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Law + Morality - I think Baelor cares about his own moral character and ethics, buuuuuut also cares about maintaining his house and his family’s image/reputation. Even though he volunteers to take Dunk’s side, I think he does so in a relatively ~safe~ way, in the sense that a trial of seven provides a set structure and opportunity for Baelor to insert himself into the conflict. Even before that, he counsels Dunk towards a trial by combat— which is still safely within legal precedent. He’s trying to be a good person, but he’s also the hand of the king operating within established legal structures.

Anxiety + Control - This goes into head canon territory and is specific to the way his character is played in akotsk, but I interpret the habit he has with his rings as related to anxiety. He probably needs to have a certain level of control to feel stable. He’s balancing roles as an heir + hand + brother + uncle + father, and I think the same qualities that make him a good leader could impact his interpersonal relationships or lead him to try and manage the people around him.

honestly i have lots of thoughts that i’ve mostly seen echoed online. i’m going to try and watch the season and enjoy it for what it is, but i’ve always struggled with hotd’s pacing. this is also so specific, but i like viserys ii targaryen, so i’m not thrilled that him and aegon were removed from the battle of the gullet and the impact that has on jace’s character motivations.

The hour is late. Alysanne sits cross-legged at the foot of your bed, drowsy-eyed with wisps escaping the pretty plait of her hair. You’re each dressed for sleep, covered in long cotton shifts; the skin beneath scrubbed with horsehair brush to clean it of the day’s hunt. Between you, a single candle flickers against the surrounding darkness of your chambers.

Alysanne sighs. The candle’s flame sputters. “Did you call me here to speak of what happened in the Kingswood? I’m sorry I ran, but don’t act like you wouldn’t have done the same.”

You open your mouth to protest, but you don’t feel good enough to deny it. All day, your mind had been twisting around what you’d learned of Prince Baelor. By touching you, he’d fallen from some untouchable place in your mind. He seemed within reach now, and if you shoved your disgust aside, you might use his attraction to secure a better place for yourself.

Strangely, despite your distaste for him, you find the thought difficult to speak aloud. With a click of teeth, your mouth shuts again.

Alysanne tosses her hands. “If you don’t wish to confide in me, so be it. But I’ve trekked through the woods all day, and I wish to sleep—”

“Wait,” you stop her quickly. Your words spill forth, but you only share what you care to. “When you left, Prince Baelor admitted there was truth to our gossip. His wife keeps other company. We exchanged words, or argued perhaps— he insulted my honor in one breath, and kissed me in the next.”

“What?” Alysanne jerks forward with a small swing of her braid, the end of it barely missing the candle’s flame. “Did he harm you?”

“No.” You stare into the small flame, willing it to burn a bright star into your vision. Moving the candle a safe distance from Alysanne’s hair, you blink the imprint away. “He threatened to take my tongue for treason, but he didn’t.”

“Seven hells, I knew I shouldn’t have run,” she whispers. “I’ve no doubt Baelor's as wretched as the rest of his house, but he seems to at least have the sense to behave when there’s a witness. I’ve not seen him drop a single courtesy in all our time here.”

It was true. You’d never witnessed Baelor react in anger or raise his voice in court, not even when a lord’s hostage son had boldly proclaimed King Daeron a bastard.

You hadn’t seen that man again, but whatever fate he’d met— it’d been handled privately.

“Baelor’s no more honorable than the rest of King’s Landing,” you say. “He only cares to act good because he must. If he’d held a dragon during the rebellion, we all would’ve burned.”

“Bloody dragon or not, he’s still the second-most powerful man in the realm! He doesn’t need a flying beast to hurt you.” Alysanne takes a sharp breath and her eyes go wide. Huddled atop your bed, she suddenly appears small— a slip of a girl again, nearly the same as the day you’d met her. “What if he seeks you out for more? Other than each other, no one cares for us here… not truly.”

Her words hurt.

“Please,” you plead, unwilling to think of the harm that could befall you simply for catching a prince’s eye. “Just lay down. Allow me a moment to think.”

Without awaiting her response, you kill the candle’s flame and set it aside. Tossing Alysanne a pillow, you pull the covers back and bury yourself beneath them.

She follows after only a moment’s hesitation. In a shuffle of limbs and blankets, you move to lay opposite of each other. Your feet at her head, her pillow propped atop them. One of her arms slings over your legs, curling around as if she could keep you anchored.

It was a habit born of your first days in the Keep. You’d each been too frightened to sleep alone those days.

Bundled beneath thick sheets and covers, you feel your body is sinking into the bed. Weighted down and safe, you listen as Alysanne speaks a quiet prayer– her voice muffled by the pile of blankets around your ears.

Your eyes shut as she pleads with the Maiden for protection. She whispers of virtue and chastity, concepts that’ve never felt a fit for you. Cast aside in King’s Landing, the glittering cleanliness praised by the Seven seemed only to belong to daughters of good houses. Loyal houses. Houses that hadn’t been built by sowing the seed of an unworthy Targaryen king.

As Alysanne prays, the skin of your lips fills with pins and needles— a burn left by the scrape of Baelor’s beard. With your eyes closed, it was easy to imagine he was kissing you still.

In the dark, you could admit you’d liked the way his tongue felt against yours.

Your foot kicks out at Alysanne beneath the covers.

“Save your prayer,” you mumble, voice thick with sleep. “I’ll protect us. If I can manage to drag Prince Baelor’s name down as low as mine, the court might think him no better than King Aegon. It’s like you said— perhaps I’ll be sent home if I bed him. The king might pawn me off to a loyalist lord husband… with a castle to silence the scandal. If it worked for my grandmother, why shouldn’t it work for me?”

“Your grandmother was a proper lady. Not a hostage.”

“What other choice do we have? I’m tired of doing nothing but needlework in the hope that my fate will change.”

Alysanne curses, but she doesn’t further press the idiocy of your scheme.

“Would you take me with you?” she asks quietly instead. “I could be the septa of your keep. It sounds a bit nicer than the life of a silent sister– I might tend to your children instead of the dead.”

You’re asleep before you can tell her you wouldn't leave her.

—

In your dreams, you’re given no lord husband. You have no children. Instead, you dream of Harrenhal’s burnt towers. You fly through dark halls, flapping paper-thin wings around mangled ghosts, their skin crisped and cracked from dragonfire.

Sudden light blinds your sensitive eyes.

You smash into a little girl’s silvered mirror and fall dead at her feet.

—

Finding Baelor alone long enough to bed him proves more complicated than you’d anticipated.

It seems he never moves unaccompanied. He’s always shadowed by a knight of the Kingsguard or a member of council; his useless brothers or one of the many Targaryen spawn that infest the Keep. In hindsight, your encounter in the Kingswood seems to have been a rarity, a quiet moment for himself that you’d crashed into unaware.

For days, you and Alysanne study the prince’s movements — observing him with the same detachment you’d grant an ant crawling over sliced cake. When King Daeron and Baelor hold court in the Great Hall, you raise a hand from where you linger in the crowd. Squinting one eye shut, you open and close two fingers over the prince’s head, imagining the type of sugared icing that might break from his skull in your boredom.

Blackberry maybe. Or perhaps some type of custard cream. You wonder if he even had a sweet tooth, or if he fashioned himself above even that indulgence.

“Do you think the prince brings a full guard with him to the privy?" Alysanne asks, her voice loud despite the fact she stands at your side.

“Aye.” You continue pinching your fingers over Prince Baelor’s head, covering the seriousness of his face. “I’d wager coin on it.”

Nearby, a lady with pearls strung through her hair clears her throat. With a glance at you from the corner of her eye, she whispers to a woman beside her. Their words are quiet, but you catch enough to know they speak of you.

—bloody sister’s rumored to be crazed. Whole house should’ve hanged.

You drop your hand. In the distance, King Daeron gives a sweating man from the Reach a choice between losing his head or taking the black. With your attention pulled away, you hadn’t heard what crime he’d committed. He chooses the black.

With a strangled shout of damn you and your Dornish frauds hurled towards the king, he’s dragged from the hall. A twist of displeasure passes over Baelor’s face, but it’s quickly replaced by careful neutrality. As if nothing had occurred, a finer dressed petitioner moves away from the long line of those awaiting an audience with the king.

“I wonder if they’ll put that man back in line for treason,” you mumble. Angling your head towards Alysanne, you ignore the concern in her eye. “I need air. I’ll be back before the king finishes.”

—

Seated on a stone bench in an overgrown garden, you watch as a black ant crawls over the back of your hand. It walks a looping path from your wrist to thumb, but it leaves no trace of touch atop your skin.

“You’ll gain no sweetness from me,” you say quietly, extending your arm to let it crawl away on a nearby rose. It disappears into a fold of petals, and you wipe your hands against your skirts. Nearby, a bell tolls to mark the hour’s turn. A booming ring that breaks the air, it echoes as you stand. It seems you’d lost track of time– it was easy to do so in the garden’s seclusion.

A month prior, you’d learned of the hideaway through whispers in the Keep. Servants spoke of a terrible accident that had befallen a visiting lord walking along one of the garden’s paths. He’d evidently had his head broken like an egg, crushed by the stone of a crumbling spire.

In some versions of the tale you’d heard, he was a Northerner robbed of his sight by King’s Landing’s sun. In others, he was a lovestruck Stormlander– too busy looking at his lady love to notice the growing shadow of a falling stone. Regardless of the truth, King Daeron had ordered the garden sealed from the rest of the castle for repairs.

Since that time, you’d found a gap in the garden wall large enough to slip through. Absent of prying eyes and barbed tongues, you felt the garden was a rare sanctuary despite the dangers it evidently held. Walking the same overgrown path the lord had perished on, your steps linger by a discolored stone nestled in the high grass. Reddish in the day’s high sun, you couldn’t tell if the stone’s stain was born of blood or rust.

Distracted by the sight, you nearly miss a quiet gasp that comes from nearby.

Stopping dead on your feet, your ears strain to listen carefully. The gasp comes again, a little quieter. You turn towards the noise. A whimper, breathless and high, followed by a pleased sigh. Heart beating faster, you follow the noise towards an alcove of honeysuckle and orange trees, fragrant with blossoms filled with small buzzing bees.

With warm cheeks and a rush of blood, you rise on your toes to peek through a gap in the leaves. Lady Jena lays sprawled at the base of an orange tree, cushioned by green grass and a high pile of skirts. A stream of sun reaches her hair, lighting her loose curls in a copper glow. Her head tosses back against the tree. A rosy flush travels from her cheeks to the tops of her breasts, heaving and threatening to spill from the bodice of her dress. Her face twists beautifully, eyes shut tight as she moans, a spill of yes, love— yes, yes, leaving her kiss-bitten lips.

Stomach twisting, you feel unable to look away; even as Jena’s skirts ripple— seemingly stacked too high. Another lady lays between her thighs, you realize— another set of skirts lost amongst lace and silk.

The woman attending to Jena removes herself from beneath her skirts, laughing quietly as she smoothes down her mussed hair. You recognize her as one of Jena’s bedmaids, a woman who’d followed Jena all the way from the Dornish Marches to King’s Landing. For a moment, they simply watch each other– but then they’re kissing, and Jena’s gaze is low-lidded and soft.

She looks like a woman in love. The sight burns itself into your eye and you feel… you feel horribly sad. Whatever you’d imagined when Baelor said his wife kept better company, it hadn’t been this.

Without a sound, you retreat to court.

—

Walking back to the Great Hall, you feel trapped within a stupor you struggle to name. A warmth lingers over your face, a hum settles in your blood. With your mind distracted, you miss the signs that King Daeron has finished with the day’s petitions. A flood of courtiers shuffle through the halls; you walk past them unseeing.

Rounding a corner, you remain in the garden, looking through the gaps between an orange tree’s leaves. You smell honeysuckle and sweetened air, only you’re Lady Jena, or perhaps she’s you. You cannot see your face, but rough bark digs into your back. Baelor stands before you, his face broken and eclipsed by blinding light.

He lays you down in sun-warmed grass— that action feels too tender. You try again.

Baelor demands that you kneel in the grass. He lifts your skirts as he pushes you back, trailing kisses between your thighs the same way he’d mouthed at you in the Kingswood– gentle at first, then rough, with a desperation bordering on hunger.

Your understanding of the scene is distant. Frightened of falling down your house’s past, you’ve only ever slipped a hand between your thighs in vague curiosity. It’d often felt strange, and you’d always pull your hand away when it began to feel good. Perhaps you were afraid of it; touch had sullied your name before you were even born.

Your mind can’t fill the gaps because of it. Baelor’s hands are rougher– larger and calloused. They’d feel different than yours, but you’re unsure precisely how.

Banish me from court, you plead in your daydream instead, when you’re unable to imagine the quality of Baelor’s touch. Grant me a castle. A fool husband— one who cares not that his babes are rumored to be branched from a Targaryen line.

Despite your control of the slipping scenario, Baelor denies your wants. He smiles at you sadly. Don’t we each wish to be better? You’re not your grandmother.

Your grandmother held a fraught history long before she’d married into House Lothston. Falena Stokeworth hadn’t remained living in your life for long, but she’d told you stories of King’s Landing when you’d been small enough to still sit on her knee.

“I pray you never see the Red Keep, pup,” she’d told you a long time ago. “The capital’s a horrid fucking place. It’s been said I suffered from the Maiden’s Day curse as a girl there, but it was all men. The same leg you sit on was shattered on the serpentine steps, pushed as I was. Damn leg’s never felt right, even when I slept in the softest bed in the realm.”

A week later, she’d slipped to her death down one of Harrenhal’s spiraling towers.

Sick and reeling, you stop at the base of the same stairs your grandmother had once shattered her leg on. The Great Hall must have cleared for the day– Prince Baelor was near the top of the serpentine steps, speaking over his shoulder at Prince Maekar, who followed at his brother’s back.

You expect Baelor to walk past you. But he doesn’t. Instead, his head turns in your direction, and he shifts his path straight towards you. He comes to a stop only a few steps above you, casting a long shadow over your frozen frame.

“Lady Lothston,” Baelor greets with a polite bow of his head. “Have you any news from around the Keep?”

Faced with him in flesh and blood, any flicker of want or kinship you’d felt for him burns away.

“Nothing worthy of your attention, Your Grace,” you say carefully, keeping your eyes on the Valyrian dagger secured in a loop of his belt. It was polished and shining– you feel grubby sporting cooled sweat along your brow. “Though I saw Lady Jena in one of the Keep’s gardens. Does she not attend court at your side?”

Baelor twists a ring on his finger, his hand flexing and unflexing just slightly. “My wife often has other business that requires her attention. I don’t expect her to attend to each of my needs as Hand.”

“Do you attend to your own needs then, Your Grace?”

You risk a glance at him. Baelor watches you with a closed expression. From your… study of his days, you knew he held no habit of speaking to Blackfyre hostages. And with a peek at Prince Maekar, you find some assurance that you’re not alone in finding Baelor’s attention strange.

Maekar is frowning. His head swivels between you and his brother, a sharp look of befuddlement shadowing his features.

“We’re expected in council, Baelor,” Maekar says a little ungracefully, knocking into the conversation without his brother’s careful tact.

With a nod, Baelor motions him ahead. “Excuse us, my lady– but my brother is correct. Please tell Lady Osgrey I send my regards.”

Your head whips towards Baelor as he steps around you smoothly. You hadn’t spoken Alysanne’s name to him in the Kingswood. The thought that perhaps he’d studied you just as you studied him was unnerving– your heart sinks to your gut.

Without sparing you another glance, Baelor and Maekar continue on their way to council. In the distance, Maekar’s stern voice reaches your ears. He makes no attempt to speak quietly, and his words cause a little ripple of courtiers to turn their heads in your direction.

“Don’t tell me you’re taken with Lothston’s harlot daughter. You’ve not had another woman in years— no one cared if the heir rode a whore during war. But now? What the fuck are you thinking?”

You’re gone before Baelor provides a response.

—

That night, you write a note to Danelle.

Sending ravens from the Red Keep was a challenge given your restrictions as a hostage. You were permitted contact with your house, but your letters often went through a round of heavy revision beneath a maester’s hand. For the letter to your sister, you settle on the tone of a love-struck lady in hopes of avoiding any unwanted alterations.

With quill and ink, you ask if she knows of any tinctures that would aid a potential courtship. I’m in love, so much I feel sick with it, you finish simply.

It seems to work. A maester’s bushy brows quirk as he reads your writing, but he fastens the parchment around a raven’s foot with little question. He laughs as tosses the raven from the rookery’s arched windows. “A word of advice, my lady? Some lords quite like desperate creatures.”

You think of shoving him to fly after the bird.

A fortnight later, you receive a note containing only the title of a tome in response. Seated in your chambers with Alysanne, you mend a slight tear in the silk of your dress as she reads the letter aloud with a frown.

“Observations on Potions and Poultices? Gods, your sister holds a horribly dull idea of courtship. No wonder she remains unwed.”

—

Cracking open the stiff-backed tome Danelle recommended, a plume of dust reaches your nose. Your eyes water as you fight against a sneeze.

The layer of dust along the cover was thick, nearly as if it hadn’t been touched in years. You hadn’t been able to find it in the castle’s open libraries. Instead, you’d ventured from your chambers at a late hour to look within a restricted book collection; accessible only to maesters within the Red Keep.

You’d gained entrance by bribing a guard with a bracelet of silver and topaz. Before you’d been born, it’d been gifted to your grandmother by King Aegon— and it’d been left to you when she’d passed.

It was a horribly gaudy thing, and you’d suffered sharp looks the only time you ever risked wearing it to court. The guard’s eyes had widened when you’d presented it to him, but it wouldn’t be missed.

On walks around the docks, you’d often considered tossing it to tarnish in the Blackwater Bay.

With shaking hands, you kneel to fully spread open the tome on the library’s stone floor. Flipping rapidly through it, you try to figure out why Danelle had recommended it for courtship. As the pages fly by, more dust plumes into the air. Your eyes scan over an endless account of medical treatments: herb poultices and wound disinfectants, salves for genital rashes— each recipe accompanied by intricate diagrams you hold no need for.

Worse, there were some words you had limited understanding of. As a hostage within the Red Keep, the continuation of your education was a privilege you’d been stripped of. Some hostages who’d been taken young enough had been condemned to a life of limited literacy and learning because of it.

You were fortunate in that your father only sired two daughters. In your youth, you’d received lessons that rivaled most highborn sons, but your education had been abruptly cut short by the rebellion’s end.

Much to your shame, there were gaps in your understanding of some written concepts. Most informal correspondence was fine, but maesters had a way of writing that often left you feeling like the soft matter of your brain had been dashed against a castle wall.

You’ve nearly given up when you catch sight of a woman’s bare breasts. No need for reading when there was an illustration like that. Pausing, your hands flip back to the page. You’d only seen part of the image; the full diagram shows a nude man and woman laid over each other. There was a bottle in her hand and an arch of flowers around them both.

You pause at the cock drawn between the man’s legs– praying that they don’t truly look like that.

Blessedly, the text that accompanies the diagram is simple enough to understand.

Bedding Draught: Causes prolonged arousal when administered. Possible increase in affection possible, but unobserved.

With a slow glance around the stacks, you listen for a sign of anyone nearby. Silence. Pulling a folded piece of parchment and stick of charcoal from a small satchel at your side, you begin to hastily copy the ingredients listed. At first, the recipe is simple enough: milk, egg whites, and honey. But then you read further, and it becomes stranger: object’s hair and saliva. Moon blood. Seed. Crushed bone.

You sneeze.

Instantly, you cover your nose with your elbow and clench your eyes shut. Please, please, please, you plead. I cannot be caught, not here.

But it seems Alysanne’s prayer to the Maiden had graced you with no protection. Someone clears their throat behind where you kneel.

“If you plead forgiveness, my lady, I might permit you to read that in open air.”

You recognize his voice without having to look, but you turn your head anyway— hastily tucking your parchment between the tome’s pages and slamming it shut as you do.

Prince Baelor stands above you, his hands fiddling with one of his rings. He cocks his head, and you’re surprised to see he appears slightly amused.

–

Sitting before Prince Baelor in a plush-backed chair, you feel prepared to hurl. The chamber he’d taken you to felt too small, and the scent of melted wax from low-burning candles was too strong. Worse, Baelor hadn’t spoken a word since he’d poured you each a cup of wine.

Instead, he’d sat down across from you at an ornate desk without taking a sip from his cup, and he’d turned his attention to the tome that now lay open before him.

Looking down, you see the familiar illustration of a woman and man tangled with each other. Another roll of nausea threatens you— your eyes move to Baelor’s face.

He was watching you with a frown.

Gods preserve me, you think— though you’ve rarely ventured into the royal sept.

Slumping back into his seat, Baelor motions to the tome. “May I ask why you risked yourself to read this? It contains little more than baseless filth.”

Your eyes dart around before settling back upon him, feeling like two little birds flapping around your skull.

“It’s a medical tome, Your Grace,” you offer weakly.

At that, Baelor sighs. He runs a hand over his forehead before letting it fall back against the desk with a soft thump. “I fear you misunderstand— or that you’ve been terribly misled. I won’t deny this text possesses some medical worth, but the maester who wrote it is well known for forsaking his vows.” Baelor pushes the tome towards you, then takes his cup of wine in hand. “Flip to the end, past the section you were reading. Then tell me why you think its access was restricted.”

With some hesitation, you reach for the tome. Your hands hover over it, thinking perhaps you’d fallen into some trick— that Baelor meant to subject you to strange humiliation as punishment for your trespassing.

When you glance to him though, you find not the cruelty you’d expected. There was only faint curiosity in his mismatched eyes. He gestures towards the tome with his cup, then takes a sip of wine.

Frowning, you do as you’re told. Flipping through the pages past the bedding draught, horror builds upon you. The farther back in the text you get, the more debauched the contents become. Illustration after illustration of contorted nude figures burns your eyes, detailed and explicit. There were written accounts still— strange observations of touch and taste and smell.

You slam the tome shut. “I didn’t know. I swear on my house, I was unaware. I’m… I’m not as they say I am.”

Baelor narrows his eyes. A tense silence builds, before he takes another sip of wine and sets the goblet aside. You hadn’t touched yours, in fear your stomach would simply send the drink back up.

“I’ve no reason to believe you,” he frowns. “I find you amusing, I’ll admit— but you must understand the compromising nature of your position. I’ve found you in a restricted area, reading a restricted tome.” Baelor holds the parchment you’d written on up into the air, the charcoal smudged but readable. “You were planning to influence someone bodily, were you not?”

“Allow me to explain—”

“Then do so. Promptly.”

“I mean to bed you!” The words escape you in a rush, your mind reeling. A strange mix of revulsion and thrill and want returns to you. Some days, you want so much, you hardly know what you truly long for. “I was going to make that draught to give to you, so that I could ruin your name and be banished for it. I’m not sure how, as the ingredients seem impossible to acquire— I’ve no bone to crush or, or seed to brew. But by the Gods, I was going to figure a way to do it.”

Body trembling, you stare wide-eyed at Baelor. Surely he’ll condemn you to death, as he could do with your confession as he pleased. No soul in the realm would risk standing between you and the Hand to stop whatever action he deemed fit.

But no threat of harm or punishment comes.

Baelor simply watches you as if you were a creature he’d successfully hunted in the Kingswood, prone and bleeding on a soft forest floor. You’ve never wished to be looked at that way. Hate or disgust were more tolerable — you weren’t sure what to do with pity.

In the ruin of the situation, Baelor breaks the silence first. He stands with a scrape of his chair, and walks around the desk to tower above you.

Feeling trapped, your head angles back to meet his eye. When his hand raises to brush a thumb over your cheek, you shiver at the roughness of his skin.

“You would have found I’m not opposed to your company,” he says quietly, “if you’d thought to approach me prior to resorting to poison. And though I find your actions reprehensible… I understand your place here. I’d still have you, if you can promise me discretion.”

Shaking and confused, you simply nod.

Baelor sends you from the chamber with a vow that he’ll seek you out once he’s able to. He keeps the tome by his side.

“Is it true your grandmother and aunt warmed King Aegon’s bed?”

Your hand stills on a stitch, a pause of needle point and loose thread. There were ladies around you in the sunroom who were close enough to overhear, giggling and sipping on summer wine. Taking a slow glance over them all, you watch their jewel-draped throats glimmer with each swallow of drink.

Turning to Alysanne, you keep your voice low– ensuring no head turns in your direction. “I’ve heard you wish to become a silent sister,” you whisper, leaning so close that the silk of your skirts press against hers.

Alysanne nods, angling her head a little closer to hear you better.

An Osgrey girl younger than you by a few years, Alysanne had taken to you quickly in the Keep. She seemed to hold a rare tolerance for your house’s poor repute, though there was a lost look in her eyes you didn’t quite like. Many outcast ladies within the Red Keep held that awful look to them— you included.

Leaning away from her, you stab your needle’s point through your embroidery hoop, pulling so tight the thread nearly snaps free.

“Then know that I’ll sew your mouth shut if you speak a word of my family again. A favor really– a vow of silence might prove impossible for you otherwise.”

Alysanne’s bottom lip wobbles. With a shove from the table, her chair scrapes along the floor, a harsh sound of wood against stone. “You’re as cruel as the rest of the Keep! As rotten as your family–” she cries, “traitors and whores, the lot of you!”

“You’re no better,” you snap. “And you’d best learn not to spread mindless talk, less you face a consequence worse than a sharply spoken word.”

Freeing your embroidery thread fully from the hoop, you jab the needle towards her. She shoves her chair between you with a yelp– startling the ladies around the chamber. A handful of them turn to you as the source of the noise, their pretty eyes cutting in harsh regard.

With burning cheeks, you ignore their judgment to settle back into your work. They could ruffle behind their courtesies all they wished, but in truth, you were each equally lacking in social grace.

The lot of you were simply Blackfyre hostages. Women and girls forced to play pretend at decency with only each other for company– as the rest of King’s Landing did not want you.

—

A bat flew into your bedchamber the morning you were seized.

It’d been a slow day, routine like any other. You’d been preparing your hair before a tarnished mirror when a shadow swooped into your reflection. With a shatter of glass, your house’s sigil had promptly landed belly up– dead and done at your feet.

Though you were sweeter in those years, you hadn’t screamed or wept. Such omens weren’t uncommon in Harrenhal, as the half-burnt castle was said to be cursed. And yet it was House Lothston’s home. It was your home. You’d never feared it, as you’d loved its hollowed halls and what crawled within it – the bats included.

It was with that love, and a small bit of pity, that you’d gingerly lifted the creature to your chest. With a swish of your skirts, you’d walked down an inhumanly scaled hall to deliver the bat to your sister.

Older and strange, Danelle kept her chambers dark. The air around her oft held a tang of metal so thick it seemed to choke the air, and her hands seemed to perpetually bleed from some nick or cut— that of which she made no attempts to cover.

The servants whispered she was mad, but you held little care. Danelle was good to you above all.

Her back had faced towards the door as you slipped in that day. Standing by a window of colored glass, she’d pointed to something below.

“There are dragons in the yard, pup.”

With a careful clasp on the bat, you’d moved to stand at her side. Harrenhal wasn’t playing tricks on your sister’s eyes. There were Targaryen flags raised and flapping in a foggy breeze, a small army of dumb red lizards clashing against the lush green of your family’s land. Lands that had been granted by the Targaryens, of course— but any good will held between your houses had curdled like rotten milk in the years since.

Their presence was a poor sign. Only a few days prior, a raven had arrived from Redgrass Field, bringing with it news that the rebellion had ended. Your father had declared for the Blackfyres near the conflict’s start, but he’d betrayed them as easily as a turn of the moon.

Although your house sided with the reds when it counted, it seemed even good King Daeron held little love for betrayers. Your father oft called the king soft at supper— worse when emboldened after a few cups of wine.

“Do you think they’ve come to kill us?” you’d asked quietly.

Danelle sighed. “Let’s hope not. I quite like Harrenhal. Perhaps our blood can hold it for a while longer… before it puts us out.”

She often spoke of the castle as if it were a living thing; a keep and thinking creature within the same breath. Perhaps Harrenhal would have concealed you if you’d thought to hide, but instead, your attention had simply shifted to the bat in your hands.

“Can you bring this back to life?”

Danelle did not ask why you carried a broken little bat, or why you’d felt it proper to ask her such a thing.

“I’ll try,” she’d said instead.

Without hesitation she’d taken the bat from your hands, kicked a rug back, and laid it out on a bloodstained floor. With a circle of chalk and a few lit candles, she’d been prepared to slice her finger with a blade when shouts echoed from the hall.

The rest blurred. With a shatter of wood, the door broke open. Men swarmed in as your mother threw herself to the floors, screaming for them not to take you. Despite her begging, you’d been dragged through the halls of your home by Targaryen bannermen— each still stinking of mud and blood, born of a freshly settled rebellion.

Your Aunt Jeyne stood watching it all from the Keep’s entrance hall. A disgraced woman, she was rumored to have been both sired and bedded by King Aegon. You’d asked her of it once, when you were only one and ten. She'd repaid your curiosity with a slap across your cheek, a warning hissed so sharply her teeth had whistled.

“Don’t believe everything you hear, pup.”

—

Alysanne forgives you by supper, though you offer her no apology. She simply plops herself in front of you, settling her skirts along a hardwood bench.

“I talk too much,” she says, leaning too far forward in her seat. “I didn’t mean to insult your honor. My brothers say my tongue runs on its own, you know.”

Her brothers were dead. Her mother too. Each of them an unfortunate casualty of the rebellion. Her father, while living, might as well have rotted with them.

Alysanne never spoke of Ser Eustace Osgrey, and you never asked of him. There was a silent agreement that existed between you in the Red Keep: you never spoke of the men whose actions had foiled your freedoms.

With a sip of wine, you eye her over the light of a long candle.

“My grandmother and aunt did warm King Aegon’s bed— though at separate times, I think,” you admit quietly, brushing your mouth with the back of your hand. “In truth, I don’t know much about it. Neither liked to talk of their time in King’s Landing, and I can’t blame them. My grandmother was removed twice from court when she lived. That shadow’s never quite left my house.”

Glancing at you through her lashes, Alysanne nods. Though the hour was late, she was neatly spreading blackberry jam and butter over a section of bread with a little silver spoon. It was a meal better suited for breaking one’s fast, but she seemed to have no interest in the roasted meats and stews that lined the dining table.

You watch with a raised brow as she sets her silverware down without a sound– only to tear at her bread like a woman starved a mere moment later.

“Gods. We’ll be seen as the sorriest ladies of the Keep if you continue eating like that,” you sigh, pressing your fingers to ease an ache forming between your brows.

“What good will manners do us? If we manage to marry, it’ll only come from the sorriest crop of husbands. I’d welcome the quiet life of a sister over that fate,” she mumbles around a mouthful, smacking her lips loudly. “You know, perhaps your gran had the right of it. The Keep is full of Daeron’s damned sons— and grandsons. You’re a bit gloomy, but you’ve a pretty face. Perhaps if you tup a prince, the king’ll have no choice but to send you home.”

“I’d wager that a Targaryen prince would sooner have my head than share a bed with a traitor’s daughter,” you laugh. Though spoken as a jape, you don’t quite manage to conceal a faint tone of hurt that creeps beneath your humor.

Wanting to shove the poor feeling away, you kick at Alysanne’s foot beneath the table. With a smile, she attempts to stomp on your toes in return. It’s a silly game, immature for your respective ages– but it helps you forget who you are for a flickering moment.

—

Trudging along a small stream, you enjoy the cool shade of looming trees in the Kingswood.

Nearby, dogs bark wildly. Men shout and horses gallop, their hooves a thunderous pound along beaten land. Foxes and rabbits tear through the forest in the late morning sun, and you wish them well– not wishing to see them snatched as trophies in honor of Prince Matarys’s first hunt.

In truth, the chances for success seemed slim. You’d seen the young prince at dawn, shaking as he’d stood clutching a bow before his father. With his wide-eyed gaze and Lady Jena’s reddish brown hair, you’d thought Prince Matarys looked more a mouse than a dragon.

“Why, oh why must we be here for the hunt? Targaryens are horrible hosts,” Alysanne whines from behind you, trailing on your heels. “It seems cruel to have ladies trudging through the woods. I’d much rather be kicking my feet up in a pavilion… eating lemon cakes and sipping tea.”

You toss her a look over your shoulder. “Perhaps they hope we’ll be gored by a boar. A tidy way to be done with us, I’m sure.” Turning to face her fully, you walk backwards and drop your voice a bit lower. “If you ask me, Prince Baelor might spend more time in the privacy of a pavilion as well. He’s only got two sons— and a lovely lady wife! I’m sure she wants more children… as many as Prince Maekar has, perhaps.”

Hopping over a fallen log, Alysanne remains a short distance away. “I’ve heard Lady Jena keeps close companions, and none of them are much the princely type!” Her voice raises as she speaks, growing a bit too loud for comfort. “What use is a giant veiny cock if one doesn’t have a use for it?”

Caught unguarded by her raised tone, your eyes widen. “Gods! Lower your voice, Alysanne. Someone will—”

A quietly spoken warning breaks through the trees. “I’d caution you each that even in the Kingswood, there are listening ears around you.”

Alysanne slams to a stop against a tree, partially hiding her frame. You freeze, caught in the open path of a clearing, and you watch in panic as Alysanne’s eyes widen– flickering to a spot somewhere behind you.

She mouths an apology, and takes off running in a crash of leaves and twigs. Silently, you vow to truly stitch her mouth shut the next time you meet her for needlework.

With a growing sense of dread, you prepare to offer an apology to whichever proper lord of King Daeron’s court you’d managed to offend. You turn, only for your confidence to crumble; it shatters in fact, as you find yourself standing before Prince Baelor instead.

From where he kneels by a small stream, he watches you with mismatched eyes and a sharp frown between his brows. He wasn’t armored, covered only by dark leathers and a long riding cloak— darkened by what appeared to be blood or water, you weren’t quite sure.

You think of briefly pushing him into the stream, but stamp that urge down. If years of tolerating tales of Baelor Breakspear’s glory in battle had taught you anything— it was that a shove to his shoulder might as well be a push against a castle wall.

Taking his eyes from you for a moment, Baelor splashes water over his face with bare hands, swiping a broad palm over his twice-busted nose and beard. He’d be an attractive man, if he didn’t seem to always be looking down at you— safe in his superiority high atop an invisible horse.

“Do you have no words to offer, my lady? No more to say of my family, or myself perhaps?” he asks quietly, not looking towards you.

“No. I believe I’ve spoken enough, Your Grace.”

Baelor laughs, but the sound holds no good humor. Pausing a moment, he reaches for a set of gloves you hadn’t noticed at his side, then he’s rising to his full height.

Your blood rushes through your ears as he approaches without a word, his footsteps oddly quiet for a man his size. When he’s perhaps an arm’s length before you, a filter of sunlight streams through the trees— flashing against the steel of his sword. It rests against his hip, bloodied and used. Valyrian, most like. The type of blade that could slice through bone and blood like butter, without a sound to be heard in an already noisy forest.

You were dead. Your house was probably dead too. House Lothston, made extinct by talk of Targaryen cock— Gods curse you, you were a fool.

Features frozen, you watch as Baelor stops a proper distance before you, as though you were no more than a frightened mare. His eyes look over you carefully, dropping a moment to strangely glance lower— before his attention settles on your face.

“You’re Manfred Lothston’s daughter. You were taken from Harrenhal as a girl, were you not?”

You nod, speaking your name as you do, though you suspect he already knows it. After a moment’s delay, you offer the prince a curtsy as well. Send a boar to strike me down, you pray. But you’re given no relief from your humiliation.

To your surprise, Baelor manages a slight smile at your response— before his words split you open as clean as any blade.

“I’m afraid your courtesies will do little to improve my regard for you, my lady.” He says simply, tugging his gloves back on over each hand. “I’m knowledgeable of your family’s history with mine, though I’d hoped you’d prove better behaved than others of your line. I assume you know that as Hand, I answer only to the king?”

You nod, your mouth feeling dry.

“Good. Then I’d have you understand, plainly, that if I was any other man– I’d cut your tongue and send it to your father. A fair punishment for treason, at least within the eyes of the realm.”

Baelor’s judgment stings, but his words are a simple echo of the type of talk that often follows your name in court. Watching him study you so coldly in the forest’s light, it frustrates you endlessly that he appears above it all.

You wonder what it would take to goad him into striking your head from your shoulders– for him to lose all of that composure you suspect he keeps a tight reign over. Judging by the steel of his sword, it’d be a swift end– a way to free yourself of courtly chatter and a wretched familial line.

But you pause. You think of Harrenhal— and Danelle in it.

Perhaps if you tup one of his sons, the king’ll have no choice but to send you home.

Your eyes narrow. Angling your head to watch Baelor closely, you think of the whispers surrounding your house– each grown tall, but containing small seedlings of truth.

“Forgive me, Your Grace,” you begin, willing your voice to sound steadier than you feel. “But you don’t strike me as the sort to condemn truth as treason. If what you overheard was a simple falsehood, then I invite you to pluck my tongue from my mouth. Surely it would prove efficient in limiting the spread of further lies.”

Baelor frowns, folding his hands before him. “Do you believe yourself in a position to question my judgment? You’ve spoken dishonorably of both myself and my lady wife. Even a fool would know not to speak in the manner that you and your… companion have.”

“My behavior is dishonorable, certainly. I’d say my words were of poor taste and judgement as well. But I’ll have you know my companion has only ever repeated what I’ve shared with her previous,” the lie flows from you without pause, a small part of you truly worrying for Alysanne and her mouth. She seemed to have a better sense of planning for her life, whereas you most certainly did not. “But were such words truly dishonest?”

A bird sings somewhere overhead. In the distance, a fox screams.

Baelor watches you carefully, his eyes narrowing at a tremble developing in your hands. You cross them beneath your chest to hide them, pushing the swell of your breasts a small bit higher as you do— a poor choice for the lighter dress you’d chosen for the day’s hunt.

Your neckline was cut much too low.

To your surprise, a peculiar development occurs as your chest raises and falls rapidly with your breathing. Prince Baelor’s careful assessment betrays him— his eyes drop to the soft swell of your breasts. A flush spreads over his nose, darkening his complexion just slight.

He speaks before you can process much, stepping to close the distance— pulling the leather gloves again from his hands as he does.

“Your tongue then, my lady.”

You frown, moving to take a few steps back. Prince Baelor was spoken of as good and fair-handed. Just like his father— but that hadn’t stopped any of them from ripping you from your house’s seat. You trusted Baelor Targaryen as far as you could throw him.

“I beg your pardon, Your Grace?”

“What you said of my wife… of her wanting more children. That was conjecture. A falsehood, that I’ll have your tongue for. My wife and I each have done our duty to the realm, and I do not resent her for seeking better company— though perhaps I might urge her of further discretion.”

Prince Baelor watches you, appearing resigned for a moment, briefly sad, before his composure slips back into place. Stepping away from him until you can go no further— your back hits against a tree. Heart beating fast, your mind catches up to the strange turn of your day.

“What of my other lies?” you ask, voice thin.

The distance between you and Baelor closes. He stands over you, blocking the sun peeking through trees behind him. “No others were spoken.”

Oh. Your eyes sweep down, before you promptly pull them back to his face.

A warmth rolls from Baelor, felt faintly even through the light fabric of your dress. He smells of salt and musk and the land around him. And despite his earlier efforts to wash himself of the hunt— there were small streaks of blood along his face as well.

Faced before a prince of the realm, your body holds onto a repulsion long held for his house’s treatment of yours— but it wars with an unwanted awareness that he seemed to hold all too common marital troubles. You’d heard similar tales whispered countless times in court. A wife and husband forced into duties expected of them, two married for the sake of their house’s alliances rather than anything heated between them, or slippery— or— or…

Born of your house’s history, many courtiers held assumptions of you that lacked truth. You did not know much of men. In truth, you didn’t even much like the idea of them— you’d suffered enough drunken lords and knights seeking you out in private during feasts to believe any of them to be chivalrous or good.

Damn me to seven hells, you think. But I want to go home.

You part your lips, opening your mouth to Prince Baelor. Awkwardly, hoping to all hells that it perhaps appears alluring or sensual or whatever the hells men sought out in brothels— you allow your tongue to peek slightly over your lips.

A breeze blows, cooling some of the slick heat building along your neck and brow. Baelor watches you closely, before his attention drops– resting along your mouth.

You squeeze your eyes shut, and the rough skin of Baelor’s palm cups your jaw, propping your mouth open slightly more. His thumb brushes along your bottom lip, your tongue– before he’s pressing a kiss to your mouth. He kisses you tentatively at first, restrained and testing, possessing a gentleness you’d expect of green cupbearers and squires.

Then his mouth opens, and it feels much too hot and strange and wet all at once. He moans into you, sounding pained– his hands drop your waist, squeezing, so large that they nearly wrap around you, a feeling that leaves you quite aware he was capable of breaking you on a whim.

“Gods forgive me,” he whispers, beard scraping against the sensitive skin of your chin. “I’m no better than my grandsire.”

Reality shatters upon your head, a hammer to your skull. Two women of your house had already been led to social ruin by pointless Targaryen wants. You react without thinking— your hand swings back to slap Baelor’s unbearable face.

He catches your wrist, surprisingly gentle– using little force despite how very badly you’d just longed to hurt him.

“Your anger is just,” he begins—

“Do you think I asked to be born into my house?” you snap, interrupting him. “Damn you. Damn you, Your Grace. Go back to your lady wife.”

He does. Only a short time later, you meet Baelor’s eyes through a pressing crowd celebrating a successful hunt. A stag lays dead, slumped and bloodied with an arrow through its eye. Alysanne clings to your arm, loudly begging forgiveness in your ear. You pay her no mind– simply watching where Baelor holds Matarys to his chest. Bloodied and grasping a bow, the child reaches for his mother.

Lady Jena takes him, stepping smoothly away from her husband when Baelor’s hand brushes along her back.