only tightens. She gets a good look at him, and really sees him. He looks convinced that he’s solving a problem. And she’s the problem.

“I’m taking her to the clinic.”

The statement is thrown out across the driveway and everything stops. The brothers fall silent and even (Name)’s struggling falters. Michael freezes halfway down the driveway, the color draining from his face so quickly it almost looks unreal. Nobody breathes then.

Joe points directly at her. “This girl is pregnant.”

A sound leaves (Name) before she can stop it.

Not a word or even a small cry, really. Just a small, helpless noise that seems to come from somewhere deep inside her chest, its beyond language. The moment Joe says it, the moment the word pregnant is said out loud in the middle of the driveway for everyone to hear, something inside her simply gives way. All the effort she’d spent holding herself together over the last few weeks vanishes at once. The planning. The rehearsing. The constant bargaining with herself that she’d tell Michael tomorrow, or the day after that, or when she found the right moment. Gone. Torn out of her hands before she ever got the chance. Her eyes squeeze shut instinctively, thinking maybe if she can’t see their faces, the humiliation won’t be real. But it is. It’s real, so horribly real.

Her knees nearly buckle beneath her and she thinks she’s actually going to collapse right there in front of everyone. The driveway tilts sickeningly beneath her feet, blood from her scraped knees mixes with fresh tears tracking down her cheeks, and all she can think is not like this. Not in front of his brothers. Not in front of Joe. Not Michael finding out this way. She had imagined so many versions of this moment. Nervous ones. Tearful ones. Maybe even happy ones. Michael sitting beside her, holding her hand. Michael hearing it from her. Instead she’s standing in the middle of a nightmare she can’t wake up from, her secret hanging in the air for everyone to stare at while her body seems to forget how to stay upright. For the first time since this started, she stops fighting Joe entirely too devastated to remember how to.

Joe shakes his head.

Michael genuinely thinks he misheard him.

The driveway feels like its been stretched one hundred feet and muted like somebody stuffed cotton into his ears. He can see mouths moving. See his brothers reacting. See (Name) crying. But everything feels strangely far away as the words register individually. This girl. Pregnant. But they refuse to connect. They hover in the air like separate things while his brain scrambles desperately to make sense of them.

He finds himself staring at (Name) as though the answer might be written somewhere on her face. And every strange moment from the past few weeks begins rearranging itself into something clear in hindsight. The tears she’s tried to hide. The nervousness he could never quite understand. The questions that seemed oddly specific at the time, questions about disappointment and anger and mistakes and whether people could forgive things they hadn’t expected. The way she’d looked at him lately, sometimes opening her mouth like she wanted to say something before thinking better of it. The fear. More than anything, the fear. He sees it all now. Not as separate incidents but as pieces of the same story. A story she’d apparently been carrying while he remained oblivious to it. His stomach hurts—because she knew. She knew.

The hurt sneaks in rearing it’s ugly little head directly into his chest, nearly hidden beneath the shock. It isn’t intense enough to be anger or resentment. It’s something.. honestly way sadder than that. A dull ache that spreads slowly through his chest the longer he stands there looking at her. Because all he can think about is the amount of time that must have passed between finding out and now. Days. Maybe weeks. Countless conversations that feel different in retrospect. Countless opportunities where she could have told him and didn’t. And the more he thinks about it, the more he realizes that what wounds him is a small, ugly part of him wonders why she didn’t trust him enough to come to him.

Pregnant. The word doesn’t even feel real. His entire life just changed between one heartbeat and the next. He’s going to be a father. A dad. He helped create life. This isn’t real life.

She looks at him. And the expression on her face is so devastated, so apologetic, so terrified of what he might be thinking.

The worst part is the fact that she can’t read him right now. Normally she can. Normally she knows exactly what he’s thinking long before he says it. She knows the tiny shifts in his expression, the way his mouth moves when he’s trying not to laugh, the particular look he gets when he’s upset but pretending he isn’t. She knows him. Or at least she thought she did because right now she knows nothing. He’s just staring. And that terrifies her, because the truth is that her fear of Michael being angry has never been entirely rational. It’s actually embarrassingly childish when she really examines it. Michael has never given her a reason to believe he would scream at her or humiliate her or stop loving her over one mistake. Yet she’d spent weeks building these catastrophes inside her own head, convincing herself there was a wrong way to tell him, a wrong time to tell him, a version of this conversation that would make him look at her differently forever.

Now she’s standing in front of him and every ridiculous fear she’s been carrying feels very fucking real because he isn’t saying anything. The silence is unbearable and her mind fills it for him. Maybe he’s angry. Maybe he’s disappointed. Maybe he’s wondering why she hid it. Wondering how long she’s known. Maybe he’s wondering what else she hasn’t told him. The thoughts arrive one after another until she can barely separate reality from imagination anymore. The awful thing is that Michael’s opinion of her matters far more than she’s ever admit out loud. Somewhere along the way, his approval stopped being something nice to have and became something she needed always because loving someone inevitably gives them a certain kind of power over you. The power to hurt you simply by looking disappointed. The power to make your stomach drop with a single expression. The power to make even you feel like you have to prove you’re good enough to be loved.

And right now she feels very young. Very small. Very foolish. Like a child waiting to find out how much trouble they’re in outside the principal’s office. Except Michael isn’t giving her anything and that’s worse. Anger is understandable. Anger can be apologized for. But shock is different, shock means she has no idea where his thoughts are taking him. It means she can’t follow him there. It means that since Joe spoke, she’s completely locked out of the one person whose reaction matters most. So she keeps looking at him. Keeps searching his face. Keeps waiting for something. Anything. A smile. A frown. A shake of his head. Some indication that he is still her Michael and not a stranger standing across the driveway from her. But it never comes. He just keeps staring trying to hold an entire collapsing universe together inside his head. And when fresh tears spill down her cheeks, she realizes the cruel irony of it all. For weeks she’d been terrified of telling him. Now she’s terrified of what happens after he knows.

“I’m not letting her ruin your life.”

“Joe—” Tito starts.

“Stay out of it.” Joe cuts him off before turning back toward Michael.

“You think this is funny? You think this is some game?”

Michael says nothing. He can’t. His mind is moving too fast and not fast enough at the same time.

”How do you even know it’s yours?”

Nobody says anything. Nobody even seems to know what to do with it. The pregnancy is one thing. The screaming is one thing. Joe being angry is one thing. But this? This feels different. Meaner. Like the argument has crossed into territory it never needed to touch. Jackie is the one who finally breaks the silence, letting out a short, disbelieving laugh as he shakes his head.

“Aw, c’mon, Joe. Nah, man.”

Joe turns toward him. “What? You got somethin’ to say to me too?”

“..You know that ain’t right.”

“It ain’t right?”

“No.” Jackie gestures toward Michael and (Name) like the answer should be obvious. His irritation is growing more visible by the second. “They been together how long?” Nobody answers because nobody has to—everybody knows. Everybody standing in that driveway has watched the relationship unfold for years. Through the tours, recording sessions, family gatherings, arguments, reconciliations, and everything in between. “(Name)’s been around since Mike was seventeen. Man, quit it.”

The words seem to irritate Joe almost as much as the pregnancy itself. “That don’t mean nothin’.”

“It mean enough.”

“No, it don’t.”

Jackie runs a hand over the back of his neck and exhales sharply. “You mad? Fine. Be mad.. You wanna get on him ‘bout rehearsal? Fine. But don’t stand here sayin’ stuff like that.” The driveway goes quiet again. Nobody wants to get involved. Nobody wants to make things worse. Yet even the brothers look uncomfortable now because regardless of how anyone feels about the situation, the accusation feels evil and insulting. Not just to (Name). To Michael.

“They love each other, Joe.” He says. “Everybody know they love each other.”

Michael looks up and his eyes flicker toward Jackie, something in the expression nearly breaks the older brother’s spirit. Michael looks devastated—like he’s trying desperately to catch up to a conversation everyone else somehow started without him. The ground beneath him has shifted and he’s still searching for something solid to stand on. Jackie sees it and feels a fresh wave of frustration. Because regardless of whatever happens next, one thing is painfully obvious. Michael didn’t know. Whatever this is, however long (Name) has known, however scared she’s been, Michael is finding out right now. In the middle of a driveway in front of an audience. From his father.

Unfortunately, Joe appears completely uninterested in anybody else’s opinion. He lets Jackie finish, lets his words hang in the air for all of two seconds before dismissing them entirely. Frankly, they’re irrelevant because none of this is actually up for discussion.

“Love,” Joseph laughs a little. “Y’all don’t know the first thing about love.” His grip tightens around (Name)’s wrist and she lets out a small cry, stumbling when he starts moving again. The sudden jerk nearly sends her back to her knees. The scrapes on her legs burn viciously as she tries to keep up, her vision blurred from tears.

“No, please—”

“Get in the car.” The command is flat, final. And that certainty terrifies her more than the yelling ever could.

The rear passenger door is still hanging open. Waiting. The sight of it sends fresh panic crashing through her chest. She can picture it too clearly, all of it. The door closing. The car pulling away. Michael disappearing in the rear window while she screams for him. Her feet plant themselves instinctively against the pavement. She pulls backward with everything she has left.

“No!” The scream tears itself from her throat before she can stop it. Raw and desperate out of genuine fear. It rips straight through the driveway. Straight through Michael.

It triggers something in Michael and he finally moves but Joe is faster.

Before anybody can properly react, before Jackie can get between them or Tito can grab the door, Joe yanks (Name) forward and practically throws her into the back seat. The force of it sends her sprawling awkwardly across the upholstery, her shoulder slamming painfully against the opposite door. The breath leaves her lungs in a startled gasp and she’s too stunned to move and process the fact that she’s actually inside the car. Until panic crashes back in all at once.

“Michael!” The scream tears itself from her throat as she scrambles upright.

Outside, the driveway erupts. Michael reaches the car just as Joe slams the driver’s door shut. The locks drop immediately with a sharp mechanical click that feels horrifying. Michael grabs for the rear passenger handle anyway, yanking so hard the entire vehicle rocks on its suspension.

“Dad!“ His voice cracks with panic. Pure panic.

Inside the car, (Name) throws herself toward the door, fumbling desperately with the handle through blurred vision and shaking hands. Nothing happens. Child lock. She pulls again. Nothing.

“Let me out!”

Joe doesn’t even look at her. “Sit down.”

Outside, Jackie is pounding on the driver’s window. Tito is trying another handle. Randy is shouting. And Marlon looks halfway between furious and terrified. Michael catches sight of (Name) through the glass. Her face. The tears. The absolute terror—fear. Genuine fear.

Then the engine starts and everybody freezes.

Nobody moves because nobody quite believes Joe is actually going to do it. Until he does, and the car lurches into reverse. Jackie jumps back as gravel spits across the driveway and Michael stumbles away from the vehicle as it swings around. And then it’s gone. Down the driveway. Onto the street. Disappearing faster than any of them can process.

There’s a pause in any movement.

“What? Y’all just gonna stand there?” Tito’s voice cuts through the shock.

Everybody is still staring at the road where Joe’s car disappeared, Michael hasn’t moved at all. He’s still standing exactly where he was when the car pulled away, staring after it with an expression that looks almost frighteningly blank.

And Tito doesn’t have the patience for it.

“Get in the damn car, let’s go!” That finally breaks whatever spell has settled over the driveway and everybody moves at once.

Jackie is already heading for his car. Randy nearly trips over himself getting to his. Marlon takes off running. And doors start slamming, engines start turning over. The sudden burst of activity feels frantic and messy and desperate because nobody actually has a plan. They just know Joe has (Name) and every second they’re standing here is another second she's alone with him.

Michael finally blinks, his mind is still somewhere back in the driveway. Still stuck on the look on (Name)’s face through the glass. Still stuck on the word pregnant. Still stuck on the sound of her screaming his name. The thoughts keep colliding with each other until none of them make sense anymore. By the time he reaches Jackie’s car, he barely remembers crossing the distance.

“Mike!” Jackie yanks his door open. “Hurry up!”

Michael practically falls into the passenger seat followed the door slamming.

Tito’s already pulling onto the road ahead of them. Another set of headlights swings out behind them. Gravel sprays beneath the tires as Jackie throws the car into gear and guns it down the street.

The ride to the clinic felt so endless.

The only sounds are from traffic, the occasional turn signal and the shaky breaths she keeps trying and failing to steady. Her wrists and upper arms ache from where he’d grabbed her. Her knees burn every time the car hits a bump, dried blood has begun to crust over her scrapes, pulling uncomfortably against her skin whenever she shifts. She keeps staring out the window because she doesn’t want to look at Joe. But she doesn’t know which is worse, looking at him or catching her own reflection in the glass and barely recognizing herself. Puffy eyes. Tear stained cheeks. Hair falling out of place. She looks exactly how she feels.

Distraught.

The second the car finally pulls into Planned Parenthood’s parking lot, fresh panic surges through her chest.

“Joe..” Her voice comes out weak.

He parks, turns off the engine and opens his door.

“Joe, please. Don’t do this.”

Of course, she gets nothing in response as he gets out.,

A minute later she’s being ushered through the front doors with trembling legs and tears threatening to start all over again. The waiting room smells like coffee and antiseptic, and a slight hint of body spray. People glance up when they enter. A pregnant woman flipping through a magazine. An elderly couple sitting together. A receptionist behind a desk. Normal people having normal days while her entire life feels like it's actively collapsing.

The receptionist looks up with a practiced smile.

“Good morning.”

Joe takes over. ”We need to see somebody.”

The woman glances between them. “..Okay. Is she the patient?”

“Yes.” The receptionist’s eyes settle on her, taking in the red eyes, the scraped knees, the fact that she looks distressed and like she’s been crying for hours.

“Miss? Are you okay?” The receptionist asks and (Name) stares, the simple question almost makes her cry.

Nobody has asked her anything all morning.

Nobody has cared what she wanted.

Before she can answer, Joe does it for her. “She’s pregnant.”

The receptionist blinks, she clearly doesn’t like what’s going on here. “Okay.”

“And she needs to be seen, right the hell now.”

Again, the receptionist looks toward (Name). “Would you like to be seen today, sweetheart?”

Joe’s jaw tightens. “Yes.”

The receptionist doesn’t even acknowledge him as she keeps her attention on (Name). “Honey?"

Before (Name) can answer, the front doors burst open and the entire waiting room turns.

Jackie. Tito. Marlon. Randy.

And Michael.

Michael arrives last, breathless and visibly shaken from sprinting through the parking lot. His hair is disheveled and he looks nothing like the famous pop star Michael Jackson. He looks like a young man who has spent the last twenty minutes terrified. The second his eyes find her, he stops moving.

And she can’t breathe.

Because he’s here. She can’t even look at him because she’s so humiliated.

Unfortunately, Joe notices too.

“We ain’t doin’ this here.”

The receptionist’s smile disappears. ”Sir, what's going on?”

“Family business.”

The woman stares at him. Then at (Name). Then at Michael standing near the entrance looking like he doesn't know whether to run to her or stay where he is. Then back at Joe.

Whatever she sees concerns her very quickly. “Sir, if she’s the patient, I’d like to hear from her directly.”

Joe lets out an irritated breath. “I’m the manager around here and what I say is best for business."

“No, sir.” The correction comes instantly, professional and calm but firm. It’s evidently clear this woman has been doing this for a very long time and will always prioritize and protect every single woman who steps foot into this building. “If she’s an adult, she makes her own medical decisions.”

Joe actually looks caught off guard. “’Scuse me?”

The receptionist folds her hands together. “If she would like an appointment, we can help her. If she would like information, we can help her. If she would like to leave, she can leave.”

“You don’t understan—”

“No, sir.” The woman shakes her head. “I think you don’t understand.” Because this isn’t a family argument anymore. This is reality. It’s paperwork. It’s consent forms. It’s a beautiful stranger with a name tag telling Joe Jackson that he doesn’t actually get to decide what happens next. And that he could go to hell, respectfully.

Then she turns toward (Name). “Is there something you’d like to do today?”

After being dragged out of her home, dragged into a car, dragged into a clinic, and talked about like she isn’t even standing there—let alone a human with feelings, somebody is finally asking what she wants.

And the decision belongs entirely to her.

The receptionist’s words should have ended it. They should have settled the matter the way facts often do, with a simple reminder that reality exists outside the boundaries of family dynamics. Instead, they seem to make Joe angrier. There is something desperate in the way he continues talking, as though volume alone can restore authority that has already begun slipping through his fingers. He isn’t really arguing about the pregnancy anymore. He’s arguing against the idea that there are limits to his control. Against the fact that there are people in this building who don’t know him, don’t fear him, and don’t particularly care what he wants. Every sentence he speaks feels less like an argument and more like a refusal to accept that the world is moving forward without asking his permission first.

”You don’t understand what’s at stake here.”

The statement isn’t directed at anyone in particular. It’s directed at the room—at the entire world for refusing to bend the way Joe thinks it should.

“If people find out my son has a babymama, it’s gon' mess up our product—our brand.”

And that’s when the brothers finally stop trying to keep the peace.

Because there is something uniquely infuriating about watching a grown ass man drag a crying woman into a clinic to force her into an abortion and then continue speaking about her as though she isn’t standing three feet away. Tito’s patience finally snaps first. Jackie, Marlon and Randy follow immediately after. Years of old resentments begin bleeding into the conversation. Old wounds. Old arguments. Old frustrations that have nothing to do with the pregnancy and everything to do with control.

A security guard appears near the front desk and then another. A nurse asks everyone to lower their voices and nobody listens.

For (Name), the noise gradually stops sounding like English. It becomes something shapeless and overwhelming, a wall of sound pressing in from every direction at once. The fluorescent lights overhead seem brighter than they did a few minutes ago and the waiting room very quickly feels too crowded, too exposed, and too public. Everywhere she looks there are strangers witnessing one of the worst moments of her life. A pregnant woman flipping through a magazine. An elderly couple pretending not to stare. Nurses trying to remain professional while an entire family implodes in front of them. People are realizing this is the Jackson family and Michael Jackson’s pregnant girlfriend is here for an abortion. The humiliation crashes over her all over again. She had spent weeks carrying this secret, weeks rehearsing conversations in her head, weeks convincing herself she would find the right moment to tell Michael. Every version had ended with the choice belonging to her. Every version had ended with privacy. Instead, she got a forced trip to a clinic and Joe Jackson announcing he wants her pregnancy terminated. Somewhere, the story stopped belonging to her.

That realization is what finally pushes her over the edge. The loss of ownership of her body, the dehumanization of herself. The feeling that everyone has been discussing her future while she stands screaming at the center of it, reduced to a subject instead of a participant. Her chest begins tightening until each breath feels smaller than the last. Thoughts start colliding faster than she can sort through them. Fear folds into shame. Shame folds into guilt. Guilt folds into the familiar childish terror that Michael is angry with her and she simply can’t tell. She hates how much that possibility matters. Hates that a part of her still wants his approval as desperately as she did when she first fell in love with him when they were seventeen. Hates that, despite everything happening around her the thing she wants most is a sign that he doesn’t look at her differently now.

Michael notices before anyone else.

The argument has long since lost his attention. Her pregnancy is still sitting inside his chest because he hasn’t figured out how to hold it yet. Every attempt he makes to examine it seems to split into ten other thoughts. The shock of finding out. The hurt of being excluded. The realization that she’d been dealing this alone. The image of her in the backseat of Joe's car. The look on her face through the window. It all keeps circling without resolution. But the second he sees the distant look settling into her eyes, every one of those thoughts disappears. He knows this version of her, the difference between crying and panic on her. He’s watched her push herself too far before, watched her try to hold herself together long after she should have stopped trying. What frightens him now is how familiar it looks. Because it looks like him.

The noise of the room continues around them, but Michael doesn’t hear it anymore. The only thing he can focus on is the way her breathing has changed and the fact that she looks like she’s slipping further away from the room with every passing second. His hands find her instinctively, one settling against the back of her head while the other gently covers her ear, creating a small barrier between her and the chaos surrounding them. It’s not a solution by any means and de knows that. But it’s something. A way of saying that she doesn't have to absorb all of it at once. A way of giving her one thing to focus on besides the noise.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs, his forehead briefly resting against hers.

The words aren't true. Neither of them are naive enough to believe that. Nothing about today is okay. Their lives have been blown apart in the span of a couple hours. They’re literally standing in a clinic because his father tried to force a situation he had no right to control. There are a hundred conversations waiting for them on the other side of this moment, but his words aren’t really meant to describe reality. They’re meant to communicate something else entirely.

I'm here. You're not alone. You don't have to do this by yourself.

The receptionist notices almost immediately, her attention shifting away from Joe and the growing argument surrounding him. What she sees instead is a young woman on the verge of a panic attack and a young man who looks just as shaken but is trying desperately not to show it, and failing. She sees the way (Name) has folded into him without thinking and the way Michael hasn’t taken his hands off her once. She sees two young people drowning beneath circumstances neither of them had any control over.

“Excuse me, mister Jackson.. are you two.. the couple?”

The question feels oddly intimate amidst everything else. Michael lifts his head, momentarily caught off guard by how simple it is. After all the shouting and accusations and assumptions, his answer is the easiest thing he’s been about to say all day. He nods.

“Yes..”

The receptionist studies them for another moment before her expression softens. “Would you like a private room? Somewhere quiet, away from.. all this?”

The offer feels like a deep cut, it’s the first genuinely compassionate thing anyone has suggested since the morning began. Michael doesn’t hesitate and doesn’t even ask where he just nods again, unable to find the energy for words. The idea of getting (Name) away from this room, away from Joe, away from this noise and the eyes and the prying eyes, feels less like a preference and more like its necessary.

The receptionist smiles gently and motions for them to follow.

The room itself is completely unremarkable. An examination table sitting in the center of the room. Cabinets line the counters, stocked with supplies that all look identical in their sterile blue and white packaging. There’s a sink, a rolling stool, a faded medical chart pinned to the wall. It’s your standard annual check up room and yet the second the door closes behind them, it feels like the safest place either of them has been all morning. There is a door between them and everyone else for the first time this morning.

The silence that settles isn’t awkward though. If anything, it feels overdue. Both of them are exhausted in ways that go beyond simple fatigue. Adrenaline has this cruel habit of keeping people on edge until the danger they perceive passes, and only afterward it allows them to feel the full traumas of what they’ve survived. Michael sits on the rolling stool beside her for a long moment without speaking, his elbows resting against his knees as he studies her. His eyes drift across her face, her eyes are still swollen from crying before he eventually settles on the angry scrapes covering her knees. The sight seems to bother him, perhaps because the cuts are visible. Tangible and a problem with a clear beginning and end. Compared to everything else, scraped skin is refreshingly simple.

Michael can fix that. He can fix that.

He reaches for the supplies sitting in the cabinets.

The avoidance is so obvious neither of them acknowledges it. There are conversations the size of elephants in the room, questions that need answers. But they both ignore it, for now at least.

The alcohol burns the second it touches the raw scrape.

A sharp hiss escapes her before she can stop it, her knee instinctively trying to pull away from the sting. It’s not even particularly painful compared to everything else she’s felt today, but the sensation catches her off guard. Immediately Michael’s head lifts.

”You okay?” The question comes out so soft as he looks up at her from where he’s crouched in front of her, his Bambi doe eyes wide with concern. It’s painfully sweet the way he asks, because the answer genuinely matters to him.

She can’t bring herself to look at him still.

Not when every time she does glance his way, she’s struck by the terrifying realization that he’s.. still Michael. Still gentle and still looking at her the same way he always has—she feels shy.

“Mm,” she murmurs softly, keeping her eyes fixed somewhere over her shoulder. “Just stings a little.”

The concern doesn’t leave his face any time soon and he watches her for another moment, before he returns to cleaning the scrape. The room falls quiet again and its strangely intimate. No one’s watching. No one needs anything from them.

When he finishes cleaning the scrapes, he turns toward one of the drawers and begins searching for bandages. She watches absentmindedly until she notices the subtle shift in his expression.

“What is it..?”

Instead of answering immediately, Michael pulls a small box from the drawer and holds it up.

Disney themed bandaids.

The sight is so absurdly unexpected that a startled giggle escapes before she can stop it and Michael glances between her and the box.

“They have Disney.” He smiles a little.

Carefully, Michael peels some bandages from their wrappers and smooths them over her knees. One ends up slightly crooked. He notices instantly.

His frown deepens.

“..It’s a little crooked.”

“Michael, it’s a bandaid.”

“But it has to be perfect on you..”

Another laugh escapes her when he fixes it and this one comes easier. The tension in the room doesn’t go away, but it is lighter. You could compare it to knot loosening enough to allow circulation back into a limb.

When he’s finally satisfied, Michael smooths the edges down with his fingertips and leaves his hand resting there before something thoughtful settles over his features. The same look she has seen a hundred times before when he becomes lost inside his own head. Before she can ask what he’s thinking, he bends forward and presses a quick kiss against one bandage.

Then the other.

The conversation doesn’t start because either of them is ready for it, every possible distraction has been exhausted. Michael stays seated in front of her, one arm resting loosely across his lap, his gaze occasionally drifting toward the cartoon princesses now stuck to her knees.

“..Can I ask you somethin’..?” He rubs his hands together nervously.

She nods.

“Why didn’t you tell me, dove..?”

There isn’t an accusation hidden in the question, that’s what makes it harder to answer she thinks. He’s not angry, he’s hurt. And hurt simply sits there between them and asks to be acknowledged. (Name) drops her gaze to her hands because the truth is she doesn’t know how to explain it. The answer was never one thing. It was dozens of fears layered together until they became impossible to untangle.

“I was gonna tell you, ’Key..”

”I know.” Because of course he knows. If she’d truly intended to hide it forever, she wouldn't have spent weeks looking fucking haunted. The secret had been leaking out of her in a hundred different ways be just didn’t know what the hell was going on. Michael’s expression softens.

“I think that’s what’s botherin’ me,” he admits quietly. ”You were gonna tell me.. but you were scared to.”

He’s talking about the fact that she’d convinced herself she had to handle this all alone and she’s forced to consider what this morning must have felt like from his side. Finding out he might be a father in the middle of a screaming match. Learning she’d been withholding life changing information from him.

“I didn’t know what to do.. ’m sorry..”

Michael lets out a small breath and looks away for a moment.

“I didn’t know what to do either.. looked like a punk..”

The honesty catches her off guard. She’d spent so much time fearing his reaction that she’d never really considered he might be just as overwhelmed.

The memory of the drive to the clinic rises uninvited. The rearview mirror and Joe’s eyes finding hers every few minutes. The hatred in them. He’d planted these awful doubts in her mind and by the time they’d arrived she’d found herself questioning things she’d never questioned before. Whether she was capable of raising a child. Whether love was enough. Whether wanting something automatically meant she was ready for it. Would Michael get tired of her and leave? Maybe she was only supposed to be a temporary person in his life, a placeholder for someone rich and famous..

“What if we’re not good at this?” She asks like word vomit. “What if I can’t do it?”

Michael takes the question seriously. “Lovey.. I don’t think anybody knows what they’re doin’. I think everybody’s probably scared.”

She studies him for a long moment before asking the question that’s been sitting underneath all the others. “What if you leave?”

Michael’s expression changes, because he understands that that question didn’t appear out of nowhere. It came from weeks of fear, insecurity, and a voice that didn’t belong to her. He reaches for her hand and wraps his fingers around it gently.

“(Name),” he says softly. ”Look at me, please..”

Reluctantly, she does.

His eyes are tired and red around the edges he looks so sure. The most sure than she’s seen him all day.

”I want this.” Michael swallows hard and lets out a small, nervous laugh. “I’m scared. Real scared..”

His thumb brushes across her knuckles. “But I want my baby.”

(Name) feels some of the fear loosen its grip on her chest. They don’t have all the answers. Maybe they never will. But they’re finally found their way back to the same side.

For now, that feels like enough.

Michael turned red and you smirked, giggling to yourself. He finally moved out of your space and leaned against the counter, inhaling the pancakes that were slightly cold now. Before either of you knew it there was a large camera crew in the foyer of the house. You grabbed Michael's hand dragging him into the large room to greet them.

Things went relatively smoothly, you all got set up in one of the side rooms of the house. The woman interviewing you sat in a chair set up across from the small leather couch that you and Michael sat on. There was easily room for both of you to sit and have your own space, but you sat flush up against him, leaning into his side with his arm wrapped around your shoulders. As the crew set up you talked casually with the interviewer. The more Michael knew the more comfortable he felt, he learned she had been doing celebrity interviews for awhile and was more focused on capturing the human side of such big stars. You could feel the tension leave Michael's shoulders as she spoke.

When the camera's started rolling you carefully squeezed his hand, letting him know it was going to be alright. He smiled at you gratefully. Things ran smoothly, the interviewer asked all the typical questions, like how did you meet, when did things become official, all that silly stuff. Then she turned to you, "So, Y/n, what's your favorite thing about your husband Michael?"

You looked at him, and he looked back at you. You scanned his face for a second, just admiring him, before smiling and answering, "My favorite thing about Michael is his soul. I know that's cliche to say, but it really is my favorite thing. He has the kindest soul on this earth, I genuinely believe that. It's like just being in his proximity you can feel how much love he carries for everyone. It's admirable, I've never met someone who cares so deeply for others." Your eyes never left him as you spoke. He smiled down at you, bringing your forehead to his lips.

The interviewer looked like she was going to cry, "And, Michael, the same question for you."

He smiled brightly, "I love how fiercely protective she is over the people she loves. She was the first person to show me that I was worth something, y'know. Before her, I spent so long feeling undermined by everyone around me, I didn't feel like I was worthy of anything I had achieved. But when I met her, she showed me my worth by standing up for me." His eyes lit up as he remembered something, "Oh can I please tell them about that one press conference?"

You laughed, "Really?? You're going to put me on blast like that?"

"Please!!" He begged.

You couldn't say no to him, so you let out a dramatic sigh, "Fineeee."

He got excited and sat up, leaning forwards, a laugh already bubbling in his chest. "So I was at this conference for the Bad tour, and Y/n here was off stage. I was answering questions when someone asked me if I bleached my skin. Y'know I was so shocked for a minute, I didn't know what to say. But this little monster was so mad she came out on stage and started berating the guy." He laughs at the memory, "Oh you were so mad! It was like I could see the steam coming out of your ears." He laughed more after looking at your unamused face.

"I stand by what I called him, that was so out of line." You crossed your arms.

The interviewer leaned forward trying not to laugh, "What did you call him?"

"I don't think I can publicly say on the air what I called him, but come up with the worst thing you can think of and multiply it times 10."

Michael was practically doubled over on your lap laughing at the memory. He sat back up and wiped a tear from his eye. "That was one of the first times I had seen her unleash her full power, it was frightening but incredibly attractive at the same time."

You eyed him, smiling to yourself. The interviewer chuckled, "Alright, I think we should play a little game. I'm going to give you who's most likely to and you are going to point at the person you think falls into that category."

You nodded, ready for a game. It started out playful, most of the time you agreed on what was said.

Most likely to lock themselves out of their own home? Michael.

Most likely to get banned from social media? You

Most likely to clap when their plane lands? Michael.

Most likely to be the first one out on the dance floor? You.

Most likely to make a playlist for the other? Michael

Most likely to get a tattoo of the other person’s name? You (And you did)

But there was one question that sparked a fierce debate.

Most likely to get hit on at a bar?

"Obviously it's Michael." You pointed at him and looked over to find him pointing at you. "Me??"

"Yeah you. Don't act modest, you're young and sexy." He defended his choice.

"Michael, my love, my sweet darling, my angelface. You're literally Michael Jackson, what are you talking about?" You raised an eyebrow at him.

"Well when we were younger you used to get hit on all the time, it drove me crazy." He leaned back on the couch.

"Baby, I'm not the one with fan edits, that would be your fine ass." You smirked as he stilled.

"What? What are fan edits?" He looked so confused, it was adorable.

Both your mouth and the interviewer's mouth dropped open. The woman looked at him, "You've really never seen a fan edit of yourself?"

"No? What are they? Are they bad?" He looked between you both helplessly.

"Oh god no, they're amazing!" You grabbed your phone eagerly. "I have like a whole folder on my phone dedicated to them."

The interview quickly turned into you and the interviewer making Michael watch edits of himself. The more you showed him the more provocative they got. You would make small comments about them, "I like the way they matched your hips to the music in this one, OH look at your hands in this one!"

Michael looked like he was going to short circuit, there was so much he was learning all at once. One being that people had taken clips of him and put them together to a song, two that you apparently knew about this and didn't tell him, three that you had seemingly liked and favorited every single one.

He squinted at the screen, reading the caption on one, "Who is dada?" He looked at you.

You looked back up at him, face so serious, "You're dada." He looked like he was genuinely going to pass away. You and the interviewer bursted into laughter, you fell off the couch, holding your stomach as you cried out with laughter. Michael sat there like a statue, trying to get his brain to work again.

His mind was racing before it came screeching to a halt and he smirked. He looked at the interviewer, "Are there any edits of Y/n?"

You halted on the floor, sitting up immediately, trying to snatch away your phone. The interviewer nodded, "Oh yeah, tons."

"Well I want to see."

"No no no no, this is about you being hot and sexy." You tried to switch the topic back to him.

But it was too late, the interviewer had handed him the phone which now had edits of you playing on repeat. Michael put on his glasses, watching the screen mesmerized.

"I think I get the whole appeal of these things now." He smiled and kissed you.