Lucy

"Tell us again" Visenya was saying, her tone stripped of its usual mockery, replaced by a clinical, urgent intensity. "Who brought you food? Which servants? Did Father visit you in the nights, or only the days?"

"Is… is Aegon okay?" Your voice was a fragile thing, a thin thread of sound that barely reached across the room. It carried a tremor of genuine, unshielded concern that seemed to vibrate through the very air of the chamber.

The effect was instantaneous. Aegon didn't so much wake as he did erupt from his stupor. He lunged forward with a sudden, violent desperation, his coordination failing him so completely that he tumbled from the edge of the bed. He hit the flagstones with a heavy thud, but he didn't stop. He practically crawled across the stone, his breath coming in ragged, starving gasps. His fingers clawed at the floor, dragging his body toward you as if you were the only solid point in a world made of water. He didn't care about the dignity of a lord or the bruising of his knees...

he only cared about the proximity of the voice that had haunted his dreams for three winters.

The suddenness of his movement was like a predator springing from brush. You shrieked, the sound thin and piercing, and scrambled backward with a clumsy desperation, your bare heels skidding on the cold stone. Beside you, Visenya’s hand flew to the hilt of her dagger, her body coiling into a defensive spring, her eyes flashing with a reflexive instinct to strike. But Aegon didn't see the blade or the danger...he saw only the silver-gold blur of you retreating into the shadows of the room.

"No… no, no, don't be afraid" Aegon pleaded, his voice a broken wreckage of the command he had spent years perfecting. He didn't reach for your hand or your waist, instead, he collapsed forward, his forehead pressing against the rough fabric of your hem as he clung to your leg with a shaky, desperate sigh. He held on with a grip that bordered on bruising, his fingers curling into the cloth as if he were a drowning man and you were the only piece of driftwood in a violent sea.

You froze, your breath hitching in a small, jagged sob. The sensation was overwhelming...the heat of his forehead through the thin cotton of your gown, the trembling of his broad shoulders, the sheer, suffocating weight of a grief that had finally found its target. For three years, you had been a secret kept in a stone box, and now you were being claimed by a man who felt less like a brother and more like a storm that had finally made landfall.

"Uhm…" The sound was barely a breath, a small, pitiful vibration in your throat that seemed to ripple through the heavy silence of the room. You looked down at the man clinging to your ankle, his knuckles white and his breath hot against your skin. He didn't look like the formidable Lord of Dragonstone... he looked like a child who had found a lost toy in the wreckage of a fire. When he finally tilted his head up, his eyes were brimming, wet, bloodshot, and wide with a raw, unfiltered hunger for confirmation. He wasn't looking at you so much as he was searching for the evidence that you were solid, that you weren't a trick of the light or a cruel hallucination born of too much wine and too much loneliness.

Visenya was the first to break the spell. With a sigh that was more an admission of defeat than a sign of irritation, she stepped forward and gripped Aegon by the shoulder. Her hold was firm, a practical anchor designed to pull him out of his spiral. "Get up, Aegon" she commanded, though the usual bite in her voice had been replaced by a strange, muted softness. "You're frightening her. You look like a starving hound." She hauled him upward with a sharp tug, forcing him to find his footing, though he remained unsteady, swaying slightly as if the world were still tilting on its axis.

Rhaenys didn't wait for him to steady himself. She collided with you in a blur of silk and lavender, her arms wrapping around your neck with such force that it knocked the wind from your lungs. She was sobbing...not the delicate, performative tears she used to get her way, but deep, racking heaves that shook both of your frames. "You were here" she wailed into the crook of your neck, her voice muffled and wet. "You were right here in the walls, and we didn't know! How could we not know?" Her grip was suffocating, a desperate attempt to merge her body with yours, as if by sheer pressure she could make up for the three lost years.

You stiffened for a heartbeat, your muscles locking in a reflexive flinch born of years where the only touch you knew was the clinical brush of a maid or the cold air of a locked room. Rhaenys felt like a wildfire, too hot, too fast, smelling of expensive oils and desperation. For a second, you weren't sure if this was another prayer dream or if the walls had finally decided to swallow you whole. Then, the familiar scent of her skin—that sweetness that always reminded you of crushed berries had pierced through the fog. This was Rhaenys. This was the sister who used to steal your ribbons and whisper secrets about the kitchen staff.

Your lower lip trembled, a rhythmic, fragile twitch that felt like the only thing moving in the room besides the sobbing. You looked from Rhaenys’s tear-streaked face to Aegon’s hollowed eyes, the shock of their presence colliding with the memory of the man who had turned the key in the lock. A small, jagged sound escaped your throat...a whine that belonged to the twelve-year-old girl who had first entered the room, not the fifteen-year-old who had emerged from it. "Father said you knew" you whispered, the words slipping out like a bruised secret. "Daddy lied! He said you wanted me here… that you were all waiting for the evil to leave before I could come back."

The silence that followed your words was not a void, but a physical weight, pressing the air from the room until the torchlight seemed to dim. Aegon flinched as if you had struck him, his face twisting into a mask of raw agony. The revelation that Aerion had not only imprisoned you but had weaponized their love to ensure your compliance, stripped away the last remnants of his composure. He let out a sound that wasn't a cry, but a jagged, guttural noise of hatred directed at a dead man.

Aegon didn't speak, but the silence he carried was heavy, vibrating with a frequency that seemed to rattle the very stones of the chamber. He moved with a sudden, fluid precision, reaching out to peel a sobbing Rhaenys away from you. He didn't do it with aggression, but with a quiet, absolute necessity, as if he were clearing a path for something sacred. Rhaenys stumbled back, her eyes wide and glistening, leaving a sudden, yawning void between you and the world.

Then, he was there.

He didn't just embrace you... he enveloped you, his arms locking around your frame like the closing of a vault. He pulled you flush against his chest, and for a moment, the world disappeared, replaced by the rhythmic, thunderous drumming of his heart against your ear. You felt him shiver, a violent, subterranean tremor as he buried his face in the crook of your neck. He inhaled deeply, a long, starving draw of your scent...skin, old dust, and the faint, lingering sweetness of the rosemary Lila had used to bathe you.

When you finally let out a small, broken sniffle and your arms tentatively wound around his waist, clinging to the rough linen of his tunic, Aegon let out a sound that was half-sob, half-prayer. He tightened his grip, his voice dropping to a low, honeyed rumble that vibrated through your very bones.

"There is no evil, sweet one" he whispered, his lips brushing the shell of your ear. "Father was a troubled man… a man lost to his own delusions."

The admission felt like a heavy stone being lifted from the room, though the space it left behind was filled with a shimmering, fragile grief. He pulled back just enough to cup your face in his large, calloused hands, his thumbs sweeping away the tears that had carved tracks through the grime on your cheeks. He looked at you not as the Lord of Dragonstone, but as a man who had just found a missing piece of his own soul. He searched your eyes, tracing the way the innocence had been replaced by a haunted, wide-eyed caution, and a flicker of something dark and protective ignited in his gaze.

You clung to him then, your fingers knotting into the fabric of his tunic with a strength that belied your fragility. The world outside that room had been a series of locks, lies, and the suffocating silence of stone; now, Aegon was the only solid thing in a shifting landscape. You pressed your face into the heat of his chest, the scent of him...leather, salt, and the fading ghost of Arbor gold, becoming your only horizon.

A sudden, sharp thought pierced through the reunion... had Lila known? Had the woman who brought you bread and brushed your hair been a silent accomplice to your erasure, or merely another prisoner of the estate's payroll? You looked up at Aegon, your eyes searching his for an answer, but the trust you felt for him was a blind, instinctive thing, a tether pulling you back from the edge of madness.

Aegon didn't answer your desperate looks with words, he answered with a devotion that felt like a physical weight. He began to kiss your face with a rhythmic, desperate tenderness, his lips pressing against the side of your head, then the curve of your cheek, and the tip of your nose. Each touch was a reclamation, a way of marking every inch of you to ensure you were real, that you were here, and that you were finally his. You leaned into him, your eyes closing, the sensation of his warmth washing away the chill of three years of isolation. You were innocent to the hunger in his gaze, the way he looked at you not just as a sister, but as the singular center of his universe.

Then, his lips shifted, landing softly, lingeringly, on the corner of your mouth.

The air in the room shifted. The sound of a sharp, dry throat-clear echoed off the vaulted ceiling, Visenya, her arms crossed, her expression a complicated mask of duty and distaste. Beside her, Rhaenys remained frozen, her wide eyes darting between the two of you, her breath hitching in a way that suggested she was witnessing something she didn't quite have the vocabulary to name. The kiss had been a sliver of a thing, a ghost of a touch, but in the heavy silence of the room, it felt as loud as a shout.

The world beyond the circle of Aegon’s arms ceased to exist. The stone walls, the flickering torches, the heavy breathing of his sisters...all of it dissolved into a blurred periphery, leaving only the scent of him and the frantic drumming of his heart against your cheek. Aegon tightened his hold, pulling you closer until there was no air left between you, as if he intended to merge your two bodies into one single, unbreakable entity. He began to mumble into your hair, the words fragmented and wet, a low, desperate litany of "My sweet, my sweet girl" and "I searched every shadow..." and "Never again."

He pressed his lips to your temple, then your brow, then the shell of your ear, his breath hot and shuddering against your skin. Each kiss was a frantic prayer, a desperate attempt to anchor you to the present. He breathed you in, inhaling the scent of old dust and faded rosemary as if he were a starving man finally finding a feast. In that suffocatingly tight embrace, the years of silence and the coldness of the east wing were burned away by the sheer heat of his desperation. For a few timeless moments, the universe had shrunk to the size of his chest, and the only sound that mattered was the ragged, uneven rhythm of his voice whispering how much he had missed you, over and over, until the words became a song of possession.

The sudden intensity of his grip became a physical weight, a crushing tide of affection that left you gasping for air. As he leaned into you, his strength was an overwhelming force, his palms pressing your cheeks together until your lips puckered and your vision blurred. You stumbled backward, your heels catching on the uneven stone, but Aegon didn't let go, he simply shifted with you, his body a looming wall of warmth and desperation. Your hands flew up, fingers splaying against his wrists, grasping frantically to pry his palms away from your face.

"Aeg…" you managed to choke out, your voice sounding like a rusted hinge. You gave a small, reflexive scrunch of your nose, trying to nudge his face away from yours. "I’ve missed you too, but… you are squeezing me… to death."

A low, rumbling vibration started in Aegon’s chest, a sound that hadn't echoed through the halls of Dragonstone in years. It wasn't the practiced, booming laugh of a lord, but something raw and private, a soft huff of amusement that broke through his desperation. He didn't pull away; instead, he leaned in, the movement fluid and instinctive. He brushed the tip of his nose against yours in a quick, playful nudge, a ghostly remnant of the games you had played in the gardens before the world turned to stone and locks. For a fleeting second, the suffocating weight of the last three years vanished, replaced by the ghost of a childhood where the biggest tragedy was a fallen lemon cake.

Aegon’s grip shifted, transitioning from a desperate crush to a possessive cling. He didn't let go of your hand, instead, he laced his fingers through yours with a strength that suggested he feared you might evaporate if he loosened his hold by even a fraction. He stepped back, but only just enough to give you room to breathe, his shoulder remaining glued to yours as if he were a shield protecting you from the very air of the room. He was a man tethered to a lifeline, his eyes never straying from your face for more than a second, his gaze searching for any sign that you might vanish back into the shadows.

Visenya and Rhaenys moved through the drafty corridors like twin ghosts of efficiency, their voices low and urgent as they coordinated the reclamation of your old chambers. The room had not been entirely vacant, Aegon had frequently retreated there in the dead of night, seeking the lingering scent of your childhood or the ghost of a memory to soothe his fractured sleep.

Because of this, the space was tidy...stripped of the dust that usually claimed abandoned places but it lacked the warmth of a lived-in sanctuary. It was a sterile museum of who you used to be, awaiting the breath of a living soul to make it a home once more. The sisters whispered of fresh linens, the scrubbing of hearths, and the immediate summons of a maid who could handle the delicate task of restoring a wardrobe that had sat frozen in time for three long years.

The door clicked shut, leaving you in a silence that felt heavier than the locks of the east wing. Being back in your own room didn't feel like a homecoming… it felt like stepping into a ghost's skin. The air was thick with the scent of cedar and dried lavender, a preserved memory of a girl who had ceased to exist the moment the door had bolted three years ago.

You walked across the plush rug, your footsteps muted, feeling like an intruder in your own life. You reached for a dress draped over the vanity, a pale silk thing with intricate lace and held it up. It was a fragile, shimmering shell, far too small to contain the woman you had become. You were a stranger to your own wardrobe, a creature grown in the dark, now standing amidst the relics of a childhood that had been stolen and curated, though anyone could see you had not matured in mind, only in body.

You wandered toward the toy chest, your fingers trembling as you reached for a doll nestled among the velvet scraps. It was a crude thing, carved from pale birch and dressed in a miniature gown of silver thread...a likeness of yourself that your father had spent a winter crafting. The doll’s painted eyes stared back at you with an unnerving, frozen innocence, a mirror of the girl who had once believed her father’s lies.

A soft sound of breathing vibrated behind you. You turned to see Aegon lingering in the doorway, his frame nearly filling the frame. He wasn't touching you now, but his gaze was a physical weight, anchored to your every movement. He watched the way you held the doll, the way your thumb traced the carved line of its jaw. A slow, genuine smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, softening the hard lines of grief that still marred his face.

"That one was always my favorite" he murmured, his voice a low, melodic rumble that seemed to vibrate in the small space. He didn't specify if he meant the doll or the girl who had played with it.

"You're silly" you giggled, the sound bubbling up from your chest like a long forgotten spring. It was a fragile, airy sound, untainted by the years of silence, and it seemed to act as a beacon, pulling him toward you. You could hear the rhythmic thump thump of his heavy leather boots against the polished wood, closing the distance with a predatory grace that you mistook for simple eagerness.

The warmth of his presence arrived before he did, a sudden shift in the air that smelled of salt and old leather. Then, you felt the firm, steady pressure of his hands settling on your hips. He didn't pull you close so much as anchor you to the spot, his touch heavy and possessive through the thin fabric of your shift. He bent a little behind you, his chest brushing against your back, and peered over your shoulder to get a better look at the birch doll in your hands. To you, it was simply the familiar weight of a brother’s protection, the kind of closeness you had craved in the suffocating silence of the east wing.

You leaned back into him with a soft sigh, your head resting against his shoulder, entirely blind to the way his breathing hitched or the way his gaze lingered on the curve of your neck. You saw only a sanctuary...you did not see the hunger in the depths of his eyes, a silent, simmering want that had grown from a sibling's love into something far more consuming and dangerous during your absence.

"If you like my doll, you may have it" you mumbled, your voice still sounding thin and ghostly in the quiet of the room. You held the birch figure out to see it better, your fingers brushing against the coarse grain of the wood. "But I wish to see it still… it reminds me of Father."

The words were a gamble, a fragile bridge built over the memory of the man who had betrayed you, yet in the sanctuary of Aegon’s arms, the betrayal felt like a story happening to someone else. You didn't notice the way his gaze shifted, sliding from the wooden toy to the pale, pulsing vein in your throat. You didn't see the way his pupils dilated, drinking in the sight of you like a man who had spent a lifetime in a cellar and had finally stepped into the sun.

Aegon didn't answer immediately. He dipped his head, his breath a hot, sudden ghost of a touch against the sensitive skin of your neck. He inhaled deeply, closing his eyes as if he were memorizing the very chemistry of your existence, the scent of soap, salt, and something uniquely you that no amount of isolation could erase. A low, guttural vibration hummed in his chest, a sound of absolute claim. "Keep it." he murmured, his voice sounding like crushed velvet. Then, with a slow, deliberate precision, he pressed a lingering kiss to the curve of your shoulder, his lips warm and heavy. "I have no need for a wooden likeness now that the living version has returned to me."

The sudden shift in his tone, the raw vulnerability in that low rumble, sent a jolt of curiosity through you. You tried to twist in his grip, your body instinctively seeking the sight of his face to gauge the depth of his emotion, but Aegon’s hold was an iron velvet. His arms tightened, not to stifle, but to anchor, pinning you gently against the solid heat of his chest. He didn't let you turn. Instead, he buried his face deeper into the crook of your neck, his forehead resting against your skin with a heavy, shuddering weight.

Another kiss followed...slow, lingering, and desperate, tracing the line of your collarbone with a tenderness that felt almost sacred. "Can we just… stay like this?" he whispered, his voice fracturing. "Just for a moment. Just a few more."

You felt the dampness of his breath, and then, the unmistakable warmth of a tear landing on your shoulder. It was a revelation that made your own heart stutter. Aegon, the Lord of Dragonstone, the man who commanded servants with a glance and bore the weight of a crumbling legacy, was trembling. He sounded small, stripped of every title and pretense, reduced to a shivering wreck of a man by the simple fact of your proximity. "I am a weak, weak man, sister" he mumbled against your skin, the words blurred by a sob he was fighting to suppress.

"You are very strong, Aeg..." you mumbled, your voice thick with a sleepy, confused sort of fondness. You frowned, the expression small and tentative, as he continued to press into you. He wasn't just holding you anymore, he was leaning his entire weight against you, a mountain of muscle and desperation that drove you forward. Your feet skidded on the polished floor, and with a sudden, jarring thud, your lower back collided with the edge of the mahogany vanity.

The impact shuddered through your spine, knocking the breath from your lungs in a sharp, sudden gasp. Your palms flew out by instinct, bracing against the cold, polished mahogany of the vanity to keep from sliding to the floor, the wood biting into your skin. "Ow—" you huffed, the sound more of a startled puff of air than a cry of pain, but the protest was swallowed almost instantly.

The protest died in your throat as Aegon’s hand found the nape of your neck, his fingers splaying wide to tilt your head back with a gentle but absolute firmness. The sudden shift in posture left your throat exposed, a pale line of vulnerability in the dim light of the room. You started to huff, the sound a small, indignant puff of air, but it was silenced by the wet, trembling press of his lips against your jawline. He wasn't listening to your protests… he was listening to the frantic, erratic drumming of your heart, a sound that seemed to synchronize with his own labored breathing.

"I missed you so, so, so much" he murmured, the words blurring into a rhythmic chant against the sensitive skin of your jaw. His voice was no longer the command of a lord, but a ragged plea, stripped of pride and polished into a raw, aching need. "You were here all along… just a few walls away… my poor, sweet girl."

Your lower lip remained jutted out in a stubborn pout, your brow furrowed as you processed the lingering throb in your hips. Being shoved against the mahogany vanity was hardly the royal welcome you had imagined after three years of solitude, and you shifted your weight indignantly, trying to reclaim your balance. Yet, as Aegon’s lips continued their slow, desperate pilgrimage across your skin, the irritation began to dissolve into a familiar, hazy warmth. You remembered the way your mother would cup your face after a failed embroidery lesson and press a soft, fragrant kiss to your cheek to soothe your tears. Your father, in his rare moments of softness, had done the same, his beard tickling your skin as he murmured an apology for some forgotten promise.

In the blurred geography of childhood, a kiss was simply a kiss...a universal currency of apology and affection. Whether it landed on a cheek, a forehead, or the side of the neck, the meaning remained the same... I am sorry, and you are loved. Aegon had been the same when you were small, raining clumsy, exuberant kisses upon you during games of hide-and-seek or pressing a quick peck to your temple before he left for his lessons. To your innocent mind, this sudden torrent of affection was merely an extension of that old language. He was simply saying sorry for the vanity, sorry for the years, and sorry for the silence, in the only way your childhood heart knew how to translate.

“I can stay with you tonight, if you wish it” he mumbled, the words barely escaping his lips, sounding more like a prayer than a question. He pressed one last, lingering kiss to the hollow of your throat, a ghost of a touch that felt like a brand before his hands shifted, gently guiding you around until you were finally forced to look at him. For a heartbeat, the room fell silent, save for the crackle of the hearth. You looked up at him, your eyes beaming with a mixture of raw affection and the lingering fog of confusion, your heart swelling at the sight of his ruined expression. The sight of him, so broken and yet so desperate, made you feel a sudden, fierce protective instinct, as if the roles had reversed and you were now the one shielding him from the world.

"I can sleep on my own now, Aegon" you giggled, the sound light and airy, cutting through the heavy, suffocating tension that had filled the room. You gave his chest a playful, dismissive shove, the kind of gesture that belonged to a girl who had just discovered she was no longer a prisoner and felt the sudden, intoxicating urge to reclaim her space. You spun away from him, your shift swirling around your ankles as you began to bubble around the room once more, your energy returning in a frantic, scattered burst. You drifted toward the window to peek at the darkening sky, then pivoted to inspect a dusty jewelry box, your movements erratic and wide eyed. "I'm not a babe in arms anymore! I can handle the dark."

Aegon remained frozen for a moment, his arms still curved in the shape of the embrace you had just slipped from, his chest heaving as if he had forgotten how to breathe. The sudden shift from his desperate intensity to your carefree lightness left him momentarily adrift, his expression a mixture of longing and bewildered adoration. He watched you dance from one side of the room to the other, a small, fragile bird finally released from its cage, unaware that the cage had simply been replaced by his own unwavering gaze.

The door clicked shut with a finality that felt less like a separation and more like a gentle boundary, leaving you alone with the scent of cedar and the fading echo of Aegon’s labored breathing. For a long time, you simply stood in the center of the room, your skin still humming where his lips had touched, feeling as though you were floating a few inches above the polished floor. The silence of the room was no longer the oppressive, heavy void of the east wing, but a soft, welcoming blanket. You felt a lightness in your chest, a shimmering sense of wholeness that you hadn't known existed since you were a child.

You lingered in the center of the room, your toes curling into the plush rug as you watched the last slivers of amber sunlight bleed out of the sky and surrender to a bruised purple dusk. The silence was no longer a predator, but a companion, and as the shadows lengthened, you felt a sudden, grounding need to anchor yourself to something larger than your own fragile liberation. You drifted toward the heavy oak bedposts, the wood carved into twisting vines that seemed to shiver in the dimming light and sank slowly to your knees. The floor was cold through the thin fabric of your shift, a sharp contrast to the lingering heat of Aegon’s embrace, but the chill felt honest.

Folding your hands over your chest, you bowed your head, your voice dropping to a rhythmic, melodic whisper as you began the prayer to the Seven. You started with the Mother, thanking her for the warmth of a brother’s arms and the sudden, blinding light of the sun; then to the Smith, for the strength of the walls that had finally broken, and to the Maiden, for the innocence that had somehow survived the dark. As you spoke, your eyes drifted shut, and for a moment, you could almost hear the soft, collective sigh of the gods agreeing that the nightmare was over. You prayed not for forgiveness but for the simplicity of a dreamless sleep, one where you wouldn't wake up to the sound of a turning key.

The prayer finished, the silence of the room felt not like a void, but like a canvas. A sudden, electric surge of mischief sparked in your chest, an impulse that had been dormant for three long years, locked away behind a door of grief and dust. You stood up, the prayer’s solemnity dissolving into a beaming, wide-eyed grin that felt foreign on your face. The room was yours again. The air was yours. The very silence of the castle seemed to hold its breath, waiting to see what the girl who had returned from the dead would do.

The silk sheets felt abrasive against your skin, a luxury that felt like a lie. For three years, you had mastered the art of the solitary existence, you had learned to find company in the rhythmic drip of damp stone and the humming of the wind through the eaves. You had become a creature of silence, a ghost haunting your own life, and you had grown accustomed to the hollow space where other people should have been. But now, the silence of your own bedroom wasn't a sanctuary...it was a vacuum. The sudden influx of Aegon’s desperate warmth and Visenya and rhaeny's sharp, grounding presence had acted like a torch in a dark room, illuminating exactly how cold you had actually been.

The sheets were too crisp, the silence too heavy, and the air held a stillness that felt less like peace and more like a vacuum. You tossed once, the silk sliding against your skin with a sound like a secret, and then twice, twisting your body into a knot that mirrored the turmoil in your chest. Sleep, which had once come as easily as breathing in the dim corners of the east wing, now felt like a distant shore, unreachable and shimmering. You huffed, a sharp puff of annoyance that echoed in the cavernous quiet of the room, your eyes snapping open to glare at the pink canopy above. The bed was a gilded cage of luxury, and you found yourself suffocating in the perfection of it.

Then, a realization flickered through the haze of your restlessness...the door was not locked.

The thought hit you with the force of a revelation. For three years, the sound of a bolt sliding home had been the punctuation mark at the end of every day, a definitive signal that you were a thing to be stored away. Now, there was no iron bar, no heavy key turning in a rusted lock, only a sliver of space beneath the door where the hallway light bled through. With a sudden, frantic energy, you kicked off the heavy blankets. You slid your feet into a pair of plush, oversized slippers that swallowed your heels, and with trembling fingers, you lit a single tallow candle. The flame danced in your eyes, a tiny, defiant spark in the gloom, as you padded toward the door, the soft thump of your footsteps sounding like a heartbeat against the polished floor.

The heavy oak door groaned on its hinges, swinging open into a hallway swallowed by velvet shadows. For a heartbeat, the silence was absolute, and then you saw it: a silhouette, draped in a heavy, charcoal colored cloak, standing motionless in the flickering amber glow of your candle. The figure looked like a phantom, a remnant of the very darkness you had just escaped. A primal, reflexive fear surged through you, a remnant of the years spent jumping at every unexpected sound. You didn't think; you simply inhaled a sharp, jagged breath and let out a piercing, guttural scream that tore through the stillness of the corridor.

The reaction was instantaneous. Before the sound could fully echo off the vaulted ceiling, a calloused hand flew forward, clamping firmly over your mouth. The grip was tight, smelling of brine and old wool. In one fluid, practiced motion, you were hoisted backward, your heels skidding on the floor as you were shoved back into the sanctuary of your bedroom. The door slammed shut with a heavy thud, plunging the room into a suffocating dimness, save for the candle you had dropped, which now sputtered on the rug. You trembled violently, your chest heaving against the intruder's chest, your heart hammering like a trapped bird against your ribs.

Then, the pressure on your mouth vanished. The figure stepped back just enough for you to breathe, and with a slow, deliberate movement, the heavy wool hood was pushed back.

"Hush, you silly girl" a voice whispered...a voice that was a familiar melody, worn smooth by years of whispered secrets and shared meals.

Lila.

"Lila? You scared me to death!" The words erupted from you in a frantic shriek, your voice cracking as the adrenaline finally broke. You didn't just speak, you practically vibrated with a mix of terror and sudden, soaring relief, your hands coming up to clutch at the rough wool of her cloak. You wanted to hit her for the fright and throw yourself into her arms all at once.

Lila didn't laugh. Instead, she leaned in, her finger pressing firmly against your lips in a sharp shush that smelled of beeswax and anxiety. Her eyes, usually so placid and dutiful, were darting toward the door with a frantic intensity you had never seen during your years of isolation.

"I am sorry, my lady, truly" she whispered, her voice a hurried, jagged thing. "But we must hurry. Your brother has been coming to your door every hour since the sun dipped. He does not enter, but he lingers. He listens. He stands there like a sentinel guarding a tomb, waiting for the slightest sound of your breath."

"He only worries for me" you mumbled, the words feeling heavy and slow, as if you were still half submerged in the dream of your own bed. You tried to smile, a small, sleepy expression that sought to normalize the image of Aegon haunting your threshold. To you, his vigil was the ultimate proof of his devotion, a physical manifestation of the guilt and love that had nearly broken him in the hallway. You imagined him there now, leaning his forehead against the oak, perhaps whispering the same fragmented promises he had murmured into your skin.

But Lila didn't share your sentiment. Her grip on your hand tightened, her fingers cold and trembling, and she cast a sharp, terrified glance toward the sliver of light beneath the door. "It is not worry, my lady. It is a fever" she hissed, her voice barely a thread of sound. With a sudden, desperate urgency, she began to tug you toward the exit, her movements frantic and jagged. "We must leave. Now."

The sudden pull snapped the last thread of your lethargy. As Lila tried to haul you back into the shadowed corridor, you jerked your hand away with a violence that surprised you both. The sound of your skin slapping against hers echoed like a whip in the quiet room.

"What? No!" you cried, your voice rising into a panicked register. You backed away from the door, your heels catching in the plush rug as you retreated toward the center of the room. The walls, which had felt like a welcoming embrace moments ago, suddenly seemed to lean inward, their shadows stretching like grasping fingers. "I am not going back! I will not go back to a locked room, Lila! Not today, not ever!"

"Not the room, my lady! We must leave Dragonstone entirely!" Lila’s voice was a frantic, hushed rasp, her eyes wide and shimmering with a terror that didn't match the safety of the bedchamber. "I promised your father… I gave my word that if the time came, I would spirit you away from this rock before the madness took hold." She reached out again, her fingers clawing at the air as if trying to snag the hem of your shift to pull you back into the shadows.

You recoiled, your back hitting the cold mahogany of the vanity once more. The memory of Aegon’s warmth was still a ghost on your skin, making Lila’s desperation feel like a sudden, freezing wind. "Father?" you spat, the word tasting of copper and old dust. "Father was a liar! He wove a shroud of deceit and called it protection, and now I see that you are merely the final thread in his tapestry!" You stepped back further, your voice rising in a crescendo of newfound defiance. "You seek to keep me from my family! There is no evil here Lila, only a brother who loves me and sisters who found me. Why are you trying to steal me away again?"

Lila froze, her arm still outstretched, her expression crumbling from frantic urgency into a look of profound, heartbreaking pity. For a moment, the only sound in the room was the dying hiss of the tallow candle on the rug, its flame flickering one last time before plunging the corners of the room into deep, ink-stained shadow. She didn't try to grab you again... instead, she let her hand fall limp at her side, her shoulders slumping under the weight of a secret that seemed to age her ten years in a single breath.

"Your brother is no good—" Lila began, her voice a fragile thread of warning that seemed to vibrate with a truth you weren't ready to hear.

The words hadn't even fully formed before you reacted. With a sharp, instinctive jerk, you slammed your palms over your ears, pressing so hard that the world dimmed at the edges and the only sound left was the thundering roar of your own blood. You squeezed your eyes shut, physically shoving the sentence back into the void from which it had come. To hear Aegon spoken of as a threat after the years of silence, after the crushing weight of his embrace and the salt-tear on your shoulder felt like a desecration.

"Do not!" you shrieked, your voice cracking with a fierce, protective desperation. "Do not slander my family!"

You dropped your hands, your chest heaving, and stepped toward her with a sudden, regal rigidity that belonged more to Visenya than to yourself. The fragility of the girl in the silk shift vanished, replaced by a searing, white hot loyalty. You didn't see a servant trying to save you; you saw an intruder attempting to poison the first drop of happiness you had tasted in an eternity.

"You have been my only companion in the dark, Lila, but you will not be the voice that slanders my family." you declared, your finger pointing sharply toward the heavy oak door. "Either you live in this castle with me or you leave it entirely! I will not have my sanctuary turned into a courtroom for your suspicions!"

Lila’s composure didn't just crack... it disintegrated. The distance between you vanished in a blur of charcoal wool as she lunged forward, not with the grip of a kidnapper, but with the frantic, clumsy desperation of a drowning woman. Her hands, calloused and smelling of the soap, she used to scrub your floors for years, flew up to cradle your face. Her palms were shaking, the vibration transferring into your own jaw, as she forced you to look at her.

"I am trying to protect you, sweetling" she mumbled, her voice a broken slurry of grief and terror. She squeezed your cheeks slightly, her thumbs brushing against your skin with a tenderness that felt suffocatingly intimate. "Please, don't do this. You… you are like a daughter to me. Do you think I enjoyed the silence? Do you think I liked watching you wither in that wing like a flower in a cellar?"

"My only mother is dead" you whispered, the words coming out as a cold, hard blade that sliced through Lila’s desperation. You didn't pull away from her touch this time, instead, you leaned into it just enough to make the rejection feel more intimate, more final. "And you shall be my second...my second mother, my second guardian...dead to me, as well, if you do not stop following my father’s ghosts and let me be free here with my family."

Lila’s hands dropped as if scorched. The silence that followed was different from the ones you had shared in the east wing; it wasn't a shared secret or a mutual endurance of loneliness. This was a void of your own making, a chasm opened by a few cruel words. She looked at you...really looked at you, and for the first time, you saw a flicker of something other than pity in her eyes. It was a mourning. She wasn't mourning your imprisonment, but the girl you had been before the walls had bent your spirit into something that mistook possession for protection.

Lila stepped back into the deepening shadows of the room, the charcoal wool of her cloak swallowing her silhouette until she seemed less a woman and more a smudge of ink against the mahogany. A ghost of a smile touched her lips...a sad, knowing thing that didn't reach her eyes. "Very well" she whispered, her voice regaining a steadiness that sounded like a death knell. "If the blind wish to walk into the fire, who am I to pull them back from the heat? I shall watch you from afar then, my lady. I will be the shadow in the corner, the breath in the curtain. But know this... I do love you. More than the gods love their prayers."

She paused at the threshold, her hand resting lightly on the doorframe, the wood groaning beneath her touch. "And when the gold turns to lead" she added, her gaze piercing through the gloom to lock onto yours, "when you realize your mistake and the walls of this family feel smaller than the ones your father built… I will be waiting. And then, I will run with you. Anywhere the wind takes us, far from the reach of lords and their legacies." With a final, lingering look of profound sorrow, she vanished into the hallway, the soft click of the door echoing like a closing book.

"Lila…" you started to cry, the word fracturing in the middle as the regal posture of a princess collapsed into the shuddering heap of a frightened child. The silence that followed her departure was not the welcoming blanket you had imagined, but a sudden, freezing vacuum that sucked the air from your lungs. "Lila!" you shrieked, the sound raw and desperate, as you turned and stomped your foot against the polished floor with a rhythmic, childish fury. "I—I command you to return! Lila!"

The minutes didn't pass so much as they dissolved, leaving you anchored to the doorframe in a state of shivering wreckage. You sank to the floor, the silk of your shift bunching around your knees, and let out a sound that wasn't a cry so much as a rhythmic, guttural keening. Your forehead pressed against the cold grain of the oak, your breaths coming in jagged, snotty heaves that made your entire frame shudder. You stayed there, curled into a ball of salt and grief, sobbing until your throat felt raw and your eyes burned like embers. For half an hour, you were nothing but a pulse of misery in the dark, mourning the loss of the only person who had seen you when you were invisible.

When you finally managed to pull yourself upright, your face felt swollen and tight, the skin puffy and blotched from the torrent. You wiped your nose with the back of your hand, a reflexive, ungainly gesture from childhood, and slowly pulled the door open. The hallway was a yawning throat of shadow, and for a moment, the emptiness felt like a physical blow. Your first instinct was a frantic, clawing need for Rhaenys. You could almost feel the ghostly memory of her small, warm arms wrapping around you, the way she would pull you into a tight, protective huddle when the two of you had been caught stealing sweets from the larder or chasing cats through the library. You wanted to bury your face in her neck, to be held until the world stopped shaking.

You took a tentative step toward her quarters, your bare feet slapping softly on the stone, but as the image of Rhaenys’s comfort solidified, another presence surged forward to eclipse her. Aegon. The thought of him was a sudden, grounding weight, a mountain of certainty in a sea of chaos. He was the one who had wept for you, he was the one who had haunted your door like a ghost of devotion. He wasn't just a brother, he was the shield, the sentinel, the protector from all things...even from the crushing loneliness that Lila had left in her wake. Your path shifted instinctively, your body pivoting away from Rhaenys and toward the direction of his chambers.

You moved through the corridors with a desperate, frantic speed, your breath hitching in your chest. The castle, once a labyrinth of fear, now felt like a gauntlet you had to run to reach the only sanctuary that mattered. Every flicker of a torch, every distant echo of a servant's footstep, felt like an obstacle between you and the warmth of his presence. By the time you reached his door, your shift was dampened with tears and your hair a wild, tangled crown around your puffy face, but the sight of the heavy door brought a sudden, sharp clarity to your heart.

The door didn’t just open, it surrendered, swinging wide on silent hinges to reveal a room bathed in the amber glow of a dying hearth. Aegon was there, sprawled across the linens of his massive bed, the light catching the sharp line of his jaw and the focused intensity in his eyes. He looked like a scholar of sorrow, perched atop a mountain of silk, scribbling feverishly into a leather bound journal. The scratch of the quill was the only sound until the click of the latch reached him. With a practiced, almost reflexive motion, he tossed the journal to the side, the heavy book landing with a muffled thud against the velvet duvet.

"Visenya, I said I’m going to sleep—" he groaned, his voice thick with a mixture of exhaustion and mild irritation. He didn't even look up, his eyes closing as he assumed the intrusion was merely his sister coming to lecture him on the morning's itinerary or the state of the castle.

The change in him was instantaneous. The irritation vanished, replaced by a sharp, electric alertness. Aegon shifted, his arm winding around you with an instinctive, possessive strength, pulling you flush against his chest until there was no air left between you. He felt the dampness of your cheeks against his ribs, the rhythmic hitching of your breath, and the raw, ragged quality of your silence.

"Why are you crying, my sweet love?" his voice dropped an octave, turning into a low, humming vibration that seemed to echo through your very bones. He didn't ask for an explanation...he didn't demand to know who had hurt you or what had happened. He simply tightened his hold, his fingers digging slightly into the soft flesh of your shoulder, anchoring you to him as if he feared you might dissolve into mist if he let go.

You didn't answer him, the words were still trapped behind a wall of sobbing breaths and the lingering sting of Lila's warning. Instead, you simply clung to him, your fingers curling into the fabric of his tunic with a grip that bordered on bruising. You ignored the question entirely, choosing instead to burrow deeper into the scent of him. Aegon didn't mind the silence or the lack of an explanation. In fact, a low, rumbling sound of satisfaction vibrated in his chest, a purr of possessive triumph. He loved that you came to him in your wreckage... he loved that the world had broken you just enough to make him your only destination.

"Poor baby" he whispered, the words barely a ghost of sound against the salt-damp skin of your cheek. His lips lingered there for a heartbeat, a soft, searing brand that seemed to cauterize the wound Lila had left in your spirit. Then, with a fluid, heavy grace, he shifted. The world tilted as Aegon rolled over you, his weight descending like a warm velvet curtain that shut out the rest of the castle, the ghosts of your father, and the terrifying warnings of a servant.

He didn't just move, he claimed the space, sliding between your legs with a slow, deliberate precision that felt less like a gesture of comfort and more like a territorial marking. The friction of his linen trousers against your bare thighs was a grounding heat, an anchor in the storm of your dissociation. As he settled, his hand rose to your temple, his fingers weaving through the tangled knots of your hair, stroking the strands away from your forehead with a tenderness that felt dangerously absolute.

"You're okay… you're safe. You're always safe with me" he whispered, the words grazing the shell of your ear like a warm summer breeze. The vibration of his voice was a physical thing, a low frequency that seemed to synchronize with the frantic hammering of your heart until the two rhythms merged into one. Then came the kiss...a soft, lingering press of his lips against the sensitive curve of your earlobe that acted as a final seal on the world outside.

In that singular, searing moment, the warnings of Lila and the ghost of your father’s betrayal faded into insignificance. You felt the immense, sheltering weight of him, a fortress of muscle and devotion that blocked out every shadow of the castle. Your puffy eyes fluttered closed, and for the second time that night, your mind offered a silent, fervent prayer to the Seven, thanking them for returning you not just to your home, but to the only person who truly knew how to hold the shattered pieces of you together.

Yet, as your breathing leveled into a deep, rhythmic lull, Aegon did not settle. He remained a storm of kinetic energy beneath the surface of his skin. You felt him shift against you, a slow, restless adjustment of his hips that pressed him more firmly into the curve of your thigh. Then he shifted again, a subtle, searching movement, as if he were trying to find a geometry of proximity that didn't yet exist. His breath, once a steady hum against your ear, became a jagged, uneven thing, hot and hurried.

A low, vibrationally deep hum started in Aegon's chest, a sound of absolute contentment that echoed through your ribs as you drifted toward the edge of sleep. He watched the way your eyelids fluttered, the heavy surrender of your limbs, and a flicker of something dark and triumphant sparked in his gaze. He breathed in the scent of your salt-stained skin, silently thanking whatever gods presided over his desire for the blissful naivety that kept you blind to the hunger in his touch. To you, this was the refuge of a brother... to him, it was the slow, methodical claiming of a territory he had long ago decided was his alone.

A low, resonant hum vibrated in Aegon’s chest, a sound of primal satisfaction that seemed to synchronize with the slowing rhythm of your heart. He watched the way your lashes finally stilled, the heavy veil of sleep descending over your eyes, and a predatory sort of tenderness flickered in his gaze. You were drifting, floating in the warm wake of your own exhaustion, unaware that the sanctuary you had sought had become a gilded trap. To Aegon, your vulnerability was a masterpiece, and your trust was the key that unlocked a hunger he had spent years refining in the silence of his own longing.

The air in the room grew thick, heavy with the scent of dying embers and the oppressive sweetness of musk. Aegon’s touch changed... the protective embrace of a brother shifted into something more exploratory, more deliberate. His hand, warm and slightly calloused, began a slow, searing journey upward, gliding along the pale expanse of your thigh with a lightness that made the fine hairs on your skin ripple. It was a touch that didn't just seek comfort, but mapping as if he were tracing the boundaries of a kingdom he had finally conquered.

With a sudden, fluid motion, he reached further, his fingers curling around the soft, sensitive hollow of your inner knee. He didn't pull away. Instead, he guided your leg upward, folding you into him with a possessive grace. His hand slid further down, his palm cupping the arch of your foot in a grip that was firm and grounding. He held you there, pinned and pliable, while he shifted his hips into you once more. A soft, ragged sigh escaped him, a sound of profound release that vibrated through the mattress and into your very marrow.

The first touch had been a mere probe, a question asked in the language of skin and warmth. You drifted in that liminal space where the world becomes a blur of amber light and velvet shadows, your consciousness fraying at the edges. You were falling, sinking deeper into the mattress as if the bed had become a warm sea, and for a heartbeat, the sensation of his hand on your inner knee felt like nothing more than a phantom limb, a remnant of childhood games. You could have stirred; you could have shifted your leg away or murmured a sleepy protest, but your mind was a soft, unlit room, too clouded by the residue of your grief to recognize the shift in the current. You didn't even know what he was doing.

Sensing your total surrender, Aegon’s grip tightened. He pressed his thumb firmly into the arch of your foot, a sharp, grounding pressure that acted as a tether, ensuring you remained anchored to him even as your mind sought the void of sleep. Then, with a slow, rhythmic deliberation, he pushed again, sliding his weight forward until the friction of his body was a searing line of heat against your own. It was a claim made in the silence, a physical insistence that you were not merely his sister, but a possession to be curated and held.

"Sister…" his voice was a low, sandpaper rasp, vibrating against the shell of your ear. You stirred, a languid, half conscious ripple of movement, your mind still swimming in the thick syrup of oncoming sleep. "Lift your other leg over my hip, okay? Just like this."

You obeyed without thought, your movements heavy and clumsy, governed by a half dreaming trust that bypassed any sense of caution. Your leg lifted, sliding over his hip with a slow, languid friction that felt like a warm current of honey. The shift in position pulled you tighter against him, erasing the last slivers of air between your chests. You felt the hard, rhythmic thrum of his heart beating against your own, a frantic galloping thing that mirrored the sudden, inexplicable spike of heat blooming in your gut.

His thumb began a rhythmic, kneading motion against the arch of your foot, a slow, circular pressure that mirrored the way he used to soothe your temper tantrums when you were barely old enough to walk. It was a ghost of a memory, a tactile echo of childhood that bypassed your adult defenses and whispered that you were safe, small, and cherished. The tension that had coiled in your spine since the confrontation with Lila began to unravel, thread by thread, as he worked the tension from your heel and toes. Then, with a gentle but firm guidance, he hooked your second leg over his hip, locking you into a tangle of limbs that felt less like a hug and more like a knot.

As he settled, his hand migrated upward, his fingers grazing your temple with an aching softness. He brushed a stray, damp lock of hair away from your forehead, his touch lingering as if he were smoothing the creases of a crumpled piece of parchment. "I'm going to help you relax, okay?" he murmured, his voice a low, hypnotic vibration that seemed to settle the frantic drumming of your heart. "Just like I do with Visenya… when the weight of everything becomes too much to bear."

The fabric of your shift, a thin slip of translucent silk, began to gather and bunch beneath his palm, the material resisting and then yielding as he shifted his weight. He didn't pull it away with any urgency, instead, he worked the cloth upward in a slow, rhythmic bunching, the silk sliding against your skin with a soft, shushing sound that felt like a secret shared between the two of you. You let out a small, fractured sound...a half muttered protest that was more a sigh than a word, your voice thick with the heavy fog of sleep.

Aegon paused, his gaze softening as he looked down at you. Your eyes were barely open, your expression a mask of drowsy confusion, and the sight of you...so fragile, so utterly undone by the night's trauma, sent a jolt of fierce, possessive tenderness through him. He leaned down, his lips grazing your cheek in a series of light, fluttering kisses that tasted of warmth and salt. A small, private smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, his eyes darkening with an affection that bordered on hunger.

The kisses were no longer mere brushes of affection, they became rhythmic, insistent pulses of heat that mapped the distance from your jaw to the sensitive hollow of your throat. As he leaned into you, Aegon’s focus shifted, his body acting on an instinct that bypassed the cautious boundaries of brotherhood. He began to shift his hips in a slow, undulating motion, a tentative grind that pressed the coarse linen of his trousers against the thin, yielding barrier of your small clothes. The friction was a sudden, searing current, a slow motion collision of heat and pressure that sent a jolt of confusing electricity shooting up your spine.

A sharp, strangled moan broke from his lips, the sound vibrating directly against your cheek. It wasn't a sound of comfort, but a raw, visceral expression of a need that had been coiled like a spring for years. The sound seemed to startle even him, and in a sudden surge of overwhelming intensity, he abandoned the kisses and buried his face deep into the crook of your neck. He inhaled sharply, his breath hot and ragged against your skin, as if he were trying to drink the very essence of you, anchoring himself to the scent of your salt damp skin to keep from drowning in his own desire.

You lay there, pinned beneath the immense, radiating heat of him, your mind a kaleidoscope of half formed thoughts. The sensation of his weight...the heavy, rhythmic press of his hips had felt like a tide coming in, slow and inevitable. In your sleep heavy state, the feeling didn't register as a threat, instead, it felt like the ultimate form of closeness.

You felt the way his muscles tightened, the way his grip on your waist became almost bruising, and you mistook this desperation for the same fear you felt... the fear of being alone again. You arched your back instinctively, a subconscious invitation for more of that grounding heat, and felt Aegon shudder against you.

"Aeg… is it supposed to feel funny?" you mumbled, your voice a thick, grainy slurry, weighted down by the residue of your tears and the heavy fog of drifting consciousness. You didn't open your eyes, the world was a blurred smudge of amber and shadow, and the darkness felt safer than the truth. Your legs, which had been locked around his hips in a desperate, instinctive knot, began to slacken, threatening to slip away as your muscles succumbed to the crushing gravity of sleep.

Aegon froze. The question was a fragile thing, a sliver of curiosity that threatened to puncture the carefully constructed bubble of his fantasy. He felt the slight slackening of your grip, the way your muscles began to dissolve into the mattress, and a surge of panic shot through him. He couldn't let you drift away now, not when the proximity had finally reached this fever pitch, not when the line between familial comfort and romantic hunger had blurred into something he could almost touch.

Aegon froze. The question was a fragile thing, a sliver of curiosity that threatened to puncture the carefully constructed bubble of his fantasy. He felt the slight slackening of your grip, the way your muscles began to dissolve into the mattress, and a surge of panic shot through him. He couldn't let you drift away now, not when the proximity had finally reached this fever pitch, not when the line between familial comfort and romantic hunger had blurred into something he could almost touch.

"Can I keep going while you sleep?"

The question drifted over you like a heavy velvet shroud, his voice a low, resonant vibration that seemed to hum not in your ears, but in the marrow of your bones. He didn't wait for an answer, he didn't even acknowledge the confused query you had whispered moments before. Instead, Aegon moved with a sudden, fluid precision, his hands gripping your thighs and hoisting your legs back into that tight, locking knot around his hips. He did it with a territorial firmness, resetting the geometry of your bodies until you were once again pinned, a captured bird in a cage of muscle and linen.

He began to move again, a slow, rhythmic undulation of his hips that felt like the tide of a warm, dark ocean. It was a steady, grounding friction, a deliberate grind that pressed the heat of him deep into the yielding softness of your center. To your sleep drunk mind, the sensation was an extension of the comfort he had always provided...a lullaby of pressure and warmth that promised you would never have to wake up in a cold, empty room again. You let out a long, shuddering sigh, your head lolling back into the pillow as the tension in your spine finally snapped, leaving you pliant and open.

"Okay…" you murmured, the word barely a breath, a soft surrender that dissolved into the heavy silence of the room. It wasn't a conscious agreement, nor was it a reasoned choice, it was simply the sound of a soul too exhausted to fight the current. As the fog of sleep finally claimed you, your body continued to react to the rhythmic heat of him, your subconscious clinging to the sensation of being held. A series of small, fractured moans escaped your lips...unbidden, airy sounds of half remembered comfort that vibrated against the space between your skin and his.

The sound hit Aegon like a physical blow. His hips stuttered, the rhythmic grind breaking for a heartbeat as a surge of raw, electric hunger crashed through his composure. Those sounds weren't the cries of a sister... they were the music of a surrender he had craved since he was a boy, a sonic confirmation that he had finally bridged the distance between them. The stutter was brief, a momentary lapse in his control, before he redoubled his efforts with a desperate, focused intensity. He pressed deeper into you, his breath coming in ragged, shuddering hitches that mirrored the erratic beat of his heart.

To Aegon, you were no longer a person... you were a fixation, a living altar at which he had spent years praying in secret. In the heavy, amber lit silence of the bedchamber, the boundary between brotherly devotion and a starving hunger had dissolved completely. You were adrift in the velvet void of sleep, your consciousness a distant shore, yet your body remained a traitor, responding to him in a language you didn't even know you spoke. Even as your mind wandered through the haze of exhaustion, your throat produced those small, rhythmic sounds...pretty, fractured noises that vibrated against his skin like a siren song.

He watched the way your lips remained slightly parted, a soft, invitationally raw aperture that mirrored the vulnerability of your spirit. His gaze fixed on the delicate curve of your mouth, and a sudden, electric impulse surged through him. His fingers twitched with a desperate, starving curiosity that he longed to reach out and brush the velvet warmth of your lower lip, to feel the damp, sliding heat of your tongue against his skin, confirming that this proximity was not a dream born of his own madness. To him, your sleep was not a barrier, but a canvas upon which he could finally paint the depth of his possessiveness.

Aegon did not reach for your lips with his fingers... instead, he surrendered to the gravity of the moment and descended. His mouth found yours not with a tentative question, but with the crushing weight of a decade of suppressed longing. It was a kiss that tasted of salt and desperation, a heavy, searing collision that seemed to steal the very air from the room.

You stirred in your sleep, a soft, confused sound humming in the back of your throat, your body reacting to the sudden intensity with a reflexive arch of your spine. To you, it felt like a dream...a blurring of boundaries where the line between a brother's embrace and a lover's hunger became a smudge of warmth and scent.

The kiss deepened, a slow, drowning tide of heat that seemed to pull the very oxygen from the room. In the depths of your slumber, the sensation was an anchor, pulling you from the void and back into a reality that felt shimmering and surreal. As the pressure of his lips grew more insistent, a sudden, electric jolt shot through you, colliding with the rhythmic friction of his body. At that moment, Aegon’s composure fractured and a sharp, guttural sound escaped him...his frame shuddered with one final, violent thrust against the thin barrier of your smallclothes.

The shock of it acted like a splash of cold water. Your eyes snapped open, pupils dilated and dazed, blinking against the amber flicker of the dying hearth. For a heartbeat, you were suspended in a vacuum of confusion, the weight of him pressing you into the mattress and the lingering taste of him on your lips. The intimacy was too heavy, too deliberate. With a frantic, clumsy motion, you jerked your head to the side, breaking the contact. Your breath came in short, jagged gasps as the fog of sleep cleared, leaving you staring at the velvet canopy of the bed with wide, searching eyes.

Aegon felt the sudden, cold dampness clinging to his thighs, a visceral reminder of the release he had barely managed to control. He cursed silently, the frustration of his own lack of discipline warring with the sheer triumph of the moment. He looked down at you, expecting a flicker of shock or a panicked retreat, but instead, he saw a strange, vacant kind of calm. You weren't reacting to the friction, the grinding pressure, or the invasive weight of his body... to your sheltered and sleep worn mind, those sensations were merely the chaotic architecture of a hug gone wrong. You were adrift in a sea of innocence, entirely oblivious to the biological reality of what had just occurred between your thighs.

It was the kiss, however, that had finally breached the surface of your consciousness. As you lay there, blinking up at him, your chest heaving with a sudden, sharp intake of air, the memory of his lips on yours felt like a brand. In the rigid social order of the estate, you had only ever seen such intimacy between married couples...the sweeping, romantic gestures of lords and ladies that were reserved for the sanctuary of the marriage bed. The Seven taught that such passion was a sacred bond between husband and wife, a fire not to be lit between siblings. The realization crashed over you not as a wave of disgust, but as a profound, confusing dissonance.

"Why…" Your voice was a fragile thread, barely audible over the crackle of the dying fire. "Why did you… we aren't…"

Aegon didn't miss a beat. He shifted his weight, not pulling away, but instead leaning in closer, his expression softening into a mask of practiced, protective tenderness. He let his hand slide up to cup your cheek, his thumb brushing away a lingering tear with a gentleness that felt almost holy.

Your voice trailed off, the words dissolving into the heavy air of the room. The ghost of his lips still burned against yours, a sensation that felt like a transgression against the very laws of the Seven. In your mind, you recalled the sight of the High Septon joining hands and lips in the Great Sept, the way the nobility of the realm spoke of the 'sacred fire' reserved for husbands and wives. Such a kiss was a seal of ownership, a promise of lineage...it was a language of passion and partnership that had no place in the quiet, familial bond of a brother and sister.

Aegon didn't flinch. He didn't pull away or offer a clumsy apology. Instead, he tightened his hold on you, his thumb tracing the line of your jaw with a slow, hypnotic deliberation. He let a small, knowing smile tug at the corners of his mouth, his voice dropping into that low, resonant frequency that always made you feel small and protected.

You were searching his eyes for a sign of hesitation, for some flicker of shame that would signal he knew this had crossed a boundary. "Aegon, the kiss… the way you… we aren't married."

Aegon didn’t blink. He didn't recoil or offer the clumsy apology of a man caught in a transgression. Instead, he leaned in closer, his forehead resting against yours, his breath warm and steady. He let out a soft, melodic chuckle...a sound of gentle correction, as if you had merely misread a page of a familiar book.

"My sweet, innocent girl…." he murmured, his voice sliding over you like silk. "You have spent too much time listening to the Septons and their rigid laws for the common folk. Do you truly believe the blood of the dragon is bound by the same mundane rules as the sheep in the valley?" He shifted his weight, his hand sliding from your cheek to the nape of your neck, anchoring you to him with a firm, possessive pressure. "Our ancestors—the lords of Old Valyria—they understood that the bond between siblings of the highest blood is the purest form of devotion. To them, a kiss was not a contract of marriage, but a seal of kinship, a way to keep the dragon's fire concentrated within the family."

"Will it… will it help me finally get a dragon to hatch for me? Or even be claimed?" you mumbled, the words thick and slurry, drifting through the haze of your remaining sleepiness. You searched his eyes for an answer, your heart hammering against your ribs with a sudden, desperate hope. For years, the stone cold egg in your chamber had remained a silent, dormant thing, mocking you with its stubbornness. You had watched others in your lineage command the skies, while you remained earthbound.

Aegon let out a low, humming sound of affirmation, the vibration rattling through his chest and into your own. He didn't answer with a simple yes... instead, he leaned in, his lips brushing against the sensitive shell of your ear, his voice dropping to a hypnotic, conspiratorial whisper. "Mhm… perhaps not the egg, my love" he murmured, the words tasting of salt and secret promises. "But the bond… the bond is everything. This closeness, this sharing of breath and skin… it strengthens the fire in your blood. It makes you more than just a sister... it makes you a part of the very soul of the dragon…My dragon."

He paused, his hand sliding down to press firmly against your heart, as if he could feel the frantic drumming within. "And Balerion..." he continued, his voice growing thick with a dark, magnetic intensity, "he has missed you. He feels the shift in you, the way you are finally surrendering to the heat. If you stay here, in my arms, locked in this circle of devotion, you will find a strength the others can only dream of. You won't need a hatchling of your own when you have the Black Dread."

A spark ignited in the depths of your gaze, your eyes practically sparkling with a newfound, hungry ambition. The hesitation that had held your breath captive vanished, and you felt a surge of warmth bloom in your chest that had nothing to do with the hearth. You looked at Aegon...not as the brother who had protected you, but as the conduit to a power that felt ancient and inevitable. If the blood of Old Valyria demanded such a closeness to preserve its purity, then you would give it. You would kiss him a thousand times over. You would kiss him forever if it meant the fire of your house would never dim, and if it meant you would finally soar above the clouds, bound to the Black Dread by a bond that no mortal law could sever.

"Be with me forever, sister" he whispered against the sensitive skin of your nape, his breath a warm, humid brand that sent a final shiver racing down your spine. The words weren't a request... they were a decree, a velvet shackle that locked the door behind you and threw away the key. He didn't give you a moment to process the gravity of the vow before his lips found yours again, not with the tentative exploration of before, but with a sudden, bruising intensity. This kiss was an erasure, wiping away the last vestiges of your doubt and the distant, fading memories of Lila’s warnings, replacing them with the singular, suffocating reality of his presence.

The world narrowed down to the rhythmic thrum of Aegon’s heartbeat against your ear and the heavy, grounding weight of him pressing you into the mattress. As the fire in the hearth succumbed to ash, casting the room into a velvet gloom, you felt the sudden shift in his posture...the predatory tension finally bleeding out of his muscles. He didn't pull away, but the frantic, searching heat of his body cooled into a protective stillness. He settled over you like a great, warm cloak, his face buried in the crook of your neck, inhaling the salt and sweetness of your skin with a long, shuddering sigh of contentment.

As the room surrendered to a heavy, velvet dark, you closed your eyes and let the weight of him settle over you like a living shield. The rhythmic friction had ceased, replaced by a stillness that felt thick and expectant. Aegon didn't move to distance himself, instead, he tucked his face into the curve of your neck, his breathing slowing into the deep, rhythmic cadence of a man who had finally captured the thing he most desired. He remained there, draped across you, his chest a warm furnace that seeped through the thin silk of your shift, inhaling the salt damp scent of your skin as if it were the only air left in the world.

You closed your eyes, drifting toward the edge of a heavy, velvet sleep, but as the darkness pressed in, your mind instinctively reached for a tether. You did not call out to the ghosts of Old Valyria, nor did you offer a prayer to the nameless fires of the Freehold that Aegon so fervently championed. Instead, in the quiet, panicked sanctuary of your thoughts, you whispered a plea to the Seven. You prayed to the Mother for a grace you weren't sure you deserved, to the Smith for a strength to withstand the gravity of this new world, and to the Crone, seeking a lamp to light the path back to a version of yourself that knew where the boundaries of blood ended and desire began. It was a silent, desperate rebellion, a tiny candle of faith lit against the overwhelming shadow of the dragon.

The words didn’t come from the air, but from the deep, echoing vault of your own memory, playing back like a ghostly recording in the silence of the early morning.

Forgive me for kissing family… but you must understand… it is not romantic… my Valyrian blood will cancel out the sin.

You could hear the cadence of your own voice, though it sounded strange to your ears...hollow, as if it belonged to a version of yourself that had already surrendered. It was a mantra you had begun to whisper to the shadows of the bedcurtains, a desperate theological shield forged from Aegon’s words to protect you from the crushing weight of the Seven's judgment. You were convincing yourself that the heat in your veins wasn't a transgression, but a biological imperative, a chemical reaction of ancient blood recognizing its own kind.

"Tell us again" Visenya was saying, her tone stripped of its usual mockery, replaced by a clinical, urgent intensity. "Who brought you food? Which servants? Did Father visit you in the nights, or only the days?"

"Is… is Aegon okay?" Your voice was a fragile thing, a thin thread of sound that barely reached across the room. It carried a tremor of genuine, unshielded concern that seemed to vibrate through the very air of the chamber.

The effect was instantaneous. Aegon didn't so much wake as he did erupt from his stupor. He lunged forward with a sudden, violent desperation, his coordination failing him so completely that he tumbled from the edge of the bed. He hit the flagstones with a heavy thud, but he didn't stop. He practically crawled across the stone, his breath coming in ragged, starving gasps. His fingers clawed at the floor, dragging his body toward you as if you were the only solid point in a world made of water. He didn't care about the dignity of a lord or the bruising of his knees...

he only cared about the proximity of the voice that had haunted his dreams for three winters.

The suddenness of his movement was like a predator springing from brush. You shrieked, the sound thin and piercing, and scrambled backward with a clumsy desperation, your bare heels skidding on the cold stone. Beside you, Visenya’s hand flew to the hilt of her dagger, her body coiling into a defensive spring, her eyes flashing with a reflexive instinct to strike. But Aegon didn't see the blade or the danger...he saw only the silver-gold blur of you retreating into the shadows of the room.

"No… no, no, don't be afraid" Aegon pleaded, his voice a broken wreckage of the command he had spent years perfecting. He didn't reach for your hand or your waist, instead, he collapsed forward, his forehead pressing against the rough fabric of your hem as he clung to your leg with a shaky, desperate sigh. He held on with a grip that bordered on bruising, his fingers curling into the cloth as if he were a drowning man and you were the only piece of driftwood in a violent sea.

You froze, your breath hitching in a small, jagged sob. The sensation was overwhelming...the heat of his forehead through the thin cotton of your gown, the trembling of his broad shoulders, the sheer, suffocating weight of a grief that had finally found its target. For three years, you had been a secret kept in a stone box, and now you were being claimed by a man who felt less like a brother and more like a storm that had finally made landfall.

"Uhm…" The sound was barely a breath, a small, pitiful vibration in your throat that seemed to ripple through the heavy silence of the room. You looked down at the man clinging to your ankle, his knuckles white and his breath hot against your skin. He didn't look like the formidable Lord of Dragonstone... he looked like a child who had found a lost toy in the wreckage of a fire. When he finally tilted his head up, his eyes were brimming, wet, bloodshot, and wide with a raw, unfiltered hunger for confirmation. He wasn't looking at you so much as he was searching for the evidence that you were solid, that you weren't a trick of the light or a cruel hallucination born of too much wine and too much loneliness.

Visenya was the first to break the spell. With a sigh that was more an admission of defeat than a sign of irritation, she stepped forward and gripped Aegon by the shoulder. Her hold was firm, a practical anchor designed to pull him out of his spiral. "Get up, Aegon" she commanded, though the usual bite in her voice had been replaced by a strange, muted softness. "You're frightening her. You look like a starving hound." She hauled him upward with a sharp tug, forcing him to find his footing, though he remained unsteady, swaying slightly as if the world were still tilting on its axis.

Rhaenys didn't wait for him to steady himself. She collided with you in a blur of silk and lavender, her arms wrapping around your neck with such force that it knocked the wind from your lungs. She was sobbing...not the delicate, performative tears she used to get her way, but deep, racking heaves that shook both of your frames. "You were here" she wailed into the crook of your neck, her voice muffled and wet. "You were right here in the walls, and we didn't know! How could we not know?" Her grip was suffocating, a desperate attempt to merge her body with yours, as if by sheer pressure she could make up for the three lost years.

You stiffened for a heartbeat, your muscles locking in a reflexive flinch born of years where the only touch you knew was the clinical brush of a maid or the cold air of a locked room. Rhaenys felt like a wildfire, too hot, too fast, smelling of expensive oils and desperation. For a second, you weren't sure if this was another prayer dream or if the walls had finally decided to swallow you whole. Then, the familiar scent of her skin—that sweetness that always reminded you of crushed berries had pierced through the fog. This was Rhaenys. This was the sister who used to steal your ribbons and whisper secrets about the kitchen staff.

Your lower lip trembled, a rhythmic, fragile twitch that felt like the only thing moving in the room besides the sobbing. You looked from Rhaenys’s tear-streaked face to Aegon’s hollowed eyes, the shock of their presence colliding with the memory of the man who had turned the key in the lock. A small, jagged sound escaped your throat...a whine that belonged to the twelve-year-old girl who had first entered the room, not the fifteen-year-old who had emerged from it. "Father said you knew" you whispered, the words slipping out like a bruised secret. "Daddy lied! He said you wanted me here… that you were all waiting for the evil to leave before I could come back."

The silence that followed your words was not a void, but a physical weight, pressing the air from the room until the torchlight seemed to dim. Aegon flinched as if you had struck him, his face twisting into a mask of raw agony. The revelation that Aerion had not only imprisoned you but had weaponized their love to ensure your compliance, stripped away the last remnants of his composure. He let out a sound that wasn't a cry, but a jagged, guttural noise of hatred directed at a dead man.

Aegon didn't speak, but the silence he carried was heavy, vibrating with a frequency that seemed to rattle the very stones of the chamber. He moved with a sudden, fluid precision, reaching out to peel a sobbing Rhaenys away from you. He didn't do it with aggression, but with a quiet, absolute necessity, as if he were clearing a path for something sacred. Rhaenys stumbled back, her eyes wide and glistening, leaving a sudden, yawning void between you and the world.

Then, he was there.

He didn't just embrace you... he enveloped you, his arms locking around your frame like the closing of a vault. He pulled you flush against his chest, and for a moment, the world disappeared, replaced by the rhythmic, thunderous drumming of his heart against your ear. You felt him shiver, a violent, subterranean tremor as he buried his face in the crook of your neck. He inhaled deeply, a long, starving draw of your scent...skin, old dust, and the faint, lingering sweetness of the rosemary Lila had used to bathe you.

When you finally let out a small, broken sniffle and your arms tentatively wound around his waist, clinging to the rough linen of his tunic, Aegon let out a sound that was half-sob, half-prayer. He tightened his grip, his voice dropping to a low, honeyed rumble that vibrated through your very bones.

"There is no evil, sweet one" he whispered, his lips brushing the shell of your ear. "Father was a troubled man… a man lost to his own delusions."

The admission felt like a heavy stone being lifted from the room, though the space it left behind was filled with a shimmering, fragile grief. He pulled back just enough to cup your face in his large, calloused hands, his thumbs sweeping away the tears that had carved tracks through the grime on your cheeks. He looked at you not as the Lord of Dragonstone, but as a man who had just found a missing piece of his own soul. He searched your eyes, tracing the way the innocence had been replaced by a haunted, wide-eyed caution, and a flicker of something dark and protective ignited in his gaze.

You clung to him then, your fingers knotting into the fabric of his tunic with a strength that belied your fragility. The world outside that room had been a series of locks, lies, and the suffocating silence of stone; now, Aegon was the only solid thing in a shifting landscape. You pressed your face into the heat of his chest, the scent of him...leather, salt, and the fading ghost of Arbor gold, becoming your only horizon.

A sudden, sharp thought pierced through the reunion... had Lila known? Had the woman who brought you bread and brushed your hair been a silent accomplice to your erasure, or merely another prisoner of the estate's payroll? You looked up at Aegon, your eyes searching his for an answer, but the trust you felt for him was a blind, instinctive thing, a tether pulling you back from the edge of madness.

Aegon didn't answer your desperate looks with words, he answered with a devotion that felt like a physical weight. He began to kiss your face with a rhythmic, desperate tenderness, his lips pressing against the side of your head, then the curve of your cheek, and the tip of your nose. Each touch was a reclamation, a way of marking every inch of you to ensure you were real, that you were here, and that you were finally his. You leaned into him, your eyes closing, the sensation of his warmth washing away the chill of three years of isolation. You were innocent to the hunger in his gaze, the way he looked at you not just as a sister, but as the singular center of his universe.

Then, his lips shifted, landing softly, lingeringly, on the corner of your mouth.

The air in the room shifted. The sound of a sharp, dry throat-clear echoed off the vaulted ceiling, Visenya, her arms crossed, her expression a complicated mask of duty and distaste. Beside her, Rhaenys remained frozen, her wide eyes darting between the two of you, her breath hitching in a way that suggested she was witnessing something she didn't quite have the vocabulary to name. The kiss had been a sliver of a thing, a ghost of a touch, but in the heavy silence of the room, it felt as loud as a shout.

The world beyond the circle of Aegon’s arms ceased to exist. The stone walls, the flickering torches, the heavy breathing of his sisters...all of it dissolved into a blurred periphery, leaving only the scent of him and the frantic drumming of his heart against your cheek. Aegon tightened his hold, pulling you closer until there was no air left between you, as if he intended to merge your two bodies into one single, unbreakable entity. He began to mumble into your hair, the words fragmented and wet, a low, desperate litany of "My sweet, my sweet girl" and "I searched every shadow..." and "Never again."

He pressed his lips to your temple, then your brow, then the shell of your ear, his breath hot and shuddering against your skin. Each kiss was a frantic prayer, a desperate attempt to anchor you to the present. He breathed you in, inhaling the scent of old dust and faded rosemary as if he were a starving man finally finding a feast. In that suffocatingly tight embrace, the years of silence and the coldness of the east wing were burned away by the sheer heat of his desperation. For a few timeless moments, the universe had shrunk to the size of his chest, and the only sound that mattered was the ragged, uneven rhythm of his voice whispering how much he had missed you, over and over, until the words became a song of possession.

The sudden intensity of his grip became a physical weight, a crushing tide of affection that left you gasping for air. As he leaned into you, his strength was an overwhelming force, his palms pressing your cheeks together until your lips puckered and your vision blurred. You stumbled backward, your heels catching on the uneven stone, but Aegon didn't let go, he simply shifted with you, his body a looming wall of warmth and desperation. Your hands flew up, fingers splaying against his wrists, grasping frantically to pry his palms away from your face.

"Aeg…" you managed to choke out, your voice sounding like a rusted hinge. You gave a small, reflexive scrunch of your nose, trying to nudge his face away from yours. "I’ve missed you too, but… you are squeezing me… to death."

A low, rumbling vibration started in Aegon’s chest, a sound that hadn't echoed through the halls of Dragonstone in years. It wasn't the practiced, booming laugh of a lord, but something raw and private, a soft huff of amusement that broke through his desperation. He didn't pull away; instead, he leaned in, the movement fluid and instinctive. He brushed the tip of his nose against yours in a quick, playful nudge, a ghostly remnant of the games you had played in the gardens before the world turned to stone and locks. For a fleeting second, the suffocating weight of the last three years vanished, replaced by the ghost of a childhood where the biggest tragedy was a fallen lemon cake.

Aegon’s grip shifted, transitioning from a desperate crush to a possessive cling. He didn't let go of your hand, instead, he laced his fingers through yours with a strength that suggested he feared you might evaporate if he loosened his hold by even a fraction. He stepped back, but only just enough to give you room to breathe, his shoulder remaining glued to yours as if he were a shield protecting you from the very air of the room. He was a man tethered to a lifeline, his eyes never straying from your face for more than a second, his gaze searching for any sign that you might vanish back into the shadows.

Visenya and Rhaenys moved through the drafty corridors like twin ghosts of efficiency, their voices low and urgent as they coordinated the reclamation of your old chambers. The room had not been entirely vacant, Aegon had frequently retreated there in the dead of night, seeking the lingering scent of your childhood or the ghost of a memory to soothe his fractured sleep.

Because of this, the space was tidy...stripped of the dust that usually claimed abandoned places but it lacked the warmth of a lived-in sanctuary. It was a sterile museum of who you used to be, awaiting the breath of a living soul to make it a home once more. The sisters whispered of fresh linens, the scrubbing of hearths, and the immediate summons of a maid who could handle the delicate task of restoring a wardrobe that had sat frozen in time for three long years.

The door clicked shut, leaving you in a silence that felt heavier than the locks of the east wing. Being back in your own room didn't feel like a homecoming… it felt like stepping into a ghost's skin. The air was thick with the scent of cedar and dried lavender, a preserved memory of a girl who had ceased to exist the moment the door had bolted three years ago.

You walked across the plush rug, your footsteps muted, feeling like an intruder in your own life. You reached for a dress draped over the vanity, a pale silk thing with intricate lace and held it up. It was a fragile, shimmering shell, far too small to contain the woman you had become. You were a stranger to your own wardrobe, a creature grown in the dark, now standing amidst the relics of a childhood that had been stolen and curated, though anyone could see you had not matured in mind, only in body.

You wandered toward the toy chest, your fingers trembling as you reached for a doll nestled among the velvet scraps. It was a crude thing, carved from pale birch and dressed in a miniature gown of silver thread...a likeness of yourself that your father had spent a winter crafting. The doll’s painted eyes stared back at you with an unnerving, frozen innocence, a mirror of the girl who had once believed her father’s lies.

A soft sound of breathing vibrated behind you. You turned to see Aegon lingering in the doorway, his frame nearly filling the frame. He wasn't touching you now, but his gaze was a physical weight, anchored to your every movement. He watched the way you held the doll, the way your thumb traced the carved line of its jaw. A slow, genuine smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, softening the hard lines of grief that still marred his face.

"That one was always my favorite" he murmured, his voice a low, melodic rumble that seemed to vibrate in the small space. He didn't specify if he meant the doll or the girl who had played with it.

"You're silly" you giggled, the sound bubbling up from your chest like a long forgotten spring. It was a fragile, airy sound, untainted by the years of silence, and it seemed to act as a beacon, pulling him toward you. You could hear the rhythmic thump thump of his heavy leather boots against the polished wood, closing the distance with a predatory grace that you mistook for simple eagerness.

The warmth of his presence arrived before he did, a sudden shift in the air that smelled of salt and old leather. Then, you felt the firm, steady pressure of his hands settling on your hips. He didn't pull you close so much as anchor you to the spot, his touch heavy and possessive through the thin fabric of your shift. He bent a little behind you, his chest brushing against your back, and peered over your shoulder to get a better look at the birch doll in your hands. To you, it was simply the familiar weight of a brother’s protection, the kind of closeness you had craved in the suffocating silence of the east wing.

You leaned back into him with a soft sigh, your head resting against his shoulder, entirely blind to the way his breathing hitched or the way his gaze lingered on the curve of your neck. You saw only a sanctuary...you did not see the hunger in the depths of his eyes, a silent, simmering want that had grown from a sibling's love into something far more consuming and dangerous during your absence.

"If you like my doll, you may have it" you mumbled, your voice still sounding thin and ghostly in the quiet of the room. You held the birch figure out to see it better, your fingers brushing against the coarse grain of the wood. "But I wish to see it still… it reminds me of Father."

The words were a gamble, a fragile bridge built over the memory of the man who had betrayed you, yet in the sanctuary of Aegon’s arms, the betrayal felt like a story happening to someone else. You didn't notice the way his gaze shifted, sliding from the wooden toy to the pale, pulsing vein in your throat. You didn't see the way his pupils dilated, drinking in the sight of you like a man who had spent a lifetime in a cellar and had finally stepped into the sun.

Aegon didn't answer immediately. He dipped his head, his breath a hot, sudden ghost of a touch against the sensitive skin of your neck. He inhaled deeply, closing his eyes as if he were memorizing the very chemistry of your existence, the scent of soap, salt, and something uniquely you that no amount of isolation could erase. A low, guttural vibration hummed in his chest, a sound of absolute claim. "Keep it." he murmured, his voice sounding like crushed velvet. Then, with a slow, deliberate precision, he pressed a lingering kiss to the curve of your shoulder, his lips warm and heavy. "I have no need for a wooden likeness now that the living version has returned to me."

The sudden shift in his tone, the raw vulnerability in that low rumble, sent a jolt of curiosity through you. You tried to twist in his grip, your body instinctively seeking the sight of his face to gauge the depth of his emotion, but Aegon’s hold was an iron velvet. His arms tightened, not to stifle, but to anchor, pinning you gently against the solid heat of his chest. He didn't let you turn. Instead, he buried his face deeper into the crook of your neck, his forehead resting against your skin with a heavy, shuddering weight.

Another kiss followed...slow, lingering, and desperate, tracing the line of your collarbone with a tenderness that felt almost sacred. "Can we just… stay like this?" he whispered, his voice fracturing. "Just for a moment. Just a few more."

You felt the dampness of his breath, and then, the unmistakable warmth of a tear landing on your shoulder. It was a revelation that made your own heart stutter. Aegon, the Lord of Dragonstone, the man who commanded servants with a glance and bore the weight of a crumbling legacy, was trembling. He sounded small, stripped of every title and pretense, reduced to a shivering wreck of a man by the simple fact of your proximity. "I am a weak, weak man, sister" he mumbled against your skin, the words blurred by a sob he was fighting to suppress.

"You are very strong, Aeg..." you mumbled, your voice thick with a sleepy, confused sort of fondness. You frowned, the expression small and tentative, as he continued to press into you. He wasn't just holding you anymore, he was leaning his entire weight against you, a mountain of muscle and desperation that drove you forward. Your feet skidded on the polished floor, and with a sudden, jarring thud, your lower back collided with the edge of the mahogany vanity.

The impact shuddered through your spine, knocking the breath from your lungs in a sharp, sudden gasp. Your palms flew out by instinct, bracing against the cold, polished mahogany of the vanity to keep from sliding to the floor, the wood biting into your skin. "Ow—" you huffed, the sound more of a startled puff of air than a cry of pain, but the protest was swallowed almost instantly.

The protest died in your throat as Aegon’s hand found the nape of your neck, his fingers splaying wide to tilt your head back with a gentle but absolute firmness. The sudden shift in posture left your throat exposed, a pale line of vulnerability in the dim light of the room. You started to huff, the sound a small, indignant puff of air, but it was silenced by the wet, trembling press of his lips against your jawline. He wasn't listening to your protests… he was listening to the frantic, erratic drumming of your heart, a sound that seemed to synchronize with his own labored breathing.

"I missed you so, so, so much" he murmured, the words blurring into a rhythmic chant against the sensitive skin of your jaw. His voice was no longer the command of a lord, but a ragged plea, stripped of pride and polished into a raw, aching need. "You were here all along… just a few walls away… my poor, sweet girl."

Your lower lip remained jutted out in a stubborn pout, your brow furrowed as you processed the lingering throb in your hips. Being shoved against the mahogany vanity was hardly the royal welcome you had imagined after three years of solitude, and you shifted your weight indignantly, trying to reclaim your balance. Yet, as Aegon’s lips continued their slow, desperate pilgrimage across your skin, the irritation began to dissolve into a familiar, hazy warmth. You remembered the way your mother would cup your face after a failed embroidery lesson and press a soft, fragrant kiss to your cheek to soothe your tears. Your father, in his rare moments of softness, had done the same, his beard tickling your skin as he murmured an apology for some forgotten promise.

In the blurred geography of childhood, a kiss was simply a kiss...a universal currency of apology and affection. Whether it landed on a cheek, a forehead, or the side of the neck, the meaning remained the same... I am sorry, and you are loved. Aegon had been the same when you were small, raining clumsy, exuberant kisses upon you during games of hide-and-seek or pressing a quick peck to your temple before he left for his lessons. To your innocent mind, this sudden torrent of affection was merely an extension of that old language. He was simply saying sorry for the vanity, sorry for the years, and sorry for the silence, in the only way your childhood heart knew how to translate.

“I can stay with you tonight, if you wish it” he mumbled, the words barely escaping his lips, sounding more like a prayer than a question. He pressed one last, lingering kiss to the hollow of your throat, a ghost of a touch that felt like a brand before his hands shifted, gently guiding you around until you were finally forced to look at him. For a heartbeat, the room fell silent, save for the crackle of the hearth. You looked up at him, your eyes beaming with a mixture of raw affection and the lingering fog of confusion, your heart swelling at the sight of his ruined expression. The sight of him, so broken and yet so desperate, made you feel a sudden, fierce protective instinct, as if the roles had reversed and you were now the one shielding him from the world.

"I can sleep on my own now, Aegon" you giggled, the sound light and airy, cutting through the heavy, suffocating tension that had filled the room. You gave his chest a playful, dismissive shove, the kind of gesture that belonged to a girl who had just discovered she was no longer a prisoner and felt the sudden, intoxicating urge to reclaim her space. You spun away from him, your shift swirling around your ankles as you began to bubble around the room once more, your energy returning in a frantic, scattered burst. You drifted toward the window to peek at the darkening sky, then pivoted to inspect a dusty jewelry box, your movements erratic and wide eyed. "I'm not a babe in arms anymore! I can handle the dark."

Aegon remained frozen for a moment, his arms still curved in the shape of the embrace you had just slipped from, his chest heaving as if he had forgotten how to breathe. The sudden shift from his desperate intensity to your carefree lightness left him momentarily adrift, his expression a mixture of longing and bewildered adoration. He watched you dance from one side of the room to the other, a small, fragile bird finally released from its cage, unaware that the cage had simply been replaced by his own unwavering gaze.

The door clicked shut with a finality that felt less like a separation and more like a gentle boundary, leaving you alone with the scent of cedar and the fading echo of Aegon’s labored breathing. For a long time, you simply stood in the center of the room, your skin still humming where his lips had touched, feeling as though you were floating a few inches above the polished floor. The silence of the room was no longer the oppressive, heavy void of the east wing, but a soft, welcoming blanket. You felt a lightness in your chest, a shimmering sense of wholeness that you hadn't known existed since you were a child.

You lingered in the center of the room, your toes curling into the plush rug as you watched the last slivers of amber sunlight bleed out of the sky and surrender to a bruised purple dusk. The silence was no longer a predator, but a companion, and as the shadows lengthened, you felt a sudden, grounding need to anchor yourself to something larger than your own fragile liberation. You drifted toward the heavy oak bedposts, the wood carved into twisting vines that seemed to shiver in the dimming light and sank slowly to your knees. The floor was cold through the thin fabric of your shift, a sharp contrast to the lingering heat of Aegon’s embrace, but the chill felt honest.

Folding your hands over your chest, you bowed your head, your voice dropping to a rhythmic, melodic whisper as you began the prayer to the Seven. You started with the Mother, thanking her for the warmth of a brother’s arms and the sudden, blinding light of the sun; then to the Smith, for the strength of the walls that had finally broken, and to the Maiden, for the innocence that had somehow survived the dark. As you spoke, your eyes drifted shut, and for a moment, you could almost hear the soft, collective sigh of the gods agreeing that the nightmare was over. You prayed not for forgiveness but for the simplicity of a dreamless sleep, one where you wouldn't wake up to the sound of a turning key.

The prayer finished, the silence of the room felt not like a void, but like a canvas. A sudden, electric surge of mischief sparked in your chest, an impulse that had been dormant for three long years, locked away behind a door of grief and dust. You stood up, the prayer’s solemnity dissolving into a beaming, wide-eyed grin that felt foreign on your face. The room was yours again. The air was yours. The very silence of the castle seemed to hold its breath, waiting to see what the girl who had returned from the dead would do.

The silk sheets felt abrasive against your skin, a luxury that felt like a lie. For three years, you had mastered the art of the solitary existence, you had learned to find company in the rhythmic drip of damp stone and the humming of the wind through the eaves. You had become a creature of silence, a ghost haunting your own life, and you had grown accustomed to the hollow space where other people should have been. But now, the silence of your own bedroom wasn't a sanctuary...it was a vacuum. The sudden influx of Aegon’s desperate warmth and Visenya and rhaeny's sharp, grounding presence had acted like a torch in a dark room, illuminating exactly how cold you had actually been.

The sheets were too crisp, the silence too heavy, and the air held a stillness that felt less like peace and more like a vacuum. You tossed once, the silk sliding against your skin with a sound like a secret, and then twice, twisting your body into a knot that mirrored the turmoil in your chest. Sleep, which had once come as easily as breathing in the dim corners of the east wing, now felt like a distant shore, unreachable and shimmering. You huffed, a sharp puff of annoyance that echoed in the cavernous quiet of the room, your eyes snapping open to glare at the pink canopy above. The bed was a gilded cage of luxury, and you found yourself suffocating in the perfection of it.

Then, a realization flickered through the haze of your restlessness...the door was not locked.

The thought hit you with the force of a revelation. For three years, the sound of a bolt sliding home had been the punctuation mark at the end of every day, a definitive signal that you were a thing to be stored away. Now, there was no iron bar, no heavy key turning in a rusted lock, only a sliver of space beneath the door where the hallway light bled through. With a sudden, frantic energy, you kicked off the heavy blankets. You slid your feet into a pair of plush, oversized slippers that swallowed your heels, and with trembling fingers, you lit a single tallow candle. The flame danced in your eyes, a tiny, defiant spark in the gloom, as you padded toward the door, the soft thump of your footsteps sounding like a heartbeat against the polished floor.

The heavy oak door groaned on its hinges, swinging open into a hallway swallowed by velvet shadows. For a heartbeat, the silence was absolute, and then you saw it: a silhouette, draped in a heavy, charcoal colored cloak, standing motionless in the flickering amber glow of your candle. The figure looked like a phantom, a remnant of the very darkness you had just escaped. A primal, reflexive fear surged through you, a remnant of the years spent jumping at every unexpected sound. You didn't think; you simply inhaled a sharp, jagged breath and let out a piercing, guttural scream that tore through the stillness of the corridor.

The reaction was instantaneous. Before the sound could fully echo off the vaulted ceiling, a calloused hand flew forward, clamping firmly over your mouth. The grip was tight, smelling of brine and old wool. In one fluid, practiced motion, you were hoisted backward, your heels skidding on the floor as you were shoved back into the sanctuary of your bedroom. The door slammed shut with a heavy thud, plunging the room into a suffocating dimness, save for the candle you had dropped, which now sputtered on the rug. You trembled violently, your chest heaving against the intruder's chest, your heart hammering like a trapped bird against your ribs.

Then, the pressure on your mouth vanished. The figure stepped back just enough for you to breathe, and with a slow, deliberate movement, the heavy wool hood was pushed back.

"Hush, you silly girl" a voice whispered...a voice that was a familiar melody, worn smooth by years of whispered secrets and shared meals.

Lila.

"Lila? You scared me to death!" The words erupted from you in a frantic shriek, your voice cracking as the adrenaline finally broke. You didn't just speak, you practically vibrated with a mix of terror and sudden, soaring relief, your hands coming up to clutch at the rough wool of her cloak. You wanted to hit her for the fright and throw yourself into her arms all at once.

Lila didn't laugh. Instead, she leaned in, her finger pressing firmly against your lips in a sharp shush that smelled of beeswax and anxiety. Her eyes, usually so placid and dutiful, were darting toward the door with a frantic intensity you had never seen during your years of isolation.

"I am sorry, my lady, truly" she whispered, her voice a hurried, jagged thing. "But we must hurry. Your brother has been coming to your door every hour since the sun dipped. He does not enter, but he lingers. He listens. He stands there like a sentinel guarding a tomb, waiting for the slightest sound of your breath."

"He only worries for me" you mumbled, the words feeling heavy and slow, as if you were still half submerged in the dream of your own bed. You tried to smile, a small, sleepy expression that sought to normalize the image of Aegon haunting your threshold. To you, his vigil was the ultimate proof of his devotion, a physical manifestation of the guilt and love that had nearly broken him in the hallway. You imagined him there now, leaning his forehead against the oak, perhaps whispering the same fragmented promises he had murmured into your skin.

But Lila didn't share your sentiment. Her grip on your hand tightened, her fingers cold and trembling, and she cast a sharp, terrified glance toward the sliver of light beneath the door. "It is not worry, my lady. It is a fever" she hissed, her voice barely a thread of sound. With a sudden, desperate urgency, she began to tug you toward the exit, her movements frantic and jagged. "We must leave. Now."

The sudden pull snapped the last thread of your lethargy. As Lila tried to haul you back into the shadowed corridor, you jerked your hand away with a violence that surprised you both. The sound of your skin slapping against hers echoed like a whip in the quiet room.

"What? No!" you cried, your voice rising into a panicked register. You backed away from the door, your heels catching in the plush rug as you retreated toward the center of the room. The walls, which had felt like a welcoming embrace moments ago, suddenly seemed to lean inward, their shadows stretching like grasping fingers. "I am not going back! I will not go back to a locked room, Lila! Not today, not ever!"

"Not the room, my lady! We must leave Dragonstone entirely!" Lila’s voice was a frantic, hushed rasp, her eyes wide and shimmering with a terror that didn't match the safety of the bedchamber. "I promised your father… I gave my word that if the time came, I would spirit you away from this rock before the madness took hold." She reached out again, her fingers clawing at the air as if trying to snag the hem of your shift to pull you back into the shadows.

You recoiled, your back hitting the cold mahogany of the vanity once more. The memory of Aegon’s warmth was still a ghost on your skin, making Lila’s desperation feel like a sudden, freezing wind. "Father?" you spat, the word tasting of copper and old dust. "Father was a liar! He wove a shroud of deceit and called it protection, and now I see that you are merely the final thread in his tapestry!" You stepped back further, your voice rising in a crescendo of newfound defiance. "You seek to keep me from my family! There is no evil here Lila, only a brother who loves me and sisters who found me. Why are you trying to steal me away again?"

Lila froze, her arm still outstretched, her expression crumbling from frantic urgency into a look of profound, heartbreaking pity. For a moment, the only sound in the room was the dying hiss of the tallow candle on the rug, its flame flickering one last time before plunging the corners of the room into deep, ink-stained shadow. She didn't try to grab you again... instead, she let her hand fall limp at her side, her shoulders slumping under the weight of a secret that seemed to age her ten years in a single breath.

"Your brother is no good—" Lila began, her voice a fragile thread of warning that seemed to vibrate with a truth you weren't ready to hear.

The words hadn't even fully formed before you reacted. With a sharp, instinctive jerk, you slammed your palms over your ears, pressing so hard that the world dimmed at the edges and the only sound left was the thundering roar of your own blood. You squeezed your eyes shut, physically shoving the sentence back into the void from which it had come. To hear Aegon spoken of as a threat after the years of silence, after the crushing weight of his embrace and the salt-tear on your shoulder felt like a desecration.

"Do not!" you shrieked, your voice cracking with a fierce, protective desperation. "Do not slander my family!"

You dropped your hands, your chest heaving, and stepped toward her with a sudden, regal rigidity that belonged more to Visenya than to yourself. The fragility of the girl in the silk shift vanished, replaced by a searing, white hot loyalty. You didn't see a servant trying to save you; you saw an intruder attempting to poison the first drop of happiness you had tasted in an eternity.

"You have been my only companion in the dark, Lila, but you will not be the voice that slanders my family." you declared, your finger pointing sharply toward the heavy oak door. "Either you live in this castle with me or you leave it entirely! I will not have my sanctuary turned into a courtroom for your suspicions!"

Lila’s composure didn't just crack... it disintegrated. The distance between you vanished in a blur of charcoal wool as she lunged forward, not with the grip of a kidnapper, but with the frantic, clumsy desperation of a drowning woman. Her hands, calloused and smelling of the soap, she used to scrub your floors for years, flew up to cradle your face. Her palms were shaking, the vibration transferring into your own jaw, as she forced you to look at her.

"I am trying to protect you, sweetling" she mumbled, her voice a broken slurry of grief and terror. She squeezed your cheeks slightly, her thumbs brushing against your skin with a tenderness that felt suffocatingly intimate. "Please, don't do this. You… you are like a daughter to me. Do you think I enjoyed the silence? Do you think I liked watching you wither in that wing like a flower in a cellar?"

"My only mother is dead" you whispered, the words coming out as a cold, hard blade that sliced through Lila’s desperation. You didn't pull away from her touch this time, instead, you leaned into it just enough to make the rejection feel more intimate, more final. "And you shall be my second...my second mother, my second guardian...dead to me, as well, if you do not stop following my father’s ghosts and let me be free here with my family."

Lila’s hands dropped as if scorched. The silence that followed was different from the ones you had shared in the east wing; it wasn't a shared secret or a mutual endurance of loneliness. This was a void of your own making, a chasm opened by a few cruel words. She looked at you...really looked at you, and for the first time, you saw a flicker of something other than pity in her eyes. It was a mourning. She wasn't mourning your imprisonment, but the girl you had been before the walls had bent your spirit into something that mistook possession for protection.

Lila stepped back into the deepening shadows of the room, the charcoal wool of her cloak swallowing her silhouette until she seemed less a woman and more a smudge of ink against the mahogany. A ghost of a smile touched her lips...a sad, knowing thing that didn't reach her eyes. "Very well" she whispered, her voice regaining a steadiness that sounded like a death knell. "If the blind wish to walk into the fire, who am I to pull them back from the heat? I shall watch you from afar then, my lady. I will be the shadow in the corner, the breath in the curtain. But know this... I do love you. More than the gods love their prayers."

She paused at the threshold, her hand resting lightly on the doorframe, the wood groaning beneath her touch. "And when the gold turns to lead" she added, her gaze piercing through the gloom to lock onto yours, "when you realize your mistake and the walls of this family feel smaller than the ones your father built… I will be waiting. And then, I will run with you. Anywhere the wind takes us, far from the reach of lords and their legacies." With a final, lingering look of profound sorrow, she vanished into the hallway, the soft click of the door echoing like a closing book.

"Lila…" you started to cry, the word fracturing in the middle as the regal posture of a princess collapsed into the shuddering heap of a frightened child. The silence that followed her departure was not the welcoming blanket you had imagined, but a sudden, freezing vacuum that sucked the air from your lungs. "Lila!" you shrieked, the sound raw and desperate, as you turned and stomped your foot against the polished floor with a rhythmic, childish fury. "I—I command you to return! Lila!"

The minutes didn't pass so much as they dissolved, leaving you anchored to the doorframe in a state of shivering wreckage. You sank to the floor, the silk of your shift bunching around your knees, and let out a sound that wasn't a cry so much as a rhythmic, guttural keening. Your forehead pressed against the cold grain of the oak, your breaths coming in jagged, snotty heaves that made your entire frame shudder. You stayed there, curled into a ball of salt and grief, sobbing until your throat felt raw and your eyes burned like embers. For half an hour, you were nothing but a pulse of misery in the dark, mourning the loss of the only person who had seen you when you were invisible.

When you finally managed to pull yourself upright, your face felt swollen and tight, the skin puffy and blotched from the torrent. You wiped your nose with the back of your hand, a reflexive, ungainly gesture from childhood, and slowly pulled the door open. The hallway was a yawning throat of shadow, and for a moment, the emptiness felt like a physical blow. Your first instinct was a frantic, clawing need for Rhaenys. You could almost feel the ghostly memory of her small, warm arms wrapping around you, the way she would pull you into a tight, protective huddle when the two of you had been caught stealing sweets from the larder or chasing cats through the library. You wanted to bury your face in her neck, to be held until the world stopped shaking.

You took a tentative step toward her quarters, your bare feet slapping softly on the stone, but as the image of Rhaenys’s comfort solidified, another presence surged forward to eclipse her. Aegon. The thought of him was a sudden, grounding weight, a mountain of certainty in a sea of chaos. He was the one who had wept for you, he was the one who had haunted your door like a ghost of devotion. He wasn't just a brother, he was the shield, the sentinel, the protector from all things...even from the crushing loneliness that Lila had left in her wake. Your path shifted instinctively, your body pivoting away from Rhaenys and toward the direction of his chambers.

You moved through the corridors with a desperate, frantic speed, your breath hitching in your chest. The castle, once a labyrinth of fear, now felt like a gauntlet you had to run to reach the only sanctuary that mattered. Every flicker of a torch, every distant echo of a servant's footstep, felt like an obstacle between you and the warmth of his presence. By the time you reached his door, your shift was dampened with tears and your hair a wild, tangled crown around your puffy face, but the sight of the heavy door brought a sudden, sharp clarity to your heart.

The door didn’t just open, it surrendered, swinging wide on silent hinges to reveal a room bathed in the amber glow of a dying hearth. Aegon was there, sprawled across the linens of his massive bed, the light catching the sharp line of his jaw and the focused intensity in his eyes. He looked like a scholar of sorrow, perched atop a mountain of silk, scribbling feverishly into a leather bound journal. The scratch of the quill was the only sound until the click of the latch reached him. With a practiced, almost reflexive motion, he tossed the journal to the side, the heavy book landing with a muffled thud against the velvet duvet.

"Visenya, I said I’m going to sleep—" he groaned, his voice thick with a mixture of exhaustion and mild irritation. He didn't even look up, his eyes closing as he assumed the intrusion was merely his sister coming to lecture him on the morning's itinerary or the state of the castle.

The change in him was instantaneous. The irritation vanished, replaced by a sharp, electric alertness. Aegon shifted, his arm winding around you with an instinctive, possessive strength, pulling you flush against his chest until there was no air left between you. He felt the dampness of your cheeks against his ribs, the rhythmic hitching of your breath, and the raw, ragged quality of your silence.

"Why are you crying, my sweet love?" his voice dropped an octave, turning into a low, humming vibration that seemed to echo through your very bones. He didn't ask for an explanation...he didn't demand to know who had hurt you or what had happened. He simply tightened his hold, his fingers digging slightly into the soft flesh of your shoulder, anchoring you to him as if he feared you might dissolve into mist if he let go.

You didn't answer him, the words were still trapped behind a wall of sobbing breaths and the lingering sting of Lila's warning. Instead, you simply clung to him, your fingers curling into the fabric of his tunic with a grip that bordered on bruising. You ignored the question entirely, choosing instead to burrow deeper into the scent of him. Aegon didn't mind the silence or the lack of an explanation. In fact, a low, rumbling sound of satisfaction vibrated in his chest, a purr of possessive triumph. He loved that you came to him in your wreckage... he loved that the world had broken you just enough to make him your only destination.

"Poor baby" he whispered, the words barely a ghost of sound against the salt-damp skin of your cheek. His lips lingered there for a heartbeat, a soft, searing brand that seemed to cauterize the wound Lila had left in your spirit. Then, with a fluid, heavy grace, he shifted. The world tilted as Aegon rolled over you, his weight descending like a warm velvet curtain that shut out the rest of the castle, the ghosts of your father, and the terrifying warnings of a servant.

He didn't just move, he claimed the space, sliding between your legs with a slow, deliberate precision that felt less like a gesture of comfort and more like a territorial marking. The friction of his linen trousers against your bare thighs was a grounding heat, an anchor in the storm of your dissociation. As he settled, his hand rose to your temple, his fingers weaving through the tangled knots of your hair, stroking the strands away from your forehead with a tenderness that felt dangerously absolute.

"You're okay… you're safe. You're always safe with me" he whispered, the words grazing the shell of your ear like a warm summer breeze. The vibration of his voice was a physical thing, a low frequency that seemed to synchronize with the frantic hammering of your heart until the two rhythms merged into one. Then came the kiss...a soft, lingering press of his lips against the sensitive curve of your earlobe that acted as a final seal on the world outside.

In that singular, searing moment, the warnings of Lila and the ghost of your father’s betrayal faded into insignificance. You felt the immense, sheltering weight of him, a fortress of muscle and devotion that blocked out every shadow of the castle. Your puffy eyes fluttered closed, and for the second time that night, your mind offered a silent, fervent prayer to the Seven, thanking them for returning you not just to your home, but to the only person who truly knew how to hold the shattered pieces of you together.

Yet, as your breathing leveled into a deep, rhythmic lull, Aegon did not settle. He remained a storm of kinetic energy beneath the surface of his skin. You felt him shift against you, a slow, restless adjustment of his hips that pressed him more firmly into the curve of your thigh. Then he shifted again, a subtle, searching movement, as if he were trying to find a geometry of proximity that didn't yet exist. His breath, once a steady hum against your ear, became a jagged, uneven thing, hot and hurried.

A low, vibrationally deep hum started in Aegon's chest, a sound of absolute contentment that echoed through your ribs as you drifted toward the edge of sleep. He watched the way your eyelids fluttered, the heavy surrender of your limbs, and a flicker of something dark and triumphant sparked in his gaze. He breathed in the scent of your salt-stained skin, silently thanking whatever gods presided over his desire for the blissful naivety that kept you blind to the hunger in his touch. To you, this was the refuge of a brother... to him, it was the slow, methodical claiming of a territory he had long ago decided was his alone.

A low, resonant hum vibrated in Aegon’s chest, a sound of primal satisfaction that seemed to synchronize with the slowing rhythm of your heart. He watched the way your lashes finally stilled, the heavy veil of sleep descending over your eyes, and a predatory sort of tenderness flickered in his gaze. You were drifting, floating in the warm wake of your own exhaustion, unaware that the sanctuary you had sought had become a gilded trap. To Aegon, your vulnerability was a masterpiece, and your trust was the key that unlocked a hunger he had spent years refining in the silence of his own longing.

The air in the room grew thick, heavy with the scent of dying embers and the oppressive sweetness of musk. Aegon’s touch changed... the protective embrace of a brother shifted into something more exploratory, more deliberate. His hand, warm and slightly calloused, began a slow, searing journey upward, gliding along the pale expanse of your thigh with a lightness that made the fine hairs on your skin ripple. It was a touch that didn't just seek comfort, but mapping as if he were tracing the boundaries of a kingdom he had finally conquered.

With a sudden, fluid motion, he reached further, his fingers curling around the soft, sensitive hollow of your inner knee. He didn't pull away. Instead, he guided your leg upward, folding you into him with a possessive grace. His hand slid further down, his palm cupping the arch of your foot in a grip that was firm and grounding. He held you there, pinned and pliable, while he shifted his hips into you once more. A soft, ragged sigh escaped him, a sound of profound release that vibrated through the mattress and into your very marrow.

The first touch had been a mere probe, a question asked in the language of skin and warmth. You drifted in that liminal space where the world becomes a blur of amber light and velvet shadows, your consciousness fraying at the edges. You were falling, sinking deeper into the mattress as if the bed had become a warm sea, and for a heartbeat, the sensation of his hand on your inner knee felt like nothing more than a phantom limb, a remnant of childhood games. You could have stirred; you could have shifted your leg away or murmured a sleepy protest, but your mind was a soft, unlit room, too clouded by the residue of your grief to recognize the shift in the current. You didn't even know what he was doing.

Sensing your total surrender, Aegon’s grip tightened. He pressed his thumb firmly into the arch of your foot, a sharp, grounding pressure that acted as a tether, ensuring you remained anchored to him even as your mind sought the void of sleep. Then, with a slow, rhythmic deliberation, he pushed again, sliding his weight forward until the friction of his body was a searing line of heat against your own. It was a claim made in the silence, a physical insistence that you were not merely his sister, but a possession to be curated and held.

"Sister…" his voice was a low, sandpaper rasp, vibrating against the shell of your ear. You stirred, a languid, half conscious ripple of movement, your mind still swimming in the thick syrup of oncoming sleep. "Lift your other leg over my hip, okay? Just like this."

You obeyed without thought, your movements heavy and clumsy, governed by a half dreaming trust that bypassed any sense of caution. Your leg lifted, sliding over his hip with a slow, languid friction that felt like a warm current of honey. The shift in position pulled you tighter against him, erasing the last slivers of air between your chests. You felt the hard, rhythmic thrum of his heart beating against your own, a frantic galloping thing that mirrored the sudden, inexplicable spike of heat blooming in your gut.

His thumb began a rhythmic, kneading motion against the arch of your foot, a slow, circular pressure that mirrored the way he used to soothe your temper tantrums when you were barely old enough to walk. It was a ghost of a memory, a tactile echo of childhood that bypassed your adult defenses and whispered that you were safe, small, and cherished. The tension that had coiled in your spine since the confrontation with Lila began to unravel, thread by thread, as he worked the tension from your heel and toes. Then, with a gentle but firm guidance, he hooked your second leg over his hip, locking you into a tangle of limbs that felt less like a hug and more like a knot.

As he settled, his hand migrated upward, his fingers grazing your temple with an aching softness. He brushed a stray, damp lock of hair away from your forehead, his touch lingering as if he were smoothing the creases of a crumpled piece of parchment. "I'm going to help you relax, okay?" he murmured, his voice a low, hypnotic vibration that seemed to settle the frantic drumming of your heart. "Just like I do with Visenya… when the weight of everything becomes too much to bear."

The fabric of your shift, a thin slip of translucent silk, began to gather and bunch beneath his palm, the material resisting and then yielding as he shifted his weight. He didn't pull it away with any urgency, instead, he worked the cloth upward in a slow, rhythmic bunching, the silk sliding against your skin with a soft, shushing sound that felt like a secret shared between the two of you. You let out a small, fractured sound...a half muttered protest that was more a sigh than a word, your voice thick with the heavy fog of sleep.

Aegon paused, his gaze softening as he looked down at you. Your eyes were barely open, your expression a mask of drowsy confusion, and the sight of you...so fragile, so utterly undone by the night's trauma, sent a jolt of fierce, possessive tenderness through him. He leaned down, his lips grazing your cheek in a series of light, fluttering kisses that tasted of warmth and salt. A small, private smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, his eyes darkening with an affection that bordered on hunger.

The kisses were no longer mere brushes of affection, they became rhythmic, insistent pulses of heat that mapped the distance from your jaw to the sensitive hollow of your throat. As he leaned into you, Aegon’s focus shifted, his body acting on an instinct that bypassed the cautious boundaries of brotherhood. He began to shift his hips in a slow, undulating motion, a tentative grind that pressed the coarse linen of his trousers against the thin, yielding barrier of your small clothes. The friction was a sudden, searing current, a slow motion collision of heat and pressure that sent a jolt of confusing electricity shooting up your spine.

A sharp, strangled moan broke from his lips, the sound vibrating directly against your cheek. It wasn't a sound of comfort, but a raw, visceral expression of a need that had been coiled like a spring for years. The sound seemed to startle even him, and in a sudden surge of overwhelming intensity, he abandoned the kisses and buried his face deep into the crook of your neck. He inhaled sharply, his breath hot and ragged against your skin, as if he were trying to drink the very essence of you, anchoring himself to the scent of your salt damp skin to keep from drowning in his own desire.

You lay there, pinned beneath the immense, radiating heat of him, your mind a kaleidoscope of half formed thoughts. The sensation of his weight...the heavy, rhythmic press of his hips had felt like a tide coming in, slow and inevitable. In your sleep heavy state, the feeling didn't register as a threat, instead, it felt like the ultimate form of closeness.

You felt the way his muscles tightened, the way his grip on your waist became almost bruising, and you mistook this desperation for the same fear you felt... the fear of being alone again. You arched your back instinctively, a subconscious invitation for more of that grounding heat, and felt Aegon shudder against you.

"Aeg… is it supposed to feel funny?" you mumbled, your voice a thick, grainy slurry, weighted down by the residue of your tears and the heavy fog of drifting consciousness. You didn't open your eyes, the world was a blurred smudge of amber and shadow, and the darkness felt safer than the truth. Your legs, which had been locked around his hips in a desperate, instinctive knot, began to slacken, threatening to slip away as your muscles succumbed to the crushing gravity of sleep.

Aegon froze. The question was a fragile thing, a sliver of curiosity that threatened to puncture the carefully constructed bubble of his fantasy. He felt the slight slackening of your grip, the way your muscles began to dissolve into the mattress, and a surge of panic shot through him. He couldn't let you drift away now, not when the proximity had finally reached this fever pitch, not when the line between familial comfort and romantic hunger had blurred into something he could almost touch.

Aegon froze. The question was a fragile thing, a sliver of curiosity that threatened to puncture the carefully constructed bubble of his fantasy. He felt the slight slackening of your grip, the way your muscles began to dissolve into the mattress, and a surge of panic shot through him. He couldn't let you drift away now, not when the proximity had finally reached this fever pitch, not when the line between familial comfort and romantic hunger had blurred into something he could almost touch.

"Can I keep going while you sleep?"

The question drifted over you like a heavy velvet shroud, his voice a low, resonant vibration that seemed to hum not in your ears, but in the marrow of your bones. He didn't wait for an answer, he didn't even acknowledge the confused query you had whispered moments before. Instead, Aegon moved with a sudden, fluid precision, his hands gripping your thighs and hoisting your legs back into that tight, locking knot around his hips. He did it with a territorial firmness, resetting the geometry of your bodies until you were once again pinned, a captured bird in a cage of muscle and linen.

He began to move again, a slow, rhythmic undulation of his hips that felt like the tide of a warm, dark ocean. It was a steady, grounding friction, a deliberate grind that pressed the heat of him deep into the yielding softness of your center. To your sleep drunk mind, the sensation was an extension of the comfort he had always provided...a lullaby of pressure and warmth that promised you would never have to wake up in a cold, empty room again. You let out a long, shuddering sigh, your head lolling back into the pillow as the tension in your spine finally snapped, leaving you pliant and open.

"Okay…" you murmured, the word barely a breath, a soft surrender that dissolved into the heavy silence of the room. It wasn't a conscious agreement, nor was it a reasoned choice, it was simply the sound of a soul too exhausted to fight the current. As the fog of sleep finally claimed you, your body continued to react to the rhythmic heat of him, your subconscious clinging to the sensation of being held. A series of small, fractured moans escaped your lips...unbidden, airy sounds of half remembered comfort that vibrated against the space between your skin and his.

The sound hit Aegon like a physical blow. His hips stuttered, the rhythmic grind breaking for a heartbeat as a surge of raw, electric hunger crashed through his composure. Those sounds weren't the cries of a sister... they were the music of a surrender he had craved since he was a boy, a sonic confirmation that he had finally bridged the distance between them. The stutter was brief, a momentary lapse in his control, before he redoubled his efforts with a desperate, focused intensity. He pressed deeper into you, his breath coming in ragged, shuddering hitches that mirrored the erratic beat of his heart.

To Aegon, you were no longer a person... you were a fixation, a living altar at which he had spent years praying in secret. In the heavy, amber lit silence of the bedchamber, the boundary between brotherly devotion and a starving hunger had dissolved completely. You were adrift in the velvet void of sleep, your consciousness a distant shore, yet your body remained a traitor, responding to him in a language you didn't even know you spoke. Even as your mind wandered through the haze of exhaustion, your throat produced those small, rhythmic sounds...pretty, fractured noises that vibrated against his skin like a siren song.

He watched the way your lips remained slightly parted, a soft, invitationally raw aperture that mirrored the vulnerability of your spirit. His gaze fixed on the delicate curve of your mouth, and a sudden, electric impulse surged through him. His fingers twitched with a desperate, starving curiosity that he longed to reach out and brush the velvet warmth of your lower lip, to feel the damp, sliding heat of your tongue against his skin, confirming that this proximity was not a dream born of his own madness. To him, your sleep was not a barrier, but a canvas upon which he could finally paint the depth of his possessiveness.

Aegon did not reach for your lips with his fingers... instead, he surrendered to the gravity of the moment and descended. His mouth found yours not with a tentative question, but with the crushing weight of a decade of suppressed longing. It was a kiss that tasted of salt and desperation, a heavy, searing collision that seemed to steal the very air from the room.

You stirred in your sleep, a soft, confused sound humming in the back of your throat, your body reacting to the sudden intensity with a reflexive arch of your spine. To you, it felt like a dream...a blurring of boundaries where the line between a brother's embrace and a lover's hunger became a smudge of warmth and scent.

The kiss deepened, a slow, drowning tide of heat that seemed to pull the very oxygen from the room. In the depths of your slumber, the sensation was an anchor, pulling you from the void and back into a reality that felt shimmering and surreal. As the pressure of his lips grew more insistent, a sudden, electric jolt shot through you, colliding with the rhythmic friction of his body. At that moment, Aegon’s composure fractured and a sharp, guttural sound escaped him...his frame shuddered with one final, violent thrust against the thin barrier of your smallclothes.

The shock of it acted like a splash of cold water. Your eyes snapped open, pupils dilated and dazed, blinking against the amber flicker of the dying hearth. For a heartbeat, you were suspended in a vacuum of confusion, the weight of him pressing you into the mattress and the lingering taste of him on your lips. The intimacy was too heavy, too deliberate. With a frantic, clumsy motion, you jerked your head to the side, breaking the contact. Your breath came in short, jagged gasps as the fog of sleep cleared, leaving you staring at the velvet canopy of the bed with wide, searching eyes.

Aegon felt the sudden, cold dampness clinging to his thighs, a visceral reminder of the release he had barely managed to control. He cursed silently, the frustration of his own lack of discipline warring with the sheer triumph of the moment. He looked down at you, expecting a flicker of shock or a panicked retreat, but instead, he saw a strange, vacant kind of calm. You weren't reacting to the friction, the grinding pressure, or the invasive weight of his body... to your sheltered and sleep worn mind, those sensations were merely the chaotic architecture of a hug gone wrong. You were adrift in a sea of innocence, entirely oblivious to the biological reality of what had just occurred between your thighs.

It was the kiss, however, that had finally breached the surface of your consciousness. As you lay there, blinking up at him, your chest heaving with a sudden, sharp intake of air, the memory of his lips on yours felt like a brand. In the rigid social order of the estate, you had only ever seen such intimacy between married couples...the sweeping, romantic gestures of lords and ladies that were reserved for the sanctuary of the marriage bed. The Seven taught that such passion was a sacred bond between husband and wife, a fire not to be lit between siblings. The realization crashed over you not as a wave of disgust, but as a profound, confusing dissonance.

"Why…" Your voice was a fragile thread, barely audible over the crackle of the dying fire. "Why did you… we aren't…"

Aegon didn't miss a beat. He shifted his weight, not pulling away, but instead leaning in closer, his expression softening into a mask of practiced, protective tenderness. He let his hand slide up to cup your cheek, his thumb brushing away a lingering tear with a gentleness that felt almost holy.

Your voice trailed off, the words dissolving into the heavy air of the room. The ghost of his lips still burned against yours, a sensation that felt like a transgression against the very laws of the Seven. In your mind, you recalled the sight of the High Septon joining hands and lips in the Great Sept, the way the nobility of the realm spoke of the 'sacred fire' reserved for husbands and wives. Such a kiss was a seal of ownership, a promise of lineage...it was a language of passion and partnership that had no place in the quiet, familial bond of a brother and sister.

Aegon didn't flinch. He didn't pull away or offer a clumsy apology. Instead, he tightened his hold on you, his thumb tracing the line of your jaw with a slow, hypnotic deliberation. He let a small, knowing smile tug at the corners of his mouth, his voice dropping into that low, resonant frequency that always made you feel small and protected.

You were searching his eyes for a sign of hesitation, for some flicker of shame that would signal he knew this had crossed a boundary. "Aegon, the kiss… the way you… we aren't married."

Aegon didn’t blink. He didn't recoil or offer the clumsy apology of a man caught in a transgression. Instead, he leaned in closer, his forehead resting against yours, his breath warm and steady. He let out a soft, melodic chuckle...a sound of gentle correction, as if you had merely misread a page of a familiar book.

"My sweet, innocent girl…." he murmured, his voice sliding over you like silk. "You have spent too much time listening to the Septons and their rigid laws for the common folk. Do you truly believe the blood of the dragon is bound by the same mundane rules as the sheep in the valley?" He shifted his weight, his hand sliding from your cheek to the nape of your neck, anchoring you to him with a firm, possessive pressure. "Our ancestors—the lords of Old Valyria—they understood that the bond between siblings of the highest blood is the purest form of devotion. To them, a kiss was not a contract of marriage, but a seal of kinship, a way to keep the dragon's fire concentrated within the family."

"Will it… will it help me finally get a dragon to hatch for me? Or even be claimed?" you mumbled, the words thick and slurry, drifting through the haze of your remaining sleepiness. You searched his eyes for an answer, your heart hammering against your ribs with a sudden, desperate hope. For years, the stone cold egg in your chamber had remained a silent, dormant thing, mocking you with its stubbornness. You had watched others in your lineage command the skies, while you remained earthbound.

Aegon let out a low, humming sound of affirmation, the vibration rattling through his chest and into your own. He didn't answer with a simple yes... instead, he leaned in, his lips brushing against the sensitive shell of your ear, his voice dropping to a hypnotic, conspiratorial whisper. "Mhm… perhaps not the egg, my love" he murmured, the words tasting of salt and secret promises. "But the bond… the bond is everything. This closeness, this sharing of breath and skin… it strengthens the fire in your blood. It makes you more than just a sister... it makes you a part of the very soul of the dragon…My dragon."

He paused, his hand sliding down to press firmly against your heart, as if he could feel the frantic drumming within. "And Balerion..." he continued, his voice growing thick with a dark, magnetic intensity, "he has missed you. He feels the shift in you, the way you are finally surrendering to the heat. If you stay here, in my arms, locked in this circle of devotion, you will find a strength the others can only dream of. You won't need a hatchling of your own when you have the Black Dread."

A spark ignited in the depths of your gaze, your eyes practically sparkling with a newfound, hungry ambition. The hesitation that had held your breath captive vanished, and you felt a surge of warmth bloom in your chest that had nothing to do with the hearth. You looked at Aegon...not as the brother who had protected you, but as the conduit to a power that felt ancient and inevitable. If the blood of Old Valyria demanded such a closeness to preserve its purity, then you would give it. You would kiss him a thousand times over. You would kiss him forever if it meant the fire of your house would never dim, and if it meant you would finally soar above the clouds, bound to the Black Dread by a bond that no mortal law could sever.

"Be with me forever, sister" he whispered against the sensitive skin of your nape, his breath a warm, humid brand that sent a final shiver racing down your spine. The words weren't a request... they were a decree, a velvet shackle that locked the door behind you and threw away the key. He didn't give you a moment to process the gravity of the vow before his lips found yours again, not with the tentative exploration of before, but with a sudden, bruising intensity. This kiss was an erasure, wiping away the last vestiges of your doubt and the distant, fading memories of Lila’s warnings, replacing them with the singular, suffocating reality of his presence.

The world narrowed down to the rhythmic thrum of Aegon’s heartbeat against your ear and the heavy, grounding weight of him pressing you into the mattress. As the fire in the hearth succumbed to ash, casting the room into a velvet gloom, you felt the sudden shift in his posture...the predatory tension finally bleeding out of his muscles. He didn't pull away, but the frantic, searching heat of his body cooled into a protective stillness. He settled over you like a great, warm cloak, his face buried in the crook of your neck, inhaling the salt and sweetness of your skin with a long, shuddering sigh of contentment.

As the room surrendered to a heavy, velvet dark, you closed your eyes and let the weight of him settle over you like a living shield. The rhythmic friction had ceased, replaced by a stillness that felt thick and expectant. Aegon didn't move to distance himself, instead, he tucked his face into the curve of your neck, his breathing slowing into the deep, rhythmic cadence of a man who had finally captured the thing he most desired. He remained there, draped across you, his chest a warm furnace that seeped through the thin silk of your shift, inhaling the salt damp scent of your skin as if it were the only air left in the world.

You closed your eyes, drifting toward the edge of a heavy, velvet sleep, but as the darkness pressed in, your mind instinctively reached for a tether. You did not call out to the ghosts of Old Valyria, nor did you offer a prayer to the nameless fires of the Freehold that Aegon so fervently championed. Instead, in the quiet, panicked sanctuary of your thoughts, you whispered a plea to the Seven. You prayed to the Mother for a grace you weren't sure you deserved, to the Smith for a strength to withstand the gravity of this new world, and to the Crone, seeking a lamp to light the path back to a version of yourself that knew where the boundaries of blood ended and desire began. It was a silent, desperate rebellion, a tiny candle of faith lit against the overwhelming shadow of the dragon.

The words didn’t come from the air, but from the deep, echoing vault of your own memory, playing back like a ghostly recording in the silence of the early morning.

Forgive me for kissing family… but you must understand… it is not romantic… my Valyrian blood will cancel out the sin.

You could hear the cadence of your own voice, though it sounded strange to your ears...hollow, as if it belonged to a version of yourself that had already surrendered. It was a mantra you had begun to whisper to the shadows of the bedcurtains, a desperate theological shield forged from Aegon’s words to protect you from the crushing weight of the Seven's judgment. You were convincing yourself that the heat in your veins wasn't a transgression, but a biological imperative, a chemical reaction of ancient blood recognizing its own kind.

Maegor’s grip was warm but unyielding, his long fingers engulfing your own as if to remind you that you were his to direct, not to cherish. He didn’t look at you.. he never really did but he did not let go either, pulling you along the path toward the shade of the courtyard’s stone wall.

Visenya followed at a measured pace, her eyes sharp despite her serene expression. She knew her son’s ways. She knew his cruelty, but she also knew his possessiveness. It was a dangerous mix.

“You cling to trifles,” Maegor muttered without slowing his stride. “Butterflies, flowers… you’d be crushed yourself if you were not under our roof.”

You stumbled slightly as he pulled you faster, the nightgown brushing your ankles, grass still clinging to your bare feet. “But… it was beautiful,” you whispered, as if the words themselves were fragile.

“It was weak,” he repeated, as if the two were mutually exclusive.

Behind you, Visenya’s voice was low, almost thoughtful. “She sees beauty where you see weakness, Maegor. That is why she will soften you, if you allow it.”

He glanced over his shoulder at his mother but said nothing. His grip on your hand tightened, not painfully, but with a sort of finality as if the conversation, in his mind, was already decided.

When you reached the stone wall, he stopped abruptly and turned you to face him. His pale eyes searched yours, unreadable, before he spoke again.

“Do not cry for such things,” he said at last. “If you wish to keep something, you must protect it. Or it will be taken from you.”

You nodded quickly, swallowing back the rest of your tears. Maegor seemed satisfied, though his mouth curved in neither smile nor frown.

Visenya finally caught up to you both, resting her hand lightly on your other shoulder. “Come inside, sweet one. Your father will wish to see you soon.”

You followed her lead, but not before Maegor’s hand brushed against yours again deliberately, almost hesitantly. It was the smallest of gestures, but for you, it was enough to make the memory of the butterfly fade into something distant, almost unimportant.

Though Visenya, watching the exchange, knew better. She knew you would remember. And she knew Maegor’s lesson was only just beginning.

Visenya nodded in approval, a small smile playing on her lips. She knew that Maegor’s actions were deliberate. He was preparing you for the world of power and manipulation that you would soon be thrown into.

A stinging pain. Eyes squeezed shut as he relentlessly pounded into you. Tears ended up staining your face and he only scoffed at the sight settling to just turn you over. “Must you.. always cry” his voice was gruff as he mumbled and spread your legs apart once more pushing at your head so it muffled the pain filled cries.

You remembered being so excited when Visenya announced you would wed your brother only to have everything stripped the night Maegor came to consummate.

His fingers left bruises and when you started crying into the pillow mumbling about it hurting he only continued on with another scoff. “You can take it.. like a good little wife.. don’t you want to please me? Have my sons?” Your fingers gripped the sheets tightly as more cries fell into the pillow your head was buried in. “M-mae please!” You cried once more with a muffled voice hearing a laugh from behind you. He took what he had wanted with rough means leaving you in a pool of your own blood that stained the sheets.

Trembling and sore. Each movement made you wince as sobs continued to escape, but maegor only shushed you and pulled you over despite the cry that left your lips at being moved.

“That wasn’t so bad was it?” He had placed a kiss to your ear mumbling his words as his hands wrapped around you. “Stop crying already.”

But you hadn’t. Only trying to hold it in as his fingers tugged at some of your hair a deep sigh leaving his lips when you mumbled. “I-it hurt Mae..”

“It’s supposed to hurt the first time sweet sister” Maegor shifted slightly an annoyed huff leaving his lips but you only glanced up through teary eyes shuffling closer to him.

“Mother said it-“

“Mother doesn’t know everything. If I say it’s supposed to hurt then that is what you believe.”

The next day your mother Visenya had sat with you. Brushing your hair after a bath and watching the maids change the sheets. Your eyes were dull as you stared at the reflections in the mirror. “You bled quite a lot.” She had commented and you only gently picked at the fabric of the dress covering your body when she tapped the visible mark at your neck watching as you tilted your head to get her hand off.

“I don’t think mae loves me.” The same childhood nickname stuck as the words flew out before you could think and Visenya only smiled.

“You are his family. Of course he loves you sweetling.” But her words fell on empty ears, the reflection staring back at you suddenly so interesting. Your mother’s sigh pulled you back when she set down the brush and turned you around.

Her eyes piercing into your own when she let a hand come up to stroke at your cheek that was already stained with tears.

You were barely more than a girl when she had arranged for you to be wed with Maegor not yet old enough to understand the shape of the game you were being carved for. But Visenya did. And she told you something you clung to like prayer.

“He needs someone who does not fear him. That is why it must be you.” Her words and soft touch made you nod slowly and attempt to stop the tears you didn’t notice started falling. And now she had repeated those same words leaving you to nod once more and accept them. “I know..”

And so you learned how to not fear.

You learned to stand still when Maegor's temper flared .. when he broke cups against stone and split skulls with a glance. You learned to remain serene when his voice turned to thunder, or when his silence lasted for days.

You told yourself that patience was love. That obedience was loyalty. That surviving him night after night was proof of something sacred between you.

When he touched you, he did not speak sweetly. He never whispered. His love was not gentle; it was teeth and fire, a hand on your throat and silence in your mouth. You told yourself it was passion. That if it hurt, it only meant it mattered.

Visenya never let you forget that.

“Pain is the cost of greatness,” she mumbled, watching you through half-lidded eyes as a healer dabbed at the bruise blooming across your collarbone. “And Maegor is destined for things far greater than any of us. If he brings you into that greatness, even for a moment, you should count yourself blessed sweet girl. You are strong enough to take it.”

You nodded, eyes on the floor, the weight of her words heavy. It became a mantra you repeated to yourself in the quiet hours of the night when his hands were not upon you. When you were left to lay in the sticky mess of your own blood and tears, whispering it like a prayer to a god that had never answered.

Days turned into weeks, and your innocence continued to wilt under the harsh sun of Maegor's "love." The castle was a labyrinth of whispers that grew louder with each passing moon. You remained the silent lamb in the center of it all, a beacon of purity that was slowly being stained.

One afternoon, you found refuge in the castle's garden. It was a place where the outside world's chaos didn't quite reach, a sanctuary of green and bloom where you could almost forget the heaviness of your new role. Your oldest brother, Aenys, found you there, sitting on a stone bench, surrounded by a kaleidoscope of butterflies. Unlike the one that met its tragic end in Maegor's grip, these fluttered freely, seemingly unaware of the storm brewing in the hearts of those who watched over them.

Aenys, with his gentle eyes and kind smile, was a stark contrast to Maegor. He knelt beside you, placing a comforting hand on your shoulder. "You're not chasing them today?" he asked softly, noticing how you merely watched the delicate creatures.

You looked up at him, your eyes red-rimmed and filled with unshed tears. "They're so pretty," you murmured. "I don't want to scare them." The innocence in your voice was heartbreaking, a stark reminder of what you had lost in such a short time.

Aenys nodded, his gaze lingering on the butterflies. "Maegor does not understand all things." His words were a gentle reminder of the different worlds you two inhabited. He knew the horrors of Maegor's nighttime visits, the subtle limp or new marks adorning your skin. You had only kicked your feet out and gave a small smile. "He loves me.."

"Does he?" Aenys questioned, his tone filled with doubt. He knew the reality behind the facade Maegor put on for the world. But he also knew the power of hope and belief. He didn't want to shatter your illusions, not yet.

You nodded firmly, clutching the fabric of your nightgown in your small fists. "Yes," you said, a hint of conviction in your voice. "He does. And I love him too."

The earlier words echoed hollowly in your ears as you laid beneath Maegor later that night. His hand held your cheek, his thumb tracing the path of a tear that slipped down your face unnoticed by the cruel moonlight. His hips thrust into you, a rhythm that had become all too familiar, a dance of pain and submission. Yet, you mumbled your words of hope and longing into the darkness, "Maegor.. you love me right?"

His eyes met yours, a cold spark of something akin to amusement in them. "Why do you ask?" he murmured, his voice thick with the lust that seemed to consume him every time he took you.

You felt the heat of his breath on your skin, the weight of his body pressing you into the mattress, and the ache deep inside that seemed to never fade. "Because," you whispered, trying to keep your voice from breaking, "I love you, Mae. And I.. was just thinking…"

he paused, his eyes narrowing slightly. The hand that held your cheek tightened, his thumb brushing over your skin as if he was considering your words. His hips resumed their rhythm, his movements punctuating each syllable. "You love me?" he echoed, the question a taunt.

"Y-yes," you whimpered, the word a sob that caught in your throat as he pushed deeper. You had hoped for a different reaction, a spark of tenderness to pierce the veil of his brutality. But the coldness in his eyes only grew, and his grip on your face became almost painful.

Maegor chuckled darkly. "How utterly predictable," he murmured. His thumb traced the line of your jaw, his nails digging in just enough to remind you of his power. "You're so naive, so simple, so… insignificant."

The words stung, but you clung to your love for him, telling yourself that he didn't mean it. That he was just playing his part in the grand dance of power and politics. You bit your lip and nodded, silently begging for a glimpse of the brother you had once known. But his expression remained unchanged, his eyes like chips of ice.

After he was done, he rolled off of you and stood, not bothering to help you up or offer a gentle word. You lay there, the coldness of his departure seeping into the marrow of your bones. As the door clicked shut, you curled into a ball, the pain of his rejection mixing with the ache between your legs.

The next day, as you sat in your chamber, you found yourself unable to face the mirror. Instead, you let your mother brush your hair, hoping the rhythmic strokes would ease the turmoil in your heart. "Mother," you began tentatively, your voice a soft whisper, "why isn't Maegor more affectionate? Why does he only come to me at night to… to do those things?"

Visenya's eyes met yours in the reflection, her expression unreadable. She paused before speaking, her voice measured and controlled. "Maegor is a man of the world, sweet girl. He has responsibilities and burdens that we cannot understand. He shows his love in his own way."

You nodded, trying to believe her words, even as your heart felt as though it were being crushed beneath a heavy stone. "But why does it have to hurt?" you asked, your voice trembling slightly. "Why can't he be gentle, like Aenys?"

Visenya's eyes darkened at the mention of your other brother. "Aenys is weak," she said firmly.

"But he's kind," you protested, a small spark of defiance flickering in your teary gaze.

"And that is precisely why he is unfit to rule," Visenya replied, her voice sharp. "Maegor is strong, and he will need a strong wife. You must endure, for the sake of the realm."

You knew your mother was one to talk down on Aenys and his frail state but your father never once changed the state of him being his heir and you knew she had hated that.

"Now go to the seamstress.. She is to make you a new nightgown." Her words lingered in the air, a cruel reminder of your fate. But you obeyed, rising from the chair with a nod. As you left the room in a skip a small smile came to your face at the thought of Maegor taking notice to something made you feel even the smallest bit happier.

The seamstress was a kind woman, with wrinkled hands that had seen more battles than most soldiers. She had seen the change in you, from a bright girl with laughter in your eyes to a silent shadow that walked the halls. Her eyes filled with pity, but she never spoke a word of it, instead focusing on the task at hand. You picked out a fabric of pale blue, a color that reminded you of the skies before the butterflies had been crushed from your life.

"I'm sure he will love it," she said with forced cheer, as she measured your frame. You nodded, hope fluttering in your chest like the ghosts of the butterflies you had once chased.

Days later, you stood before the mirror, the new nightgown a whisper of blue silk against your skin. The seamstress had worked her magic, creating a garment that clung to your curves in a way that made you feel both beautiful and vulnerable. Visenya had approved, her cold eyes gleaming as she assessed the transformation.

As night fell, you waited in your chamber, the anticipation a coil in your stomach. When Maegor arrived, his eyes swept over you, a flicker of something unreadable crossing his face. He said nothing, only gesturing for you to come closer. You stepped forward eagerly, the soft fabric brushing against your legs with every step.

Maegor's gaze lingered on the neckline of the gown, his eyes darkening. He reached out and touched the silk, his fingers tracing a line down to the small of your back before pulling you closer. For a moment, you dared to hope that he might kiss you gently, that he might whisper sweet nothings in your ear. But his lips remained a thin line as he pushed you onto the bed.

You lay there, the softness of the silk a stark contrast to the harshness of his touch. His hands were rough on your skin, pulling at the fabric as he claimed you once again. You bit back the pain, telling yourself that this was what love looked like in the eyes of a king. You closed your eyes and thought of Aenys, of his gentle touch, and the way he made you feel seen.

But Aenys wasn't here. It was Maegor who was your husband, the one you were supposed to love. So you forced yourself to look into his eyes, to find some semblance of warmth, of affection. Yet, all you saw was hunger, a hunger that consumed everything in its path, leaving only ash and ruin.

Maegor noticed your gaze and paused, a smirk playing on his lips. "What do you want?" he asked, his voice gruff.

You swallowed hard, trying to push down the lump in your throat. "I-I just want you to hold me," you whispered, your voice trembling. "To tell me you love me."

Maegor's smirk grew, his eyes cold and unyielding. "You want that?" He leaned in, his breath hot against your skin. "Fine."

He wrapped an arm around your waist, pulling you closer, and whispered, "I love you, my sweet sister." You knew they were a lie, a tool used to manipulate and control. Yet, you clung to them, desperate for any scrap of affection in the sea of pain he drowned you in.

Maegor's movements grew more frantic, his grip on you tightening as he claimed your body again. Each thrust was a silent declaration of his dominance, a stark reminder of your new role in his life. But you held onto the hope that maybe, just maybe, one of these nights he would hold you without the intent to break you.

Tears trickled down your cheeks, mixing with the sweat that glistened in the candlelight. His breath was harsh in your ear, a steady beat that matched the rhythm of his hips. You focused on the sound, trying to find some semblance of comfort in the chaos, your voice lost to the cacophony of his grunts and the rustle of silk.

You found solace in the moments with Aenys, in the quiet whispers of the garden, and the gentle brush of his hand against yours. He never spoke of your bruises, never asked about the tears you shed in the dark, but his silent understanding was a balm to your soul.

One sunlit afternoon, you ventured back to the garden with him, your feet moving with less enthusiasm than before. The butterflies still danced, but they seemed to have lost some of their magic. You sat in the soft grass, watching the world go by without you, your heart feeling heavier than the crown that lay in wait for your brother. Aenys noticed the change in you, the way you didn't chase the butterflies with the same glee.

He sat beside you, a concerned look on his kind face. He didn't say much, just offered his hand for you to hold. It was a silent comfort, a gentle reminder that you weren't entirely alone in the labyrinth of your new life. A butterfly, a lonely splash of color, landed in his hair, fluttering its wings as if trying to communicate a secret. You couldn't help but give a small smile at the sight, a genuine expression that hadn't graced your lips in what felt like an eternity.

Aenys glanced at you, his eyes searching yours. "Are you okay?" he asked, his voice softer than the whispers of the wind that danced through the leaves above you.

You nodded, not trusting your voice. The weight of his hand in yours felt like a lifeline in the stormy sea that was your life. You brought your knees to your chest, hugging yourself tightly, and stared at him. Aenys, so kind, so gentle, the complete opposite of the monster that shared your bed.

You couldn't help but imagine what it would be like if Maegor had a heart like Aenys'. If he treated you with the care and tenderness that Aenys did. If his touch was soft, his voice whispered sweet nothings into your ear, and his eyes held warmth instead of the coldness that haunted your dreams. The thought brought a pang of longing so intense it was almost physical, making your chest ache.

As Aenys left the garden, his gentle touch lingering on your skin like the softest of kisses, you felt the weight of your own reality come crashing down upon you. The butterflies fluttered away. You watched them go, a sad smile on your lips, before rising to your feet and heading back to your chamber.

The corridors of the castle felt like a prison, each step a silent echo of the future that awaited you. When you reached the door to your room, you took a deep breath, steeling yourself for the nightly ordeal that was your "duty."

Maegor was already there, his silhouette cast against the flickering candlelight, a looming figure of shadow and fire. You shyly sat on the edge of the bed, hoping for a gentle touch, a kind word, anything that would make you feel less like a sacrifice to his twisted idea of love.

But he had other plans. He grabbed your ankle with the same force that had crushed the butterfly, yanking you towards him. You couldn't help but flinch, your body tensing as his grip tightened. "You always just climb on me," you whispered, a hint of desperation in your voice. "Is there no other ways?…"

Maegor's expression remained unchanged, a mask of cold indifference. He pulled you closer, until you were straddling him, his eyes never leaving yours. His hands moved to your hips, his fingers digging in, guiding you to move in the way he liked. "This is how it's done," he murmured, his voice a low growl. "This is what pleases me."

You sat there, trembling, as he began to kiss you roughly, his hands roaming over your body without care. You felt like a ragdoll in his embrace, manipulated and discarded as he saw fit. But you clung to the hope that maybe, just maybe, you could find a way to make him love you. "Maegor," you murmured, trying to keep the tremble from your voice. "Can't we try something different?"

Maegor paused, his eyes narrowed as he studied you. He released your ankle and sat up, his expression contemplative. "What do you suggest?" he asked, his tone a mix of amusement and irritation.

You took a deep breath, your heart racing with hope. "Could… could we not be so… rough?" You didn't know how to put into words the tenderness you craved, the gentle touch that Aenys had never given but you knew existed in the whispers of love stories. "Could we… could we try to be more like Aenys and his wife?"

Maegor's amusement vanished, replaced by a flicker of anger. "Aenys is a fool," he spat, pushing you away. "His weakness will be his downfall. And I will not be swayed by such follies."

You landed back onto the bed when he pushed you off a frown tugging at your lips as the sheets rustled under you. You had hoped that by mentioning Aenys, you could somehow find a way to bridge the gap between the gentle love you dreamed of and the harsh reality of Maegor's love. But it seemed that even the mention of your other brother was enough to make Maegor's anger flare.

With trembling hands, you quickly apologized, climbing back onto him, straddling him as he had shown you before. You tried to ignore the way his eyes darkened, the way his jaw clenched at the mention of Aenys. You focused instead on his words, on the promise of making him happy. If that meant enduring his roughness, then so be it.

Maegor's grip on you was firm, his hands moving over your body with a possession that sent shivers down your spine. You wrapped your arms around his neck, trying to find some semblance of comfort in his embrace. His kisses were harsh and demanding, his teeth occasionally nipping at your bottom lip.

You closed your eyes, trying to focus on the task at hand. To please him, to make him love you. You moved your hips in a rhythm that you thought he might like, hoping to elicit some warmth from him, some sign that he felt something more than just lust. But his touch remained cold, his kisses a mere claim of ownership.

Maegor reached down, pushing your dress up to your waist, not bothering with the delicate ties that held it in place. The fabric whispered against your skin as he freed himself, his eyes never leaving yours. You felt a flash of fear at the sudden exposure, your body reacting instinctively as he guided himself into you.

"Lift yourself," he commanded, his voice gruff with desire. You did as you were told, raising your hips slightly, feeling his manhood press against your sensitive flesh. "Good girl," he murmured, his grip tightening as he positioned himself. You held your breath, waiting for the pain that had become so familiar, a twisted reminder of your place beside him.

Maegor didn't bother with finesse, pushing into you without hesitation. You bit your lip to keep from crying out, your eyes squeezed shut as your body adjusted to his intrusion. When he was fully seated, he grabbed your hips and began to move you up and down, his movements quick and rough. You tried to focus on the rhythm, the way he watched you, his eyes glinting in the candlelight.

"Like this?" you whispered, unsure of what he wanted from you. The question hung in the air like a prayer, a desperate plea for some semblance of approval.

Maegor's eyes narrowed, his movements faltering for a brief moment. "You're doing fine," he grunted, his voice strained. But his grip on your hips tightened, his thrusts growing more forceful.

You nodded, trying to find a way to make this feel less like a battle and more like the love you longed for. You leaned in, kissing his neck, his jaw, anywhere you could reach without disturbing his rhythm. You whispered sweet nothings into his ear, hoping the words of love would melt the ice around his heart.

Maegor's grunts grew louder, his pace increasing. You held on tighter, willing yourself to feel something, anything other than the pain and fear that had become your constant companions. But the only emotion you could muster was a sad determination, a stubborn hope that one day, he would love you the way you dreamed.

As he reached his climax, you felt his grip loosen, his body going slack beneath you. You collapsed against him, your forehead pressing into the crook of his neck, trying to find some solace in the warmth of his skin. For a moment, you thought you felt his arms wrap around you, but it was only the aftershocks of his release, his body reacting without thought.

Maegor pulled away pushing you aside to sit back on the bed rather than his lap, leaving you trembling, the coldness of his absence stark against the warmth of his recent embrace. He stood, adjusting his clothing with the ease of one who had done this countless times before. You watched him, feeling used and discarded, your body aching from his rough touch.

When you next found yourself wandering the gardens your belly was swollen with Maegors seed though still small. You hadn't chased the butterflies but had only sighed at the discomfort that came with growing a child.

Maegor noticed the change in you, a subtle blankness around your eyes, a gentle frown to your lips that wasn't just pained submission anymore. He studied you from afar, his thoughts a tumultuous storm of confusion and possessiveness. You had become more than a mere pawn in his game of thrones; you were now the vessel for his legacy.

When he finally approached you, his heavy steps crunching against the gravel path, you did not look up immediately. The warm sunlight filtered through the leaves, dappled patterns shifting across your gown and the gentle swell of your belly.

“You tire easily now,” Maegor observed, his voice carrying neither concern nor judgment only a strange curiosity, as though cataloguing a change in the weather.

“Do I?” you replied softly, your gaze fixed on the small pond where lilies floated untouched by the breeze.

For a long moment, he stood in silence beside you, his shadow falling across the water. His eyes trailed from your face to your hands, resting protectively over the curve of your stomach. It was a sight that both unsettled and anchored him. The blood of the dragon was growing there .. his blood he had worked tirelessly to pump inside of you.

When his fingers brushed yours, it was not the harsh grip you had come to expect. It was tentative, almost searching. “You will give me a strong heir,” he said at last, but there was a note beneath the words, something unspoken an unacknowledged fear that the child might come out to be like the girl you were, but when a butterfly landed in his hair, he was about to swat it only stopping when your hand reached out.

He was about to scoff and scold you for trying to capture the creature but when you crushed in into your palm, he couldn't help but close his mouth and raise a brow confusion written on his face until a smirk came at your words.

“Butterflies are helpless creatures. Weak.”

and with that you took his hand wanting to go back inside and hide in your chambers as you've been doing often. Aenys forgotten like the joy you felt once at being in this very garden.

However, the nightmare did not go away when you awoke. Not here- not in the south, in the heart of king's landing. The heat baking the wet air becoming almost as oppressive as milk of the poppy felt on the tongue. It made you move slower in your cotton dresses- made you take a second longer than normal to answer one of the southron courtier's questions. You knew not how your granduncle ever adjusted to this- how he still kept his wits to sharp. You missed the riverlands, you missed being the smart one of your siblings. Now, beneath the southern sun, you felt unable to do anything at all. As if the prince had just cut your tongue out himself on your wedding night.

It had been your granduncle's idea for the match. Lord River's had offered you, his kinsmen's niece, when the topic of the king's widowed son arose while riding to a tourney in the riverlands. Maekar had plenty of sons and daughters, marriage was not a truly pressing matter, but the prince Baelor had been worrying for his brother's loneliness. House blackwood, with plenty of heirs, had one to spare. You had gone unwed, despite being the same age as Maekar's eldest. It was just not something you excelled at. Reading, studying, bothering your uncle, politicking, archery, and adventuring the lakes had been your favorites- courting was never your exceptionality. Both you and your sister had flowered early, and she had done well and got her husband quick- but you ignored the matter entirely.

That was, until it was chosen for you.

Maekar had not been unwelcome. Your uncle and him had gotten along well exceptionally when they'd met at tourneys in their youth. He'd had no daughters himself to offer, so a niece was the closest thing he could give the prince. Despite being the same age as your own father, you found Maekar's company semi-enjoyable when you'd first met him. He listened as you and your uncle went back and forth in conversation, answered your questions about the fighting knights on the field, and seemed to tolerate your presence enough. His eldest, Daeron, had accompanied him to the tourney but he had left right after the introductions to chase after a server carrying wine.

However, after being wed, you'd come to realize you'd made an egregious error to conflate Maekar's fondness for your uncle with fondness for yourself- by which to say, he had none. You thought, often, that he just viewed you as another child added to his hoard. Another responsibility to weigh heavy on the shoulders of the prince. He had a great many, you'd come to learn in your first moons in the Red Keep. Or, at least, he perceived he had a great many. Always so stressed for a fourth son, you'd observe while sitting at his side. You liked to stay there- as you knew not much about anyone else at court. There was your granduncle, Bloodraven, who your mother said had accidentally been at Raventree for your birth. However, beyond being held by the albino man as a wriggling infant, you had little else for interaction with the master of whisperers.

Maekar did not seem to entirely hate or love your presence at his side. You kept yourself well-maintained with the help of your handmaidens, with a new love for your black and red wardrobe- having already taken to the colors since you were little, so the adjustment was not a great burden. Maekar always wanted you dressed in the colors when at his side, just as he kept his sons. While eating with him and keeping a watchful eye, you'd come to learn your place to the prince: an accessory of his own image. The young, virile wife who he wished to have the court see as loyal, dutiful, and little of any other substance. It was not a hard roll to fulfill, even if it was grating to your self-esteem, but the pay off was worth it. At least, you thought so in the beginning.

You knew it was the wish of many girls at court to be wedded to a prince. Plenty had tried to seek your friendship for that sole reason after your wedding. Little blonde girls of the reach or redheads of the stormlands following at your skirts- some too timid to even open their mouths, just gawking at you hoping you'd speak first, while others were more bold and grabbed your arm to pretend you'd been friends since girlhood. They'd wish to seek out one of your stepson's attentions, thinking they'd get to have a life of comfort with the simple pay of bedding, bearing children, and playing the dull, pretty wife. You were one of them once, you'd think to yourself while lying beneath your quilts. Riding south with the only thought of your future luxuries and the parties of court.

The bedding and courtly appearances were not too bad, you thought. You'd been terrified your wedding night, suspended on the marriage bed by yourself with only the sound of the witnesses' breath behind the paper partitioner filling the chambers as you awaited the prince. Maekar was not truly too bad with it, though. It felt like you'd been torn apart the first few times. He was thick and he had little patience- always wishing to take you immediately with never much thought of getting you worked up first. He had no patience for it. Eventually, though, you found pleasure in his rough, merciless poundings- with help from your own hand, which Maekar had little offense for. Or, at least, if he did he made no mention of it. Which would be odd for your husband, as you found him a rather catty thing- always sucking on his teeth or rolling his eyes at his sons and brothers.

The beddings, even though you had found your own ways to please yourself (or coax maekar into) during, you were happy were few and far between. About once a moon at minimum after your bleed, when he knew you'd be the most fertile. He did not want to try more often. He'd already had plenty of sons and daughters with his first wife, any he had with you would be of little consequence. More a burden to him than anything. If you found yourself needing outside of it, you found comfort in your fingers. The knights of the yard were tempting things to indulge with, but you knew better than to risk your station- especially with your granduncle always looming. As well, it would be more work than worth just for the feeling of something between your legs. They were better visuals than actual assistants, anyways.

However, your issue- while you found little happiness and autonomy in your marriage- didn't truly lay with Maekar. It came in the form of the silver-haired monster that followed at his heels wherever he went.

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You had not met Aerion at that tourney with Maekar. He had been riding below while you and your uncle watched from the stands. You remembered, vividly, the time you first saw his face. He had just unhorsed a bracken boy, something your uncle took great pleasure in- and, therefore, you as well. He had a chicken leg in hand as he waived it in the air and cheered, while you stood at his side doing the same. Maekar had been sitting, calmly clapping for his son's victory while most likely giving you and your uncle a side eye that you could not see. Aerion had taken his helm off, then, and you had almost stopped your celebration of the bracken's loss. Violet disdain echoing in your very bones as he stared you down.

Aerion was a handsome prince, that there was no denying. He looked almost like a dragon, was your first thought. The scrawls of the extinct beasts in the tomes you read always had such sharp jaws and pointed snouts. He had that echoed in his own face, and you wondered more than once if Maekar had the same, hidden beneath the white scratchy beard he had. The two were near-mirror images of each other anyways. All except for the eyes. Maekar's were hardened, cold like indigo. He'd seen too much and cared too deeply to have room for much else behind those irises. Aerion's were bright and entrapping, burning like a bright fuchsia flame. They sucked you in like a whirlpool and held you under his gaze like a cage of steel.

It was obvious that your husband's eldest children had no like for you. You were the same age as Daeron, his eldest. Your mother had mused that perhaps you'd find friendship with him like you found with your male cousins but he was the one of Maekar's brood you saw the least, other than Aemon. But you wondered if that even counted, since he was off in Oldtown. Your singular interaction with your bookish stepson had been at the wedding feast when he and little Aegon had tripped over your skirts while running away from their sisters.

As for Daeron, you knew little of him. He was blonde, unlike your other stepsons. You wondered often, sitting across from the boy at feasts, where he and his little sister inherited that from. Their mother had been a Dayne yet not a singular one got her looks. It was a peculiar thought to you that you might befall the same fate. Birthing one or two babes who looked nothing like you, and would grow up to despise you as your their half-siblings did. Well... you were not entirely sure Daeron despised you, necessarily. Most interactions you had were on opposite sides of his father, your head bowed as Maekar growled curses at the man-boy.

You remembered one time when Daeron had been dragged back by Aerion and one of their knights from a ditch in flea bottom. You had been in your husband's chambers the night prior for your monthly bedding. He had been rougher with you. Grabbing your hips from behind as he fucked you like a dog. His grip so hard your skin still bloomed red and purple in the shape of his fingers in the morning. You had been running your fingers over the bloom as Maekar had been screaming his head off on the other side of the chamber. Your body, in naught but a shift, hidden behind a paper partitioner. You had found the ground a comfort, in that moment. The cool stone against your backside grounding you, a distraction from the yelling. Your mind wandering off to far off places as your fingers just traced, over and over.

Somewhere, in your trance, you had felt something creep up between your shoulderblades. It felt almost like black oil, ebbing out in a spider's web to creep up the nape of your neck and into your hair. The strands curtained your vision almost like a horses' blinders as you had your knees up to your chest and your head bowed. You had to move your head to get the mane away from your vision, looking over your shoulder to see where the spider's fingers originated. Your shadowed gaze meeting nothing else but a bright, illuminating flame- and one beneath it that looked as if it had been poured upon with water and weighed down without oxygen.

Maekar had sat Daeron in a chair by the window, the farthest he could get the boy from him in the chamber as he raged. Aerion stood behind him, leaning back against the stones with his arms across his chest. Their father did not see the crack in the paper partitioner, giving his boys view of his own secret as he lambasted them for theirs. Daeron's gaze was more forgiving in that moment, but he still looked at you as if you were nothing- like he was looking through you to dee something else beneath. Something of no consequence, like a kitten abandoned on the riverbank that was soon to be taken by a catfish or eaten from the inside out by parasites.

Aerion's eyes were scorching, almost like the light that filtered in through the seven-pointed star's window in the sept. He looked like the warrior with the sun at his back, arms crossed and judging. You thought to yourself that he saw you as nothing more than a raven to be crushed in the skies beneath the dragon's shadow.

It was that moment you looked back on often. It was there you thought, with Aerion seeing something he was never meant to see, that started the watching.

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You remembered the first time you truly noticed the watching. The first few moons, you just assumed it a natural curiosity or hatred from all of your husband's children. All of them scoping out the new woman that would be entering the family fray. Aegon, however, eventually warmed up to you when he realized you knew of the knights he loved to ramble about. The girls also seemed to take to you after they saw you knew how to braid (and that you didn't care to scold them for their mischief) and from there it turned into a more sisterly relationship than stepmother one. But Aerion's watching never went away.

He still looked at you like a stranger or an opponent, even after the moons waned into half a year. At that point, you began to wonder if it was more jealousy than anything. Any time you were not near the boy was immediately at your husband's feet. His younger self- his little shadow- always at his father's side. That angle you could've understood. You almost had sympathy for him. You had backed off during familial gatherings, after thinking that. Let the boy have his time and space with his dad, but even then the glare did not stop. As well, Maekar had begun to grow annoyed of that as well- thinking it was an embarrassment (on top of his other embarrassments) that his wife was not at his side. He told you to model yourself after Baelor's wife, to stay constantly by his arm.

The arrangement eventually culminated into you on Maekar's arm and Aerion on the other side of him or walking behind. You preferred him at his father's side. Then, there was a physical buffer between you two. Between you and that poisoning, crawling violet that would wrap around your waist and nape when he stood behind.

It got to the point that you eventually gathered the courage to mention your discomfort to your husband around the eighth moon of marriage. It was a quiet supper, one he requested to have you with in his chambers. You knew his intention for the night as your monthly bleed had ended, but you found yourself coming to your wit's end with his second son.

"He has just- he is unnerving me!" You had eventually found yourself huffing and pushing away your venison in frustration at your husband's excuses. "It's agitating to my being in ways i do not have the words for- and you make no attempt to alleviate it." You had stood and shook your head, turning away towards the window to get a breath of the cold salt spray that wafted up from below.

Maekar, himself, gave naught but a groan and slammed his cutlery down. You could hear the scratch of his beard against his hand as he rubbed it in annoyance. Paired with the scrape of his chair against the stones as he moved to join you.

"Am I not making an attempt to alleviate you now?" Your husband countered as he moved to stand behind you, looking out at the blackwater. One hand going to your hip to pull you back against him. "I had the kitchens make you a fine meal."

You found yourself not amused, and jerked your back away from his chest. Grabbing the stones in-front of you with a scowl. "You say that as if I am the issue here" your tone came out more a snap than the sadness that truly troubled you deep inside. You tried your hardest not to take the arrangement personally. You would tell yourself over and over that the prince simply acted as a man of his age and station. That it was a more comfortable life style than being shipped off to a lord who was truly in need of a wife, who would've worked you like a broodmare. You tried to remind yourself to be grateful and courteous and everything else that was needed from a lady. But still, you found the misery welling up inside you until it reached your throat and held it so tight you became a miserable, vindictive thing you'd never been before.

"Then do not make yourself one" Maekar responded in kind. He did this whenever you did something that vaguely displeased him- responding to you like you were one of his children. It made you feel the smallest you've ever felt. Like you were stupid and unable to behave yourself like the proper woman he wanted.

The silence that followed felt like it accumulated in your jaw. Part of you wished to snap back but you knew it would do no good. Fighting with men, while a fun passtime in girlhood, did not transfer well to being a wife. The other part felt that pressure in your jaw begin to spread. Traitorously, the frustration found its way to your eyes and began to sting as you stared out in the water. Your lungs aching with the need for more air.

Maekar, for once, took a gentle mercy on you. He reached back to the table to get the pitcher of sweet wine and your goblet. He poured it for you, something a prince should never do- something only a servant's hands does in the red keep. But you were away from eyes, away from court, and here he deigned it safe to take care of you- if just this once. You still hated it, hated how small it made you feel. The part of your mind that never stopped running whispering that it wasn't true care, like he would've showed hid first wife. You were not his equal or love in that measure. You were just another broken child in his hoard he had to piece back together after tearing down.

Yet, you took the goblet anyways- if only to save yourself the embarrassment of allowing tears to fall in front of him.

It had been an hour after (and a few more goblets of wine) when your husband took you to bed. The drink gave your world a sloshing feeling at the edges. Like you could just tumble over with every turn of your head or body. However, you were not entirely gone to your cups. You could still feel and move your body at will and you saw pretty clearly, until the thrusts of your husband beneath you blurred the chambers just slightly. Your thighs had to stretch to accommodate the muscular width of maekar's waist beneath you as you rode him. Serving to only open you further to the merciless girth of his cock. Your husband's lazy groans filled the chambers, paired with the sounds of wet smacks as Maekar's fingers kneaded the fat of your ass, jostling you up and down every last inch.

It was this type of fucking with Maekar that you eventually found your body looking forward to. You felt to useless, so unwanted at court and the rest of your life in king's landing. Feeling your husband like this- so bestial and ravenous as he pounded up into your heat- made you feel needed. The wine swirled deep in your belly, itching at your overstimulated cunt alongside the wall Maekar's head continued to slam into. The impatient man unable to allow you to ride him for too long without bending his legs and digging his heels into the mattress to take over your rhythm.

"Ha- ah-" the moans that came from you were more like breathy cries of pure need. Torn from your throat with each slap of Maekar's hips against yours. He would continue like this until he got his full and your muscles gave out from the force of his cock. Doubled over him, chest to chest as he was leaned back against the headboard. Tits rubbing against his bare chest as he had been too focused on getting to the actual fucking to fully pull your shift off. Instead, he tugged the fabric down until your breasts were out, hauled the hem up over your ass, and that was well enough for the prince.

Your cheek had been pressed to his shoulder when you saw it. Eyebrows screwed up and hands shaking where they gripped his bicep. All nail and skin to Maekar's fervent enjoyment- even if he would not admit he liked the pain aloud. A choked gasp torn from your throat as your eyes found another's- one that went unnoticed by Maekar due to the nature of your current state. Teetering so close to the edge.

He was hidden behind the lattice door that lead up the stairwell to the privy. It had been a cheap, quick replacement to the wooden door that Maekar had put a fist through in one of his rages over Daeron. But now it served as perfect viewing for the carnal show being put on in your marital bed.

You didn't recognize him at first, you just saw the shadow in your blurred gaze. Your husband's pounding thrusts jostling your entire world as you held on to him. But then you began to recognize the details. Plush, wine-red velvet paired with black, scaled leathers and silver chainmail. Those harsh, violet eyes wide and staring down into yours- half-lidded and struggling to stay open.

You don't know why you didn't say something, why you didn't scream or try to cover yourself with the quilt. Perhaps it was the wine you could blame it on, perhaps it was the weight of Aerion's gaze or Maekar's words from earlier. Do not make yourself an issue - he would not believe you. Not if you screamed, if you made a fuss and tore a rift between father and son. Aerion had a tongue, too, he would've found an excuse- wiggled his way out of the accusation like a weasel. He was just sneaking out and left the wrong passage, he came to investigate a concerning noise, he thought someone was harming me. Any one of them he would put into Maekar's hand and your husband would believe his little shadow, his little warrior, the son he wished was his first- never the second wife he didn't want in the first place.

No matter what excuse you could conjure for yourself, the truth of the matter still came and passed: you froze. Eyes locked on to Aerion's. Lips parted from pleasure and nails raking into Maekar's skin. The world going still for just a second, fully encapsulating you like thick molasses.

You felt it, traitorously, as your core clenched down on your husband's cock.

"Fuck" Maekar groaned, and a thick, calloused palm cracked down against your ass. The sting tearing you away from the frozen world you and Aerion had been caught in as a moan tore from your throat and your eyes squeezed shut. Your head turning back towards your husband, his beard scraping against your kils as your moth formed an "o". The pleasure taking full hold as Maekar renewed his pace with a relentless fervor, both punishing and rewarding you for making him bleed.

You tried to focus, tried to stave it off, but the wine made it impossible. Your eyes burning with the knowledge that weighed down on you. With the deep-gutted coil of Aerion's gaze upon your bared skin that caused you to tumble over the edge, milking your husband's throbbing flesh and tearing his own climax from him.

In the heavy heat of your release, dazed and breathless, you tried to turn your head to find the door again. Half-open eyes grazing along the dark lattice only to see a flash of purple and red. The young prince's skin flushed, his chest heaving and scraping against his chainmail as it rose and fell.

You tried to open your mouth, but a large hand grabbed your jaw. Your head turned back towards your husbands, and like the current of a river sweeping away a carcass, Maekar's tongue found yours.

Even later, with legs shaking like a newborn fawn and your mind near-completely taken by wine and exhaustion as you stumbled off to the privy, you would not find the young prince. The cold, stone hall entirely empty- lit only by a torch or two as you stood alone. Slip torn and skin a raw red on your backside, a traitorous part of you wished he had still been there. Just watching you, gasping for breath like a dog in rut.

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You found that traitorous thought torn from you in the moons that followed. In fact, you wished you'd never even met the young prince. Wished you would've just done your duty and flirted with the lords and knights that visited Raventree, wished you would've gone somewhere cold and remote and spent your days with your own children teaching them the histories and language.

Instead, you were trapped in this insufferable southern heat caught between one inferno and another. Maekar, as your marriage trudged along, eventually took to you in his own odd way. You did not find true comfort in your position but you came to know the rule you were meant to play. Part of you knew it was for the better. Court was not an appetizing thing. These people were like leeches that would find their way down your throat. None could be trusted and just playing your part of the silent, dutiful wife kept you shielded from it all.

Perhaps that was your granduncle's intention in the first place, you'd wonder. If that's why he kept his distance, why he had you wedded to the fourth son of the king if you had to wed into the royal family at all. It was wishful thinking on your part, though, for you knew the white and red raven was not thinking of you at all in his schemes beyond what purpose you served him (which, from what you saw, was little). But it was a small comfort to know you had at least one family member in this court so you just kept thinking it anyways.

But Maekar could not protect you from what lay behind his shield. What had travelled from standing opposite of you on his father's side to standing shoulder-to-shoulder.

The prince was no longer passive in his observation of you. You knew not if it was from that night or if Maekar had taken annoyance with your concern and told him to play nice. Either way, he was on you now. Sweet and silver-tongued at feasts and supper, anywhere eyes were on you. He poured your wine if servants were occupied, took your hand to help you down the dais if Maekar was talking with Baelor or the king, and most unnervingly he had taken to calling you goodmother.

"Let me help you, goodmother"

"The winds sure are harsh today, goodmother"

"Are you in need of company, goodmother?"

Any rare semblance of autonomy you'd had, in the breaks between doing your duty to Maekar, were gone. You could not walk in the gardens by your lonesome, for he would appear out of some shrub or tree like a bat. You could not read tomes in the library without feeling a breath on your shoulder. You could not even sleep without squirming, paranoid he was at some peephole in the walls. The prince you were once curious about at the tourney you now wished you knew a lot less about. It took every ounce of patience you had to not snap at him in front of the entire court to just fuck off and leave you be.

This frustration, this unease in the silence of your own chambers, lead you seeking out your husband's far more often. Even if it was not your height of fertility, as usual, you would wander into his bed. You needed something to get your mind off of him. Something to push out the feeling of your stepson's scorching glare by pure force. Whether it be thick, calloused fingers shoved down your mouth, a muscled arm around your neck from behind, or a cock piercing your cunt until all that you felt was an aching throb when you tried to walk.

But even then, when you had to return to your own chambers, the nightmare would not end. Even in your absence, he found something of yours to take if it was not your time. It started small- your slipper lost it's pair, your bowl of hairbands going empty faster than usual. Then, it escalated- your shifts and small clothes disappearing from the laundry room. When you brought it uo to maekar, he said one of the mousers might be taking your hairbands, as Daella's own feline loved to play with hers. Then, it became one of the servants must be thieving things- but it made no sense, as it was only your clothes going missing from the washing room. It made you feel endlessly guilty to see the servants be sharply questioned on your behalf, so eventually you just stopped bringing up the missing pieces to Maekar entirely.

After getting away with that, though, he became emboldened. That's when the notes started. Scribbled, entirely unlike his proper princely handwriting to make it seem like a servant's doing of caught. Unnerving sentences scrawled on ripped papers, smelling of man like he has rubbed them on his skin like a reptile scenting its property. Hidden underneath the jars on your vanity, your pillows, inside slippers.

"You've brought me great amusement with this pointless flailing."

"One of these nights you will be here when i come. One of these nights you'll finally indulge me, my lady of sorrows."

"How long can you truly run from me, gentleheart? How long will you pretend you actually want to?"

Your mind would not stop running with those words. At court gatherings, as he played the perfect prince waiting on you dutifully, you would see the words in his eyes. Alone in the library you would find yourself running over them instead of your studies. Holding on to your husband's hair like a lifeline as he had you bent in half, fucking you out of breath and sense, you could still hear them echoing over the sound of skin on skin.

"I am fine, my prince, thank you-" You'd tried to refuse Aerion as he went to refill your goblet. It was the young prince Matarys' birthday- your husband's nephew. You didn't know much about Baelor's boys other than the fact that Maekar resented that his sons were not like Valarr, and you knew less about the younger one. You didn't even know why you were here, beyond just being Maekar's arm piece, and you were already agitated by not having a fitting gown for the occasion- or at least one you thought fitting. You'd argued with Maekar about it earlier, that you'd wished you had more dresses, and he'd argued back that you'd had enough- so you were already over it. You'd already drank a few cups, as well, and you knew you were nearing the line of not being fully in control. Dealing with the watching Aerion was the last thing you wanted to do, yet Maekar was off with his brother again, and here you were having to bear the consequences. As always.

"Nonsense, my goodmother, it is a celebration. It is the best time for indulgences" the silver haired prince smiled and poured anyways.

It was that word he used in letters often. Either detailing his own indulgences he took with you, or the ones he wished you would take with him. It set you off, on the short string you were already at for the night. You let the mouth you developed in girlhood get the better of you. Your hand snatching your goblet and placing your fingers over it. The sweet wine pouring onto your skin, staining it and the tablecloth red.

"I have no want or will for indulgences, my prince" the word came out almost like the snap of a hound's teeth. It gathered the attention of your other stepchildren seated nearby at the table. Daeron and Aegon both had their eyebrows raised, though there seemed to be an amusement in their eyes. No one ever stood up to Aerion when he was putting up his courtly act. Rhae who had been sitting at your side had yelped and backed up, however, as wine had splattered off your hand and onto her baby-blue, velvet dress.

Of course, every time you even tried to fight, the consequences always fell upon someone innocent.

"What are you doing" Maekar had growled at you before going to attend to Rhae, who was looking down at her pretty dress with that silent pout little girls always do before crying. It took all the fight out of you, in that moment. Your gooddaughter was too sweet to be caught in this mess of yours- this never ending nightmare.

"I did not mean to- I was just-" you went to try to make an excuse. To try and fight for yourself... but you knew it was not worth it. It would only attract more attention and attention would only make Maekar more angry. Fighting was useless, especially in the face of the perfect little princeling. You would be the sole proprietor of the blame no matter which route you went down- it was best to choose the one with the least fallout.

"It's my mistake, I am in my cups and not thinking" you relent, despite the anger clawing in your chest. You looked to Rhae and took your handkerchief from your bodice, gently dabbing at the blue fabric as you leant over your chair. "Don't rub, sweetling, that'll only spread the stain. Let us go get your septa, she'll get it out with some vinegar."

Rhae had made a protest, whining about hating the smell of the cleaner, but you had already found your own out of the feast. Maekar, for once, aided you in this endeavor and told the girl not to fight her goodmother and to go get cleaned up. Rhae would surely be mad at you for a few days, but it was a sacrifice you found yourself willing to make if it meant having some distance from the prince.

You were already halfway off the dais when you heard his voice start.

"Father, grant me leave to help the girls. It was my hand that poured the wine, it should be my responsibility to see them escorted to Rhae's chambers."

You wanted to scream as you held Rhae by the shoulders still. Your head turning over your shoulder to give your stepson a glare. Maekar was not looking, thankfully, he was too busy patting the boy on the shoulder while looking at his eldest.

"Thank you, Aerion, for taking initiative and accountability" Maekar spoke the words like little throwing darts. Daeron, to his own credit, did naught but roll his eyes and pour more wine into his goblet. Mumbling something into the golden lip that made Aerion send him a sharp look. The sight of the prince angered gave you some semblance of happiness, if for a fleeting moment, before he came over to take your arm. An immediate scowl coming onto your lips, the wine making you unable to school your features fully before they came to pass.

"Of course, father, anything for our gentle hearted goodmother" the prince spoke with a gentle smile, but he was still staring at you with those reptilian eyes.

You wished to throttle him like you would've one of your male cousins- but this was not the muddy riverbanks of your childhood. There was no soft autumnal air and giggling siblings, all in their shifts and breeches without a care for the world- without the mind of woman or man. There was no innocence or love here where the air was as sharp as a dagger and the eyes that looked at you saw only what laid beneath your clothes and how it would serve them.

"Thank you, Aerion" you said through a tightened jaw, hating every syllable of it.

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"You embarrassed me tonight with this ceaseless grudge of yours! It was my brother's son's night and yet he had to worry about mine own daughter and you. Do you not see how that affects me? Affects you? Because of some baseless hatred of yours?"

The scolding words echoed in your mind as you stumbled back into your chambers. You had not fought back. Especially with the scent of wine on your husband's breath beating down on you with every word. You were no one to judge- your own lips stained with the liquid- but it still made you pause. It always did. A man in his cups was not a man you wished to feel the hand of. Maekar had never done it to you before (not when you didn't want it) but you still froze every time his voice raised. Still waited for the day it would turn when you grew too much a burden. When you'd finally gone mad and he needed to put some sense into you as he did with Daeron.

He'd had you. You needed it. You needed something to get the thought of Aerion's hand around your arm. Your mind would not stop- it never stopped. You suddenly understood why Maekar's eldest gave himself to the wine and whores. A good fuck and a good drink made it quiet, if naught for a moment.

But even then, the feeling- the sight of thise eyes- still came to you as you bit down into Maekar's arm. He had taken you from behind tonight like a dog, as he always did when he was angry. You wondered if it was your hair. If, in the flickering dark, he'd mistake riverlander for dornish from behind. You'd been thankful for it when the tears came. When it all became too much, when the thoughts and faces bled together beneath the weight of each pound, and you finally bit down on his skin to hide a sob as you spasmed around his cock.

You shook the thought- the shame- away and tore yourself from your evening gown. Maekar had not taken it off tonight, just pulled it up over your ass and bent you over the bed before collapsing atop you. The stained velvet now thrown to the side, over the back of your armchair, and you knocked your hip into your armoire before falling into the bed in just your slip. Your hands going to run over the silks, to trace shapes as your mind ran in circled until your exhaustion took you.

Instead, your finger found a wet spot.

With a groan, your eyes fluttered open lazily. Perhaps the maids had accidentally spilled a bit of the water bowl you used to freshen your face in the morning on the sheets. Instead, your eyes caught on dark streaks that littered the sheets and your pillowcase. Clear liquid with the faintest of white stains at the edges where it began to dry. By the side of your pillow, discarded on the silk, was a pair of your smallclothes.

You froze as you always did. Your fingers just faintly twitching where they laid on the wet spot. You always froze- always- to your absolute infuriation. The heat gathered first in your cheeks and ears, before making a beating march down your neck to your chest. Wrapping tight around your esophagus and ribs as your teeth dug into your cheek.

You had nothing. You had no one. You had not love or comfort or a second of chilled calm. You had no clothes. You had not one speckle of space in these chambers untouched by others. Not even your own fucking bed.

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Aerion remembered the first moment he ever saw her. He had been vaguely curious of the new plaything his father was to have. Some simpering little girl Daeron's age, meek and pretty enough for court to stop their ceaseless whispering of his mother's death. He would've liked someone different for father. Someone valyrian, someone who would make him look strong.

Instead, he found himself gazing upon someone almost unbearably common. He'd wanted the bracken boy on purpose, had pulled some strings with the gamemakers to have it happen. He thought it would get his father some brownie points with the old, fat lord of Raventree- once a warrior but now lost to his indulgences. He'd heard their cheers when he'd unhorsed the puggish boy who'd just received his knighthood. They were both in red and black, looking like a ravenous murder. Eyes alight with unbridled elation at the young boy's misfortune- pecking, vengeful things. He found it uncouth.

"If she is not to your tastes, brother, she can always go to one of your boys to appease lord Rivers. Aerion or Daeron may like her, she seems spirited enough to handle him." His uncle Baelor had just been rambling on the ride back to their quarters. Playing at being the jester, giving him a wiggle of the brow and a smile before laughing at his own joke when no one else did. His father's jaw had clenched at the thought like his brother had just insinuated he was unable to do his duty. Like he was too out of it and hold to manage a young, free, virile wife. He could see those thoughts festering inside his father's mind as they rode. Could see the resolution in his grip on his mare's reigns.

It would be the best if he took her, then- if only to spare himself tor a more advantageous match with someone of valyrian descent. He would not want his pups born with those common features of hers- even if her figure was an agreeable pne to his tastes- her coloring would not do it for her. His stock was to remain pure, silver.

She would be inconsequential- just another thing for his father to try and tame alongside Daeron's drinking.

At least, that was what Aerion had first thought. He had not known how far the raven would be clipped without her murder. It was such an odd switch. So free and petty to something so quiet and caged. Kept close at his father's arm at all times like a dragon and its hoard. Perhaps he saw it as something that would put him above the rest of his brothers- a younger wife, prettier and ready for more children. He always prided himself of that, how many he managed to have on mother compared to uncle Baelor and Aenys. There was no doubt in his mind that he would start to work at getting her round and swollen as soon as he could. She had flowered early, he overheard Baelor and his father's talks, there would be no doubt it would happen within the first year of coupling with that fertility.

He had wondered it for a while, what she would look like with his father's whelp inside her. His mind would wander as he stared her down across the table from over his father's shoulder. His place used to be the one she took now- and soon it would be the little spawn that came from her. The seed was strong, he knew that as all his siblings shared the same coloring, but a part of him wished she birthed some little wretch that looked like her so that she would become something that could never rival him. Something that would lose his father's interest.

She never did, though. His father's insistence with her only seemed to accumulate with the passing moons. More and more oft she would wince and take her time sitting at the table when breaking fast. More oft would he have her on his arm, even if it was not a feast and to just walk the halls of court together. He could hear their sounds through the hollow passages in the walls of his family's floor in the holdfast. Father knew of them but took no interest in them. He had always been focused in on his public image to care for sneaking about and doing things to satiate his private self. He never understood that need that Daeron and Aerion took in whores- why would he, when he had a pretty, young wife to pound into the mattress?

His suspicion was confirmed when he saw her that day. He and Daeron had accidentally gone to the same brothel that night. He'd had a Lyseni girl, something close enough to looking a dragon from behind. He'd had her crawl on all fours like one, anyways, before taking him into her throat. His hand curling in those silver locks as he wondered what his father would think of the sight.

When the morning came and he'd wandered outside just to see his father's charge pulling Daeron out of the mud, he himself narrowly escaped scrutinization by pretending that he was there looking for his brother as well. Yet, he still was forced to stand there and face father's lambasting- just for the act of being a prince and being in one of those establishments. It wasn't the first and it wouldn't be the last he'd endure, but he'd remember it solely for the sight of her.

Daeron had noticed her first- focused on the shadowed figure while trying to survive and distance himself from Maekar's screaming. he stared far off past her, but Aerion's eyes caught solely on her. On the bruises blooming where her shift had ridden up over her hips. That riverlander mane hiding those solemn, dark eyes he'd become far too familiar with- much to his own annoyance. Those eyes that seemed to follow him, those eyes that found their way beneath his chainmail where no dagger could. She was sitting there, the curve of her ass on the cold floor like a serving girl who'd strayed too close to some drunken lord's chambers.

His mind began to wander to the noises he heard far too often for his own liking. He imagined what the night before had been like for her. Was it similar to his own? Was she taken with as much care as he has taken that whore? Did she rise from bed and feel the ache deep in her cunt and knees? He wondered how she cried when her father took her- she'd been loud their wedding night, he'd heard whispers of. It was hard to imagine a girl like that lying with a man like his father- it was almost like imagining a hound being fucked by a bear.

Those blooming thighs would look much better around him instead- the prince imagined, against his will, as the face of his whore and the face of this bruised girl blended into one another in his imagination as their eyes met.

The traitorous, wrongful thoughts he felt stirring in his mind as she saw him brought not shame but instead made him begin to stir in his breeches.

It was from there that he began to indulge those thoughts further. It started with just the company of his own hand. His mind wandering, without his leave, to how her own hand would feel around him instead. When it was slick from her mouth having already wrapped around his cock. How she would have to take a break from having him deep in her throat to pump every inch with that hand, looking up at him with red cheeks and tearful eyes as she panted for breath. His hand would tighten even further as he thought about her cunt and how it would leave him sopping when she finally pulled herself off of him. She would put up a fight, he knew that. He could see it in her gaze when she thought his father wasn't looking. She despised him, as he found his own dislike with her in the beginning. A survival technique, he presumed- hate them back when they hate you. It's how Aerion molded his own temper. But he wondered how different those eyes would look after he broke her down, after he fucked her so deep she would not know how to function without his cock deep inside her. She'd love him then, whisper it over and over as he fucked her tight cunt while his father was none the wiser to what his little wife was doing in her chambers.

He came to the thought.

Then, his hand was not enough. He needed the real thing, his mind would whisper like a devil from the seven hells. Her chambers were right down the hall. Perhaps he would find her when she was in a wine-addled sleep. Fuck her hard from behind whilst she was still half-asleep and leave before she could see who was truly having her. However, the guards there kept him from fulfilling that thought. So, instead, he took the passages to his father's- the route he knew well, he'd take it whenever he needed a little extra pocket coin for the street of silk. The blame would always be found on Daeron or Aegon anyways.

He'd watch them coiled together, that night. She had looked wrought, caught somewhere between pain and pleasure. Her face was screwed up like a feline, clawing desperately at his father's pale skin. Back arched as she was slumped over him, forced to take every inch as deep and as hard as the prince could go.

It was wrong to come here, he thought as he desperately wished to have something to wrap his hand around. To take the breath and life from to satiate his own anger. He wished it was her. Wished she was not there, breasts and ass exposed to the wet, hot air. He wished she was writhing beneath him, begging for mercy- begging for forgiveness for coming here. For ruining everything, for plaguing him with these thoughts. For not warming his cock instead. The multitudes of anger and need echoing and building on top of one another in the prince's mind- before he'd finally had enough and stormed back off down the passageways when he was done.

He found himself in the street of silk later. Cloaked and snapping at the madames, inquiring them of any riverlanders they may have in their employment. He would have them while they were blindfolded and gagged. It was better not to see their eyes or hear their voices as it would ruin the illusion. But, eventually, it shattered anyways- as all good things eventually come to pass. He was a dragon in the purest form of soul, just cursed to a human body. He was insatiable, as was his right to the entire world. As was his right to take and conquer everything he laid his eyes upon.

So, he began to take. Little things, hairbands to wrap around his cock as he stroked it fervently. One of his visits to the brothel, he'd had a girl wear it in their hair as he had her from behind. Then, it was one of her slippers or handkerchiefs to hold to his nose, to smell her as he fucked a pillow or a whore. Not only did they serve him, but there was always the present risk. Stuffed in his pocket at feasts, just inches away from falling out as he bent over the table to serve her wine- or stuffed down his breeches, nestled against his cock where he wished her tongue would be instead. He'd rub himself while looking at her across the table while staring into those sad eyes, wishing she was there beneath the tablecloth instead. One groan or twitch away from the lords of the realm seeing them.

As well, he saw how it made her anger grow. He loved to see that fire in her irises. See that heave in her chest where thorns of hatred festered beneath her ribs. He felt it for her too. When she got too close to him or would be a day late on her moonsblood. He checked her sheets frequently to make sure. When that was not enough, he'd switch her morning tea with moon tea herbs he'd stolen from the maester. No one would suspect him, he knew- they'd think it just another serving girl that tickled Daeron's fancy and regretted it upon the morn.

Then, it was not enough to only have her stuff- he decided he must conquer her very time. He needed more fuel, he needed to familiarize himself with every expression- every minute little habit of hers to make the fantasies more real. As well, he relished in the frustration she showed. The clench of her jaw or the fists her hands made as he showed up behind her in the gardens. The way she'd abruptly snap her book shut in the library and excuse herself- saying something about his father needing her or his younger sister's with a low murmur behind her teeth. He imagined that fury when she was atop him, riding his cock without abandon. Imagined her raking stripes down his back and biting down into his shoulder as she took every inch of him.

She was coming to her wits end when he took a batch of her smallclothes from the washroom. He could feel it. She truly loathed him at this point. He could not resist taunting her. He wished to poke the fire, fill it with oxygen only he could give. He wished to lash his tongue with the flame, taste everything she had to give like a true dragon dining on its meal. He would hold her small clothes to his nose, his lips, take them into his mouth as he stroked himself at a fever pitch sitting before the fireplace. He'd release himself into the flames- no cunt other than hers deserved it. Perhaps the seed would dissipate into the air and reach her chambers and encapsulate her skin in flame and him.

He loved to use the words he wrote against her deliberately. It was like a secret that onlt the two of them knew- innocuous to the rest of court right before their noses. His only annoyance was Daeron- always seeing and knowing. He treated the dreams like a burden, while he relished in his like any true dragon would do- but his brother was a coward. Every day he thanked the flames that she did not go to him instead of father. He would've treated her too gently. A raven is never meant to glide on easy winds. They scrap, they claw, they shriek to the heavens. She deserved him and father- they were true dragons. They could have her riled as she was truly meant to be. Those black feathers alight with every color of the world beneath dragonflame, as beautiful as a phoenix in its final flight.

She'd finally snapped at him, and it was like a shot right to the cock. Those eyes narrowed into a glare, those fingers stained red with spilt wine. He wondered if they'd look the same soaked in her own moonsblood. Playing at her cunt, dreaming of him on the one week his father kept from her. The one week he dreamed of having her solely to himself, soaking his cock and chin in her own blood in the tradition of Valyria. Blood mixed together, binding their souls into one beneath the eyes of the flames.

He'd thought about that very scenario as he took his full rights to her space and things. His final act of conquering, claiming her sheets and where she laid her head at night with his seed. His fist pounding his own length mercilessly as he felt high on the scent of her smallclothes. Cumming so hard it left him dizzy as he pressed his forehead to the mahogany of her headboard.

After he made his claim, he went back off to his chambers. Happy and weightless like uncle Rhaegel dancing away in the night, cock in the wind. Sipping a goblet of wine, one hand on the mantle. He'd barely had time to look over his shoulder when he'd heard the door slam open. When bare feet smacked against the stone, quickly approaching. Violet eyes met naught else but a storm of riverlander shadowy hair, before his head was jerked to the side. A sharp pain claiming the skin of his cheek and ear as the breath was knocked out of him. The world ringing as he stumbled back against the stones until his shoulder hit it. Her yells were muffled beneath the ringing and the swirl of the chambers around them. His eyes focused, through the rocking ground, on the thin white shift as it wrapped around her form. Plump skin just barely contained beneath the flimsy thing, ready to be wrapped in flame and caressed by flesh that burned at the same pace as hers.

"You fucking mongrel-" he caught the end of her anger as his eyes slowly dragged up that pale skin to her eyes and lips. Bent over as he peered up at her, the world around still ringing where she'd caught his ear with her fingers. His own hand going up to try and match where she'd struck. Tried to compare the sting of her fingers to the rough press of his own, imagined those same fingers tangled in his- holding and melding into him as they shared skin and became one. As her anger that she finally- finally allowed to unleash on him melted and gave way to passion.

"Good girl" he whispered- for the strength of her hit or the pure rage in her voice- he knew not. A smile had taken his lips without his permission. His entire being just fulled with pure elation and pride as he looked upon that inferno he sparked inside her, before he stumbled forward and his lips found hers. Finally- finally- claiming what he was owed.

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Good girl.

The very words made you freeze in confusion. This man was absolutely, positively mad. His lips curled like a viper's tail and dripping that same poison. He was dangerous- you knew now- he'd taken your slap and was about to give it back to you. Beat you bloody and have you disgraced infront of court as he'd done with plenty a servant and whore.

You'd braced for the violence and found naught but gentleness in its' stead. Plush, somewhat chapped lips swirling and melding with yours. The cracks rubbing and coaxing your lips to follow his rhythms. One long hand resting on the small of your back, the other clutching the nape of your neck. His head tilted to the side as he tried to coax you forward. Pulling you deeper into his flaming whirlpool where you would lose grip on yourself fully.

Good girl, the soft, breathy whisper replayed in your mind as your feet moved without permission. As your back pressed to the stones and a hand travelled up your ribs from your waist. The other leaving your nape to go down to the hem of your slip and grab a handful of meat from your ass. The touch pulling a gasp from your throat, one the mesmerizing beast before you took full advantage of. His tongue swirling against yours, softer than your husband's. Younger, less experienced, more patient- not with his hands, but at least with his lips.

You forgot yourself for just a moment. One traitorous moment, your hand moved not by order but by its own want. Finding the cropped silver strands of hair and bare jaw. No scratching beard- no weathered lines. An equal instead of a commander.

"That's it" Aerion whispered against your lips, and the hand on your ass went down to your thigh. Hauling it up over his hip as his crotch pressed to yours. His cock already stirred beneath his breeches- hard and long and ready to go immediately. No touch or beating from his own palm to force it awake. "No more pretending."

Pretending- the word snapped you out of your trance. You were not pretending- your anger was righteous. It was yours, it was the one true thing in this keep full of pretenders. Liars and thieves and lusters, the lot of them. Including him. He was not freedom- no- you needed to remind yourself that. He was no equal. He was an oppressor, a tormentor just like the rest.

Two hands raised and immediately shoved the princeling away by the chest. Foot stomping back down onto the stones with a bare smack. "You fucking pervert!" You lambasted the man-boy, slapping at hid chest once again for good measure. Hut the dragon is not quelled with whips, it only feeds their flame. His smile only brightening with pure, flaming glee behind those fuchsia irises.

"There we go" he smirked and went to grab your waist once more, "there's that flame to fill us both." His nose found your neck and nuzzled into the flushed skin. Nipping lightly at a red ear as he whispered "that feeds right into my cock" and grabbed your wrist to press your palm against it. It was like a living thing- it pulsed and twitched beneath your body heat. Like a hatchling squirming, ready to wriggle free from its confinement and feast on its surroundings. Feast on you. It made your skin crawl.

You ran from his chambers that night. The sound of your feet echoing against the halls, panted breaths bouncing off the stairwell. You didn't stop- didn't even look back until you were back in your chambers and the door was slammed shut and the lock clicked. Chest heaving with both hands planted against the mahogany, bent at the waist. You stayed there for a moment, your hand burning from where it had touched him. Your throat tight and lips twitching as if they'd been rubbed in burning powder. You'd wanted to fall to your knees- to curl in a ball and scream and sob like a toddling.

"Tsk" you heard the click of a tongue behind you. Your head whipped around, hand grabbing the door handle. Had he gone a separate way? Chased you down through the passages in the walls?

Your eyes flashed to the table by the window, and surely your gaze found silver- but instead of a bright, electric lilac your eyes found a dark, simmering red staring back. Your granduncle was dressed in all black, highlighting the pure white of his skin. His gaze peering up at you over the lip of your black mug from the morn. You'd forgotten to give it to a servant before leaving your chambers, perhaps? It was hard to remember the start of the day, after everything. He sniffed at it with a distasteful lip twitch before placing the old mug of tea back down upon the table.

"My sweet niece, what have you done to have the gods weave these threads for you?" Lord rivers mused as he slowly stood from the chair he sat on. You felt small beneath his crimson gaze- almost similar to how daeron would look at you. Like you were a sheer fabric that he could peer through, that he saw a million moving shadows behind. The click of his heels as frigid as winter winds at they came upon you, and a hand slowly ran over your cheek as he bore into your eyes. Studying and categorizing like all the files he had stored away, all the whispers of the world he knew. You wondered if he was reading your very thoughts- if he would hide away the ones you refused to even acknowledge yourself.

The ones of him-

"Don't go getting that look with me" your kinsmen chided and moved his hand to your chin. Holding it betwixt his pointed and thumb as he lowered himself to your eyes. "You need to keep your wits about you. No more of this madness. The gods need you sharp for their plans. From now on, you drink only the tea I have the maester bring you. The tonic will soothe you- not like the swill they feed Rhaegel."

Then, he was gone like that. As quick as snow fleeting over the mountains and as silent as a shadow. The door closing behind him as you were left to catch your breath. Your mind finally still for once, but your heart still ran like you'd just bolted across the length of a tourney ground.

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You did not know why- just as you did not know why you stayed at maekar's side, or why you did not fight back against Aerion- you listened to your granduncle. You drank what the maester brought every morning. Your heart began to calm, your mind stopped its racing. Whatever tonic the master of whisperers had brought you dulled you down. You wondered if this is what Prince Baelor's wife felt like every day- or one of the little girl's at court. They were so carefree, so unburdened by the weight of the world. They saw the gentle colors of the sky in the wind that brushed their skirts and felt the softness of the grass hug their skin. You only felt it now- after a year of trudging through mud and having your head shoved beneath white water currents.

You didn't trust it. The drink would wear off in the early morns, right before the maester would come with more tonic-mixed tea. Then, you'd feel that itch again. Heart guarded and pounding against your ribs, waiting for the other shoe to drop. For Maekar to summon you to his chambers, screaming at you for what you'd allowed Aerion to do. For the king to summon you and have you beheaded for adulterous treason. For Aerion to come through the walls like a shadow in the moonlight and take what he tortured you to near-madness for.

But Aerion never came.

Not in the gardens, as you wandered- dazed from your tea and brushing your fingers against the leaves of the shrubbery. Not when you lay in the library, studying Essosi legends by the fire. Not at feasts when you're on his father's arms, smiling at Tyroshi merchants. Not when you're knelt beneath the heart tree in the godswood, eyes closed, pretending it's the weirwood from home as you whisper your thoughts and wishes to it. Not when you're bent beneath Maekar, staring up at the ceiling with one hand in his hair.

You stopped looking forward to Maekar's roughness the longer you drank the tea. You felt pleasure, sure, but your mind could not focus to reach completion as it once could. There was no pay off to his merciless treatment. You would try to coax him, sprawled chest to chest with your legs locked around his back. Try to appease him with a soft smile and goading lips. Try to get him to slow down or treat you gentle in kind. But Maekar did not know gentle- not with you. He had learned to love you in madness and teeth. He had learned to control you, to own you and make you feel needed when you were about to teeter off the edge of the world. He did not learn how to be kind to you- how to touch you with soft hands and softer lips and have it not feel like betrayal. Like wrong, like guilt deep in his chest.

You found your mind wandering to him when your face was buried in your husband's neck. You thought of the slow brush of his lips against yours as you nuzzled into the skin to hide from the relentless pounding. You tried not to think of where he'd put your hand or how he'd pressed his clothed cock right to the middle of your cunt. You didn't want that, in these moments. You wanted to be naive, just for a moment, like the girls who tried to gain your friendship for them- asking so meekly about the young princes. You wanted to forget about the stolen clothes, the watchful eyes, the scrawled notes. You just wanted to be a girl, daydreaming about the honor and unconditional romance of princes in fairytales. You didn't want to face the real thing when you opened your eyes, when you saw your husband's face panting above you before he took your mouth in a kiss that was all tongue and clashing teeth.

You dreamed of an equal. You dreamed of someone who wanted you- who needed you with the reverence of a man kneeling before the statue of the mother. In his face, with no one else to fill the hole, you envisioned Aerion.

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She would come back.

Aerion convinced himself- told himself every night. Every time his eyes grazed her black silks and red velvets as she walked past. She had come once, and when she broke again she would come again. Patience- patience would be his virtue now. He'd given and given and given, and now it was time to leave her waiting. He'd watch her from the shadows, up on balconies as she walked through the gardens. Peering out behind the wall as she prayed to the heart tree. Hidden in the corner as she slept in her own bed when his father was done with her.

Whatever the maesters had her own now was a strong thing. It kept her rage hidden deep below, so deep it only showed as she slept. The twitch of her legs, the white of her knuckles as she clutched a pillow to her chest to cuddle. He thought of running his hands over them, soothing the muscles back down to sleep. She deserved her sleep- you needed it to handle a dragon. Only he should be the one to take it from her. He should be the one that tormented her, that kept the under eyes of hers dark and had her mind swimming in a daze.

He'd wondered which one of them had finally cracked to have the maester brew his tonics. His father, endlessly prideful, would never admit that his wife- his new, shiny wife- had a problem. Same as he never admitted Daeron had one, or even suspected Aerion himself for a second. But, on the same side, she was just as proud. A proper raven, always preening her feathers and keeping her head high. She let madness take her before she'd even fought back against him. She'd let him take and take without even raising an alarm bell as to not show weakness.

When moons passed and she did not come back, he grew anxious. He ventured closer and closer in the night when he'd watch her. He'd started watching her again at feasts and tourneys. One knight from the reach got too close during a jest and asked for her favor and later- disguised as a commoner- he'd attacked the man with his own helm. On the one hand, he would never let his father be humiliated so. On the other, he drove each swing with the prideful rage of a dragon protecting its hoard. Each time the metal came down on his face, he imagined hers. Imagined the feel of her plump flesh in his hand. Imagined the taste of the sweet wine that had clung to her lips as he sucked on the bottom one. Imagined the feel of her fingers brushing against the base of his cock over the cloth of his trousers. Then, he would see her running- see the fear on her face instead of hatred and passion- and he would renew his swings with a fervor.

She will come back...

She will come back...

--------------------------------------------

The news of Ser Simon's injuries at Duskendale had been a troubling thing on the morn, but it had been of little consequence in the grand scheme of things. You had given the knight your prayers with your goodbrother after drinking your morning tea and then you had left with your husband to ride back to King's Landing. A common thief in the night, they'd said, that had taken his helmet and run off. An unfortunate thing- but not uncommon for a man on his lonesome in the night, who had been deep in his cups, to fall upon. Daeron had his pockets stripped before- albeit the prince had already been passed out or a whore had taken it when he'd not been looking.

You rode beside that blonde prince now, as your husband was with his brother infront of you now. Your hands twirling the mane of your stallion absentmindedly as your stepson sipped from a flask.

"Born from the blind come monsters straight from the cradle" the young prince mumbled before tossing the empty flask to the trail.

Monsters straight from the cradle, your mind echoed those words after reaching the red keep. Your maids had given you a hot bath and put you in a plum-red nightgown for bed. Your hair spun in one simple braid for the night.

There was only one monster that Daeron would refer to- same as Aegon would when he was pouting at Maekar after being scolded. It was always him- always those cropped, silver tufts and violet eyes. Hidden behind the twisted, red metal that made his helm. Your mind lingered on that imagery as you stared at the silken sheets, running your fingers over their ripples and folds.

He had been a monster, your thoughts swirled, he still is by all probabilities. You thought to Ser Simon. You wondered what he saw, while being beaten by his own helm. Lying on the ground in a mix of mud and his own blood. You wondered if he saw the same violet that haunted you before he closed his eyes- the same you saw it before you closed yours for moons and moons on end.

But now there was nothing. The stone walls echoed not a passing gaze or muffled breath. The silence was cold and oppressive, and you had not the heat of a good pounding or the daze of wine to make the walls swirl in the absence of others.

You had nothing anymore.

--------------------------------------------

Aerion had the same dream he'd had at least once a moon since the night of his father's wedding. He'd be lying against the bottom of a riverbed, completely bare against the cold, rounded stones. The current slowly dragging up from his heels, around his manhood, and up to graze against his cheek. It would be so cold, so still- a moment frozen away from the rest of the world. Nothing like the dreams of disconnected screams- of smoke and ash. Of fire bursting from his lungs as a crowd stared upon in horror as the dragon melted its false body and his true soul was bare for all to see. The stones slowly disappearing, sinking away as he found her.

The eyes that would gaze upon him in the water had not horror but solemn need. A river nymph, moving like the shadowy underbelly of deep water above him. Soft knees brushing against his waist as she bent over him, a hand going over his cheek to stave off the current and make the water still. He'd move for the first time, then, when she freed him from the watery confines. Their noses would brush, tentatively, like felines in greeting. Like they knew each other mind, body, and soul already. His hands would worship her murky body. Slowly running up the sides like one would feel the marble of a statue. Eyes closed and forehead pressed to her neck as he did not look- did not lust- but felt and mapped each curve and indent. Reverent and claiming- for one needed to know every nook and cranny of which they wished to claim. When he reacher her ribs, his head would lower. The two, still floating in the water, connected lap to lap. His legs bent beneath her ass as hers were wrapped around his hips. Her watery hair spreading around them like curtains- like wings- and folding over them. Shielding the prince as he took a nipple between his lips and began to nurse tentatively. One of her arms snaking around to cradle the back of his head as the dark water took them. Her cheek nestling, softly, against his hair before it all went black.

The singular call of a crow would echo in those deep waters before he opened his eyes.

There, in the quiet dark, he would find not stoned ceiling or flickering moonlight, but those eyes- very same from the water nymph in his dream, staring down at him.

--------------------------------------------

Surprisingly enough, for a man so paranoid he always wore chainmail in public, he kept his doors unguarded. Part of you wondered if it was a thing of pride like his father. Part of you wondered if he kept it unguarded for you. Despite ignoring you, perhaps he was just waiting- like a spider in its web, lying in wait to ambush the unsuspecting fly.

However, no fangs or crawling legs found your skin when you stepped inside the mahogany doors. Just the sounds of light snoring and twitching fingers. Was this what he was so crazy about? What he had waited in the walls for nights in and out- just watching you just breathe and lay still? It was an odd thing to take pleasure in, you supposed. He slept on his back like a creature of the night, so stiff. Did you sleep that way? No, you would roll in your sleep- you used to kick, too, like a vindictive spirit took over your form while you were abed. Your cousins would complain of it often when they'd sleepover in your chambers. Did he take amusement in that- such a sharp contradiction to his own way of finding rest? Did he lay in wait for the moment your nightgown slipped over your ass, til your legs parted enough for him to get a gaze at your cunt, until you shifted to the side and one of your breasts would spill from its cloth confine? You supposed that would make it a more fun pastime- but you had little that you could peer at for a man. It was not a pastime made for women, you thought to yourself, similar to a great many hobbies in Westeros.

He'd awoken with a start while your mind was lost in thought. Or, perhaps he'd awoken peacefully and had been spooked by you standing over the side of his bed. Either way, he was sitting on his elbows at the moment. Chest rising and falling as he blinked away the sleep in his eyes. It was a sight that made you rethink your fear of the man.

"This is not as fun as I thought it would be" you thought, for once, that you'd speak honestly to one of the princes. You don't know why you did- the first time had had not gone well and you'd received a stern talk from your husband. The second had led to your stepson's lips tangled with yours as he had your hand palm his cock over his trousers. Honesty was something punished in the red keep, not rewarded.

Perhaps you found yourself seeking a punishment, you mused for a moment as the prince's sleep-addled mind fought to catch up. Maybe it would make you feel alive again, for the first time since you started drinking your granduncle's tea. Since the ache left behind from sex with Maekar was no longer enough to satiate you.

"What?" The prince's voice was rasped as he slowly sat up. The quilt he had pooled around his waist, he was still fully clothed in bed- a pair of black, silk trousers and matching tunic. The edges embroidered with little dragon designs on the sleeves and neckline. Daeron slept half-naked, you'd discovered on accident one time when you saw him being dragged back to his chambers by the guards in naught else but a tunic. Aerion must be too paranoid for that sort of thing- always ready to be up and exchanging blows at any moment.

"Watching you- it's not as fun as you made it seem. You said it brought you amusement, it brings me nothing" once you started it was like your voice could not stop. Everything was just so hollow these days. Your own voice sounded like an echo off the empty carcass that had become your life as it left you. Like it was not even yours anymore as you studied the prince.

"You want amusement?" Aerion cocked a brow, looking you up and down as you stood before him. The skin of his cheek rising and falling with the drag of his tongue along his canines.

"I want for a great many things, little of which come to pass" you turned and went to the windows of his chambers. His view was not to the blackwater, but instead went out towards the city below. To the slums of flea bottom and the revelry of the street of silk. You wondered what it was like down there.

"Stop that, you're speaking like Daeron" the young prince grumbled behind you before you felt his chest brush against your back. His cheek went to rest against your hair. Two hands wandered along the fabric of your nightgown in tandem with all his other touches. He was like a balm trying to rub himself over every inch of skin at once.

"... You came back" his lips brushed against your ear. Your head tilting away from his plush mouth as you looked down at the lanterns hundreds and hundreds of feet below. You wondered where the other prince was. What drink he used to swallow the thoughts in his own mind. What little crook of the world he carved himself for the night- as he had nothing else to claim, just like her.

"I have nowhere else to go" the admission fell from your lips in a quiet whisper as you looked back at the prince over your shoulder. His eyes, in the dark, were not so bright as the daytime. More of a gentle lilac without the scorching heat of the sun beating down on them. Part of you, for a brief moment, wondered if the prince would take offense to that remark. His father despised being the last option, perhaps he would too.

But then, just as that night you'd came in raging, Aerion lowered himself down to your lips. In that moment, you'd come to realize that was what he wanted. He took his time, carved away everyone and everything else, and left only one space in the world for you to find solace in- to foolishly conflate as your own. For there to be no one but him, as he dined on you wholly. Two hands on your cheeks like a horse's blinders- locking even the moonlight out from gazing upon your coupling. Lips and tongues brushing against one another like a match and phosphorus.

His hands wandered blindly, grabbing and pulling at any flesh he could find along their journey. Eventually, those rough fingers found their way down to the curve of your ass once more. This time, he grabbed two handfuls instead of one as he pulled you chest-to-chest. A low groan breathed from his mouth into yours as your back hit the cold stones of the windowsill. Like he was breathing the very air that kept you going into your lungs. You responded in kind, one hand going tangle in his cropped tufts as the other wandered his chest. Aerion was muscular like your husband but he was lean in his build. He did not have the years and pounds on him that thickened his biceps and waist. Your nightgown scraping against brick as you blindly wriggled your way up onto the windowsill.

As soon as you were moving up, Aerion was already tugging the silks up over your hips. His lips abandoning your own to chase their way down your jaw to the tender skin of your neck. Your breaths becoming far more ragged as your fingers fisted a handful of his tunic and pulled up. Pale skin bare and shining in the moonlight, slotted between your thighs. You were almost certain your eyes blew out at the sight as Aerion was entirely enraptured by your reaction. Hands pawing at your tits as he pulled you close to meet your lips again after taking his time to study your face.

It was wrong, you knew that much. You were not an idiot. An idealist- a woman relinquished to her own selfish desires and grasping at straws of freedom- a lustful, delusional creature who was sure to spell her own doom? Sure. You could admit it. You were not above the judgement of the gods- and certainly not above the judgement you gave yourself. Even then, even knowing all that of yourself, you still gave way to those very same ideas. Breathing into the mouth of a princeling you had no business with, who by no right should have his hands on you, and it made you feel alive. It made you feel like a person with her own wills, if for only a moment.

Your hands, as his massaged, went down to your silks and tore them up over your head. Your body on complete display, sitting above the prince. The room tinted blue from the light of the half-moon above. The gentle wash blurring the prince's silver hair as you looked down at it. A hand running over the locks as you tried to collect your breath. Watching, bated, as the prince finally got to gaze upon you up close- no lattice or stone beneath him and the presented skin. The curves you knew he'd pleasured himself to night after night- right in front of him in the murky blue.

His eyes were blown out as they dazedly wandered up to yours. The black pools of his a sure reflection of your own. Perhaps that was the true essence of your souls: bottomless pits that took and took, that could never be truly full in the purest form of the word. You could be satiated, you coukd be quelled, but it would only be for fleeting moments. You saw that in one another, even if you didn't wish to admit it at first. But you watched him now, standing beneath you like a man who saw everything he'd ever wanted. His own doom- your own doom- served to each other on silver platters.

You dined- as was your nature- and let the two hollow caverns of your souls try to both fill the other and take their own feed simultaneously.

--------------------------------------------

"Fuck" Aerion whispered into that mane of hair. He had her pressed against the wall, cheek against stone as his chest was to her back. His eyebrows were screwed up- mouth falling open as his hips twitched. Fighting back against the instinct to press up and fully sheath himself in the tight cunt that pulsed around him. One hand kneading at the flesh of her tit to distract himself while the other was holding her hip to keep her arched. A gasp tore from his chest as he finally managed to work her down to the base. She was a good girl, he knew that. She was trained and had taken far worse, of which he'd seen with his own eyes- but it wasn't the stretch that was getting to her. He knew it was just the sheer length. He fell on the skinnier side for cocks, but he was long. Curved upwards, always managing to dig out that spot that made the whores tear up from overstimulation as he had his time with them. Pounding down into the very end of their walls as if he was trying to bury himself right in the uterus. That was where he belonged- he'd think oft- where a dragon was meant to bury his seed. He could feel hers rubbing against his tip as he was fully seated inside. Part of him thought of taking it slow and shallow. Fucking naught else but that end of hers, hitting it over and over. But he knew abusing there would make her cunt raw and aching quicker- and he intended to have her teetering on the edge of pain for far, far longer than that.

Instead, he slowly dragged himself out to the tip, before working his way back up to the hilt. His eyes fluttering closed as he gave a breathy moan at the feeling. Her own mouth open as her eyebrows furrowed from the feeling. He had her- he knew it. If she was not satisfied with what she was getting, she would have to give her the opposite for now. Just until she was weathered down, when she'd be more willing to give him what he wanted instead of focusing on her own needs. Then, he'd get to fuck her as he truly wanted- with all the slamming and slapping and screaming as he loved. But, for now, he just reveled in the soaked grip that he'd dreamed of for moons on end. Studying every ridge and velvety curve that swallowed his manhood.

He repeated that process, taking and giving every inch for the first few thrusts. Until her quiet pleasure turned into breathy moans. Her control slowly rubbing away with each glide of his length inside her. Then, he picked up the pace- only withdrew halfway before snapping back in. Both hands going down to her hips to pull her ass back against him to match each thrust. Gasps hiccuped from her then- broken off with each slap of his balls against her clit. His eyes watched the entire time- not ready to give up a single second. Not after how hard he'd worked. Not for all the coin in the castles's coffers. This was his prize and he'd remember every second of it.

--------------------------------------------

Your back hit the bed and the world spun around you. Plump, angled flesh rubbing at the inside of your thighs as Aerion dove into your chest. Your ass suspended at the edge of the bed as the prince stood over it. Five long fingers wrapped around your throat as his palm pressed flat against it. Tits pressed to his chest as his face nestled into the crook of your neck. Panted, enraptured groans muffled against the skin before he bit down upon it. His hips moving akin to a hound as they're pressed flush to yours- belly to belly. His cock buried to the hilt, dragged out just an inch or two, and then nestling right back in.

The bed slowly creaked beneath you, slow and heady. Your eyebrows screwed up as you tried to get air into your lungs. Trying to not focus on how he shadowed you entirely- how every inch of your skin was met with his skin in kind. Until a growl- a pure growl, not a groan or moan- tore from the prince's chest and he took a ripe, tender nipple between his teeth. Forcing a cry from you as his hips moved from their slow, deep pace to quick and shallow thrusts. The air echoing wet slap after wet slap, stomaches hitting each other as he sucked so hard you thought he'd determined to take the very skin off you. Grazing the hardened flesh, grinding it between his teeth between sucks.

You were jostled- hair scraping against the sheets as your legs locked behind the prince's back. A weak attempt at trying to get him to slow his pace. He only responded in kind, shifting up your body until his lips were pressed to your cheek. Hot air cascading along the flushed skin as his hand went off your neck to grab a fistful of hair. Tugging hard, forcing you to make eye contact as he was buried to the hilt. His thrusts pushing you down into the bed, the mattress squealing in protest beneath you. Your own lips giving all but strangled cries, mouth open and unable to shut despite your better judgement. Your eyes fighting their own battle to stay open- to keep their gaze trained on the violet lightning that would surely strike you down if you closed them.

"That's it- that's it-" the prince groaned and pressed his forehead to yours as he drove you deeper into the bed. His own eyes falling closed finally giving you leave to match him. Your lips just grazing one another. Damp, steaming air meeting in the middle and weighing heavy as it went back down your throat with each hiccuped mewl. The darkness behind your eyelids finally allowed you to focus solely on the coil deep in your belly- on the grind of his head pounding deep, scratching at the walls of your cunt.

"Fuck- fuck!" the prince gave a frustrated groan and a sharp crack filled the air. A cry torn from your chest at the sting on your ass. His hands kneading the meat and digging in hard nail to try and stave off his own end. Stubborn and prideful as any other scaled beast- not yet ready to give up at its meal despite itching at the seams.

Your own mind swam as you caught sight of the ceiling. Dazed and exhausted, perring over the prince's shoulder as he pressed his forehead to the sheets and wrapped an arm around your head to cradle it. Holding you still as he went deeper- pain blooming deep within your belly and spreading up in sharp pulses as he attacked your final wall.

Hanging on the ceiling, you caught sight of a green and gold tapestry. The world blurred at the edges of your vision, focusing solely on the woven threads above. It was something you should've presumed the princeling would own. Many of the old tapestries of Valyrian legends had been burnt by King Baelor the Blessed for nudity and eroticism, yet here one remained. The sides depicted the same scene: a reptile coiled around a woman, plump and ripe with a full figure. Fit with long, flowing gold hair that splayed out like a hundred little serpents. The beast's maw was open, spewing fire as its head was tilted back and hips driving forward between her legs. In the middle, the woman was shown with her legs crossed, bare- suspended in the air. A hatchling, small enough to wrap around her wrist, cradled to her breast as it nursed.

You had little time to wonder how he procured the tapestry or why he had it hung over his bed before you heard a low groan. The prince's cock driving as deep as it could go, pulsing and sputtering inside your sopped and abused cunt.

--------------------------------------------

The moons after would come and go in a blur of two beds- two princes- two roles you had to play at once. But you'd already had a year of experiencing acting- wishing- deluding yourself, it was too far to go back now. Not with a swollen belly and aching breasts- not with sheets still clean and white for two moons. Not a drop of red spilling from you since that night. It would be Prince Maekar's- that you had no doubt. You may give to your whims of comfort- to being needed- but when it came to the eyes of the public you knew better than to fall to the same entrapment. No matter what, it would be his- a new sibling for his sweet princes and princesses.

You open the fridge, scanning through the scarce contents while attempting to drown out the vibration of your phone. Your jaw clenches as anger builds inside you. 

You hate your father. You hate him with all of your heart.

You hate him for never truly being a father to you, always an inconsistent figure that would drop by every few months to play house with you and your mom, always with the promise of getting better and trying harder, only to leave in the quiet of the night a few days later, your mom’s savings shoved in his pockets each and every time.

You hate him for giving hope and then snatching it right back, never truly fulfilling his end of the bargain, for never really caring enough for you and your mom.

You hate him for being such a ghost of a father, for never putting in the effort to be around you or to get to know you, for not taking you out on father-daughter dates, for looking at the five-year version of you and not being sober enough to remember that you were his daughter.

You hate him for all the times he promised to come back for you, all the times he kneeled down and told you to be ready cause this time he was finally taking you out to the movies or to that one amusement park you’ve always wanted to go to only to never show up, not a single phone call or a message to explain as the hours went by and you’d remain seated in the porch steps, trembling with cold but hopeful and insistent that your dad would show up, no matter how much your mom would try to convince you to get inside the warmth of the house. 

You hate him for abandoning you and your mother in favor of needles and white powder. For not being strong enough to stop, for allowing the thrill and euphoria of the drugs to get the best of him.

You hate him because while he is a bad father to you, he was even worse to your mother, never once caring for your mom’s health problems and the bills that come with it or for rent or for your college tuition or for groceries. 

And right now, as you stare at the nearly empty fridge with the loud buzz of the old appliance increasing the longer you stare at it, your hatred for your sperm donor only grows in volume. 

The vibration in your phone sizzles down until it dies off. A moment later, it buzzes once and then twice, before finally quieting down. When the screen finally goes dark, you tap on the old phone’s screen.

A missed phone call and two messages.

You don’t even have to read through the text to know what it says. It’s unpleasant but routine by now. A clockwise visit that you’ve learned to expect as the days drag closer to the end of each month. 

You hate your father for many reasons and one of said reasons being his brother’s monthly visits.

Uncle Baelor, like he insisted you call him back when you were a cheerful child and he would lift into his lap and sneak some candy into your hands like it was your little secret. You don’t like to call him that anymore. 

Your mom’s eyes dig into you as she plates your dinner, a meager dose of omelette and a dry  thin slice of bread. 

“Who is it?” she seems reluctant to ask, much like she already knows the answer. 

“Baelor.” 

You hesitate for a moment. “He says he’ll drop by tomorrow.” 

Tension gathers in your mom’s face.

Her face, once pretty and full of life, now turned into a rather haggard one, the hollow cheeks and dull skin coming as a reminder of her soul-sucking job and the health that keeps failing her and the dark circles beneath her eyes only seem to get worse with each month. Another reason to hate your father. 

She opens her mouth, but no words come out.  

“It’s fine, mom.” you shrug your shoulders and close the fridge, slamming the door harder than the old appliance deserves. “We’re almost running out of food and your meds also need a refill. It's good timing I guess.” 

Her frown deepens at that, much like it does every month. She shakes her head, eyes carrying a helplessness so deep that you have to look away.  

When she speaks, her voice is nothing but a frail, broken whisper. “I wish things were different…”

And in that moment, you feel just as helpless as she does. 

–

You hate your father for a never-ending amount of reasons, but the one that cuts you the deepest is the fact that he was born into money.

A Targaryen, a family that revels in copious amounts of old money and their successful multiple-venture family business. A powerful surname, nearly as distinct as the silver-hair and violet eyes that the majority of the family members have.

You inherited none of them.

Not the surname and certainly not the looks. Your father never married your mother, never bothered enough to sign on the birth certificate and neither did his genes, allowing you to come out as an exact copy of your mother. And while you’re grateful for the latter, you can only dream of how much better-off you and your mom would’ve been had he given you his last name.

A whole world of out-of-reach fantasies haunt you at night, when hunger and stress won’t let you sleep. 

Had you been given the Targaryen surname, not a day would be spent scraping and saving all the pennies you can, of counting every single note and coin only to realize you’re gonna be short for something, of having to stand in the lines of the food banks only to be told that there was nothing more to be given.

You wouldn’t have to make hard decisions, to pick between paying electricity or refilling your mom’s medicine, between paying rent or falling short on the college tuition. If you were a Targaryen by name you wouldn’t have to decide whether you preferred to skip breakfast and dinner altogether for the better part of a month or if replacing your only pair of shoes wasn’t worth it. 

No. If you were a Targaryen you’d be a trust fund kid, spoiled and carefree, living your best life. Your mom would be taken care of with the best doctors and expensive treatments and she’d be able to rest instead of working her ass off for the minimum wage. 

If you were a Targaryen you wouldn’t have to thank your uncle for the check he brings once a month, feeling your cheeks burn with shame as he gives you the money, fully aware that you and your mom are nothing but a side project of his, a little charity project he works on from time to time as you’re sure the rest of the family thinks.

As if he’s offering you the money out of his heart’s kindness instead of giving you what you are rightfully owed. 

But then again - it’s not really charity work, is it?

There is no such thing as a free lunch in this world and you sure do pay a hefty price for what he gives. He gives you something and you give him something else in return. Because that’s how the world works. 

If you were a Targaryen, you wouldn’t have to go through the humiliation of being a charity work of your billionaire uncle.

Things would’ve been so much different for you, and sometimes while laying awake at night, mind unable to shut off with all the bills and expenses that keep adding up, you like to imagine how different your life would've had been.

Maybe you’d be a less bitter person, less stiff, less negative.

Maybe you wouldn’t look at your classmates and seethe with jealousy at the clothes and phones and laptops they own. Maybe you wouldn’t cry hidden in the bathroom because someone mentioned that you’ve used the same jacket for nearly three weeks - because that’s the only jacket you have.

Maybe you wouldn’t have to juggle between college and the part-time job at the shitty restaurant, the long hours of standing and serving and tolerating disrespectful clients, all with a smile on your face just to earn scraps that barely get you by. 

Life could’ve been so much different and it hurts when you think about it. 

Maybe you’d be able to go shopping and have fun and drive a nice car. A sleek, expensive black car much like the one your uncle is parking in front of your house.

There’s uncontained jealousy as you observe him exiting the car.

It doesn’t go unnoticed to you that this is a different car from the one he drove last month, you don’t even know why you’re surprised. You live in completely different worlds and his family changes cars like someone changes socks. They’re filthy rich while you and your mom remain dirt poor - the sad reality of your life.  

You hide behind the curtain of the window, bitterly watching Baelor lock the door of the shiny car before heading towards the house with quick steps. 

The knock to the door comes a moment later but you don’t rush. Instead you take your sweet time walking to the door, not exactly eager to face him.  A second knock resounds, more firmly this time. With a deep breath, you prepare yourself to face your uncle. 

His face eases up when the door opens, a small smile dangling on his lips.

He stands confidently tall, dressed with a formal black suit and pants and silver personalized cufflinks much like he just came from the office. His outfit, judging by the appearance, looks like it cost more than your house.

“Y/n.”

“Uncle.” you nod at him as a greeting. You stopped hugging him years ago. 

“May I?” 

You pull the door wider and watch as Baelor enters with the confidence and steadiness of someone who knows their way around.

A hint of annoyance flares up at that, at the arrogant way he walks in much like he owns the house. Which he technically nearly does. It’s his money that pays for the rent and covers for the utilities, a thought that begrudgingly comes to you. 

Instead of following Baelor to the minuscule living room, you head over to the kitchen.

You grab a clean glass and place it underneath the faucet. As it fills up with tap water, you check behind you and then quickly bring your face to the glass.

A globe of spit drops to the water as silently as you can. What Baelor doesn’t know can’t hurt him and God knows he deserves much worse than this. 

When you enter the living room, you find Baelor seated on the couch, reading something off of his phone - which you vaguely recognize as the latest model of the expensive brand.

He has removed the black blazer, leaving it folded in the back of a chair. But even while wearing the simple white shirt and black formal pants, he still appears quite the tycoon. A tycoon that has no business sitting on a second-hand couch in the middle of a small living room whose walls have paint peeling off in pieces. 

He looks up when you hand him the cup, thanking you. Petty satisfaction blooms in your chest as he takes an unsuspecting sip of the water. Serves him well. 

He places the glass on the small coffee table and puts his phone face down next to it. And then looks at you, his gaze assessing you as you stand at short distance.

You stare back at him. 

Same as you, your eldest uncle also failed to inherit the Targaryen genes. The short dark hair matches with his beard, both of them sprinkled with grey. 

There’s a maturity and a severity in his face that often makes him look much older than what he truly is, though you know he just recently celebrated his thirty-seventh birthday. His eyes, one violet and the other brown, perspect you attentively. 

He gives you a small, kind smile that you don’t retribute. 

“How have things been? With the two of you.” 

As if he cares. Fighting back the urge to scoff at him, you shrug your shoulders. 

“Fine.”

He gives a small nod, eyes searching around the division. “And your mother?”

You try not to show how much that question bothers you. 

“At work.”

Baelor’s attention returns to you. “And how’s college going?”

“Well, I guess.”

“That’s good. Education and knowledge are two things you can never have enough.” he says with an approving nod. “College is a good experience, prepares you for the future. Do you have friends there?”

“A few.” you lie. 

“Good.” Baelor’s eyes dig into you. “And boyfriends?”

You shift the weight between your legs. You despise how every question sounds like an interrogation and you wish he’d just hand over the check and get over with the rest.

“No.” you speak the truth this time. “I don’t have time for that.”

Baelor lets out a quiet hum as he reclines on the couch.

“You do well. You should focus on your studies before anything else.”

The silence grows for a few moments. When Baelor speaks again, it’s with a softer tone.

“You didn’t attend my birthday celebration.” he gently brings up. “I was quite sad not to have you there. The whole family was in attendance except for you, that is.”

You know that.

Your cousin Daella’s Instagram is public and you’re not a stranger to stalking her posts from time to time, a habit that you can’t let go of, no matter how much you try.

She posted quite a lot for that day - mostly her own photos, with the stylish gown and glamorous makeup - but a few videos of the event also appeared through the flood of selfies. 

Something had rotted in your chest while you used the college’s wifi to watch the numerous shots of the tower of cake and the huge pile of presents, all the sparkly designer dresses and the shiny jewelry and for once, you were glad you didn’t attend.

You would have made a fool of yourself, dressed in the best outfit you own - washed away jeans and a pink blouse. It’s not like you have a dress at your disposal when you can’t even afford a new pair of shoes. 

Baelor continues.

“Matarys was quite eager to meet you. He kept asking for you, if at last he was going to meet you.” 

You swallow and shrug your shoulders. “I was busy.”

The silence prolongs itself for a moment and Baelor looks at you as though he’s expecting you to elaborate. When you don’t, remaining with a blank face and arms crossed, he lets out a small sigh.  

“Yes, I’m sure you were.”

You can’t contain the flare of anger at his tone. 

“I was working the entire day. So, yeah, sorry for missing your fancy birthday party over that.” 

Baelor grimaces at your small outburst. His hand begins to toy with the expensive, golden rings adorning his fingers. 

“I know. You are a very hard-working girl and I did not mean otherwise.” he says, as a justification. “I only meant that you have a family that would very much like to meet you, if so you wished.”

You bite your tongue to avoid telling your uncle that if the rest of the family is anything like him or your father, you’re better off not meeting any of them. Your mom is all the family you need. All the family that is actually here for you, unlike those rich fake uncles and cousins.

“And it’s not just my son Matarys. Your grandmother Myriah speaks of you quite often. Asks me about you all the time.” 

“Right.” 

All the internet pictures of Myriah Targaryen showed a woman with kind features and grey hair, pretty jewelry always adorning her neck and hands. She looked much like a modern grandmother, dressed impeccably.

Then again she knows where you live, she knows where you study, she knows her eldest son comes to your house with a check every month. So what’s stopping her from coming to you herself or God forbids, giving you a call.

Your uncle’s eyebrows rise at your silence. 

“She’d be most glad to meet you. All of the family would.” Baelor assures you, before adding. “If you agree, next month we could-”

“Like I said, I’m busy. College, work, my mom. My plates are full at the moment.”

You cut him off more indelicately than you should considering he’s the one with a big wallet but you’re getting tired of walking in circles. You’re growing impatient and anxious and you just want him and his arrogant ass out of your house, the only place you find some solace in. 

You take a step forward. 

“Can we… get it over with?” you ask. “Please. I’ve got exams to study for.”

Baelor expression falls in the slightest, brows furrowing and then easing up. He’s quick in molding his face back to normal, wearing that mask of composure he always does. 

“Of course.” he answers. “Let me get it for you.”

You exhale shakily as Baelor stands up and reaches for his jacket, digging into the pocket until he retrieves the white envelope, where inside lays the check.

Finally.

Your skin prickles with anxiety and anticipation as Baelor places the paper on the coffee table before coming to stand before you.

He stands much too close, your nose catching the distinct fragrance of his cologne. A hand rises to your face, the back of his long fingers caressing your cheek with a feather-light touch.

His gaze darkens as it lands on your lips, still humid from the lip balm you put on earlier. 

“I’ve done my end of the bargain.” his voice deepens as he inches closer, his hand slowly descending until the back of your neck is trapped in his palm.

“You fulfill yours now.”

–

You hiss at the uncomfortable feeling.

You dig your nails into the back of your thighs, the self-inflicted pain helping you distract from the thick cock that is splitting you in half. A single tear escapes from the corner of your eyes, quickly slipping down your neck.

Baelor leans forward until his body is molded on top of yours, his weight pressing you down on the bed. His forearms rest against the pillow on each side of your head, trapping you in. 

“That’s it, sweet girl. Taking my cock so well.” he praises you, lips hovering over yours before capturing them into a kiss. He pushes his hips and swallows down your whimper as he buries himself to the hilt.

He groans, a deep sound that vibrates through your chest, but remains still, letting you get used to him. You squirm, feeling a dull ache at his cock stretching you to the fullest and yet twitching at the short curls at his base that tingle your clit. 

His kiss turns insistent and you take the cue, obliging by parting your lips and letting Baelor deeper into your mouth, his beard scratching at your skin.

Nausea gathers in your stomach when your brain reminds you that the man whose tongue is inside your mouth and whose cock is balls deep into your pussy is none other than your own uncle. 

You hate your father for an endless list of reasons, all of them valid on their own, but the one that truly breaks you is that he’s the sole reason why every month you have to lay on your back and let his older brother fuck you raw.

All because life is unfair and you were born with shitty luck, because your uncle has money and you don’t.  

Baelor parts the kiss and presses his forehead to yours, mismatched eyes boring deep into your soul as he begins to move.

He starts at an excruciatingly slow rhythm, calm and unrushed as he intently studies every shift and expression that appears on your face, easily catching on whenever a sparkle of pleasure brightens your face and being quick in adjusting the angle to keep hitting that spot. 

Your cheeks burn with betrayal and humiliation as wetness begins to accommodate his intrusion, as pleasure begins to build inside you and Baelor is fast in catching that, the corner of his lip twitching. He forces you to hold his gaze as he begins to build a steady, firm pace that has your single bed squeaking at the effort.

Your tight walls cling to his cock, the stretch feeling just delicious and it doesn’t help that his pelvis keeps brushing against your sensitive bundle of nerves, sparkling in a way that has you clenching around him. 

You release your hands from your thighs that are now burning from the strain of keeping them apart for so long, and slither them around his back, clinging onto the older man as he fucks you vigorously. His warm breath fawns over your face, flushed cheeks and Baelor groans when your walls clamp around his shaft like a vice, eager to get the release you so desperately desire. 

“Baelor…. ah, uncle, please.” you beg, feeling your climax right around the corner.  

Baelor fucks you with strokes that reach deep enough to nearly make you lose your head, each slam of his hips against yours hard enough to have breathless sounds punctured out of you and the coil inside of you keeps dangerously tightening with each rigorous thrust. 

“Go on then, sweetheart. Take what you need. Cum all over my cock.” he pants, clenched jaw and strained voice telling that he’s getting closer as well. 

A few more strokes and the coil inside you finally snaps like a storm, pleasure exploding like a million little stars that have your back arching and your lips falling apart in a soundless moan and in this moment, you couldn’t care any less that the cock you’re coming all over belongs to your uncle, because your own fingers are never able to deliver such a devastating orgasm. 

Your impending orgasm has Baelor reaching his as well, slamming himself home with a harsh thrust as he comes inside you with a heavy groan and a curse, forehead pressed against yours.

The aftermath washes away the pleasure and replaces it with something less pleasant, the disgust and horror slither underneath your skin like it always happens every month, after the deed is done.

Baelor breathes heavily on top of you, attempting to catch his breath and you remain underneath him, frozen like a statue. Feeling impure and disgusting for doing what you did, even if there was no way of escaping it.

And then the silent, cold anger returns and you feel upset. At yourself for just giving in without much a fight, at the world for being so unfair but most especially, at your father because he’s the root of your problems. 

And with your uncle’s cum slowly dribbling down from your pussy and his cock still stretching you out, you close your eyes and swallow back the disgust. 

It's done now. For this month, at least.