BRIGHTFLAME

“Hm? What was that?”

The argument begins with a conversation while the two of you are drunk on firewine and lounging in the sand, watching the sunset, though neither of you knows quite yet the disastrous path Aerion’s line of questioning will lead you down. 

It’s been almost a moon since the two of you came down with sea fever, and Aerion has been acting odd ever since. At first, you assume it is simply one of his moods—Aerion has many of them, after all. Some days, he wakes restless and sharp-tongued, prowling through markets like a caged beast looking for something to bite. Other days, he is languid, stretched across cushions with a goblet in hand, while you entertain yourself by irritating him until he snaps. Recently, he has been quieter, more prone to lashing out, quicker to assert himself at your side when you drift away. 

Which is normal-ish. 

If it were just that, you might be able to brush it off as another strange, territorial mood. But it’s also the way he watches you now—like he is calculating something, weighing your words before they have even finished leaving your mouth. It’s the way his questions come, one after another, circling the same subjects as though he is trying to pin them in place. Volantis. The Black Walls. Your father. The factions at court. Old rivalries. Trade. 

At first, you laugh it off, answer lightly, deflect when you can. But he does not let things lie—he has never been inclined to do that, but it appears even less so now. He presses and doubles back. He remembers what you say and returns to it days later, asking the same question from a different angle, as though he’s watching for inconsistencies.

It’s not how one makes conversation. It’s how one… interrogates when they’re trying not to be obvious about the interrogation. You know the difference because you have done this before—because you have had it done to you. There was an Elephant heir once—Aenys Vyninar, son of one of the current ruling Elephant Triarchs—clever and smiling, pretty and soft-spoken in a way that made men and women underestimate him. The two of you spent years circling one another at court, trading questions dressed as pleasantries, testing for weaknesses, loyalties, and limits, anything that could be turned into leverage later. You learned quickly that the most dangerous questions are never the ones that sound like interrogations—they are the ones that sound like curiosity. 

Aerion does not smile the way the Aenys did, and he does not try to lower your guard with stolen kisses and touches as he asks the questions—he is far less subtle—but the pattern is the same.

And when the red flags start waving, when you start paying attention, you notice other things. The servants say he stays up most nights trying to write up letters to send by raven to Westeros. That ravens come more frequently now, dark shapes cutting across the sky toward the Vyrano’s manse at odd hours. One of your harbor boys tells you the same—that the prince has been sending more birds west than he had when he first arrived.

Which—that upsets you, because when you put it all together, it leads you to one conclusion: that he’s trying to get information out of you to send back home. It upsets you far more than it should. More than it ever has when men try to use you. It is logical, you tell yourself. He is an exile trying to regain favor with his family; of course, he would look to a foreign noble from a city that has bordered on enemies with his family for three hundred years to try to get information to curry favor. It is logical, and it would not bother you so much if he were anyone else, and yet—

And yet, it makes your stomach twist. Terribly so.  

“I asked,” Aerion says again slowly, as though he suspects the wine has dissolved whatever good sense you possess, “whether you have ever been west.”

You pause, fiddling with your wine glass. 

A broad question. Broader than the last few he’s asked, but questions do not have to sound precise to be useful. Sometimes the broadest ones tell you the most—where someone has been, what they have seen, which courts have shaped their thinking. It is how you learn, not just what a person knows, but how they know it.

You assume he’s talking about western Essos, and you imagine that he’s going to ask about Volantene political relationships with the rest of the daughters of Valyria. Yesterday, he asked about the Tiger and Elephant parties—it would be the next logical step, from internal politics to foreign. You can picture the reports to his father, telling him which Volantene nobles would be amenable to a trade negotiation, which Westerosi goods would be most profitable, which Free Cities might take issue with a Westeros–Volantis alliance, and how they might take advantage of it. 

The most important thing an exile can do in exile is prove to his family that he is still of use—that he is worth bringing home.

You know this because you have tried it yourself.

In the first year, when the sting of exile was still fresh and pride had not yet slipped into hopelessness, you played this same game. You listened more than you spoke once the anger passed, collected names and allegiances, traced who held power and who only pretended to. You sent word where you could, careful little reports dressed as courtesy and loyalty and proof that distance had not lessened your value. That you were still worth the future they had taken from you.

You still do, sometimes.

But they never answer. Never acknowledge the work you put in. Not you, not when exile is a mercy, but Aerion—

Aerion’s exile isn’t permanent, and it isn’t mercy. Aerion’s exile centers on the question of when he will go back, not if. Aerion’s exile can be shortened if he proves to his father that he has been properly chagrined by his time abroad, if he proves that he is useful to his family. You told him this yourself when the Tyroshi and Myrish envoy docked in the harbor.

You should not indulge it, not when you know what he is doing. You know this.

“West,” you repeat vaguely after a moment, when the silence has stretched on too long.

He hums, silently beckoning you to continue, and your brows furrow.

You wave a lazy hand in the air. “A couple times,” you say. You speak even though you know better, and your voice is light, but there is a pit in your stomach that you cannot seem to rid yourself of. “When I was younger. Pentos and Tyrosh when I was two and ten. My father was threatening some merchant lords, and thought I should join to see how it is done. The Stepstones several times to rout pirates who looted our ships.”

Aerion’s gaze does not leave your face, lips flat, deadpan.

“I meant farther west, you fool.”

Westeros? 

You blink, trying to figure out why he would be asking you about Westeros of all places, unless he’s trying to gauge the old blood’s opinions on his homeland—in that case, he will be seriously unhappy with the answers he receives, and you will have to tread carefully.

“Oh.” You consider that for a moment, fingers sliding through the fine-grained sand as the sun begins to set over the sea. “No.”

Half-draped over his lap, you peer up at him curiously, watching the way his lips pinch together. He doesn’t look down at you, gaze pinned on the sunset, even though you can tell he’s not really watching it at all. You do not watch it either, even though you were the one who insisted on coming out here to watch the sunset. 

You watch him instead.

It is easier, you’ve found, to understand Aerion when he’s not speaking at all. When he speaks, he is sharp and cutting, and never truly says what he means, using words as weapons or shields depending on his mood. But when he is quiet, you can see all of the things he would ordinarily hide behind his chosen mask, how his lips tighten and his eyes shift as he stares into the distance, how his brows furrow and his nostrils flare as he exhales. As though this is just as difficult for him as it is for you—you like the idea of that, at least. That he is using you for information, but it is not easy for him to do so. 

As soon as the thought crosses your mind, it pisses you off—you like the idea of that? Consoling yourself by telling yourself that at least it is not easy for him to do this? Who even are you?

“Why?” you ask, propping yourself up on one elbow, watching as he hisses in annoyance when the bone digs into his thigh. You give him a sweet smile as he shoots you an accusing glare. “Hm?”

“I was just curious,” he says after a moment, still shooting you a vicious glare. “What do you know about it?”

Yes, you realize, tongue pressing to the back of your teeth when you realize you were correct in your assumptions. He’s trying to figure out Volantene opinion on Westeros. Why does it bother you so much that he’s using you for information? It shouldn’t. It’s logical. You would be doing the same if he were from a kingdom worth the old blood’s time. So, why can’t you push away the way your chest tightens? Worse, why are you allowing it to happen? Why haven’t you shut this down and accused him of what he’s doing? 

It all comes back to the same questions that have been plaguing you for weeks: What will you do when he leaves? Is this really just a taste of fire? Indulgence? Distraction? Why do you not sabotage, when you have never been above such methods before? Why, ever, would you think of home, and then think of bringing him to see it? Why would you sit at his bedside while he’s sick and nurse him back to health? Why do you sit here and let him use you as a source of information to report back to his family?

It is becoming increasingly intolerable to pretend this isn’t what it is—and what it is, is entirely unacceptable.

You press your lips together and raise your eyebrows. “That is a very broad question, dragon prince.”

Aerion scowls. “Answer it.”

You huff softly, shifting your weight so that you’re more comfortably draped across him, fingers idly brushing patterns into the sand.

“Fine,” you concede. “Let me think.”

You tilt your head, gaze drifting toward the horizon as you lay your head in his lap, lashes fluttering when his fingers lift to toy with the ends of your hair. You hum, mind racing from thought to thought as you try to remember something not totally unpleasant to give Aerion as an answer. Westeros is not fondly spoken of in Volantis, or throughout Essos generally, really, and the Targaryens are—well, the Volantene old blood have low opinions of the western dragon family for countless reasons. 

“I know that it is called the Seven Kingdoms, even though there are technically nine,” you say after a moment, proud of yourself for coming up with something neutral. You hear Aerion snort above you. “I know that House Targaryen rules over them. Though from news that has crossed the Narrow Sea, I hear that rule has been… contested, recently.”

Aerion’s fingers still in your hair. Touchy subject, you realize, and decide to move on.

“Your people call themselves more civilized than the rest of the world while chopping each other apart over titles and inheritance disputes,” you continue wryly, unable to help yourself, but you catch yourself when Aerion scoffs. “Your winters are long enough to kill cities, and your summers long enough to make men forget the cold exists at all.”

“Go on,” he murmurs, absently smoothing your hair back from your face.

“I know that your men love the idea of honor until it becomes inconvenient for them,” you add, lips curving, “and that half your court would sell the other half for a slightly better seat at your king’s table.”

Aerion bristles with a huff. “That is hardly unique to Westeros.”

“No,” you agree, “but you dress it up in prettier words and act as though you are better than everyone else.”

Aerion scowls. “What are the Volantene courts like, then?” he asks after a moment. 

“Vicious,” you say immediately, a small smile curling at your lips as your eyes slide shut, and nostalgia floods you in an instant. You miss your home. Miss it so much that you’re willing to talk about it with someone who is clearly only trying to fish for information from you. When did you become so sentimental? “But we are honest about it. Mostly. We do not pretend otherwise, or cloak it in honor or chivalry or whatever pretty words your lords use to justify their ambitions. We want power, and we take it when we can. If we cannot, we position our pieces on the board so that we can”

It is the pride of the old blood, you do not say out loud, who refuse to hide their nature behind gentler fictions. 

It is said that thousands of years ago, while the rest of the world prayed to gods, the Valyrians became them, and though the Freehold burned, that arrogance did not. Gods are not bound by the morality of men. They do not temper themselves to be palatable, and they do not soften themselves to be loved, or feared, or understood. They simply are. They take what they want, and the world bends around them—or breaks.

Even the Elephants, in all of their coin and venom, live by that same understanding—smiles sweeter and daggers in ledgers instead of hands, but no less sharp for it. They do not pretend their wars are anything but wars. They just prefer quieter battlefields. You do not have to question who your enemies are in Volantis; the lines are drawn clearly, etched in blood and coin and old grudges that no one bothers to soften with pretty words.

“We are what we are,” you finish, voice soft with wistfulness, though your eyes remain closed. “We do not dress it up to make ourselves easier to stomach.”

Aerion’s fingers slow in your hair. “And what is that?” he asks.

You smile faintly.

“Cruel,” you say simply. “Ambitious. Patient when we must be, vicious when we can be. We remember what we were, and we do not pretend we have become something lesser simply because the world hopes we have.”

Unlike the Targaryens, the old blood of Volantis lost its dragons during the Doom, but it never lost its blood, its rites, or its rituals. You’re not quite sure why you try to get that dig in, because you know it will irritate Aerion, but you’re feeling quite irritated yourself, so you think you should share the wealth, so to speak. You shift slightly, turning your face more fully into his lap, his warmth a pleasant contrast to the cooling sand beneath you. He doesn’t lash out the way you expect him to. 

“And you think we do,” Aerion says, voice cool. 

“I think your Sunset Kingdoms dress its power in virtues it does not actually believe in. Honor. Duty. Piety. As though naming something noble makes it so,” you reply. Then, you add, “I think your family has learned to soften what it is to make it palatable to those who would fear it otherwise.”

“That is untrue,” Aerion scoffs, jaw tight.

“Is it?” you ask, raising your eyebrows, but you decide against pushing further, because you don’t want to argue—not really.

You think, bitterly, that if any of your friends could see you now, they would laugh in your face. It is not that you want to argue, you understand, not really, you are just frustrated with yourself for giving Aerion everything he wants without protest, even when you know what he’s doing, even when you know that if anyone back home knew this, they would lose their mind. You befriending and fucking the dragon prince is already bad enough, but giving him information like this? 

They’d never look at you the same. Never. 

The Westerosi royal family has long been spoken of with disdain. They are dragonlords who traded their blood for crowns, who bent themselves to lesser men and called it conquest. They are diminished, your father would say, softened in a way the Volantene old blood refuse to be, and when the last of the dragons died for their inheritance dispute after years of the old blood trying to work with the Targaryens to restore the Freehold… 

Well, many of the old blood would prefer a union between rival houses than anything to do with the Targaryens.

Aerion drawls, “You seem to have a very low opinion of my family and my homeland.”

“I have never been, dragon prince,” you remind him, dismissive, hoping to shift the conversation back to him. “I only know what I have been told.”

“And yet you speak as though you have seen it yourself.”

You crack one eye open to glance up at him. “Is it inaccurate?”

Aerion’s lips press together. “…Not entirely.”

You smile faintly, satisfied, and let your eyes slide shut again. “Tell me about your courts, then.”

Aerion does not immediately reply, and you think he has some nerve—so quick to seek information from you, but not even willing to put on the front of reciprocation. But then he speaks, and the brief spark of anger is extinguished. 

“They are not so different from what you described,” he admits. “Ambitious and petty, although they pretend as though they are above it. They speak of honor and duty and loyalty to the Realm, and then they undermine each other at every opportunity, scheming and lying and making alliances that last only as long as they are useful. Everyone has their own nest of vipers, but they insist on pretending the snakes are doves.”

You snort. “How exhausting.”

“It is,” he agrees. “You are expected to smile at men who would gladly see you dead, call them allies, break bread with them, trust them, invite them into your home—”

“And then poison them later,” you finish lazily. “In Volantis, if a member of an Elephant family sets foot in the palace of a Tiger family without invitation, it is known that their life becomes forfeit if they are caught. And vice versa. We do not waste time pretending we are anything but enemies, would sooner break a neck than break bread.”

“It is not all bad,” Aerion says quietly after a moment. “It can be amusing—at times.”

“How so?” you ask, gaze lifting to his face as you stretch in his lap, fighting a yawn.

“Watching them,” he replies. “They whisper behind closed doors and pass notes through servants they think loyal, make careful little moves across the board as though no one else can see them. They are so convinced of their own brilliance that they cannot see that they’re not as clever as they believe themselves to be. It is like here—sitting on the balcony above it all, watching the magisters and merchant princes scramble with their alliances below. I think that—”

He cuts himself off abruptly, jaw tightening as he looks away. You tilt your head curiously. “You think that…?”

“Nothing,” he says after a moment, voice unusually subdued. 

You watch him for a beat longer, eyes narrowing slightly.

“You were about to say something,” you press.

“I changed my mind.”

“Well, change it again.”

Aerion huffs softly, irritation creeping back into his expression like a mask snapping into place. “No. I decided it was not worth saying.”

You watch him carefully for a moment, noticing how tense he suddenly is, fingers flexing where they rest against your body, restless energy thrumming beneath the surface of his skin. He is terribly on edge, all of a sudden, and though it makes you curious, you have little desire to antagonize him after the mind-numbing day of feasts and politics you had.

“If you say so,” you say lazily. Then you add quietly, “It does sound like it could be amusing, watching it unfold—at times, that is.”

Aerion’s gaze flicks toward you, an unreadable expression on his face, something terribly and uncharacteristically soft in the amethyst of his eyes. His throat bobs. Briefly, you wonder if maybe your assumptions were wrong because Aerion has never looked at you like this, not so open, not so hopeful, but you disregard the thought immediately, because what else would it be?

“Yes,” he agrees. “At times.”

——————————

Several days later, he prods again, and you are aggravated, though you try to play it off.

“Did you just say something?”

Aerion rolls his eyes, irritated. “I asked you what you did as a child.”

You pause, mind working to figure out what information he might be trying to gather from this. “That is a strange question.”

“It is a simple one,” he counters. “Try to keep up, wench.”

You scoff, rolling your head back against the cushions and swinging your feet onto his lap, ignoring the indignant look he shoots toward you. You lift your wine glass, beckoning for one of the courtesans to come fill it for you, and as she does, you tilt your head to look at Aerion again, calculating.

“What does it matter?”

Aerion shrugs, though his gaze remains fixed on you in that sharp, assessing way he’s been the past few weeks. “I am curious.”

“You have been unduly curious these past few weeks,” you note, subtly calling out his attempts at intel gathering, swirling your glass once it’s filled and lifting it to your lips, taking a long sip and staring at him from over the rim. Aerion flushes and gives you an accusing look. Some nerve. “Why do you care to know about my childhood?”

Aerion sneers, realizing you’re not going to drop the why. “Children are taught what matters long before they are old enough to understand it,” he says after a moment, voice clipped and logical. “How they play is how they learn to think.”

“Ah,” you realize, lips curving into a smile that doesn’t quite reach your eyes. “You are asking how the old blood raise their heirs.”

Aerion does not deny it, but he does squint lightly with a small frown, so you wonder if you got something wrong. You don’t press again, though, humming lightly, head falling back to look up at the ceiling as you decide how you want to answer. You feel his hand curl around your ankle, thumb running absent circles around the bone protruding there. Your gaze traces the impeccable marble above, considering your words. 

You should not indulge him, you think as you do every time he snoops for information. You know what he’s doing. 

Yet, you find yourself wanting to anyway. You want him to understand you—where you came from, who you are, how you became this way—and you want to understand him to. 

This is not indulgence, not a taste of fire or a distraction, this is—

“Well,” you say lightly, “we did not play at knights and maidens, if that is what you are imagining.”

Aerion scoffs. ”I am not.”

“Good,” you reply. “Because that would be terribly dull.”

He fights a sneer and then presses, “So? What did you do then?”

“We played cyvasse, of course,” you say first. “Before we could properly hold a blade, we were taught to move pieces across a board. Have you played before?”

“I have not,” he says after a moment. “How is it played?”

“It is a strategy game,” you explain, despite better judgment, despite knowing that if he were anyone else, you would have told him to fuck off and take his snooping to shove it up his ass. But he’s not anyone else—he’s Aerion, and you hate that it changes anything, everything. “Two players, each with their own set of pieces—elephants, dragons, heavy horse, spearmen, trebuchets, more—arrayed in secret behind a screen before the match begins. The board is made of varied terrain, so positioning matters as much as the pieces themselves, if not more. Each piece moves differently, and the goal is simple: outmaneuver your opponent and capture their king. It is more about learning foresight and patterns, and how to weaponize them, than anythign else—anticipating moves, controlling space, forcing your enemy into mistakes before they even realize they’ve made them. I will teach you to play one day—” The promise slips out before you can catch it, and you hate how easily it does. “—but you must promise not to cry when you lose, dragon prince.”

Aerion bares his teeth at you. “I do not lose.”

“You will,” you say with an easy curl of your lips, head lolling to the side to look at him. “I have not lost a game of cyvasse since I was a child.”

Aerion huffs and raises his chin. “We will see.”

So arrogant, you think fondly, a small smile on your lips as you roll your head back again to look up at the ceiling, exhaling through your nose as you recall the first time you remember sitting across from your father at the game table. 

You were young—four or five, maybe. You vaguely recall staying up half the night flipping through a war book detailing the Century of Blood. You didn’t understand half of the words yet, but you understood the pictures, and that was enough. 

He was proud of you—your father was always proud of you. You were his pride and joy, his sharpest blade, the child he paraded before the Tigers as proof that his bloodline would not falter when it came time to name a successor. Your brother was always your mother’s favorite, her soft little boy who only wanted for music and laughter, but you were your father’s daughter, cut from steel with a mind honed for war. 

You had not won back then, you were still only a child, but you remember how the room had gone quiet when your father realized what you’d done. How you’d unwittingly shaped the terrain to choke his advance, funneled his stronger pieces into narrow passes, sacrificed just enough to bait him forward. You had not understood the full scope of it then, only moving pieces in the way you’ve seen others and in books—you were just happy that you had made your cold father smile, determined to do it again. 

But the men around the table had understood. 

The old blood weigh their children in potential, and you proved in one game that you were not merely clever for your age, but prodigious in a way that could be honed with time. You saw patterns quicker than most, and moved pieces with an an instinct that could not be taught. You were invited to more tables after that, tested and pressed and always watched—and you always, always rose to the occasion. 

You were fucking inevitable, and everybody in the Black Walls knew it—from your peers to the elders to the Elephant cunts who watched you with wary eyes the moment you began shadowing your father at council meetings. 

The Tigers were desperate for someone sharp enough, ruthless enough, visible enough to rally behind without fracturing themselves in the process. Old blood bred pride, and pride made men difficult to follow—that was especially true amongst the warhawks of the Tiger party—but you made it easy. You were young, brilliant, charismatic, undeniably of them, and you made victories look effortless. You gave them something that they had not had in generations—momentum, the miracle needed to steal the majority from the Elephants after three centuries of losses dressed up as compromise.

Until you weren’t. 

From future Triarch to a prince’s whore.

Now you’re lounging with a fucking Targaryen, letting him pick you apart piece by piece, drive a blade into your chest, after you hand him the steel and stand there with open arms, smiling as he does it. 

Who the fuck even are you? What have you let him make of you?

A fool, that’s what.

Your teeth grind together, tongue pressing against the back of them as you school the heat that rises at your train of thought. 

“We played at war, too,” you force yourself to continue, clearing your throat, forcing the lingering thoughts away when you see Aerion watching you with those calculating eyes, trying to figure out where your mind is when it drifts. You do not want him to know, so you push it all away. You do not know whether you are more angry at him for asking, or at yourself for answering. “Much more violent than Cyvasse.” You toss him a wink and a smile that barely makes it to your eyes. “And much more fun.”

He raises his eyebrows. “War?” he echoes, and when you hum in affirmation, he says blandly, “War is not a game.”

“It is when you are a child,” you say. “Or rather, when your tutors wish to see what you might become. They would divide us—children of the Tiger families against one another. Give us each a stretch of garden, or a section of a family’s palace, or even an entire courtyard, and tell us to take one another’s. Whoever has the most territory by the end is crowned victor.”

Aerion’s eyes narrow, amused, curious. “How would you take territory?”

“With whatever we could find,” you say easily. “Wooden swords, practice bows, servants bribed into acting as informants, other children convinced to betray their sides. Once, I set fire to the stables one of the boys was given as his territory to smoke him out, and then had him hunt down another in exchange for keeping him in the game as a vassal.”

His lips twitch faintly. “That sounds less like a game and more like training.”

“It was, partly,” you admit. “Cyvasse showed them how we think. War games showed them what we would do with that thinking. They were able to determine which of us were worth investing time in, and which should only be used as broodmares and trophies for the ones who were.”

Aerion raises his brows slightly, as though considering your words. He asks at last, “And what did you do with your thinking?”

You give him a sharp smile. “I won, of course.” 

Your eyes slide shut, your smile softening. Your brother would always wait for you to find him during war games. He would try to slip away to some hidden corner of the palace whenever the bells rang to signal a day of games, but your father’s men always found him in time for the starting horn. So he learned to wait instead—counting on you to reach him first, so he wouldn’t have to face your father’s wrath for being the first to lose his territory. 

You’re too old for war games now, but you can’t help but wonder what your father has roped him into now that he’s his only heir left. You know well what it looks like—long days in the yard until your arms tremble and your grip fails, tutors who strike first and correct later, lessons in strategy that bleed into lessons in cruelty. You thrived under it, but he never did, fingers better suited to strings than steel, temper too gentle for the kind of world your father demanded you both to master. You stood between him and the worst of it for as long as you could—taking the harder paths and drawing the attention away, winning quickly so he wouldn’t have to lose slowly—but there is no one left to do so now.

Your throat tightens, and you ask after a moment to change the subject, “And what do Westerosi do as children, dragon prince?” 

Aerion doesn’t answer for a moment too long. You crack one eye open to peer at him, seeing how his expression is all twisted. He says after a moment, voice little over a mutter, “Knights and maidens.”

You laugh loudly, ignoring the way he sneers at you, a smile pulling at your lips as you roll onto your side to look at him more clearly. 

“Were you the knight or the maiden?” you tease, laughing again when he gives you an offended look, grabbing your ankle to drag you closer to him, until your head is flat against the cushions. He shifts so that he is hovering above you, forearms pressed on either side of your head, narrow hips slotted between your thighs. You lean your head up to brush your lips against his as you purr, “I would be your knight, zaldrīzes dārilaros.”

“I was the dragon,” he says, snapping down on your bottom lip. Your eyes flutter shut as he bites hard enough to draw blood before sucking lightly, running his tongue over the wound. “I am the dragon.”

“Yes, yes,” you agree, lifting your hands to cradle his face between your palms, fingertips skimming against his temples. “And a ferocious dragon, you are. Even back then, I’m sure.”

His eye visibly twitches at your words, and you fight another laugh as you lean in to press your lips to his again, sighing lightly into his mouth as he lets out a pleased hum, instinctively sinking into you. You drag your tongue lightly along his, tasting the honey he was picking at earlier off his tongue. After a few moments, you exhale through your nose and lay your head back against the cushions again. 

He tilts his head, gaze sharp, trying to figure out what you’re thinking.

“I think it sounds nice,” you admit quietly, tracing your fingers along his face before you let your hands drop. His brows furrow. “Knights and maidens growing up. It sounds…”

You trail off with another sigh. Your brother would certainly have preferred it. He might have actually been happy when the two of you were younger if he’d grown up in a place that had children play pretend instead of war. A lump forms in your throat. You swallow it away.

“Peaceful,” you finish at last. “A better way for children to be raised.”

Aerion’s expression is unreadable as he stares down at you.

“You think so?” he prods, an odd tone to his voice.

“Yeah,” you agree softly. “Yeah. I do.”

——————————

“Hm?” you ask during the final conversation, the damning one, head lolling to the side so you can look up at him, mind fuzzy from the copious amounts of firewine you’ve consumed, limbs warm and weightless from the incense creeping around the gardens of the First Magister’s estate. “What did you say?”

“Do you ever pay attention when I speak, you useless whore?” Aerion snaps at you.

From the gardens below, a flutter of giggles reaches the balcony you’re lounging on with Aerion. You frown, peering forward through the marble bars to shoot a glare down at the gaggle of courtesans entertaining the First Magister’s eldest son, though they’re too drunk on wine and clouded by incense to feel your ire.

“Go silence them,” you mutter, even as you return to where you were using Aerion as a cushion, head against his shoulder, back to his chest. “They give me a headache.”

“You do not order me, wench,” he replies immediately, but there is a distinct shortage of heat behind the words, and he sounds thoroughly distracted. 

You squint, tilting your head to the side before you look up at him again, catching an unusually contemplative expression on his face. 

“Careful, dragon prince, you might strain yourself thinking so hard,” you say with a lazy smile, to which he instantly shoots you a sneer. Even that is lacking in its effect, so you ask again, “What did you say?”

Aerion exhales through his nose, arm returning to where it was snug around your waist. After a moment, he says stiffly, “Do you enjoy gardens?”

What type of question is that?

It is both the question itself that catches you off guard and the way he asks it—careful in a way he only is when he’s trying to fish for information, like he is circling something larger and cannot quite bring himself to say it. 

But what the hell would he gain through asking about your interest in gardens?

“What?” you say immediately, voice so riddled with confusion at his question that Aerion’s grip on you tightens, and when you glance at his face, you see the tips of his ears going red. Baffled, you back track, “Well, who doesn’t?”

Aerion frowns, as though not satisfied with your answer, and you stare at him, bemused.

“Now who doesn’t listen?” you say petulantly instead of answering, still trying to figure out the purpose of the question. All of his questions have led somewhere. This one must, too—you just cannot see where yet. “I told you all about the gardens in Volantis a few weeks ago.”

Aerion glares at you. “When?” he demands. “You did no such thing.”

“I did,” you hum, looking away spitefully.

“You did not.”

“I did. But I shall remind you, since I am feeling generous,” you tell him after a moment. “Back home, my family’s palace had a garden that stretched larger than the docks here in Lys. We had flora from all over the known world—Yi Ti, Ghiscar, even your little Westeros—my brother cried once because he could not understand why winter roses would not bloom in Volantis. He was so distraught that my mother asked my father to go down to the spellslingers and bloodmagickers to see if there was a way to sequester a section of the garden and alter the climate so that the roses might bloom for him.” 

Your lips curve up into a smile at the memory. 

Your brother wailed when your father came back with the unfortunate news that there was no way to make the roses bloom in the palace’s garden. The two of you were only six then, and he was already openly softer than you, more than what was acceptable to your father and your tutors, and this incident only further confirmed what they already feared—that he would never rise to be the kind of heir they demanded. They hoped to nip the weakness in the bud by separating the two of you, because you were always quick to rise in his defense whenever they tried to beat the fragility out of him, but they only succeeded in making sure that the two of you became very creative about disobedience.

You were meant to spend the mornings being bored to death in the music hall learning the harp and the flute, while your brother suffered through sword drills and archery in the yard below. Then, in the afternoon, the two of you would swap: you would take to martial studies while he would take to the arts. 

It only took three days for you to begin switching places after you discovered that the eastern corridor connecting the music hall to the training yard had a servants’ stair that no one bothered to watch.

You would double down on your favorite lessons and abandon the rest entirely. No one ever realized what the two of you were doing, or if they did, they didn’t dare tell anyone who mattered. You were both good enough at lying anyway—the only tells you had, squinting lightly before you speak and smile tightening slightly at the edges, were ones that you could only ever pick out in each other. No one ever knew either of you well enough to catch them. It worked out. 

It always worked out for the two of you until it didn’t anymore.

Your heart aches suddenly, and you blame it on the wine still wet in your mouth.

You do not like thinking of your brother, or home, or anything. You wish Aerion would not ask about it, but he does not seem keen on stopping anytime soon, and you clearly lack the ability to stop yourself from answering.

It is aggravating. You are aggravated already.

“There was no way, of course,” you finally say, blinking once as you realize you lost yourself in your own thoughts, and Aerion is waiting for you to finish your story, watching you carefully. “Or if there was, they were not going to waste blood and sacrifice on roses to dry my brother’s tears. But even without the winter roses, it was beautiful. We would spend hours chasing each other up and down the rows of flowers and shrubs, climbed the orange trees even when our governess yelled at us to get down.” You sigh and finish softly, voice heavier, “They were easy days, back then.”

You can feel him listening more closely than the story warrants, as though this—of all things—is what he had been trying to draw out of you.

It makes no sense, you think, frustrated. What are you missing? 

And then he says:

“You speak of magic casually.”

His voice is quieter than usual, thoughtful in a way you do not often hear from him. His chin rests lightly against the top of your head where you lean against him, and you feel the vibration of his words through his chest.

You scoff softly. “Of course I do,” you reply. “It is casual. Half of our rites are steeped in it. If your family hadn’t fled to the west before the Doom, you would know of them.”

“If our family hadn’t fled to the west before the Doom, we would’ve perished alongside the twoscore families of dragonlords who remained,” Aerion drawls. Then adds more curiously, “But you make it sound simple. As though one can simply walk into a shop in Volantis and purchase a spell the same way a Lyseni merchant buys silk. Is it truly so common there?”

Ah, you think, mood souring even more as Aerion reaches the intel he wants. You can feel the turn in questioning now, the question beneath the question. Not just what Volantis is, but what it still has, and what might be taken. What he might bring to his father to prove himself a worthy son. 

You tilt your head with a hum, eyes sliding shut as you force away the bitterness. You should stop here—redirect the conversation elsewhere. 

You don’t. 

You say lazily, “Within the Black Walls? More or less. When I was nine, I had a bloodmagicker curse an Elephant boy bald after he pulled my hair in court.” Aerion snorts behind you, but his arm tightens slightly around your waist, as though he wants to ask more but can’t formulate the questions. You know exactly what he’s doing. You press anyway, giving him the opening he needs. Your eyes slide shut in frustration—you do not know if you hate yourself or him more. “Are you interested in magic?” 

He doesn’t answer right away, and his voice is clipped when he says, “Well, it is our blood, isn’t it?”

“It is,” you agree blithely, running your fingers along the back of his hand, enjoying the way his fingers twitch under your touch, though you shouldn’t be enjoying anything at all. “Though your Westerosi maesters pretend otherwise, like to claim that magic died with the old city. The magic of Valyria will not die until the blood that birthed it does. Your family kept it alive with dragons, for a time, and ours keeps it alive through old rites and rituals passed down from our ancestors.”

You should not be telling him this.

Aerion makes a sound in the back of his throat. You feel him shift slightly behind you, velvet cushions rustling as he leans back against them, pulling you with him. Your limbs are heavy and weightless at the same time; you sink back into him because you can do naught but, head rolling back against his shoulder with a hum. You hate yourself for it. 

“Our family has not passed down many rites and rituals,” he admits quietly after a moment. “I—” He cuts himself off, and you crack one eye open to peer up at him, seeing the way his jaw works as he tries to find words. “I sought them out. Hoping to bring them back.”

He does not have to say what they are. You know by the wistfulness in his voice, the yearning in the way his grip tightens on you. You remember the expression on his face that day he woke after his fever broke—nyke ēdrugon ēdan iā zaldrīzes—and the bitterness that had begun to claw at your chest dissipates. Your gaze traces up to his face as he stares up at the night sky with the same unreadable expression he wears whenever the conversation edges too close to something he actually cares about.

At last, you hum and say, “Well, the old blood still remembers what your family abandoned. We retained many of the rites and rituals of our ancestors.”

It is easier to bicker with him than it is to acknowledge that you understand him far better than you should—because acknowledging that means admitting that you have really, truly known what he was doing from the very beginning, and that you have been giving him everything he wanted anyway. And that is an admission that will lead you to both a question you are not ready to face and an answer you’re not ready to hear.

Aerion bristles immediately, snapping him right out of his spiraling thoughts.

“We abandoned nothing,” he hisses.

“You did,” you reply, voice airy, though there’s an edge to it now. “Your family crossed the Narrow Sea, wrapped itself in Andal customs and Westerosi superstition to appease your new people. You built a kingdom among people who feared the very blood that made you powerful.”

His jaw visibly tightens.

“We conquered them.”

“Is that what you call it?” 

He makes a sharp sound of disbelief, and you continue, because it is also easier to provoke him than to sit with the way he looks when he speaks of wanting to understand Valyrian customs and tradition, because that only makes you want to indulge more, because it makes you want to tell him things you should not be telling him, because that makes you angry—at yourself, at him, at everything. Because you want him to understand you, where you came from, where he came from, even though you know his intentions. 

“You married outside the blood, and adhered to their laws and justice,” you say, counting lightly on your fingers against his hand. “You took their Faith, their maesters, their customs. Do you even know the names of the Fourteen Flames?” 

“The mountains?” Aerion scoffs, becoming increasingly more irate the more you speak. “I—”

“Our gods, dragon prince,” you say, gaze shifting out toward the gardens again. Aerion cuts himself off immediately, going silent. “I speak of our gods. Not the mountains.”

“I know the names of our gods,” he says through his teeth, face reddening. “Balerion, Meraxes, Vhagar, Syrax, Ty—”

“But you did not know that the mountains were named for them. You do not know the proper rites. Have never stepped foot in a temple,” you finish lightly. Then continue lazily, tone far too conversational for the touchy subject. “I have heard stories of your Half-Year Queen letting smallfolk claim dragons in her little war with her brother.” You tilt your head slightly, amusement curling at the corner of your mouth. “I oft think I, too, was born in the wrong generation, because I would have paid dearly to see the faces of the old blood when that particular bit of news reached Volantis. They must have been absolutely aghast.”

His grip on you turns briefly bruising. Aerion’s voice becomes colder, more defensive. “They were dragonseeds.”

“Commoners,” you correct.

“They carried Valyrian blood.” 

He speaks as though the words are poison in his mouth, as though he agrees with you, but cannot bring himself to say it plainly—will not speak ill of his own house to someone who does not share its blood. 

“So do half the whores in Lys,” you say mildly. “Should we have allowed them to become dragonlords, too?

You don’t know why you’re pushing him like this, needling a subject that is clearly sore.

No, that is a lie. You know exactly why. Because you would prefer to turn this into a fight than admit that you are still answering his questions, than admit you are weak for him, than admit that you lo—

Aerion’s arm tightens around you again. “That is not the same.”

“Isn’t it?”

“I tire of this conversation,” Aerion says through his teeth, shifting as though to rise to his feet. “You are exceptionally irritating tonight.”

“You are the one who brought up the topic,” you disagree, settling back against him when he tries to move you off of him. He bares his teeth at you furiously when he finds that he cannot move while you’re on top of him. You give him a sweet smile in return. “You can only blame yourself, truly.”

“I did not,” he spits. “I only asked if—”

He cuts himself off, looking away, and you raise your eyebrows, curious. 

“You asked about gardens,” you recall, stretching languidly on top of him, a pleased sigh escaping your lips as his body shifts beneath you. “A terribly riveting topic. Why is it that you asked me about them again?”

It couldn’t have been to get to the topic of magic in the Black Walls—you had been the one to bring that up. There must have been some ulterior motive that he abandoned when the topic of Valyrian magic presented itself. 

But what was it? You find yourself stuck on it even now—all of the pieces he’s handed you fit together perfectly except for this one, and it’s bothering you. Because you feel as though you should know how it fits, like the true reason for his question is on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t put it into words.

“It does not matter now,” he scoffs, looking away. When you glance up, the tips of his ears are red. You squint, suspicious. “It was only a question.”

Only a question, he says—like all the others.

“Well, did you intend to follow that thought somewhere?” you ask mildly. “Or were you simply struck by a sudden and unprecedented interest in my opinion of landscaping?”

Aerion exhales through his nose sharply. “You speak far too much,” he mutters, but his expression has gone distant now, uncertain, and you tilt your head to the side with growing interest. 

“You were going to follow the thought,” you say, voice soft in realization, sharp in accusation. “With what?” 

“I was not.”

“You were.”

“I was not.”

“You absolutely were.”

Aerion scowls.

“You are intolerable.”

“And you are very bad at being evasive.”

Instead, he stares out over the gardens again, his arm tightening faintly around your waist as though grounding himself in the present moment.

After a moment, he says stiffly, “I only meant to say that there are gardens in Westeros.”

What does that mean? you think to yourself, bemused, thoughts faltering mid-turn, trying to figure out how this fits in with everything else, but you find yourself at a loss, because it doesn’t fit. Not with the others, with the pattern you have been so certain of this whole time. What the hell do Westerosi gardens have anything to do with intel to send back to his family? Flora for trade?

Or—have you been off mark since the beginning? 

No. That is ridiculous. It was obvious. 

Right?

“Well, I would certainly hope so,” you reply dryly. “Nine kingdoms and not a single garden would be a strange place indeed.”

Aerion bristles like a furious cat. “Forget I said anything, you impudent wench. I no longer wish to speak of this subject.”

This time, you do laugh, turning in his arms to look up at his face. He does not look down at you, but he does hold you, one hand cradling the back of your head so you don’t have to strain your neck to hold it up, the other resting on your hip, nail biting into your skin.

“Very well,” you say lazily, mercifully letting him retreat from whatever thought has him so wound up. “Then I suppose we should return to more pleasant subjects.”

Aerion glances down at you suspiciously.

“Such as?”

You hum, nosing into the soft silks draped around his shoulders, thoroughly comfortable, though your thoughts are no longer quite so loose, still trying to figure out what this might mean.

“Well,” you muse, “we could return to arguing about how your family has abandoned Valyrian tradition.”

Aerion hisses angrily. He really is a lot like a cat, you think, terribly amused as you lift a finger to his lips only for him to snap at it. “You speak boldly for someone in my arms. I should snap your neck.”

You grin up at him easily. “I would enjoy the feeling of your hands around my throat.”

Aerion scoffs with a roll of his eyes, but he doesn’t quip back a snide retort as you expect. You can feel his mind turning again, circling something, and you wait for him to speak. Finally, he says, voice quieter, “If it still lives there as you say—magic, the old rites and rituals—why has Volantis not conquered half the known world? Why have you not—”

Why have you not brought back dragons?

You snort outright at that, and you can feel Aerion’s indignant gaze trained on your face.

“Oh, dragon prince,” you sigh, lifting your hand to cradle the side of his face, thumb brushing over his bottom lip. You don’t wince when he bites it hard, irritated by your condescension. Instead, you slip it into his mouth, stroking his tongue lightly to make his face flush. “Now who sounds like a child listening to stories? Magic is old and costly and temperamental. It only answers blood, and rarely in the clean, simple way men want. One can ask for rain and receive flood. Ask for victory and receive it at devastating costs. Ask for life and pay in something worse.” You pause, slipping your thumb out of his mouth, back to resting on his cheek, and you say more quietly, “There is no blood in this world valuable enough to restore what was lost.”

“You are wrong,” he replies after a few moments. You raise your eyebrows at the certainty behind his words, gaze flicking up to his face again, but his attention is somewhere beyond the gardens, and his body is terribly tense. “There must be.”

“Must there?” you ask dryly.

“Yes,” he says through his teeth. “Yes. There must. I’ve seen it. I—” He cuts himself off again, exhaling through his nose. You lean up slightly now, tilting your head to the side when you see the feverish intensity that suddenly spreads across his face, a frown settling on yours. “They will return. I know it. We just need to find the right price.”

“And what blood would you offer, dragon prince?” you ask him, voice light, but a bit more cautious now. “A thousand slaves? A hundred magisters? Our bloodmagickers have tried it all, I assure you.”

Aerion scoffs. “Volantis thinks too small.”

You’re more amused than offended as you ask, “Do we now?”

“Yes,” he says, amethyst eyes sharp as they cut toward you. “You speak of magic as though it’s some crude exchange. A goat for rain, a king for victory.”

“Because it often is,” you reply, rolling your eyes. “Are you to lecture me on magic now?”

“Dragons are not rain or victory,” he hisses. “They were bound to blood. Dragonlord blood. Goats and common blood would never be enough, regardless of the droves they come in.”

You pause now, tilting your head to the side, lips curving down as you realize where his thoughts are turning. “If it were blood alone that was key, Volantis would have solved this problem centuries ago. Do you imagine our bloodmagickers have not thought of that? The old blood still runs thick and pure within the Black Walls, and it has spilled more of its own veins than you would find tasteful in its attempts to return life to our stone eggs.”

Aerion’s gaze flicks down toward you, jaw tight. “I do not mean Volantis.”

You hesitate, recalling the way he insisted that his poppy dream was not a dream, not really, and you feel unsettled. You do not like where this conversation is going. You do not like the feverish look in Aerion’s eyes, nor the certainty in his voice. You do not like any of this.

You scoff and say, “Then who? You sound as though you would be willing to offer yourself to the flames.”

“I am not afraid of fire,” he says after a moment. His gaze drifts once more to the sky, and you sit up from where you’re lying in his arms, lips pressed together, suddenly not feeling all too drunk at all. Your stomach drops. He adds quietly, “Dragons are born in fire.”

“Now it is my turn to tire of conversation,” you say after a moment, looking away, a pit in your stomach and a lump in your throat. You especially do not like the image that this evokes—fire and pain and charred bone and Aerion. “I think I preferred to speak of the gardens. Tell me more about Westerosi gardens. I might like to see them one day.”

You need to pull this back to something simple. Something you understand. Except, you don’t understand the gardens either, you realize desperately. You don’t understand any of this. You suddenly feel terribly out of depth, but you would rather he keep asking his pointed little questions, picking at you for answers you should not give, than sit here and speak so easily of throwing himself into the flames for a mummer’s farce.

Aerion’s attention snaps back toward you, expression caught between something wounded that you refuse to acknowledge and something hopeful that you also wish not to see. As though he can’t decide if he wants to be hurt by your dismissive words, or if he wants to lean into the fact that you’re willing to indulge his initial question. 

He evidently decides on the former and says tightly, “I thought you would understand.”

You exhale through your nose, watching the glittering courtesans below, though they feel strangely distant now. “Understand what?”

“That some things are worth more than comfort,” Aerion replies.

You scoff. “I understand ambition, dragon prince,” you say mildly. “Volantis practically breeds it. But ambition and martyrdom are not the same thing.”

“I did not say anything about martyrdom,” he replies, watching you with an intensity that makes something uncomfortable twist in your stomach. Is he fucking serious right now? you think incredulously. You are aggravated. You have been aggravated for weeks. You’ve been aggravated with yourself. You’ve been aggravated with him. You’ve been aggravated with this situation, the way you’ve handled it, the way he handles it. And now you are fully aggravated because how dare he come to you with I am not afraid of fire, and expect you to understand. He continues, frustrated, “You just spent the better part of an hour explaining that magic answers blood. That the rites of Valyria still live in your city. That the old blood still have access to the dragonlords’ secrets, and yet the moment I suggest that perhaps the answer lies closer to us than your bloodmagickers believe—”

“You suggest setting yourself on fire,” you say through your teeth, trying to rein in your temper. “I prefer my dragon princes alive and breathing, not charred bones.” 

“I am not suggesting dying.”

“You quite literally suggested burning.”

“I said dragons are born in fire.”

“And men die in it.”

Aerion shrugs faintly. “Most men.”

You withhold a deep sigh and instead ask, “Why did you ask me about gardens?”

Aerion stiffens, scowling at you from the corner of his eye. “I told you I no longer wish to speak on the subject.”

“And I no longer wish to speak on this one, so either sit here silently or put your mouth to better use.”

Aerion sneers at you, seemingly just as aggravated as you are, hand darting out to fist your hair roughly. “Perhaps I should force your mouth to better use,” he spits. “Put that vile tongue of yours to work at the only thing it’s good for.”

You lean in to press your lips against his before you can stop yourself, huffing sharply against his mouth when you feel his breath hitch as you shift back into his lap. His grip on your hair eases as he cradles the back of your head, and you slide your hands beneath his silks, nails grazing his abdomen in the way that always makes him shiver.

“I will teach you,” you say after a moment, before you really understand what you’re offering to him. You rest your forehead against his, lips brushing his as you speak. His lashes flutter as he opens his eyes to look up at you. You keep yours closed. “The old rites, the rituals, our gods and traditions—all of what your family has lost over time, but you will promise me something in return.”

What the fuck is wrong with you? 

All of the questions ring through your head again: What will you do when he leaves? Is this really just a taste of fire? Indulgence? Distraction? Why do you not sabotage, when you have never been above such methods before? Why, ever, would you think of home, and then think of bringing him to see it? Why would you sit at his bedside while he’s sick and nurse him back to health? Why do you sit here and let him use you as a source of information to report back to his family? Why do you find yourself so aggravated by this whole situation? Why did your stomach drop when he spoke of himself in terms of blood sacrifice? Why are you willing to teach him all of the things his family willingly abandoned, knowing how much it would infuriate your people?

You don’t have to look at him to know the rapturous look that must be in his eyes, amethyst slivers around widened pupils, lips parted. He always gets this way when you talk with him about Valyria and what is left of it. Aerion is almost breathless as he says softly, “Anything.” 

Your hands slide up along his ribs until they rest flat against his chest. The words leave you far more bluntly than you intend. “You will not burn yourself alive trying to bring life to stone.”

Aerion blinks, and then his brows draw together. His hands go still at your waist and in your hair. He says slowly, “You think that is what I intend to do.”

“I think you are arrogant enough and reckless enough to try, if you convince yourself you can, and you sound half there already,” you reply, nails digging slightly into his pale skin. One hand slides up further—to the Valyrian steel he wears on his throat—and rests there firmly. He tilts his head back slightly, baring his neck to you. “You are mine. You will not go somewhere I cannot follow, and I will not follow you into the flames.”

Aerion’s lips part as he stares up at you. Instead of becoming defensive, like you expect, his breath catches in his throat as he asks, “And where would you follow me?”

Would you follow me back to Westeros? 

The real question he’s been asking this whole time lands all wrong. Lands late. Like this question has been hanging between the two of you for weeks, waiting for you to catch up. The uncertain, wide-eyed look on his face now is the same one he’s worn every time he’s asked about Volantis—every time he circled and pressed, every time you told yourself he was picking you apart for something to send back across the Narrow Sea. Volantene politics, the Black Walls, what you knew of Westeros, how you grew up, the gardens. 

You knew from the beginning that he was never quite asking what he really wanted to ask, but you didn’t realize it was this. 

He was not asking what Volantis could give him; he was never trying to figure out information to send back to his family to shorten the sentence of his exile. He was—he was trying to gauge whether or not you would follow him back to Westeros; he was trying to make sure he would not have to leave you behind when it ended. The thought is almost laughable—that he has been dancing around the same question that has been haunting you for months—but the more you think of it, the more it makes sense. 

He wanted to know your opinions of his homeland to know if you would ever be willing to make it your own. He asked you about your childhood and the way you were raised to understand what you would be leaving behind if you did. He circled around politics and simple things like gardens to find where you might bend—to see what angles he should press if you proved reluctant, which arguments might sway you, and which might make you dig your heels in deeper if he brought it up. 

Your jaw tightens, remembering all of the ways you had inadvertently implied you would because you did not realize what he was asking.

It does sound like it could be amusing, watching it unfold—at times, that is.

I think it sounds nice. Knights and children growing up. It sounds… peaceful. A better way for children to be raised.

Tell me more about Westerosi gardens. I might like to see them one day.

Fuck.

Your throat tightens. “That is not a promise.”

“And that is not an answer,” he counters, matching your quiet tone. “I will decide whether or not I will give you my word after I’ve heard your answer.”

Would you follow him back to Westeros?

You do not know, you realize blithely. Lys without Aerion Brightflame here to warm your bed, to chase you across rooftops and join in your mockery of this island of silk sounds like a dreadful existence. Now that you have had a taste of life in exile with him, you do not want a life without him. 

But would a life in Westeros be any better? 

Aerion is a prince, and you are an exile. You would never be allowed to marry him—it would be a political disaster for the Targaryens if they allowed it. The Elephants could even take it as a declaration of war—and though you do not believe your father and the rest of the Tigers would back military action against you, the Elephants have their own means of war through coin and secrets. They’ve felled many an empire with gold and words, and you do not wish to see Aerion cast out permanently, as you have been, because of you.

And what would that mean for you, then? Would you be a mistress while he frolics with a proper lady wife? While she bears his children and his name? You would rather slit her throat, his, and then your own. You would rather set fire to their keep and give him the flames he so desires. You do not want to share him, and if you cannot have him, you do not want to be anywhere near him and the woman who does, lest you find yourself doing something regrettable. 

“I do not know,” you say at last, shifting away as his expression twists. He did not expect that response; you can tell from the way his lips part, from how he blinks once and then furrows his brows, recalculating.

“You do not know,” he echoes flatly. 

“I do not know,” you repeat stiffly, gaze shifting to the garden. 

Aerion scoffs suddenly, pushing you off his lap to rise to his feet, his face a war of pride and anger and embarrassment and hurt and disbelief. He convinced himself that your answer would be anywhere, everywhere, iksan aōhon, iksā ñuhon, and you cannot even blame him—weeks of careful questions to build up the courage to ask you more directly, and perhaps if you hadn’t been so blind, so quick to assume the worst, you could have subtly dissuaded him from this answer. 

Instead, you unintentionally led him right to it, not realizing his ultimate goal.

Fuck.

“Of course, you do not know,” he says bitterly. “I will make your answer easy, then: do not follow me anywhere.”

“Aerion—”

“Remain here, and play your games, drink your wine, fuck your whores,” he spits, making his way off the balcony, back into the First Magister’s manse. He casts a derisive look over to where you’ve risen to your feet. “You have made a life here. One that suits you well enough.”

“And what, exactly, does that mean?” you ask.

Aerion pauses in the doorway, one hand braced against the carved wood as he glances back at you over his shoulder. For a moment, he says nothing. Then his mouth curls. It is not a pleasant expression.

“It means,” he says slowly, “that you have grown very comfortable amongst silk and pillows for someone who was once meant to preside over the Black Walls.”

Your spine straightens, fury flaring hot in your chest as he uses what you told him against him.

“You—”

His gaze drags over you, distasteful.

“A daughter of Volantis,” he continues, voice edged with something cruel. “Heir to one of the oldest bloodlines in the city. Future Triarch, if I recall correctly.”

You stare at him in disbelief, anger hot, hurt worse, burning deep in your chest, in your lungs, behind your eyes.

“And now?” he adds. “Now you lounge about, bickering with courtesans and playing at being amused by everything around you. You speak of your city’s power as though it still belongs to you, but you do not even live within its walls.”

“Fuck you,” you say, the words a low hiss because you cannot manage anything else. 

“Done that, as has half of the city, I’m sure,” he says with a sharp smile. The steel on his neck gleams traitorously in the moonlight. “You were meant to rule the last standing city with the secrets of Old Valyria, and you cower at the idea of leaving your pillowed prison. Perhaps you are not who I thought you were. I have no interest in dragging a coward content on being a whore across the Narrow Sea.”

You stare at him blankly, words ringing in your ears long after he’s finished speaking. You don’t know why you’re so wound up, don’t know why it feels like there’s fire flooding your veins, why your heart is racing and your pulse thuds in your ears. You have not felt this way in a long, long time—not since you were on your knees in the Ivory Yard with shackles on your ankles and wrists. Even in that first year of your exile, when everything was still jagged and new and unbearable, when you were learning of the existence of new wounds every time someone spoke to you, no one managed to get under your skin the way that he has right now.

It is infuriating.

It is humiliating.

It is—it is fucking ridiculous.

You should not be so upset. 

You rationalize that it’s because he’s caught you while your guard was down, because you let him wear your guard down, even though that is something that you haven’t allowed in a long, long time. He’s been inadvertently whittling at it for weeks. All of his questions about Volantis, talking about your past, your father, your brother, your childhood—it reminded you of the future you were promised and denied—you should have deflected or redirected, but you answered, and it has put you in a state of wistfulness, of yearning, of what was and never will be again. You miss being home. You miss your brother. You miss your father. You miss who you were before exile. You miss who you could have been. Years of resentment, of anger and bitterness, have long since settled into something bearable—a still, glassy lake you’ve learned to live beside without looking too closely at your reflection in it. And Aerion—

Aerion has hauled a fucking boulder over and dropped it straight into the center. The surface shatters. The calm you’ve built annihilated, replaced with violent waves that drag everything buried beneath it back up—old anger, old pride, old longing, all of it rising too fast, too consuming, too much. 

And he has the audacity to stand there and look at you as though you’re the one who has done something wrong. 

Worse than anger, worse than pride, worse than longing, is the fucking hurt that spreads through your chest, cruel and unrelenting. Is it because you feel like a fool for not realizing all of this sooner? Because this was avoidable? Because this feels like your own fault? Because he’s using what you confided in him against you? Because you trusted him with something that he used as a knife to drive into your back? 

Or is it because he’s right?

You say, “Get out of my sight before I cut your fucking throat.”

“Gladly,” he hisses through his teeth. “You may find me when you remember who you are.”

——————————

“Remember who I am,” you echo, spitting the words at Caelyx. “Who does he think he is? He has no idea who I am. He thinks he knows me after a few months together on this island? I should have drowned him the moment he called me a whore on that rock, let him drink that poisoned wine, put my fucking blade into his throat. I—what?”

Caelyx is smiling into his wine next to you. “Nothing,” he says, laughter in his voice. “I just have not seen you so wound up in a very long time.”

You scoff loudly and look away, gaze flitting across the hall of Vyrano’s manse, where you have been forced to make an appearance for yet another of his ridiculous feasts. You got into an argument with the First Magister earlier in the day because you did not want to attend, but he insisted that your presence tonight was necessary, so now you are forced to sit in the same general area as Aerion as he lets two whores paw at him while wearing your Valyrian steel.

“I should kill him,” you say after a moment, teeth grinding together as your gaze draws over to where a girl with your hair color is kissing up his neck, and another with silver hair is positioned half in his lap. You don’t even want to look at him, but your attention keeps pulling back toward him. He’s not even looking at you. You want him dead. “Can you fucking believe this?”

Caelyx hums, shifting to face you. He lifts his hand, fingers grazing your chin before he tilts your face toward his, smoothing his fingers over the line of your jaw to try to make you ease how it’s clenched. You relent after a moment, sighing, and he runs a thumb over your bottom lip before he murmurs, “You are giving him what he wants, my lady. You must not keep looking at him. He grows more smug each time your eyes draw to him.”

You know that he is right. You press your tongue to the back of your teeth, eyes sliding shut. 

You can feel his gaze on you now that your attention has been forced away from him. 

That is as it has been for the last fortnight—you watching him when he is not looking, him watching you as soon as you look away. Both of you far too aware of one another while pretending not to be aware at all. 

You have not spoken to him since that argument in the First Magister’s manse. He has not sought you out, nor you him, and the days have been long and agonizing, terribly boring. You drink, you find whores to entertain yourself with, you lounge on sun-warmed rocks and velvet cushions. You do as you have done for five years, and it is unbearable in a way that it has not been since the first months of your exile. You are bored and restless, and your temper has been outrageously quick to snap, and you find yourself looking toward the east at dawn and dreading your bed at dusk. 

Is this how it is meant to be once he leaves?

You are furious. You are furious at the situation. You are furious at Aerion. But most of all, you are furious at yourself for allowing yourself to get attached to this Targaryen prince the way you have, for allowing him to become more than just another distraction, for allowing him the power to hurt you. You never should have let him become more than what he was that first night at the mid-summer festival: a plaything, fun to antagonize and toy around with, fun to pass the time, but nothing worth fussing over. The moment that Caelyx caught on to what was happening, and you felt your temper fraying just at the mere idea of him leaving for Westeros and you staying in Lys should have been warning enough for you to start pulling back.

Instead, you sat there and convinced yourself that it was worth it—that you would prefer a taste of fire at the risk of being burned to a lifetime of ash. Here you are, burned thoroughly, not for the reasons you anticipated, and you have no one to blame but yourself after lighting the fire and handing him the flame. 

“This is not who I am,” you say through your teeth, turning your face slightly into Caelyx’s palm. “I am not so—”

Weak.

“You are furthest from weak,” Caelyx murmurs, knowing what you’re about to say without you having to say it at all. You can feel Aerion’s eyes boring into the side of your head. It takes all of your will not to turn to meet his gaze. You distract yourself by letting Caelyx hold the weight of your head in his palm, lips curving down when he lifts his other hand to cradle your face with both. “You are the first daughter of the oldest bloodline in Volantis. Lady of the Sorrows—how many men can say they’ve made the River Rhoyne run red?

“Do not pander to my ego,” you mutter, but you do traitorously find yourself feeling better at his words. 

Do not forget who you are, he tells you without saying anything at all, which serves to irritate you because it reminds you of what Aerion had the gall to say to you two weeks ago. But Caelyx actually knows who you are, you tell yourself—he was here when you were at your worst, eased you through the rockiest days of your exile when you were angry and violent and only wanted to go home. It is different coming from him than it is from Aerion, who only threw it in your face to wound you.

“Ah, but you have always liked when I pandered to your ego, my lady,” Caelyx says with a familiar teasing smile, leaning in to ghost his lips against your jaw. He breathes out, “Though it’s true that you never did care much for words when I had you distracted properly.”

You huff out a soft laugh, tilting your head back slightly to give him better access to your neck. Your pulse flutters as his soft lips trail down your throat, nipping and licking at your skin the way you like. Caelyx has always been good at this—soothing you, pleasuring you, being with you when no one else dares to. Even now, even as fury clouds your mind and desperation runs through your veins, you find the terrible pulse pounding in your ears easing beneath his touch.

“You are shameless,” you accuse, though there’s no real heat behind it, letting him kiss down to your collarbone, and then back up to the corner of your lips. He brushes them there once, pale lashes fluttering as you tilt your face to him so that your lips ghost one another.

“Only for you,” he replies easily, hand from your face to your abdomen, fingers smoothing over your bare skin after he slips his hand beneath the silks. 

You do not answer. You do not trust your voice not to betray you. You still feel Aerion’s eyes on you, and it is maddening, the way your awareness of him lingers even when you refuse to look at him—like heat at your back, a blade hovering just shy of your skin. You know the threat is there even if you cannot see it with your own eyes. You itch to look at him, but Caelyx stops you before you can make the mistake.

“Let him stew,” Caelyx murmurs. You let out an airy sigh as he sucks lightly at the underside of your jaw. “You do not chase. Do not start now.”

A bitter laugh threatens to rise, but you swallow it down. “I am not chasing.”

“Not yet,” he says, lifting his face to brush his lips against yours again. 

“Not ever,” you reply, and his violet eyes glitter, pleased by your words. He nips at your lips. You let him. You click your tongue. “He is an idiot. He thinks the world should bend to him. That I should bend to him.”

“He is a prince,” Caelyx corrects, thumb stroking the line of your jaw. “He thinks the world belongs to him.”

And he thinks you do too.

The thought once sent a thrill running up your spine—iksan aōhon, iksā ñuhon, I am yours, you are mine. Now, it only frustrates you, because he was never yours, not really, and the months you’ve deluded yourself into believing otherwise have finally caught up to you now that he’s asked the question you’ve been dreading since Caelyx first brought up the topic. You slide your tongue along the back of your teeth, frustrated. 

“He is a fool,” you insist with a scoff. “Do you think I would get in too much trouble if I shoved him over the balcony?”

Caelyx laughs, a pretty sound, one that has always settled your nerves. “If you want him gone, my lady, all you need to do is say the word. I will have it done, and no one will know it as anything but a terrible accident.”

And yet, therein lies the issue. 

You do not want him gone. You want him. You want him completely, and you hate the idea that one day, someone else will have him. That the day will come where you either have to bid him goodbye or be okay seeing someone else have him in a way you will never. 

What a double-edged blade it is, you think, that exile is the only reason you were able to meet him, and it is also the reason you will never be able to have him.

Or maybe you would have found your way to one another anyway, you think wryly—somehow, someway. Though you cannot imagine how, because had you not been exiled, you would have been elected Triarch and married to your brother, but Aerion is—well, Aerion. And he matches you in a way that no one has ever been able to. You cannot fathom a life where the two of you never met.

Perhaps through war, you consider at last. You are both violent little things; it would be fitting that you met on opposite sides of the battlefield.

“I dislike seeing you like this,” Caelyx murmurs, a heavy look in his violet eyes as he pulls back to look at you, more serious than you’ve seen him in a long time.

“Do you? I’m surprised you haven’t hit me with an ‘I told you so’, yet,” you say, more a joke than anything else, but Caelyx flicks a disapproving look toward you.

“I find no satisfaction in being correct. If you remember, I only brought this up out of concern,” he says. Then his lips flick up into a familiar smirk. “Though if you insist, I did tell you this would be an issue.”

You roll your eyes, nipping playfully at his fingers, and he lets out another pretty laugh, leaning slightly into you. You mutter, “You are incorrigible. I cannot believe that you were the one sent to deal with me all those years ago. How did I not kill you?”

He winks at you. “You were too distracted to manage it.”

Your brows lift. “Was I?”

“Mhm,” he hums, voice dipping lower, amusement curling through it. “If I recall correctly, you were far too occupied with my tongue to be thinking about murder. Hard to stab a man when he’s got you too busy forgetting your own name.”

You snort despite yourself, shoving lightly at his shoulder. “Arrogant.”

“Is it arrogance if it’s true?” he replies smoothly, catching your wrist before you can pull away, pressing a brief, teasing kiss to the inside of it. “You’ve always had a weakness for my particular talents.”

“Mm,” you murmur, though your lips twitch. “A tragic flaw, truly.”

“A devastating one,” Caelyx agrees solemnly, though the smile in his eyes gives him away. His thumb traces slow, absent circles against your pulse. “Though I would be happy to remind you of it.”

“Perhaps I should take you up on it,” you murmur, lips curling up into a small smile when he leans in to ghost his lips against yours. “I find myself in desperate need of a distraction.”

Caelyx hums softly, pleased, the sound vibrating against your lips as he closes the distance properly this time, his mouth settling against yours with a familiarity that puts you at ease. He shifts closer, sliding closer to straddle your lap as his hands come up, one to the back of your head, fingers entwining with your hair, and the other slinking loosely around your shoulders.

“Desperate?” he murmurs against your mouth, amused. “That’s not a word I hear from you often, my lady.”

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” you scoff, but you’re smiling, eyes sliding shut as he kisses down your throat, one hand dropping to slide beneath your silks, skin warm against yours as he trails his fingers up your abdomen, your body instinctively shivering. “I—”

Aerion is across the room in a heartbeat, though neither of you notices until too late. 

You hear Caelyx let out a hiss in surprise, violet eyes flying open, and your attention snaps upward as he’s forced off you, yanked away with brutal force, balance lost as he’s dragged backward by his collar. 

“Aerion, what the fuck?” you start to snap when you recognize Aerion standing at the edge of the cushions, amethyst eyes ablaze, jaw tight, a type of fury rolling off of him that you’ve never seen from him before. 

He doesn’t even acknowledge you, and as you’re pushing yourself up to sit straight, you see steel flash in his right hand. Your eyes widen, and you’re moving before you even really understand what’s going on, hand wrapping around Aerion’s wrist as he tries to drive a dagger forward, fast and vicious, aimed straight for Caelyx’s throat. 

The force of his swing jolts through your arm when you stop it, a hair's breadth from plunging through Caelyx’s neck. Your fingers press bruises into his skin as you hold him in place, grimacing slightly as he strains against you, trying to force the blade forward anyway, driven more by fury than sense. Distantly, you notice courtesans and magisters alike fleeing the room, and you gape at Aerion in sheer disbelief, but Caelyx has the nerve to let out a breathless laugh, eyes wild. 

“Careful, dragon prince,” he purrs, voice smooth, despite the fact that the tip of the blade grazes his skin. “You’re looking rather unstable.”

You give Caelyx a sharp look, but he only winks at you, which only serves to set Aerion off even more from the way he bares his teeth. He drops the blade out of his right hand, left hand darting out to catch it by the hilt midair, but you jam your shoulder into his chest before he can swing outward with his free arm. He stumbles backward, eyes flashing furiously as he finally turns his attention to you, and you shift so that you’re standing in front of Caelyx, head falling slightly to the side as you stare at Aerion. 

“Is this how it’s going to be?” you ask him, voice light despite the tension in your shoulders as your fingers wrap around the grip of a fruit knife. The blade is much too thin for you to actually be of use in a fight with him, but it’ll be enough at least to deflect the blade. You just need to disarm him. “What the hell is your problem? There’s no way this isn’t going to get back to your father.”

That only serves to irritate him—maybe you should have bit your tongue. He says coldly, “Get out of my way.”

Who the fuck does he think he is? 

You smile sharply, although it doesn’t reach your eyes. It is only the two of you now—everyone else has fled the room, even Caelyx’s better judgment finally got the best of him, leaving the room as soon as you were between him and Aerion. “Make me.”

Steel clashes as Aerion lunges forward again, faster this time, both of you letting loose two weeks of frustration and fury onto each other as the dam finally breaks. The fruit knife in your hand catches the dagger with a sharp noise, the impact jarring up your arm as you deflect the strike just enough to send it skidding past your side instead of through it. You step into him, closing the distance, and you drive your elbow hard into his chest, knocking him off balance enough for you to lift your leg and put your foot into his thigh, forcing him down to one knee. 

“You’re out of practice, dragon prince,” you mock, pressing the tip of the fruit knife under his chin, enjoying the way his eyes flash furiously at your words, “or perhaps you are better off a whore than a knight. Your father chose the right Free City to exile to after you embarrassed him.”

His jaw tightens at that, something ugly crossing his face, but you are angry—his words echo through your head. You may find me when you remember who you are. He has no idea who you are, but if he wishes to know so badly, then you will show him the worst of you. 

“If you ask Caelyx nicely, he might be willing to give you some tips—he’s quite good at what he does, and I doubt your father will take you back anytime soon after this little display. You might be able to make some decent coin with his help when Vyrano inevitably kicks you out of his manse for causing too much trouble,” you continue when he doesn’t immediately respond, voice cutting, lips curled up into a small smile. “You cannot even hold yourself together long enough to stand in a room without drawing steel like a rabid dog, and you think—”

You don’t notice that he’s wrapped his hand around your ankle until too late, the air ripping from your lungs as he yanks your foot off the ground to knock you off balance, dragging you down onto the floor with him. Your back hits the ground hard, knocking the air from your lungs, and you grimace in pain when the back of your head smacks against the marble. Aerion is on top of you in a second, weight heavy on your hips as he leans over you to press his dagger against your throat, amethyst eyes wild.

“How many times have I warned you that your tongue was going to get you in trouble?” he breathes, dragging the blade up your neck to press it against the corner of your mouth. “Do you think this is a game? That you can say whatever you want and walk away untouched? That you can take what you like and leave the rest in pieces at whim? I’d sooner see you dead, whore.”

Your lips curl up despite the sting of the blade sliding against your skin. You ignore the taste of iron as you murmur, “And what, exactly, do you think I’ve taken from you, dragon prince?” 

His grip tightens on the dagger, and he doesn’t answer, but his expression tightens, jaw flexing and amethyst eyes shifting into something far more vulnerable than the rage that has consumed him. You hate the way it makes your throat swell. You hate even more than you know the answer to your question as soon as you ask it.

His breath comes out unevenly, and the dagger is still at your lips, pressing deep enough for blood to trickle into your mouth, but the expression on his face is all twisted, like he doesn’t know what to do with himself anymore.

You notice, absently, that his fingers are trembling around its hilt—at your collar too, where he fists the silk you wear.

It would be so easy to mock him.

The thought rings through your head traitorously. You would if you were back home and he were any of your peers—you have in the past, laughing in Aenys’s face when brought up binding the most powerful families of the Elephant and Tiger parties through marriage, telling Jaenys to fuck off when he told you that he might love you. Only one person has ever been spared from your cruelty, and that person is not Aerion. You could make him bleed right now in a way that’s far more painful than the blade he has pressed against your mouth. 

You do not.

“You know what you’ve taken,” he replies, voice hoarse, little over a breath. The dagger slides down your cheek to your jaw, and he drags a thin red line until the tip of it is pressed to your pulse point. His eyes fixate on the droplets of blood that bead at the shallow wound before they flick back up to meet yours. “Do not play the fool. You knew what you were doing this whole time—clinging to me, mocking me, covering for me when you could, telling me about your home, taking care of me while I was ill, bringing me to places that you claimed were only yours. You knew what you were doing, and you do not get to pretend that you don’t. You do not get to pretend as though this is nothing. You do not get to walk away.”

“Aerion—”

“It is infuriating,” he spits, the tip of the blade digs a smidge deeper into your skin. “You’ll take everything someone is willing to give you, but the second they ask something back, you run—as though you think you do not owe anyone anything. You get close, you take everything you want, and then you leave before it can cost you anything, like nothing ever mattered. It is infuriating. You are despicable. I will not allow it. I am not a silk boy for you to toy with—I am a dragon. I am the one who takes. Not you.”

Your heart thuds in your chest, lips parting and breath coming out too shaky for your liking as you stare up at Aerion. You can feel his breath fanning across your lips, the haze in his eyes reflecting a war of pride and fury and indignance and desperation. You’ve seen this before—never this raw and never this close, but you have seen it nonetheless. You have known that this volatility was there from the very beginning, tucked beneath the sharpness of his tongue and the arrogance he wears like armor. He burns too hot and too fast; everything in him is always just on the verge of spilling over into something uncontrollable, because Aerion feels everything too intensely, and he doesn’t know how to deal with it so he shows it in the worst ways possible.

“When I am called back to Westeros, you will come with me,” he says at last, eyes searching yours for an answer even though he speaks it as a command, dagger pressing into your neck a bit deeper as though reminding you that you do not have a choice, threatening you that he will go through with what he promised should you deny him, because he would rather you dead than with anyone else. “Say it.”

“No,” you reply.

Aerion lets out a noise caught between a hiss and a whistle, eyes flaring dangerously. “You think I won’t? I’ll kill you before I let you walk away from me. I’ll—”

“I don’t think you will,” you reply quietly, and Aerion makes another noise, this time in the back of his throat, wounded and furious like he didn’t expect you to call him on his bluff, “and you cannot make me come with you.”

Aerion grinds his teeth so hard that you’re sure it must be painful. He digs the blade into your skin deeper, as though trying to force himself to do it, and then he lets out a terribly broken exhale, letting the blade clatter to the ground next to your head. Frustration, rage, desperation all swim plainly through his face. 

He vows instead, “Then I will kill everyone else. If you stay behind when I leave, I’ll have them all hunted down.” When you sigh and shake your head, looking away, his hand darts up to grab your chin, forcing you to look at him. “The whores you surround yourself with, the harbor brats that cling to you—anyone dares who comes close to you when I cannot. I will have them burned for it, and I will have their corpses delivered to you with Brightflame branded on their face, so that every time you look at them, you think of me—so that you may never dare to forget me.”

You exhale through your nose. “I will not forget you, Aerion—”

He bares his teeth. “Then I will make you wish that you could.”

You roll your eyes. “This is deranged—”

“I do not care,” he snaps immediately. His grip on your chin tightens, fingers digging in just enough to hurt. “You do not get to walk away from this. You don’t get to walk away from me. This was not nothing. I was not nothing. I am not nothing.”

“You’re wrong,” you say after a moment. A lie, it tastes bitter on your tongue, makes your chest ache so terribly that you want to take it back as soon as it leaves your lips. “It was nothing, Aerion. Just a bit of fun. You made it into something it isn’t. It—”

“Liar!” Aerion accuses, voice loud and shriller than he intends, expression twisting violently. “Iksan aōhon, iksā ñuhon—” His voice breaks over the High Valyrian. “—you’re the one that said it. You are the one who said it. You do not get to say that and leave; you do not get to make me say that and leave.”

“It is not as easy as you’re making it out to be!” you finally explode, hands driving upward to push him off of you. He tumbles back onto the marble, and you grab the dagger he dropped near your ear. You swivel so that you’re the one straddling him, pressing the blade to the apple of his throat. “You are a fucking idiot, Aerion. You are an idiot, and I will not go to Westeros with you just to watch you get married off to some noblewoman—”

“You dare to call me the idiot,” he hisses, leaning into the blade without fear, forcing you to pull it back when it starts to sink into his neck. “You think I’ll let myself be married off to some dumb cow when I have you? You—”

“It is not up to you,” you spit, shoving his shoulder back down so he’s lying flat against the ground. He sneers up at you, lips parting, blood trickling down the length of his neck, amethyst eyes wide and wild, slivers around dilated pupils. You repeat more calmly, because one of you desperately needs to calm down before you end up killing one another, “It is not up to you, Aerion. You are beholden to your father and king, and they will never allow—”

“Fuck my father, and fuck the king,” Aerion interrupts viciously. “They can both fuck off. I will wed you here. Now, even—” What?! “They cannot stop me from having you.”

You exhale, shaking your head and closing your eyes, setting the dagger to the side. You look away as you sit back on his thighs, frustrated and just wanting this conversation to be over, because he will not listen to what you have to say. He sits up, one hand lifting to grab your chin again, more gentle now as he turns your face to him, thumb stroking the line of your jaw.

“I will do it,” he says, quieter now. “Here. Before we go back, so they cannot stop it. We can do it in Valyrian tradition—by blood and fire.”

Your throat bobs as your gaze meets his, the fervor still there, but the fire behind it has tempered into something less volatile, something warm and steady that settles over you like heat rather than wild, open flame that has been licking at your skin. It would be easy to lean into it, to let yourself rest in it. You want to—desperately, desperately you want to.

“I thought your family didn’t retain any of our rites,” you say, voice hoarse as you try to rebuild the walls that he has broken down stone by stone over these last few moons together, so that you can put this to rest. 

“We retained one,” he amends, thumb pressing against your lower lip. “Let me have it with you. We do not need anyone’s blessing—not my father, not my grandfather, not anyone’s. We do it here. We bind our lives in blood and fire, and it’s done. They can rage about it later, but it won’t matter. You’ll be mine, and I’ll be yours—iksan aōhon, iksā ñuhon—no one will be able to take it from us.”

You want to agree.

You so desperately want to agree. You do not think you have wanted anything so bad since the Triarchy was within reach. Since you were chained in the Ivory Yard, staring up at your brother for the last time as you waited for your fate to be decided. Since you were put on the ship to Lys, not even able to say goodbye to those you love. And you think it is ridiculous. It is ridiculous that you want this as badly as you wanted to be Triarch, as badly as you wished for a life with your brother, as badly as you wished to say goodbye—it is simply not possible that Aerion managed to carve himself this deeply into you in six short moons. 

It is ridiculous, it is absurd, it is exactly the sort of thing you have spent your entire life learning how to avoid. You have had men before him—men and women, better men and better women, safer men, safer women, easier men, easier women. You have had partners who would have given you everything without demanding anything in return—Aenar joined your campaign through the Shallows and Slaver’s Bay, knowing the risks, knowing it was treason, fighting at your side, spilling blood in your name, Jaenys almost started a war for you when the Elephants dared to chain you, Aenys would have set aside three centuries of family grudges and risked disinheritence to wed you—and yet—

And yet, your chest aches, and you cannot drag your eyes from his, wide and searching, tracing your face for a hint of an answer before you speak. You have never wanted any of them the way you want him. Never felt anything close to this—the tightness in your throat and the pull in your chest, the terrible, overwhelming urge to give in. 

You start to shake your head, and Aerion’s jaw tightens. “We can’t.”

“Why—”

“Because I will not see you exiled as I have been, Aerion!” you say loudly, shifting to get off of him, but he grabs your wrists to hold you in place before you can. His face is riddled with confusion, like he doesn’t understand what you’re saying—of course, he doesn’t, you think bitterly, because he hasn’t thought so far ahead. “You—you do not understand the gravity of my exile. I should be dead right now, Aerion. I should have been torn apart in the Ivory Yard. I parted on good enough terms with my father and the Tiger Party, yes, but the Elephants are the majority, have been the majority for three centuries, will likely be for the next three after what I’ve done. I am lucky that I am not dead, and if word gets back to the Elephants that the Targaryens have taken in someone they exiled for high treason, they can take it as a declaration of war, Aerion.”

Aerion presses his lips together. “They cannot do anything to Westeros—” You laugh, it is a harsh, cruel sound, and you roll your eyes, shaking your head in disbelief. He is a fool—an arrogant, idiotic fool. “—They can’t. I would like to see them try to declare war on us. They would—”

“Westeros has been facing civil unrest for over a decade, Aerion,” you spit. “Do you think we are fools who do not pay attention to what happens across the Narrow Sea? Your lords are already looking for excuses to turn on you. The court bristles over Rhoynish influence, and the Blackfyres did not rise from nothing. They had support, they still have support. Men who lost lands and sons and pride for backing them, men who would seize any chance to see your line weakened again. They sit here in Essos now, building their power in that sellsword company that just sacked Qohor, and all the Elephants would have to do is whisper in the right ears, send the right coin—”

You shake your head. You cannot swallow away the lump in your throat. You knew all of this already—it has been hanging over you for several moons now, but it is different speaking it out loud. You will never be able to be with him, not unless he accepts that being with you would mean setting aside any hope of ever being able to go home. 

“Your father will not risk it—your king will not risk it,” you tell him. “Westeros cannot afford to make an enemy of Volantis when there is so much unrest already, and I will not see you bind yourself to me through blood and fire, knowing that as soon as you do, your father will have to permanently exile you to avoid a war with my people.”

He’s quiet for a long moment—too quiet, and too long. You expect him to argue, to snap and deny and twist your words into something easier to fight against, but he doesn’t. His grip on your wrists loosens slightly, not enough to let you go, but enough that it no longer feels like he’s trying to restrain you, so much as it is that he just wants you close.

“I do not care,” he says simply after a moment, but his voice is stripped of anger and frustration; there is something small and childlike in the words, as if he knows what you’re saying and understands the logic behind it, but can’t bring himself to accept it, even if all he has a flimsy lie to shield himself from the truth. It is so far from the arrogance and fury he hides behind that it cracks your chest right open. His gaze doesn’t leave yours, wide and stubborn and far too open as he shakes his head. “I don’t. I just—”

He falters, staring at you, lips parted as he shakes his head. 

“It is your fault,” he accuses, throat bobbing as he swallows. “It is your fault. You should have left me alone—” The edge to his voice comes back now, not entirely, but enough. His breath is unsteady, eyes locked to yours as though he’s trying to force you to understand. “You should have treated me like everyone else on this pillowed prison, but you didn’t. You dragged me through your city, into your games, into your ridiculous, arrogant little world where you pretend you are above anything. You let me in. You told me you were mine, and that I was yours, and now you expect me to go back to Westeros and sit in that viper’s nest and pretend that I am—that I have not had you? That I have not felt—”

He stares at you, his face twists, he is angry, and you are not sure if it’s at you, himself, or both. You do not dare speak, because there is a heat that threatens behind your eyes, and a tightness to your throat that is overwhelming.

You know this, you want to tell him to shut him up. You know this is your fault, you know you never should have let this go so far, you know this is a mistake that has irrevocably destroyed you both. 

“You’ve ruined it,” he breathes out. “Do you understand that? You’ve ruined everything. I have thought about it, you know? Every day since my father exiled me, I have thought about leaving this wretched place and going home—there was nothing I wanted more than I wanted to go home.”

His voice is strained, and the words come faster, more accusing, like he’s been holding them back for too long. You wish he would stop talking. You don’t want to hear this—it will only make everything harder. He continues before you can bring yourself to speak.

“I counted the days, envisioned our banner in the harbor, imagined walking up to my father and—” He cuts himself off abruptly, grimacing as he looks away, as though he was about to admit to something that he realized he shouldn’t. “I would step back into it, and everything would be as it should be—and then you—and now I—” He rubs his face hard, frustrated. “Now I think about going back, and it feels like I am being dragged back into something smaller. I look at it now, and all I can think about is that you will not be there.”

“Aerion—”

“And I am supposed to want that?” he demands, something incredulous slipping through the anger. “I am supposed to be satisfied with it, knowing—” He exhales sharply, cutting himself off again before the words can come out wrong. “I won’t be. I know I won’t be. I will think about this place, about you, and everything else will feel like a poor imitation of something I’ve already had, and it is your fault. You’ve made everything else feel—” He falters again, as though searching for a word to describe what he means. “—less. You have made everything feel less, and you do not get to ruin it—me—and walk away like it is nothing, do you understand?”

You do not respond for a long time, staring at him helplessly. You do not know how to respond—and it is such a foreign feeling, truly. All of the years you spent honing your blade in the training yard and your tongue in court, and this dragon prince has it tied in knots, because you do not know what to say that will make him understand. 

“Say it,” he says again, hands slipping from your wrist to hold your own, fingers sliding between yours. “Say that you will come with me.”

You let out a shaky breath, and then you smile. It is tight at the edges. “Okay. I will.”

“You will?” he breathes out, eyes searching your face rapidly.

You swallow, and then you nod, breathing in deeply, squinting slightly before you say again, “Yeah. I will.”

Aerion visibly relaxes, breath leaving him in a rush, like something in his chest has finally unclenched after being wound too tight for too long, like the fire burning him from the inside out has finally been extinguished. His hands tighten around yours firmly, and he searches your face again.

“You mean it,” he says, not quite a question, but he waits for you to answer as though it is one.

You nod. 

It feels easier than speaking. 

He exhales again through his nose, separating his hands from yours to lift them to your face. He cradles your cheeks between his hands, gaze tracing your face, and you hope that he does not see the lie thinly veiled behind your eyes. You lean in to press your lips against his before he can search for too long, hands sliding up his abdomen to rest firmly on his chest. You can feel the rapid pace of his heart thrumming beneath your touch, can taste the wine on his tongue as it mixes with the blood still wet in your mouth. 

He kisses you back, lips sliding messily against yours, fingers biting into your cheeks. One hand slides behind your head so that he can thread his fingers through your hair, and the other slides down to your waist, so he can pull you impossibly closer. You have kissed Aerion hundreds, thousands of times since he’s arrived in Lys, but this kiss feels different—it is not rough and biting, a fight more than a caress, and it is not even like the slow kisses you share in the cove, a place that is only yours and only his, where you can fall into each other without fearing unwanting eyes. This kiss is—

It feels like surrender. Surrender to this. To each other. To this mess that you have found yourselves entangled in, with no hope or desire to be free from. To everything you have been denying for moons on end, because this is not distraction, or a taste of fire, or indulgence—if it were, you would agree to his request without hesitation, you would not lie to appease him, knowing you will renege on your promise when the time comes, because you would not care if Aerion was permanently exiled for binding himself to you through blood and fire. You would not care because it would mean you get to keep him, because all you care for is your wants and whims, without restraint and without consequence. 

But you do care. 

You see the way he looks west, and you see the yearning in his eyes when he speaks of home, though he tries to hide it behind a veneer of arrogance and bitterness. You see it, because you are intimately familiar with it yourself—and you will not be the reason he is stripped of his birthright and cast out. Not when you know very well that he will never truly be happy choosing you, when you know the what ifs will haunt him for the rest of his life, and he will look west when he thinks you are not looking, and he will dread sleep because he will be forced in front of all of the faces he left behind.

It is not your right to make this decision for him, a traitorous part of you whispers as he sighs into your mouth, hand sliding up and down your back as he kisses you deeply. It is his decision to make, and if he chooses you, then so be it, but—

But you know better, you counter viciously. He doesn’t know exile as you do. How could you condemn him to what you’ve suffered for five years, what you will suffer for the rest of your life,  knowing how it’s ruined you? What would you do if you were in his position? If you had a chance to go home, but it would mean leaving him behind for good? Would you take it?

If you had a chance to go home, but it would mean leaving him behind for good, would you take it?

Your breath catches against his mouth as he drags his tongue across your lower lip, waiting for you to part them for him. You do, and he lets out a pleased hum against you as he licks at the inside of your mouth, tongue pressing against the cut he made at the corner, lapping at the blood he drew. 

You love him—somehow, some way, Aerion has managed to worm his way into your heart. He has lit up the part of you that you thought died the moment you were cast out from the Black Walls, stripped of everything that made you who you are, your promised future, the one you bled and destroyed yourself for, ripped away like it was nothing. Five years you’ve spent rotting away, cold and empty and always lying to yourself, and he was able to reignite the flames that once burned through you like it was nothing. 

And he loves you, you know this now, too. If he didn’t, you would not be having this conversation; he would not be convinced that he wants you more than his birthright, he would not be so upset over the idea of you not coming with him, he would not allow himself to be so—

His breath hitches into a soft moan against your lips when you shift your lower body so that you can sit more comfortably, unwittingly putting pressure on his half-hard cock. His pupils are blown wide as he stares up at you, waiting for you to do something rather than take it himself. You hesitate just for a second, gaze tracing the flush high on his sun-kissed cheeks before you slip your hand beneath the silks he wears, fingers wrapping around his cock.

Aerion’s jaw falls half slack, head lolling backward as you lazily stroke his cock, thumb running over his tip, smearing the precum already dribbling down his length. It’s not long before he’s heavy in your hand, breath leaving his lips in ragged pants, the whites of his eyes slivers as his eyes roll half-back when you squeeze the base of his cock. He tries to turn his face away, chest heaving. 

“Jurnegon rȳ nyke,” you breathe out, free hand coming up to cradle his cheek gently as you pick up the pace of your wrist, leaning in to ghost your lips against his, nipping his bottom lip. He lets out a low moan, pale lashes fluttering as his hazy gaze tries to focus on you. “Jaelan naejot ūndegon ao.”

Look at me. I want to see you.

Aerion’s breath is hot and shaky against your lips, eyes lidded; you can feel his abdomen tensing and spasming as he tries to stop himself from jerking his hips up so that he can fuck your fist. You press your lips to his more firmly, tasting the wine on his tongue as you drag your tongue against the roof of his mouth. The next noise he lets out is more of a whine than a moan, pitched and breathy and so sweet that you just can’t help yourself from giving him what he wants when he gasps a: “Kostilus,” into your mouth. 

Please.

You part your lips from his and smile when he instinctively finds himself chasing you, a pout forming on his kiss-swollen mouth when you lean back a little further, just far enough so that he can’t catch you. Before he can start complaining, you shift forward, hand sliding down to your own silks so you can shift them to the side. 

“Oh,” you breathe, breath hitching when his tip presses against your cunt, slipping against your slick folds. 

You nudge your nose against his, forehead-to-forehead, eyes sliding shut as his trembling fingers find your waist so that he can help you ease down on his cock. He nips your bottom lip once before you start to sink down, and lets out a low moan when he feels your walls clamp down around him. You take in a breath that sounds almost like a hiss, a sharp whistle between your teeth as your back arches into Aerion’s chest, the burn of his cock against your walls, stretching you open, makes your thighs tense and your head all hot.  

“Sīr ȳrda,” he groans, leaning back slightly so his lidded gaze can drop to where the two of you are joined. 

So tight.

One hand slips from your waist to your cunt, lithe fingers sliding down to your clit so he can rub slow circles on it; your head drops forward as you gasp, forehead pressed to his temple, you mouth absently at his jaw, biting back a whine as he lifts your hips up off his cock until only his tip is stretching your hole, and then guides you back down. He does it again, and again, again—a slow, agonizing pace that makes tears prick your eyes. 

You rock your hips against his, desperately trying to take over to set a quicker pace, teeth grazing his neck; his fingers bite deep into your thigh, thumb still rolling your clit, chest heaving as he lets you bounce on his cock at your leisure. Each time you drop your hips so that you’re flush to his thighs, you swear that you can feel him in your stomach, so deep that you can hardly breathe, hardly think, so full of him that all you can feel is him. 

Your fingers claw at his back, and he grunts lightly, arm slipping around your waist so that he can drag you closer, until your chest is to his and you can feel the rapid thuds of his heart against your body. You bury your face into the crook of his neck, muffling a moan by biting down hard when he starts fucking his hips up into you, meeting your bounces, burying himself deeper, deeper, deeper. He pinches your clit lightly, shifting the angle of his hips, and you choke out a noise—a sob or moan or gasp, you’re not sure, half his name, half a curse—as your whole body shudders, nails raking down his spine, jaw falling slack as you cum so hard that spots dot your vision.

“Gevie,” you hear him breathe, arm tightening around your waist, holding you close as you come undone on his cock. Your pulse pounds in your ears, and your thighs burn, and your body is trembling violently, and the lewd sound of his cock driving in and out of your cunt has you dizzy. You can hardly even make out what he’s saying, drowning in the feeling of his slick body sliding against yours, the sound of his hitched gasps and pitched moans, the taste of his skin, of the blood you drew at his throat before you tossed the knife away. You cannot get enough of him. You will never get enough of him. “Kesi—kesi sagon mēre. Ao se nyke. Rȳ ānogar se perzys. Ivestragon ziry.”

Beautiful. We—we will be one. You and I. Through blood and fire. Say it.

You feel his fingers leave your waist to slide up your body, threading through your hair. He pulls your head back, and your breath hitches at the sight of his swollen lips and sweat-slick skin, glistening as the sun begins to set outside. You choke on air as he thrusts his hips up, eyes sliding shut again, thighs so tense that it’s almost painful. You already feel as though you might cum again, chest fluttery and stomach tight and hot, and Aerion’s grip tightens on your hair, the pull at your scalp forcing another moan from your lips as he tries to get your attention to him again.

“Say it,” he demands, but you don’t even know what he’s referring to, all of his words sliding in one ear and out the other, eyes big and watery as you lose yourself in the familiar amethyst, black blown wide and so fucked-out that you can see the haze he’s feeling in them. His jaw tightens when your cunt spasms around him again, lashes fluttering as he lets out a low groan, abdomen flexing beneath your hands. His cock twitches inside of you, and your eyes half roll back when you feel it grind against that soft spot that makes you writhe, a whimper spilling from your lips. “Say it!”

If you had a chance to go home, but it would mean leaving him behind for good, would you take it?

“Avy jorrāelan,” you gasp, because you do not know what he wants you to say, and the question that keeps ringing through your head makes your eyes wet and your chest hurt, and that is the only thing you can think of when he looks at you like this, when he holds you like this, when he is so deep inside of you that you cannot even breathe, much less think. There are no walls to keep in what has been plaguing you for moons now, no way for you to twist what you feel for him into something more manageable—more understandable.  

I love you. 

The words rip from your lips so honestly that it stuns you—that all you can do is stare up at Aerion with parted lips, only barely processing what it is that you spoke, watching the way he physically falters, eyes widening. It is the truth, it is the truth you have been avoiding acknowledging for months in fear of what it means—the truth you have been terrified of, desperately trying to explain as something else. 

You want this for the rest of your life, you want him—this was never just indulgence or distraction. Never. This was always—it was always him. It was always you. It was always the two of you together, from that first meeting until now. This was how it was meant to be. He is the fire to your steel. You are sharp enough to cut, and he is hot enough to burn, both of you are reckless to actually try, and you love it—you love him.

But if you had the chance—

His grip on your hair loosens, mouth hanging open, and then he leans in, before you can blink, pressing his lips to yours in an open-mouthed kiss, hot and messy, lips slipping and teeth clashing. He kisses sloppily down your neck to your collarbone, teeth catching skin, and then he drags his mouth back to yours. He does it again, and again, and again. 

He muffles a pitched moan into your mouth, and it catches on something close to a whine. He is mumbling something, the same thing you spoke: avy jorrāelan, avy jorrāelan, avy jorrāelan, avy jorrāelan. He says it like a prayer, desperate and reverent all at once—over and over and over again, through gasps and groans and whimpers, muffled into your mouth, against your skin. 

His grip on your hair and waist tightens, and he pulls you down on his cock, fucking his hips up into you for one last reckless thrust as he spills his seed deep inside of you with a choked noise, pretty face twisting as his eyes knock back and his jaw falls slack. 

You shudder against him when you feel him fill you, cum pumping deep inside of you, so much of it that you can feel the excess dribbling out of you, smearing on your thighs. You’re hardly even able to kiss him back when he finally brings his lips back to yours, breath ragged as he drags his tongue across the back of your teeth, sliding it lazily against yours. You sink into him, a pleasant, boneless feeling settling into you, one arm slinking around his waist while the other entangles with his hair as the two of you come down from your high, sharing the same air, the same warmth, unwilling to unwrap yourselves from one another.

You do not know how much time has passed by the time you finally speak, but the sun has set, and the stars glitter through the night sky, and you finally ask the question that has been bothering you for a fortnight now: 

“What brought all this up? About going back to Westeros?” you ask quietly after a moment, carding your fingers through his silvery hair. Aerion is still panting, eyes half-glazed over as he buries his flushed face into your chest. “Hm?” 

“I… I have been in correspondence with my father,” Aerion says after a long moment, tongue darting out to wet his lips as he pulls himself together. You knew this already from your harbor brats and courtesans, but you hum anyway as though it is new knowledge, ignoring the pit in your stomach. “I am sure you have heard of the fever spreading through the Seven Kingdoms.”

“I have,” you agree after a moment, fingers stilling briefly in their steady movements as you wait for him to continue. It is hard not to hear about it when all of Essos has closed its ports to their neighbors across the Narrow Sea. From what you hear, half of the folks in their major cities are succumbing to the sickness; a strong man could wake up healthy in the morning and die by evening. 

“My grandfather and two of my cousins have come down with it,” Aerion says quietly after a moment, and you’re grateful he doesn’t see the way your eyes slide shut in shame, as you remember what you’d been spiraling in paranoia about a fortnight ago. His kin is dying, and you thought he was sending ravens to betray your trust. “The maesters do not think they’ll live through the moon, and my uncles Aerys and Rhaegel are in the Red Keep too—if the worst comes to pass and they all succumb to the fever, then my father will have to bring me home when the ports reopen. It could be months from now, it could be next week.”

You do not know how to respond to this. You have never been good at comfort. “I see,” you say after a moment, voice soft. “I’m sorry to hear about your grandfather and cousins. Were you close?”

Aerion scoffs softly into your skin. “No,” he mutters. “My grandfather and grandmother always preferred Uncle B—” He falters over the name, but then clears his throat and continues. “—Uncle Baelor and his sons. After what happened in Ashford, well, they could hardly stand to look at me and my father. They blamed us for Baelor’s death, even if they wouldn’t say it out loud.”

There is something odd in his voice as he says it, as though it is only a front of indifference that he’s putting up, as though it bothers him more than he’s letting himself accept, but you do not call him on it.

Instead, you ask, “And your cousins? Were you close to them?”

“No,” he says immediately, and then pauses. He says again, with less certainty, “No.”

His fingers tighten slightly where they rest against you, like he’s searching for something to do with them. You do not respond yet, because he sucks in a breath as though he has more to say, but doesn’t know how to push it out. 

“They’re Baelor’s sons. Valarr and Matarys,” he continues after a moment. He adds bitterly, “Everything I was supposed to be, according to my father.”

His throat spasms as he swallows. “Matarys—he is younger. He did not take to combat or jousting. I do not see much of him. We are not close. Valarr—” he starts, and then huffs a quiet breath against your skin. “Valarr is always around, always doing what is expected of him. The perfect prince. The perfect son. My grandfather adores him. My father—” He cuts himself off, jaw tightening as he lays his forehead on your shoulder. “Everyone does.”

You hum, just so he knows you’re listening.

“I speak to him,” he admits, quieter now, like it’s something he doesn’t particularly enjoy admitting. “Spoke to him. More than the others. We wrote to each other when my family left for Summerhall after the rebellion, and sparred often when we visited King’s Landing. I thought—he did not write to me after Ashford, when I was sent here. Did not speak to me after the trial. I almost died—nearly bled out on the tourney field, almost had my skull crushed by that oaf of a hedge knight, and he did not even bother to—no one bothered to—I—it does not matter. I do not wish to speak of this.”

You want to ask him about the Ashford Tourney, curious to hear what actually happened. Rumors have crossed the Narrow Sea, of course: Prince Maekar’s mad son invoked an ancient blood trial to cull the line of succession, that he meant to cut his way through kin and rival alike beneath the guise of honor, that he laughed when he learned his father struck a killing blow to his uncle. You have never been one to put stock in rumors—there are countless that follow you and the reason for your exile—but there’s always some level of truth to them.

But Aerion’s voice is strained, and his fingers have gone still against you, so you do not press. Your fingers resume their slow path through his hair—it is longer now, six moons ago, it was cropped short to his ears, but now the silver brushes past his shoulders, soft, silky strands that you could spend hours toying with. He breathes out against your skin, uneven at first, then slower, as though trying to regain some control over himself.

“It does not matter,” he repeats again, hands curling against you, forehead dropping to your shoulder. “I do not care about them. I do not care if they send ravens, and I do not care if they drag me back or leave me here to rot.”

He is lying. You can hear it in his voice, feel it in the way his grip on your waist tightens, the way his fingers tremble despite ardent attempts to still them. Your eyes slide shut. 

He lifts his head from your shoulder so that he can look at you, and your hand slides from the back of his head to his face, thumbs absently stroking the faint scars that line his cheeks. Usually, he would turn his head away or bat your hands, but now, he lets you, leaning into your hand slightly, like the touch steadies him, like he needs it more than he wants to admit. His eyes slide shut for a moment at the contact, lashes resting against flushed skin as he lets out a heavy sigh. 

“You will come with me,” he says again at last, forcing his eyes back open so that he can look up at you. “You will. We will do it here, if we must, if that’s what will convince you—blood and fire. I do not care.”

His gaze searches yours with that stubborn, unmovable certainty that makes it impossible to argue with him properly. You exhale through your nose, not responding right away.

“Say it,” he adds, quieter now. “Say that you’ll come with me.”

He doesn’t need to speak the please that almost comes with the words. 

Your lips part, and your fingers still against his face, the pads of your fingers brushing over the raised skin before your hand slides down to rest on the side of his neck. Your thumb glides along his pulse, feeling how it flutters unevenly beneath your touch.

If you had a chance to go home, but it would mean leaving him behind for good, would you take it?

You smile lightly—it is small, and it is tight at the edges. “I will. I’ll come with you.”