chᢉ𐭩rry.

You had known Ormund Hightower all your life, loved him when you were young and foolish enough to believe that your innocent heart mattered to him. For years, you had molded yourself into his ideal—you kept yourself pretty, perfected your manners, and stayed up late reading tedious books just so you could casually strike up a conversation on subjects he cared about.

“Only you would throw yourself in the studies of the arts of war. What a charming young lady you are.” He would smile and be amused, and you would bite the inside of your cheek, genuinely believing you were winning him over.

You had carefully crafted your image as a prim, intellectual lady, dedicating every ounce of your grace and intellect to a singular, desperate goal: enticing him.

And you really thought you were at the forefront of his thoughts too—

“I present my victory to you, my lady. And at my behest, name you as the queen of love and beauty.”

The day you were crowned by the dashing heir of Oldtown right after he won the tourney before the entire court was the day you truly believed your girlhood dreams had come to life.

However... Ormund Hightower was apparently a man of distinct taste— and the young flower of House Tyrell was not on his list of potential brides, despite his fondness of you.

“Any good man would be delighted to be the object of your affections, no more so than I.”

It was the night after the news had broken of him asking for the hand of the vivacious Lady Tarly. He had a crooked smile, even as you stared at him with heartbreak shining in your eyes.

“Alas, I am a man soon to be wed. We must cease these meetings, so I ask you not to call on me any longer.”

Your heart died then, and stayed cold for the next ten years.

But fate, working its cruel irony, returned Ormund to you just as the war of succession for the Iron Throne began to tear the realm apart. Although the man before you was no longer the posh new lord of Oldtown, but a seasoned man hardened by politics and a wife who died in childbed.

“Declare Aegon the rightful heir and commit five thousand of your men. In exchange... my protection and the hand of the Lady Tyrell.”

Your good sister, the Lady of Highgarden, who was the regent for her infant son, had wished to remain neutral amidst the ongoing civil war. But the Hightowers were kin to the queen dowager and had been fiercely loyal since ancient times. Confronted with Ormund Hightower’s formidable host and the threat of dragonfire, she simply could not refuse his offer.

However, you had not forgotten the man who had broken your heart.

. . .

“Who would have thought that you would remarry? Your poor wife must be weeping in her grave.”

That was the first thing you said to his face after ten years, and he was entirely unfazed and amused instead.

“Of course, no one is more delighted than I to accept this most generous proposal,” you followed, your voice dripping with sweet venom as you paced before him. “But I wish to settle an arrangement first.”

Ormund leaned back, an intrigued glimmer in his dark eyes. He had a small smile and gave you a nod, gesturing for you to continue. “And what might that arrangement be, my lady?”

“I wish to maintain my freedom. I expect to be allowed to live on my own terms, and that includes being permitted to keep my own counsel, travel as I see fit, and take my own companions.”

Ormund’s lips twitched, as he tilted his head. “Companions? Do you mean lovers?”

You lifted your chin and looked down at him with haughty defiance. “I suppose so. Because frankly, I cannot see either of us engaging in romance in our otherwise unfortunate union.”

How was it that the man who once meant the world to you be the one you felt nothing for when fate twisted its narrative so you could become his wife?

“The rose has grown rather sharp thorns, I see.”

For the first time, you saw how Ormund’s eyes lit with distaste, even if he was ever amused. “As much as I could imagine, I couldn’t possibly allow that. At least for old times’ sake, shouldn’t you grant me the grace of fulfilling the role of your lord husband?”

“Let us speak freely here. If I recall correctly, it is my house’s bannermen you seek, and ten years is a long time,” you scoffed. “We might have been fond of each other once, but we are, at present, not.”

“Oh, but I am,” he countered smoothly, “still very fond of you, Lady Tyrell.”

Ormund finally rose from his seat and approached you with ease. His blue eyes narrowed, and a wicked, knowing smile curled his lips.

“And I have no intention of sharing what is mine, least of all with men lesser than I am. If it is a lover you want, then you will find I am more than sufficient.”

He stepped into your space, a particular yet pleasant smell—from his collection of pomander, no doubt—filled your senses. Leaning down, he whispered directly into your ear:

“At least let me prove to you that we don’t need romance to find… a common ground.”

This man was far more cunning than you had ever given him credit for, seamlessly crafting a trap for you to fall into.

But if he thought he could effortlessly master you like a piece on a chessboard, he was sorely mistaken.

He might have broken your heart a decade ago, but now, you held the shards.

Ormund Hightower, however, seemed intent on making good on his word.

He lavished you with his wealth, stood beside you like a devoted and gallant husband, and before long, even the smallfolk began singing praises of your match—utterly charmed by the sight of their Lord and the new Lady Hightower.

And he wanted the exclusive rights to your bed? Fine. You would grant him lordly dues, but—

—seven hells, you would have never expected that sex with him would be this great.

One time, it had started with him pinning you against the walls of your chambers, devouring your lips like a man in heat. The other time he took his time, worshiping every inch of you until you were weeping his name into the silk pillows, begging for a release he purposely delayed.

And now—

“Haah...”

The breath hitched in your throat as you sank down onto him, the heat and friction from where the two of you were joined striking like a sudden fever. You sat astride his hips, your skirts pooled around you, anchoring him beneath you.

Ormund’s calloused hands were gripping your waist as he let out a grunt, trying to steady himself against a shifting tide. He looked up at you, his blue eyes hooded, blown wide with a hunger that melted away the facade of composed lord from the war council.

This was him entirely at your mercy—

You rolled your hips with a fluid, agonizing grace that drew a ragged groan from deep within his chest. You kept your chin tilted high, meeting his lustful gaze with a mocking smile.

“Is this all it takes to render the Lord of Oldtown into submission?” you taunted, your voice trembling slightly with the pleasure of him, though you forced the words out like a dare. “A woman’s touch?”

Ormund’s jaw clenched, a breathless grin on his face. “Since when... have you become so sharp-tongued?”

“Since I realized pretty words are wind and noble lords are fickle liars,” you provoked, leaning forward until your tangled hair brushed his cheek, your breath hot against his ear. “Now, are you content to let me rule your bed just as Highgarden rules over you?”

Crafty little lady. That was his breaking point.

With a low roar, Ormund seized control. He didn’t unseat you—instead, his hands locked onto your hips like iron clamps, guiding your body into a bruising rhythm that completely shattered your cool. He drove up into you with fierce thrusts, proving with every deep stroke just how formidable he truly was.

The smug defiance bled out of you, replaced by needy gasps of pain as he chased your peak, drowned in his carnal dominance until the world blurred into a haze of white-hot heat and mutual ruin.

. . .

When it was over, the heavy silence of the chamber returned, and you woke to find yourself tangled in his arms.

Ormund lay with his eyes shut, his broad, bare chest pressed against you, holding you fast.

His hair was disheveled, his eyelashes were long, and for a moment you saw your first love again, who stood tall amidst the rose gardens.

How is a man well-known for his faith luring you into thinking of sins?

You immediately tried to pull away as your pride demanded that you re-establish your distance. However, when you moved to swing your leg off him, a sudden ache between your thighs made you wince slightly.

Ormund noticed instantly as his eyes fluttered open. He shifted beside you, his voice unusually soft in the dim light. “Are you sore?”

“I am perfectly fine,” you snapped, brushing his arm away as you reached for the sheets to cover yourself, trying to regain a semblance of independence.

You had expected him to either offer an argument or wear that infuriating smirk. He did neither. Instead, he quietly rose from the bed, and you watched him, expecting him to leave you be.

However, a moment later, Ormund returned to the bedside. He gently pulled back the linen sheet and before you could protest, the soothing, comforting heat of a warm towel pressed against your inner thigh, wiping away the slick remnants with tenderness.

You froze, the sharp retort dying in your throat.

His touch was gentle, devoid of the lust from moments ago and completely stripped of the smugness he wore by day.

“Do not coddle me, Ormund,” you croaked, your voice tight as he pressed another clean, warm towel gently over your lower abdomen for comfort, before pulling the sheets over you.

“You ride like a wanton, yet you are far from used to it,” he sighed softly, as if lamenting. “I would have been gentler, if I had known.”

You fell silent as shame coiled in your chest—a mirror of when you were just a young girl vying for his attention only to face the news of his impending wedding to another woman.

But he is taking care of you now, and you have become his lawfully-wedded wife. And in this quiet gesture, a dam broke in your memory— of a young man who draped his coat over your shoulder as you basked amidst the roses of Highgarden.

“You must be cold. Go inside already,” he would say, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes.

You used to dream of his touch, his love, his everything. It was bittersweet how he was yours now, but you were torn between heartache and a desire to pay him back in full for what he had inflicted on you—the bitter, humiliating pain of not being chosen.

“Must you hate me that much?”

You blinked up at him, caught off guard. Ormund met your gaze with a certain sternness you had rarely seen from him.

“...to the point of hurting yourself?” he went on, his brow furrowing as he looked down at you. If you were bold enough, you would presume that it was concern that you saw in his eyes.

Yet… it only made that part of your heart clenched instead.

Why now? Why only after you had hated him enough to last a lifetime? Why only after you had spent nights crying yourself to sleep that he finally turn his eyes on you?

It was so fucking unfair.

“You presume too much, Ormund Hightower.”

Your response was biting cold, yet so soft and whispery. He blinked, a flicker of surprise crossing his features.

“Rest assured, in this very contractual marriage of ours, I have no intention of feeling anything for you,” you continued, your lips curving into a cruel smile. “Other than with my body.”

To your relief, not a single muscle in his jaw twitched, burying whatever thoughts your words had stirred in him.

He shook his head lightly, finally breaking your gaze, a ghost of a smile returning to his lips, though it never reached his eyes.

“So be it then,” Ormund murmured, his voice dropping to a low baritone that carried no warmth, only the absolute finality. “How regrettable though. One may mistake you as the rose, whereas you have long since become its thorns.”

Without waiting for your answer, he straightened, turning his back on you to dress, leaving you alone in the quiet wreck of the bedsheets.

You have done it. You had ensured that his affection would forever remain beyond your reach.

That may be so, but it did not mean the physical hunger between you regressed in the slightest

You had laid with him a few more times afterwards. Each encounter in his chambers was an exercise in numbing hearts— he took you with a demanding dominance that left you breathless and slick with sweat and pleasuring you as if you were the only woman he worshipped.

Yet, as soon as the sun rose, Ormund was back to his cynical self, his crooked smile and calculating gaze ever keen on you. He kept you at an arm’s length though since that night, strutting through the halls of the Hightower as the proud lord he was.

You truly believed you could kill that fragile part of your heart that still yearned for him, matching his coldness with your own pride.

Until the turn of the moon, at least.

“My lady... this is strange.”

The pale morning light filtered through the arched windows of your solar as your maid, Ellyn, tugged firmly at the laces of your corset. You stood before the tall silver mirror, waiting to be cinched into your dress.

“What is?” you asked, feeling how her fingers slipped on the laces.

Her hands smoothed over the small of your back as she tried once more to force the edges of the bodice together. “The laces simply won’t meet. It is as though it has shrunk.”

“Do not be foolish. Pull harder.”

“I am pulling, my lady, but...”

Ellyn hesitated, her eyes shifting to your reflection. Slowly, a realization dawned to her as she stepped to the side. “Oh, my...”

You looked at your reflection then, and for a moment, you forgot how to breathe.

There, beneath the unlaced corset, your normally slender waist held an unmistakable curve—a slight protrusion in your belly that had not been there a moon ago.

“Bless the Mother,” Ellyn whispered, her hands dropping away as a smile broke across her face, entirely unaware of how your breath had caught in your throat. She beamed at you, asking:

“My lady... your courses— when did you last bleed?”

. . .

“We will march for Tumbleton.”

You were pulled from your daze at the dining hall when Ormund’s voice broke your thoughts.

“You, however, are to remain in Oldtown,” he continued, adjusting the signet ring on his finger. “You know the city and the ledgers. I need a steady hand to rule it in my stead.”

His words passed by at first.

“I’m bringing my ward Daeron and his beast. I have also arranged for the merchant boy to have his hair dyed to stand in his place—”

“A double?” you asked, almost in disbelief. “If anyone notices the deception—”

“They won’t,” Ormund interrupted smoothly, a cold smile touching his lips. “People see what they expect to see. Silver hair, a fine cloth, and the right escort would do to make one a prince. It keeps the boy safe, and more importantly, it keeps our leverage intact. I’d wager sooner or later they’re going to demand his head.”

It was this exact cunning that had captivated you. He was a man who saw the board three moves ahead, possessing an intellect forged for the cruelties of war. The fact that your child would have him as father brought a wave of reassurance, somehow.

But at the same time, dread creeped in— with the news of his departure, the secret beneath your skirts suddenly felt twice as heavy.

Ormund paused, his sharp eyes narrowing as he caught the hollow look in your eyes. His lips crooked.

“No counsel to give? You already wear the expression of a widow grieving a husband lost to the war.”

The barb pierced through your fog, sparking a sudden flash of ire as you gave him a look. “Do not flatter yourself.”

“That’s more like it.” He rose from his seat with a low chuckle. He didn’t see the ghost that seemed to settle over you, nor the way your hand instinctively wanted to press against the fabric of your skirts.

There were barely two days before his banners moved out, and somehow you didn’t have it in you to let him go without any parting words.

“May the Seven guide your path.”

The hollow blessing tasted like ash in your mouth, but it caught his attention. Ormund paused and turned back to face you.

However, there was no warmth in his expression—only an expressionless stare that bore straight through your soul.

“I thank Her Ladyship for her blessing,” he said, his voice dropping into a formal cadence. “Though I find it unnecessary.”

Three weeks had passed since then, and even the air in Oldtown was thick with the apprehension of war.

With Ormund riding out to lead his host, the governing of the city fell upon your shoulders. While it was your first time doing so, you found that you possessed the head and patience for it.

And thankfully, it kept you busy enough to keep the ghost of him out of your thoughts.

Yet at the same time, unbeknownst to you, your devotion to the city made you a conspicuous target.

It happened on a gray morning while you were overseeing the distribution of rice near the harbor. Before your household guards could even draw their steel, men in dark cloaks had surrounded you and cut down the soldier closest to you—

“Lay down your swords!” you screamed, trembling as the smallfolk were sent into a cries of horror after the man’s blood splattered across the cobblestones.

The crowd erupted into a panicked frenzy, scattering like birds before a hawk. Your remaining guards hesitated, their blades shaking in their hands as the cloaked men closed the circle around you.

From the shadows of the docks, a man stepped forward. He wore a dun-colored cloak, his brigandine bore the banners of Targaryen black and red. Men loyal to the Queen Rhaenyra.

“Yes, yes...” the leader sneered, his voice cutting through the screams of the fleeing smallfolk. “Tell them to keep their steel sheathed, Lady Hightower, or we will turn these docks into a slaughterhouse.”

“You dare bring violence to Oldtown?” you demanded, your voice finding its steel despite the frantic pounding of your heart. “Lord Ormund will have your heads on spikes before the moon turns.”

The man laughed, a harsh, grating sound. “Oh don’t you know, my lady? Lord Ormund bit off more than he could chew. Even as we speak, he lies dying in a pool of his own blood in Tumbleton.”

The world seemed to tilt beneath your feet, leaving you hollowed out by an icy shock. Without thinking, your hand flew to your abdomen, your fingers pressing firmly against your velvet gown, trying to find something to hold.

Dying. The word echoed in your mind like a funeral knell. The fortress of ice you had built to protect your heart shattered. For all your vows of indifference, the thought of him bleeding into the dirt tore a jagged wound through your chest.

Your captain of the guards stepped in front of you, his sword raised. “My lady, we can take them. Run for the gates!”

“If a single blade is drawn, my men will cut these peasants,” the leader warned. “We will burn these docks, and every innocent soul on them will die because of your pride. Come with us quietly, or watch Oldtown bleed.”

You looked at the terrified faces of the very people you had spent weeks watching— the women holding their children close, the old men trembling behind the grain carts.

For years, Ormund had protected them as their lord. Even if he is now— No matter how, you couldn’t let his city fall.

You placed a firm hand on your captain’s arm , forcing his blade down. “Lower your sword,” you commanded quietly.

“But my lady—!”

“I said, lower it.” You stepped past him, lifting your chin, refusing to let these dogs see you tremble. Looking at the leader in the eye, you spat, “I will go with you. Spare the city, and let these people go.”

He gave a mocking bow. “A noble choice, Lady Hightower. The realm will remember your piety.”

A rough hand seized your arm, dragging you towards a waiting carriage. The smallfolk of Oldtown wept aloud as they watched their lady—the sweet rose who had looked after them these past few weeks—spirited away into a cage.

Only when the heavy door slammed shut and the iron bolt clicked into place did the stark reality finally crash over you.

Tears welled in your eyes, spilling down your cheeks as you cradled your belly and struggled to breathe under the crushing weight of the very possibility that the man you had once again fallen in love with might well be dead.

There were many things, in truth, that Ormund favored in you.

You always smelled of sweet roses— out of everything, that was probably what he liked the most.

The vast gardens of Highgarden suited you, and he remembered the girl you used to be, the one who had been too timid to look him in the eye at first, but who had beautifully worked herself up to be able to do so.

He knew of your affections— he has always known. It flattered him, though none but himself and the Gods would ever know that he, too, harbored a quiet fondness for the innocent Lady Tyrell.

His little rose. In truth, he had believed that someone so young and sweet as you shouldn’t be bound to a man like him. His late wife—rest her soul, for he had been fond of her too, though it was never a blind, consuming love—had been different. She had been compliant, and more than ready to submit herself to her wifely duties, and she was who he needed when he first took on the mantle of the Lord of Oldtown.

The Gods are cruel, as all men know, especially when his dutiful wife died in a tragedy and he had to turn to House Tyrell to aid his house in its conquest for the throne— only to find you, his rose, still very much beautiful and unwed.

However, that sweet rose has grown thorns. So sharp the thorns that he has almost forgotten how soft the petals are.

You no longer stuttered and conducted yourself with pride that both vexed and captivated him. In the beginning, he had been intrigued by the woman you had become because he was convinced that the gentle little lady of his memories was still there, waiting to be coaxed out.

That was why on the day he took you to his bed and realized the truth—that you were merely performing and he had been anything but gentle—he drew the line.

But you merely looked at him with eyes as cold as winter.

“Rest assured, in this very contractual marriage of ours, I have no intention of feeling anything for you.”

Every time those words echoed in his mind, it felt as though a dagger were piercing his lungs.

. . .

“Lord Ormund! My lord! Thank the Gods you’re back!”

Tumbleton had been a bloodbath, and he barely survived it himself—a blade having pierced his armor and a hair’s breadth from his heart. But the market city had fallen, the Blacks had been broken there with the betrayals of two of their own dragonriders, and in the grand game of thrones, that was all that truly mattered.

However, the moment he stepped his foot back at Oldtown after six weeks, the atmosphere in his own home were grim— his household servants were openly relieved, some almost weeping, as if he was a ghost returned from the grave.

“They told us you were dead, my lord,” the head guard told him somberly. “We thought all was lost.”

“A blatant lie made to weaken our morale,” Ormund hissed, his hand dropping to the pommel of his sword as his wound ached. “Tumbleton has fallen, and I’m far from the grave.”

Still, he sensed something dreadful had occurred by how mournful the maidservants were—

“My lord!”

Before Ormund could demand what had happened in his absence, a shrill voice cut through. Ellyn, your faithful handmaiden, pushed past the other servants, her eyes were red-rimmed from days of crying.

She fell to her knees, clutching desperately at the hem of his traveling cloak.

“You must help her, Lord Ormund! You must bring her back!”

A cold knot of dread coiled in his stomach. He looked down at the trembling girl, his brow furrowing deeply.

And the words she uttered next, as she looked up at him with tear-streaked cheeks, made his blood run colder than when he saw dragons burning Tumbleton.

“The lady! Three weeks ago, while the city was fooled by the news of your death, the false queen’s men took her away!”

They had taken you to Tumbleton.

The market city was ravaged beyond repair. For three weeks now, they had held you hostage in a makeshift holdfast. They gave you barely enough bread and water to keep you alive, and as the days bled together, your hope withered to nothing.

Your unborn child, who grew heavier by the day beneath your heart, was the only thing left to give you the strength to survive this madness.

And as if your situation weren’t desperate enough, through the timber door of your cell, the muffled voices of your captors reached your ears. They were conversing in frantic, hushed tones.

“The smallfolk are rioting in King’s Landing. They’re storming the Dragonpit. The Queen is fleeing!”

“Then what of us? What of the woman?” another rasped.

“Leave her. If the Hightowers find us here, they’ll flay us alive. Set the fire. Let the ashes cover our tracks.”

Alarmed and struck by a sudden, feral terror, you flung yourself against the door.

“Let me out!” You screamed for help, your voice raw, hitting the wood until your knuckles bled.

But the only response was a thud, followed by the crackling of fire and pitch. Smoke and heat began to seep through, as the chamber was slowly being consumed. You were trapped.

Realizing you would soon meet your demise, the strength left your legs, and you collapsed into the dirt, trembling with tears.

I would die, Ormund already did, and I have never told him.

You bitterly regretted never telling him that you were with his child.

As the heat grew unbearable, your mind drifted away to the sun-drenched rose gardens of your home, where you and Ormund Hightower had first met.

He is devilishly handsome and gentle. Your first love who had broken your heart once, but still owns it to this very day, when you would breath your last.

The black smoke filled your lungs, choking the breath from your throat. Your vision began to tunnel, the edges of the room blurring into darkness as you surrenderred to the Stranger.

Then, through the flames, a sudden, violent crash echoed— the sharp ring of steel slicing through. Through your fading, tear-blurred sight, a figure burst through the burning doorway.

You could have sworn you saw the shimmering edge of Vigilance cleaving through the smoke, its blade gleaming. That was the Valyrian steel your husband wielded.

Was it a cruel figment of your dying imagination?

But then, the heat of the fire was eclipsed by the fierce, solid weight of heavy arms wrapping around you, lifting you from the ground. And right against your ear, came a trembling voice you recognized:

“I have you,” Ormund whispered, his voice cracking with a raw emotion you had never heard from him before.

“Hold on to me. I have you, dearest.”

The next time you awoke, you were in his bedchambers in the Hightower.

The suffocating stench of smoke and pitch was gone, replaced by the familiar, comforting scent of the crisp sea breeze blowing off the Whispering Sound. The moment your eyes fluttered open, you saw him.

He was staring down at you, his dark eyes ringed with exhaustion, but shadowed with a profound relief. He was only in a loose linen tunic that showed the bandages wrapping his chest.

“Ormund...?” your voice was a broken rasp. You reached out a trembling hand, terrified your fingers would pass right through him. “Are you... are you truly here? T-they told me you were slain—”

His eyes softened, and he smiled. Not the crooked one or a smirk, but the sincere, tender smile you had fallen in love with ten years ago.

“I’m here,” he assured, his deep voice and scent wrapping around you as he took hold of your hand.

Your first tear fell, and your voice broke into a sob then. Ormund pulled you gently but fiercely into his arms, tucking your head beneath his chin, and you clung to him, burying your head into his chest, weeping for the horror you had survived and the miracle of his embrace.

Slowly, he pulled away. His hand moved from your hair to cup your jaw, tilting your face up. The sorrow in his eyes flared into something primal— and he pressed his lips to yours in a deep, passionate kiss.

He drank you in as if you were the only life-giving water in a world reduced to ash, and you kissed him back with everything you had left. You had the man you loved returned to you, and he had the sweet rose he cherished safe in his arms.

When he finally pulled away, both of your breaths coming in ragged gasps. The tender silence stretched between you, but then Ormund’s gaze drifted downwards.

His large, warm palm rested against your belly, a knowing look in his blue eyes.

“Must you hide so many things from me?” he asked softly, his gaze boring into yours with an intensity that made your heart skip.

“I... I was—”

“Would you continue to do so if I told you that now, it is you who holds my entire heart and soul in the palm of your hand?”

You didn’t even dare to blink, and he held your gaze and a bittersweet smile touched his lips.

“I have always longed for that lady amidst the field of roses,” he murmured, his voice dropping to a rough, impassioned whisper. “Even though she knows nothing of it, even though I know she is too pretty for the likes of me, and even though I have broken her heart... I still selfishly wished I could have her for myself.”

“Ormund...” Your lips wobbled, ingesting every word as the tears pooled fresh in your eyes.

His vivid blue eyes, so warm and tender, crinkled faintly as he brushed a fallen tear from your cheek with his thumb.

“So even if roses bear thorns, I would gladly suffer a thousand cuts from now on… so long as I am the only one who gets to hold you.”

That was everything you needed to hear. You surrendered yourself to his embrace again, letting him kiss the crown of your head.

Dragons might continue to dance and the kingdoms would burn, but in that fleeting moment within the walls of the Hightower, the bloodstained game of thrones ceased to matter—

YOU HAD been born a Baratheon, and yet from the moment you could walk, it seemed the world never quite knew what to do with you.

Storm’s End was a fortress built to withstand gales and thunder, but even its thick stone walls felt indifferent to your presence. You were not the eldest child, the one groomed for legacy and expectation. That was something your older brother bore with stolid strength and determination, a man as severe as lords twice his age. You were not the youngest just as well, whose sweetness and promise drew the admiring gazes of lords seeking gentle wives and docile futures. That honor belonged to your lovely sister—mild-mannered, beautiful in a way that softened rooms, perfect in all the ways men liked their daughters and brides.

You were the middle one. The forgotten one, the one of little consequence.

Your parents loved you, of course. There was no denying such fact. However, love, when spread thin and distracted by duty, has a way of becoming distant. 

They did not scold you harshly nor praise you lavishly. They did not correct you often because, in truth, there was little incentive to. You were never meant to inherit, never meant to be bargained for in marriage with the same urgency as your sister. And so, left largely to your own devices, you grew much like a vine untended. A wild little thing, curling wherever it pleased, stubbornly alive.

It was perhaps inevitable that you found your true upbringing not beneath your parents’ careful eyes, but in the booming laughter of your uncle.

Lyonel Baratheon—the Laughing Storm himself—was everything Storm’s End pretended not to be. Where the castle that was supposed to raise you had been stern, he was riotous. Where duty weighed heavy upon your house’s shoulders, he would dance. Where men spoke carefully of politics and restraint, your uncle laughed with a goblet in one hand and a sword in the other.

He was a storm given flesh. Someone charismatic, bombastic, fiercely honorable, and utterly unafraid of the world. A warrior who laughed as he crushed opponents, who roared louder when insulted, who loved with the same intensity he fought. The smallfolk adored him, the soldiers followed him without second thought, and even the court could not help but watch when he entered a room.

And you—initially unnoticed by most—were always there at his side.

You watched him dance when others stood stiff. You learned to speak boldly because he had never punished honesty. You learned to laugh loudly because he never was one to shush joy. You learned, through his indulgent guidance, that strength did not always have to be quiet, and that being feared was not half as powerful as being unforgettable.

By the time you were grown, the court had already decided what you were. The girl that was too loud. The girl who was a bit too unruly. The little doe who was just too… Baratheon.

You reveled, drank, danced, and spoke your mind with little care for propriety. You did as you wished, because no one had ever truly asked you to do otherwise. And when lords looked past you in favor of your sister, you learned not to mind. Attention, after all, had never been your currency.

That was why the banquet felt like nothing more than another night of music and wine to you—at least at first.

It had been thrown in honor of a visiting delegation and to celebrate a minor courtly occasion. It was the sort of thing that mattered greatly to those who lived by their titles and making a show of it, and very little to anyone with blood still warm in their veins. 

Normally, your uncle would have been the soul of such an evening, his booming laughter and reckless charm ensuring no one dared to call the night dull. But Lyonel Baratheon had been delayed—some matter of arms or pride or both, knowing him—and you had been sent in his stead.

The hall had murmured with disappointment at first. The Laughing Storm absent? How dreadfully proper this night would be, then. You could not, in your good conscience, abide that.

You arrived late on purpose, skirts swirling, already smiling as though the night had whispered a secret meant only for you. Torches have lined the walls, casting gold and shadow across polished stone. Lords and ladies sat stiff-backed, speaking in low voices about alliances and obligations. Music played softly, restrained, polite. To you, it was a bit too much like music meant to be listened to, not felt.

You had already lived enough lifetimes in such short span of years to know how such evenings ended. It would be dreary and miserable, with weary courtesies, half-empty cups, and promises no one intended to keep.

So you acted to fix it. You were known for such things, after all.

By then, your name carried a particular sort of reputation—one spoken with admiration by the bold and with quiet disapproval by those who preferred their daughters to be submissive, obedient. You had danced with lords and laughed with knights, shared kisses with men whose names you barely remembered by dawn. None of it had ever meant very much to you. You had broken hearts not out of cruelty, but carelessness. You loved easily, briefly, and without promise.

Men mistook your warmth for devotion. Cruelly so, if you had half a mind to be aware of yourself, you never corrected them.

So when you stepped onto the floor and pulled one noblewoman after another into motion, when you laughed and clapped and coaxed the musicians into something faster, brighter, more alive, the hall transformed. The wine began to flow. Shoes start to scuff against the floor. Conversations rose into laughter. Even the most rigid courtiers found themselves smiling despite their best efforts, roped into the crowd moving with bliss.

With little grace, that was when you saw him.

Valarr Targaryen sat at the end of the high table, ever above the salt, like a blade laid carefully upon velvet—perfectly placed, perfectly still.

You had heard of him before you ever laid eyes upon him that night. The whispers had reached you early in the evening, traded between goblets of wine, ale, and careful courtesies. The prince had come in place of his elders, they said. His family was detained by matters of the realm and obligation elsewhere, and so he had been sent to represent the dragon in their stead.

It struck you then as faintly amusing, how you stood in your uncle’s place while he sat in his family’s. Two heirs of temperament, if not of title.

He did not drink much, you note with the absence of drunken rouge on his skin. His cup remained half-touched beside him, serving more as ornament than indulgence. His posture was immaculate—shoulders squared, chin lifted just enough to command respect without seeming arrogant. His dark hair caught the reflection of torchlight, the strand of silver shining under the light like pale flame.

Among all these, it was his stillness that drew you in. For stillness, in a room so alive, was louder than laughter.

His eyes followed the crowd with quiet intensity, not lazily nor idly. He only observed, measured, and assessed. There was calculation there in his violet-brown gaze—but not cruelty. There was no boredom, either. You believe it wholly to be something else. A tension held taut beneath polished manners.

Most would have mistaken it for disinterest. You did not. Your uncle had taught you better than that.

Lyonel used to say that one must learn to listen to silence, leaning close then as though he was imparting some grand secret. He divulged that men shout their strengths, but they whisper their weaknesses. 

Watch who laughs too loud, he counseled, and who does not laugh at all.

You had grown up studying faces across feasting tables because of that man. Really, quite a surprising thing considering his disposition. But because of him, you learned which knights puffed their chests to mask insecurity, which lords softened their voices when they wanted something, which courtiers smiled without warmth. You learned how to make people comfortable, how to disarm them, how to coax them into revealing what lay beneath silk and steel.

And what you saw in Valarr was not indifference. It was restraint.

He wanted to move. You could see it in the subtle flex of his fingers against the goblet’s stem, in the way his gaze lingered a heartbeat too long on the dancers when the music swelled. But something—duty, expectation, the weight of a name older than storms—held him fast to his seat.

A prince does not lose himself in revelry. A prince remains composed. A prince represents.

You knew that burden well enough, though you are amply prudent to know that yours had always been lighter in comparison. You could afford chaos. He could not.

You noticed him because he was the only one not moving. Because in a hall you had set ablaze with laughter, he remained untouched by the flame.

You danced past him once, skirts brushing near his boots, laughter directed at an old lord that harrumphed a jest trailing where you pass as though a challenge. His eyes flicked to you—sharp and assessing—but he did not rise.

You passed him again, this time spinning deliberately closer, watching from the corner of your eye as his jaw tightened ever so slightly. It was worth noting to you that it did not seem a displeased sort, nor scandalized. Rather, he seemed quite… tempted.

When that did not break his composure, you stopped directly before him, hands on your hips, eyes bright with challenge.

Up close, you saw more. You saw that he was not shy, for shy men avoided eye contact as would a sinner avoid the seven-pointed star in a sept. He did not. He met your gaze evenly, steadily, but with caution. A certain… carefulness. As though he feared venturing wrong into a world that would remember every misstep, especially from him.

You tilted your head, studying him as one might study an opponent before a duel. Oh, you thought. You are not cold. You are merely waiting for permission to burn.

“Why, you look positively miserable,” you said, not unkindly.

He blinked, clearly startled, as though he had not expected to be addressed at all, much less so directly. “I— I beg your pardon, my lady?”

You smiled wider. “You are allowed to enjoy yourself, you know. This is a celebration, after all, not a sentencing.”

His eyes flicked past you to the whirling dancers, then back again, measured and thoughtful. “Some of us are required to maintain a certain decorum.”

“Decorums die of tediousness,” you replied at once. “Usually young and terribly unmourned, I find.”

The corner of his mouth betrayed him, twitching despite his effort to suppress it. “That may be so, but I fear my family would not appreciate me abandoning propriety in favor of—” his gaze dipped briefly to your spinning skirts, “—enthusiasm.”

“Oh, please do not flatter me,” you said mischievously. “I am far worse than enthusiasm.” 

You extended a hand. “Come dance.”

“Do you have any knowledge of who I am?”

You groan in playful vexation, eyes rolling in your sockets. “Must you truly bore me with talk of titles, Your Grace?”

“You do, then,” he concludes, appearing torn between uncertainty and relief.

“So what?” 

It truly had been unwise to act so insolently, especially with someone of such consequence such as he. Even so, after the counts of wine and beer you’ve had, though it was not too much, it did give you an almost blind confidence and unawareness that made you care far less than you should have.

“I do not… dance,” he breathed out, seeming bewildered and defeated all at once.

You leaned closer, lowering your voice as though sharing a secret meant only for him. “Liar.”

A pause stretched between you. He studied you now—not the crowd, not the room, but you. There was something like disbelief in his expression, as though he were trying to decide whether you were real or merely another reckless impulse best to be ignored.

“I truly must decline,” he said at last.

Unwilling to admit defeat, even to a challenge only you had struck against yourself, you took his hand anyway. It was warm, strong in its grip. It felt calloused in places that suggested he was no stranger to swords, no matter how courtly he appeared. He stiffened at the contact—but he did not pull away.

“Oh, do not look so frightened,” you laughed softly. “I vow not to scandalize you too terribly, or the Gods themselves shall strike me down.”

“I am not frightened,” he replied, a touch too quickly—though the faint color rising in his ears told a different story.

“Of course not,” you said, already tugging him gently upward. “You’re a dragon. Dragons do not fear storms.”

He should have refused again. He should have reminded you of titles and expectations and duty.

He did neither.

Once standing, he hesitated, uncertain what to do with his hands, his posture too formal for the lively rhythm now spilling through the hall. You stepped closer, placing one hand lightly at his shoulder, the other guiding his arm as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

“Just follow me,” you said. “I’ll take the blame if anyone scolds.”

He let out a quiet breath—half laugh, half surrender—and allowed himself to be led.

At first, his movements were careful, measured, as though he feared stepping wrong would echo through history. But you laughed when he stumbled, teased him gently when he grew too stiff, praised him when he relaxed even a fraction. Slowly, the tension eased from his shoulders. His steps grew surer. His smile—when it came—was unguarded and rare, as though it had been waiting patiently to coaxed out.

And in that moment, as the music carried you both, Valarr Targaryen realized that no duty had ever felt so heavy as the restraint he had imposed upon himself.

You, meanwhile, simply danced—unaware that with every laugh, every touch, every reckless smile, you were undoing him entirely.

It is later—when the music softened and the crowd thinned, when laughter dulled into murmurs and dancers began to drift back to their seats—you felt the shift in the air before anyone else did. You always did. Parties, you learned, had their rhythms, and this one was winding down, slipping into that familiar moment where joy became nostalgia before the night was even over.

You caught Valarr watching the musicians this time, no longer tense, no longer standing apart. Just thoughtful.

“Come,” you said quietly, tugging at his sleeve. “Before someone drags you into another polite conversation you don’t care about.”

He allowed himself to be led again, easier now, less hesitant. You guided him a few steps away from the hall and toward a balcony overlooking the vast expanse of land in this estate, where the torchlight flickered softly still and the noise faded into something manageable. Here, the air was cooler, quieter. Real.

For a moment, neither of you spoke.

Then he broke the silence, voice lower than before. “You don’t often slow down, do you, my lady.”

You glanced at him, surprised—not by the observation, but by the gentleness of it. “I do,” you said. “Just… not where people can see it. I rather it be my partiality to merrymaking that is remembered.”

“You enjoy this, then,” he said, gesturing vaguely toward the hall. “The noise. The attention.”

“It is the people I enjoy, my prince,” you corrected. “And I enjoy making things less unbearable for them.”

He smiled faintly. “You certainly make such endeavors look effortless.”

“It isn’t,” you said after a beat. Then, with a shrug, “I just grew to learn early that if no one is going to give you space, then you must take it.”

Something shifted in his expression then—something quieter, more serious.

“I… wasn’t meant to be here tonight, truth be told,” he admitted. “I had been sent.”

You hummed. “Funny that. So was I.”

He looked at you sharply. “You?”

“My uncle was delayed,” you said easily. “Storms, duties, pride—take your pick. I fill in  his sonorous absence when needed.”

Silence arose, so you turn to glance at Valarr whose stare lingered. You sensed the question before he could speak it and smiled pleasantly. “Lyonel Baratheon.”

“Lyonel Baratheon…” he repeated. “He is the one called ‘The Laughing Storm,’ is he not?”

You barely keep in a snort. You think to tell your uncle that a member of the royal family also knows him by his moniker, but save such musings for a later time. “Quite so.”

“That is… not what I expected. It is not ofttimes lords would send their nieces to attend these events on their behalf,” he said. There is a pause, before he scrambles to amend his verbiage. “W-Which is not reflective of your own abilities, of course. I believe you are well capable for your uncle to have chosen you to serve as his delegate.”

You laughed softly at his frantic response. “Do not take it to heart, Your Grace. I certainly do not. No one ever expects a woman to be trusted enough for such matters.”

You spoke then of small things at first—travel, places you had seen, places he had only heard about from lords and knights and men alike. From your perspective, it all seems much more agreeable. You told him of roads and inns and small moments that mattered more than feasts ever did. He listened closely, asking questions that showed he wasn’t merely being polite. And in turn, he spoke of expectations, of being watched even in stillness, of learning how to hold yourself so the world would not presume weakness.

“It is strange,” he said at last. “To want something so badly and yet never quite have the courage to reach for it.”

You studied him for a long moment. “Then maybe,” you said gently, “you should get out of your own head and reach for it scared.”

He looked at you then—not as a prince weighing propriety, but as a man standing at the edge of something unfamiliar and frightening and beautiful. “You make it sound simple.”

“It isn’t, my prince, nothing ever is,” you said. “But I reckon it would be worth it.”

For the first time that night, he laughed—not politely, not carefully, but honestly. And something in his chest unraveled.

When you finally stepped away, the night pulling you back toward laughter and noise, you paused just long enough to press a kiss to his cheek—quick, warm, and utterly careless.

“Thank you, Your Grace, for dancing,” you said, as if he had done you the favor.

To you, the gesture had been nothing. To him, it was everything.

As you disappeared back into the revel, Valarr remained in the balcony, heart racing, mind alight, utterly undone. He knew—without yet knowing how or why—that he would never quite escape the memory of you. He would never outrun the sound of your laughter, the warmth of your honesty. Especially not the way you saw him without reverence or fear.

Something irrevocable had begun. You, of course, noticed none of it.

You were a Baratheon, and storms never stop to see what they leave behind.

AFTER THAT night, Valarr Targaryen did not fade from your life as fleeting presences often did. He lingered.

At first, it was in the form of letters—careful, polite things carried by ravens, sealed with wax and restraint. He wrote of the weather where he was, of duties performed, of books he thought you might enjoy. You replied in looser hand, ink sometimes smudged, thoughts running ahead of formality. You wrote of travel, of boredom, of people who amused you, of nothing in particular and everything at once.

It became a rhythm.

Sometimes the letters crossed paths in the air, one raven rising as another descended. Sometimes weeks passed. Sometimes only days. And each time, you found yourself smiling before you ever broke the seal.

You met again, as though by fate’s casual design—at tourneys, at feasts, at courtly gatherings where banners snapped in the wind and history was quietly being written between cups of wine. You were almost always at your uncle’s side, laughter ringing from beneath his pavilion.

Your Uncle Lyonel thrived in such places, and you with him—your presence expected now, your energy welcomed. And Valarr was often nearby as well, not as free as you, not as unburdened, but present nonetheless.

He came with his father.

Prince Baelor—the heir to the Iron Throne, Hand to the King—commanded rooms with quiet gravity. Valarr followed a step behind, observant, composed, learning the weight he would one day bear. Where Baelor spoke of duty, Valarr listened. Where Baelor stood firm, Valarr stood straighter.

But when he found you across the crowd—laughing and dancing and alive—his reserve softened.

You grew close in the way only the young and unguarded ever truly do. Through shared glances, quiet jokes, and letters that grew warmer, bolder, though never explicit. And you, perhaps without meaning to found amusement in the way his eyes followed you, the way his attention sharpened whenever you leaned closer or laughed a bit too freely at his side.

You flirted like it was breathing—not because you often deigned to, but because warmth could not help but follow you wherever you went.

It was in the way you spoke to Valarr without fear or reverence, calling him by his name as though it were the most natural thing in the world. In the way you leaned in when he talked, not out of coyness but genuine interest, eyes bright and focused, making him feel—dangerously—like the only person in the room. You touched without thinking, as well, with a hand at his arm when you laughed, fingers brushing his sleeve as you passed, a brief squeeze of reassurance when conversation faltered. Small things, innocent things, really.

To you.

You listened to him in a way few ever did. When he spoke, you did not rush to fill the silence or redirect the topic—you let him finish, let his thoughts land, let him feel heard. You remembered details he mentioned once in passing and brought them up weeks later, casually, as though it meant nothing.

You teased him gently, never cruelly. You challenged his certainty, questioned his restraint, smiled as if you knew something he did not. Sometimes you praised him—his discipline, his thoughtfulness, the way he carried himself—and said it so plainly, so honestly, that he did not know where to place the feeling it stirred in him.

You never promised anything. You never asked for anything. And that, perhaps, was the most intoxicating part.

To Valarr, every letter felt like an invitation, every meeting like a secret shared. He mistook your ease for intimacy, your affection for intention. He thought the way you looked at him—open, amused, warm—meant you saw him as something singular when, in truth, you were simply being yourself.

Storms do not need intent to uproot trees, regardless. They only need to pass close enough. And Valarr, standing in your wake, fell like it was fate—never realizing you had never meant to make him fall at all.

The breaking point came during a tourney—one of many, but one that would stain his memory forever.

Your uncle’s tent was alive that night, swollen with sound and motion, a riot of music, sweat, and unchecked joy. Soldiers spun noblewomen badly across the rugs. Squires pounded tankards against tables in crooked rhythm. Someone had shoved a long trestle aside to make space for dancing, and the packed earth beneath your feet trembled with the force of it all.

It was chaos—glorious, unmeasured chaos—and you belonged to it the way flame belongs to air.

Valarr had gone because he thought you would be there.

And you were.

He saw you at once—however could he not? The torchlight caught in your hair, skirts fanning as you turned, laughter spilling from you without restraint. You did not merely dance, you commanded the space around you. Men straightened when you passed. Women smiled despite themselves. You were audacious joy given mortal form, as if the gods had carved you from thunder and given you a heartbeat.

He could have watched you forever.

Until he saw the lord.

The man was handsome in an easy, polished way—broad-shouldered, flushed with drink, confidence curling at the edge of his grin. His hands rested at your waist with familiarity that made Valarr’s jaw tighten. You did not remove them. If anything, you leaned closer. Your laughter softened, became something warmer. When the lord bent toward you, his mouth hovering just shy of yours, you tilted your chin up in answer.

Valarr did not remember crossing the space between you. One moment he was watching and the next—

His hand closed around your arm, firm, pulling you back. “Enough.”

The word cracked through the music like a whip.

You stumbled half a step, startled, still processing the near-kiss, still feeling the warmth of another body close to yours. The lord blinked in confusion as Valarr stepped between you, all rigid lines and burning eyes.

“She’s had too much to drink,” Valarr said, voice clipped, controlled only by force.

The musicians faltered. A lute string gave a miserable twang and went silent. Conversation thinned into sharp pockets of attention.

The lord straightened at once, recognition dawning with visible alarm. “Your—Your Grace,” he stammered, bowing awkwardly. “I meant no disrespect. I assure you, I-I had no ill intent toward the lady—”

“You were about to kiss her,” Valarr said coldly.

The lord flushed. “Only because she—she did not object—”

“I did not object,” you cut in, heat rising to your cheeks—not from shame, but fury. “Valarr—”

Valarr’s fingers tightened at your arm, unyielding but never to hurt.

The lord, desperate to recover his footing, stepped forward slightly. “My prince, I swear, the lady was willing. I would never presume—”

He reached toward you—perhaps to steady you, perhaps to prove his innocence. Valarr shoved him back with a hard palm to the chest. It was not a dramatic blow, but it was entirely unmistakable.

“Don’t you touch her,” Valarr said, voice low and lethal.

That was when the tent truly fell quiet. Whispers sparked like flint all over. A prince. A shove. Over a lady. Over you.

Your humiliation flared into something incandescent.

You tore your arm from Valarr’s grasp. “What are you doing?” you demanded under your breath, heart pounding not with swooning gratitude, but with white hot rage.

The lord looked between you, mortified. “I assure you, Your Grace, there was no dishonor meant—”

“Leave,” Valarr said, not looking at him.

“My prince—”

“Now.”

The authority in his tone brooked no argument. The lord hesitated only a moment before bowing stiffly and retreating into the crowd, eyes following him with hungry interest. You could feel every single one of them. Worse yet, with one glance toward the other end of the tent, where your Uncle Lyonel looked on with a severe gaze bordering between displeasure and concern, it was as if the embarrassment that has burrowed beneath your skin grew teeth.

Without another word, you grabbed Valarr by the wrist—hard—and pulled him through the parted bodies, past the flap of the tent, into the cooler night air beyond. The sounds of revelry rushed back in behind you, louder now, edged with speculation and no doubt your uncle’s attempt to divert the crowd’s attention.

You did not stop until you were well clear of prying ears. Only then did you turn on him.

“What in the Seven Hells was that?” you hissed, voice low but shaking with fury.

“He— He was taking advantage of you,” Valarr replied immediately. The words came out too fast, too sharp, as though he had spent too long a moment wanting to say them. “He had no right—”

“No right?” You turned on him, incredulous. “I gave him every right, Valarr. I wanted him to kiss me.”

The sentence landed like a blow.

For a moment, he did not move, did not speak. He simply stared at you, as if the ground beneath his feet had tilted and he had not yet, nor will he ever, find his balance again. The anger drained from his face first—then came confusion, raw and unguarded. After that, there appeared something unmistakably wounded.

“You do not know that,” he said at last, but the certainty was gone from his tone. “You do not know what men are like when—”

“I know exactly what men are like,” you cut in. “And I am not some fragile maiden in need of saving.”

“That is not what I think,” he said quickly.

“Then why did you treat me like one?”

The question hung between you.

Valarr dragged a hand through his hair, breath uneven now, the careful restraint he wore like armor beginning to crack. “You cannot possibly expect me to stand idly by while someone makes a spectacle of you.”

You laughed softly, humorless. “Are you listening to yourself? You are the one who made a spectacle,” you said, voice tight with restrained fury. “Do you have any idea what you just did?”

“I stopped him.”

“You shoved a lord in front of half the realm,” you said coldly. “You embarrassed him. And you embarrassed yourself.”

He straightened, shoulders going rigid. “I do not care what they think.”

“Well, you should!” you snapped, stepping closer. “You are not some reckless knight in a tent full of drunkards. You are the firstborn son of the heir to the Iron Throne. You cannot go about striking men because you dislike where their hands are placed.”

His eyes lifted to yours, sharp and burning. “It wasn’t dislike.”

“Then what was it? Hm?”

He faltered, actually faltered, and took a step back as if the answer had struck him before he was ever ready to speak it aloud. When he finally did, his voice was quieter and considerably unsteady.

“You nearly kissed him.”

“Yes!” you said at once, unflinching. “Yes, Valarr, I did. And what of it?”

His breath caught. His hands curled at his sides, knuckles whitening as though he were holding himself together by force alone.

“And what of—” He stopped, swallowed hard, then tried again. “What of what we have?”

The words cost him something. It showed in the way his voice cracked—not loudly, not enough for you to catch unless you were listening for it. 

But you laughed. It was not unkind nor deliberate. It was instinctive and light, almost fond, as though he had made a clever joke you had not expected.

“We?” you echoed, brows lifting in genuine surprise. “Gods, Valarr. There is no we. There never has been.”

The silence that followed was immediate and devastating.

Something in his face hardened completely, all warmth gone in an instant, as though shutters had slammed shut behind his eyes. The hurt was still there—you could see it as clear as morning—but it had been buried beneath pride and restraint and something dangerously final. Without another word, he turned away.

He did not shout. He did not argue. He did not look back. He walked into the night with his features set to stone, leaving behind the music, the laughter, and the girl who had become the axis of his world without ever knowing it.

You did not follow.

And Valarr learned, in that moment, what it meant to love a storm—and be left standing in the ruin it never meant to cause.

ALL OF it was nearly a triennium ago now—though it has never felt like something that belongs to the past. The memory remains sharp, unsoftened by time, as vivid as torchlight against canvas. You know precisely how long it has been because, at this very moment, a piece of news has reached you that makes those events feel not distant at all—but dangerously, painfully present.

You had not even been meant to hear it.

It came drifting through the stone corridors of Storm’s End as idle house staff chatter often did—careless, half-muttered, passed between handmaidens adjusting sleeves and housemen pretending not to listen. A prince, someone said. A betrothal. A lady from Tyrosh.

That was all. No certainty. No care for the damage such words could do. You suspect that they had heard it from the lords and ladies that came at your Uncle’s disposal for feasts and festivities of no apparent reason, holding onto the word “prince” to be of more consequence than the detail of this prince’s name. Either way, your heart stilled all the same. 

A prince is to be betrothed to a lady from Tyrosh.

Your mind did not need to wander through possibilities. It did not consider cousins or distant branches of the dragon’s line. It did not pause to ask which prince, or whether the rumor held truth at all. It went to him at once.

Valarr Targaryen.

Of course it did. No other prince had ever mattered enough to you for the thought to sting, after all.

The reaction was immediate and undignified. It felt like a sharp, hot twist in your chest, like breath stolen from your very insides without warning. Alarm followed close behind, quick and vicious, curling into something darker before you could stop it. A sort of bitter taste akin to jealousy, possessiveness, and perhaps a flare of something you did not yet have the courage to name.

You told yourself you had no right. You told yourself this was absurd—that you had been the one to laugh at the ridiculous notion back then, the one to dismiss, the one to watch him walk away without an effort to stop him. You had never claimed him. You had never promised him anything, nor did you even allow the possibility to linger long enough to settle.

Be that as it may, the idea of him choosing someone else, of his attention turning where it had once lingered on you, felt utterly intolerable. Not because you believed he belonged to you, but because some traitorous part of you had always assumed he would remain there. A patient man—your patient man—waiting, open, and unclaimed.

You had never been accustomed to competition.

Men always came quite easily to you. Attention, in your wealth of experience, had never needed to be fought for. And Valarr—ever-steady, ever-forbearing, ever-earnest Valarr—had felt less like a conquest and more like a certainty you could return to whenever you wished. 

The realization struck you with humiliating clarity… that you had mistaken his devotion for permanence.

Worse still, the thought of a lady from Tyrosh—foreign, elegant, deliberate—made something sharp and ugly coil in your stomach. She was someone who was chosen, worse yet, intended. Someone who might take him seriously in all the ways you had not.

In hindsight, you are reminded by it that you were meant to serve at court now. Having been summoned to King’s Landing—a role was offered to you with polite insistence, one you had accepted without much thought at the time. Truthfully, the invitation had been a matter your mother and father was made aware of prior to you. Duty, they called it. Opportunity. Proximity to power.

Proximity to him, your mind supplied unhelpfully.

Officially, your appointment was an honor beyond question. You were to serve as a lady-in-waiting to the young niece-wife of Prince Maekar Targaryen, a princess spoken of with rare and sincere fondness. Court whispered that she was gentle where her husband was unyielding, gracious where he was sharp—a tempering presence, a soft hand laid upon iron. To attend her was to stand close to the royal line without inviting suspicion, to be seen as useful rather than threatening. A perfect placement for a lady of your house.

You told yourself you understood this. You told yourself you were grateful. You even meant it, in some distant, well-mannered part of your heart.

Yet gratitude was a thin thing compared to the pulse of anticipation that followed you through every corridor of thought. The Red Keep was not merely the seat of power, to you. It was where you knew Valarr resided now, where his days unfolded beneath the same roof that would soon shelter you. 

You would attend the same feasts, kneel within the same sept (not with a choice of your own, as someone near irreligious), stay in the same courtyards where glances could linger too long and words were to be weighed like coins. You would move in the same orbit, close enough that chance alone could no longer be blamed.

As a lady-in-waiting, you would attend the princess at dawn and dusk, help oversee her household, accompany her in public, stand just behind her chair at court. You would listen more than you spoke, smile when required, learn the subtle grammar of power that ruled the Keep more firmly than any crown. And all the while, beneath silk and duty, something restless would coil in you—an awareness that this summons had not only placed you near the heart of the realm, but near the one person you had never quite managed to leave behind.

You would come to serve a princess—this was the version of the story you repeated to yourself, the one that sounded proper and orderly and fit for a lady of House Baratheon. A bidding to court was an honor. A duty, a sensible next step for someone of your birth.

But some treacherous part of you knew the truth even as you clung to the lie, that you would have gone to King’s Landing regardless, so long as he was there.

The realization did not arrive all at once. It unfurled slowly, insidious and unwelcome, coiling itself around your thoughts. You told yourself it was curiosity, nothing more. Or perhaps closure. Guilt, even. After all, you had not been kind. You had never been careful. 

This—whatever this feeling was—was unbecoming. You knew that. It was not the sort of thing a lady ought to entertain, least of all over a man she had never named, never claimed, never promised herself to. 

You had never loved him. At least, that was what you insisted. And so what did it say about you, to feel this sharp, unsettled heat in your chest at the mere suggestion that he might soon belong to someone else? It felt ugly and petty. Pernicious, if you were honest.

You had absolutely no right to it.

And yet, all the same, you did not like the idea of losing something that had once been yours in all the ways that mattered, even if you had refused to give it a name. You did not like imagining another woman laughing with him, standing where you once had, learning the weight of his silences and the steadiness of his regard. Worse still, you did not like the thought that she might take him seriously in the way you never had, or that she might be given the chance to love him properly, where you had only ever danced around the edges.

All you truly knew was a prince was to be betrothed to a lady from Tyrosh. Nothing else had been spoken to you. No assurance offered. The rumor stopped being harmless the moment it took root in your chest. It became something sharp, personal, and thoroughly past bearing.

Your pulse quickened, defiant and disordered, as a single, reckless thought took hold.

No, you thought. Not like this. Not without a fight.

KING'S LANDING greeted you the way it greeted everyone—loud and hot and unapologetically alive—just the way you remembered it. The Red Keep loomed above the city like a promise and a threat all at once, its red stone glowing beneath the sun as though it remembered every fire it had ever survived. You had been to court before, of course, in visitation to him, in trivial noise and equally unimportant celebration—but never like this. Never to stay. Never to serve.

You were escorted through halls that smelled faintly of incense and polish, past tapestries heavy with history, until you were announced into the solar of the princess you were now bound to.

Prince Maekar’s wife—his niece by blood, his princess by law—rose from her seat at once when you entered.

She was younger than you had expected, or perhaps simply softer than the court stories suggested. Her gown was modest in cut but rich in fabric, her glimmering silk-silver hair braided simply, her smile unguarded and bright. She did not wait for you to kneel for long before stepping forward herself.

“Please, my sweet,” she said gently, hands already reaching to lift you. “You are a Lady of House Baratheon. I would not have you on the floor.”

Her touch was light and reassuring, unpracticed in command, from what you could deduce, but still practiced in care. Her voice carried the same warmth, clear and earnest, lacking the brittle authority you had braced yourself to endure from someone of her status. You note, just as significantly, the sheer verity and luster in her spirit, an air about her that is uncomplicated and could not possibly be feigned.

“I am very glad you have come,” she continued, studying you not as one might appraise a servant, but as one welcomes a guest. “I have heard you are quite… lively.”

You huffed a quiet laugh before you could stop yourself. “That is one word for it, Your Grace.”

She grinned wider at that, a soft, genuine thing. “You may call me Princess,” she said and seemed quite excited by it. “I should like us to be comfortable with one another.”

It disarmed you at once.

She gestured for you to sit with her rather than stand at attention, pouring the wine herself—an intimacy you had not expected, nor quite knew how to respond to. After all your time out and about, it is not a common practice you observed from those of higher status to do such a gesture. You accepted the cup carefully, posture still stiff with habit, hands folded neatly in your lap.

“I hope the journey had not been too tiring,” the princess said. “King’s Landing can be a bit unkind to newcomers.”

“It was long, Your—Princess,” you corrected yourself quickly, earning a soft laugh from her. “But I have journeyed worser roads and even worser company. The Keep is… certainly impressive.”

“Well. That is a polite way to put it,” she smiled conspiratorially. “Most people mean overwhelming.”

You allowed yourself a small one in return. “Yes. I suppose that too.”

She asked after Storm’s End then—about the sea winds, the sound of the waves battering stone, the storms that gave your house its name. When you spoke of it, you heard yourself soften, the formality loosening just a touch.

“It must be very loud,” she said, eyes alight. “Though I imagine the storms are magnificent.”

“They are,” you replied. “You’re forced to learn quickly whether you love the noise or resent it. There is no in-between.”

“And you?” she asked. “Which are you?”

You hesitated. “I think… I grew to love it. It gives you allowance to be unruly, especially at the height of a particularly heavy rainfall, I find.”

She laughed at that, delighted. “I think I would like storms very much, then.”

After sipping from her cup, the Princess leans forward suddenly with blithe interest. “Lord Lyonel—The Laughing Storm. I have heard so many stories.”

You couldn’t help yourself as your smile turned fond. “Most of them are true, I can vouch for it. And the rest… well, they are probably understatements.”

Her laughter rang bright and genuine, echoing lightly against the stone walls. “We could use more men like him here. People tend to forget how to laugh in this place.”

“Court does have a way of weighing on people,” you said carefully.

She nodded, swirling her wine. “It does. There are days I feel as though I’ve lived a dozen lives without ever leaving these walls.” She glanced up at you then, almost shy. “I do not often get to leave the castle.”

You blinked. “Not at all?”

“Rarely,” she admitted. “There are so many rules. So many eyes. And yet…” She smiled again, softer now. “I am happy. I have my duties. My books. My garden. My lovely children. I find joy where I can.”

Something about the way she said it—without bitterness, without regret—caught you off guard.

“That is… admirable,” you said honestly. “I think I would go mad.”

She tilted her head. “Perhaps. Or perhaps you would learn new ways to be free.”

You laughed quietly, the sound surprising even yourself. “You speak like someone who has made peace with things others might resent.”

“I suppose I have,” she said simply. “And you? Are you at peace?”

The question was gentle. Curious and not demanding, which makes you hesitate, then answer truthfully. “I do not know yet, Princess.”

She reached out then, resting her hand lightly over yours. “That is all right. There is no need to rush here.”

For the first time since arriving in the Red Keep, you felt your shoulders ease up. You wondered then—quietly, unexpectedly—if perhaps joy did not always require escape.

“I imagine court will feel rather different,” she said after a moment. “Especially for someone like you.”

“I imagine it already does,” you replied honestly, then hesitated. “I can only hope I will not disappoint you.”

“You will not,” she said at once, too quickly for courtesy, her certainty earnest. “Do not think so, my lady. I did not ask for you because I needed perfection. I asked for you because I needed someone real.”

She hesitated then, fingers tightening slightly around her cup. “My last lady-in-waiting has only just retired. She has been with me since I was but a child. She knew my silences better than my words.” A small, wistful smile touched her lips. “It is strange, learning how to be without her.”

Something softened in your chest. “I’m honored you would trust me with that place,” you said quietly.

“I think you will be good for me,” the princess replied, sounding quite sure of herself. “And I for you, perhaps. We shall learn each other in time.”

She spoke of her household then—of duties and rhythms, of mornings filled with petitions and evenings heavy with ceremony. She made it all sound manageable, even gentle, as though life in the Red Keep were not something to be endured, but navigated like a thrilling venture. How she maintains such excitement for a place she’s been in for so long, you do not know.

“You will find it overwhelming at first,” she admitted softly. “But it becomes easier when you stop thinking of it as a cage and instead start thinking of it as a crossroads.”

You nodded, though your attention had already begun to drift—treacherously, involuntarily.

Your eyes traced the archways beyond her solar door. The corridors beyond. The staircases. The countless hidden turns of the castle.

Where would he be?

A part of you reckon he’d be sparring with knights in the training yard. Perhaps tending to matters of the court in council chambers, or brooding in some shaded gallery overlooking the city. The thought slipped in unbidden, persistent as an ache. You wondered if he had already passed beneath these same banners today, if you had missed him by mere moments.

“Lady Baratheon?”

You blinked, startled, realizing you had not heard the last of the princess’ words.

“I—Forgive me, Princess, I did not mean to lose myself in thought,” you said at once, flushing. “I do believe the journey was longer than I thought my body could handle.”

She regarded you for a moment, eyes thoughtful but not unkind. If anything, there was something knowing there. Something almost… amused.

“Of course,” she said, letting the matter drop with grace. “The Keep has a way of pulling one’s thoughts in many directions. Hearts are not always punctual.”

You stiffened slightly at that, though she only smiled, serene and distant, as though indulging a private fancy.

“I am glad you are here,” she added, almost dreamily. “I believe some meetings are meant to happen twice. Or perhaps… finished properly.”

You did not yet understand what she meant.

But as you left her presence later that day—heart restless, thoughts circling the same forbidden name again and again—you had the uncanny feeling that the princess already knew exactly who you were searching for. 

And perhaps, in her own quiet way, she was hoping for the same ending you had not yet dared to admit you wanted.

BY THE end of your first full day in the Red Keep, you had learned that serving a princess was less about idle attendance and more about quiet constancy. Better yet, it did not come as much of a surprise that you found yourself enjoying it.

Your first conversation with her had already softened whatever wariness you’d brought with you to court. Now, with each passing hour, that initial trust deepened into something steadier. She did not keep only one lady-in-waiting—no royal woman of rank ever did—but you were the newest, and increasingly the one most often at her side. 

There were others, of course. From elder ladies who oversaw her household accounts and dowries to younger girls learning how to walk, speak, and smile without offending half the realm. Even so, it was you she asked to remain when the room thinned. You were the lady she would ask to sit beside her in the solar as her correspondence was read and quietly annotated. You were the lady she would ask to walk with her through the gardens while she dictated replies, trusting you to remember which words must be softened and which sharpened.

You helped her dress in the mornings. Where, instead of doing so in silence, you offered kinds of conversation she must have  desperately sought for quite a time. You learned which gowns she favored when she wished to be taken seriously, which colors she wore when she was tired, and which jewels she avoided because they reminded her too much of obligations she had not chosen. 

You became, without ceremony, her gatekeeper in small ways, as well. Through announcing visitors, gently deflecting those she had no strength for that day, and lingering close enough at audiences that she could glance at you when she needed grounding.

More than anything, to a greater degree, you were her companion.

She spoke freely in your presence—more freely than court gossip would ever guess of her to be privy to. She talked of books she loved, of the quiet joy she found in tending her garden with her own hands, of spending all other free moments with her youngest children, or of how the castle felt smaller at night and louder during the day. Some of those times, she would pause mid-thought and murmur something half-formed, almost dreamlike.

“I dreamt of a dragon standing in the rain,” she said once, absently, fingers tracing the rim of her cup. “But he would not open his wings.”

Then she would blink, as if realizing she had spoken aloud, and laugh softly, brushing it aside.

Yet when you spoke—of history, of power, of the careful reading of people she seemed so intent on mastering—she listened with full attention. She asked questions. She remembered your answers. There was depth beneath her gentleness, insight beneath her warmth. A sharp steel beneath the softest of silks.

You learned things about her the court did not know, or perhaps did not care to notice. And in that knowledge, in that growing ease, you found yourself unexpectedly at home.

If only your thoughts did not keep straying—to corridors beyond your station, to footsteps that were not the princess’, to a prince you had not yet seen but felt everywhere all the same.

Still—throughout it all—your attention betrayed you.

It was your third day in the Keep. You had dined within its walls, learned the rhythms of its bells, slept beneath ceilings so intricately carved they seemed to whisper of old kings and older sins. You had walked its corridors often enough now to no longer lose your way, could anticipate which turns would open into light-filled galleries and which would narrow into shadowed passages meant for servants and secrets alike. On paper, at least, you were settling in.

And yet you had not seen him.

You told yourself it was for the best. That you required composure, distance, a steadier heart. That your first meeting after three years ought not happen by accident—some careless crossing in a corridor while your arms were full of parchment, or while you were mid-laugh at something the princess had said. You deserved more dignity than that. He did too.

Still, imagination was a traitor.

You caught yourself wondering where he walked now, which parts of the Keep he favored. Whether he still took his steps too quickly when agitated, whether his presence still seemed to bend a room toward him without effort. You imagined what it would be like to hear his voice again—not as a memory behind your eyelids softened by time, but sharp and immediate, spoken within arm’s reach. In these thoughts, your breath would hitch before you even realized it had changed.

The smallest sounds undid you. Every echo of boots against stone set your pulse racing. Every door opening drew your gaze up, unbidden, hopeful despite yourself. Once, while organizing the princess’s correspondence, you misplaced an entire letter simply because footsteps passed the solar entrance—and you were certain, for half a heartbeat, that they were his.

Your other duties suffered in subtle ways because of it, too.

You would catch yourself pausing a tad too long while fastening clasps or reading the same line of a missive twice before  understanding it. Even while walking beside the princess, listening as she spoke of her plans for a coming afternoon tea with the ladies of prospective ally houses or her thoughts on a visiting lord, part of you strained outward—toward hallways you could not see, toward a presence you felt rather than heard.

Even the princess, not often praised for being perceptive, noticed.

She noticed the way your hand stilled when a voice rose outside the door. She observed the way your attention fractured, just slightly, at even the mere sound of male laughter in the distance. She took heed of the way your thoughts seemed always half a step ahead of where you stood.

And she said nothing.

Instead, she slowed her pace when you walked together, as if giving you time to gather yourself. She repeated instructions gently when your focus slipped. Once, when you startled at the sound of approaching guards, she merely smiled and shifted the conversation elsewhere, sparing you the embarrassment of explanation.

In that silence, you sensed understanding—not prying, not judgmental, but patient. As though she knew that some absences were louder than presences, and that some names did not need to be spoken aloud to be felt in every stone of the Keep.

FOR DAYS now, she had been speaking of it—almost offhandedly at first, then with a growing fondness that made it clear the thought had taken root.

“We must take tea in the gardens,” the princess had said once while you were fastening the final clasp of her sleeve. “Not yet, of course. The sky has been too fickle. I want it clear. Properly clear.”

Another time, while you sorted correspondence at the solar table, she had sighed again that particular dreamy sigh of her and added, “When the sun behaves, it will be an enlightening day.”

That word had made you pause, quill hovering mid-air.

“Enlightening?” you had echoed, unable to keep the amusement from your voice.

She had only smiled, something small, knowing, and entirely unhelpful. “That is how it appears in my dreams, my lady.”

You had laughed then, soft and unguarded, teasing without malice. “Princess… do your dreams often plan your afternoons?”

“Why, more often than I would like,” she had replied, just as lightly. “Do yours not?”

“Oh, well, mine are far less poetic,” you had said. “Usually disordered things. Half-formed thoughts. Nothing worth arranging tea around.”

She had tilted her head, studying you with that quiet attentiveness you were beginning to recognize. “Still,” she had murmured, “I think you would make good company for an enlightening day.”

So when, on the morning of the fifth day, she invited you at last, it felt less like a command and more like the fulfillment of a long-promised indulgence.

The gardens were everything one would expect of a royal keep and still, they stole your breath. Roses climbed pale stone walls in disciplined abundance, their colors deep and lush, their scent heavy in the warming air. Low fountains murmured nearby, water catching the sunlight in quick silver flashes. The trellises, wrapped in nearly endless looping vines, arched overhead, offering dappled shade, and the paths beneath your feet were swept so clean they seemed sacramental.

You could not help but admire it all openly.

“They are beautiful,” you said, glancing around as servants set down the tea. “Even more so than the courtiers boast.”

The princess smiled into her cup. “They always boast. But I like to think the gardens listen better than most people.”

You took your place beside her, the familiar ease between you settling quickly. For a while, conversation flowed without effort—about the weather finally settling, about a book she had nearly finished, about how the roses had been transplanted years ago from another region entirely.

Then, idly, you asked, “Do you truly dream so often, Princess?”

She considered the question, eyes tracing the curve of her teacup. “Often enough that I have learned not to dismiss them,” she said. “Dragon dreams… They are not always clear. Sometimes they are only feelings. Light. Sound. A sense that something is… approaching.”

You frowned, curious rather than alarmed. “And today?”

She glanced up at the sky—blue, unmarred, almost indulgent in its clarity. “Today feels promising.”

You laughed softly, shaking your head. “You make it sound as though the day itself has its own intentions.”

“Can it not?” she countered gently.

You had no answer for that, only a fond smile. Whatever the court gossips said of her softness, whatever rumors clung to her like ill-fitting silks, moments like this revealed something else entirely. In these shared instances, one can truly distinguish her thoughtfulness, curiosity, and quiet confidence in her own inner world. If anything, your trust in her only deepened.

You were midway through explaining the difference between storm winds that threatened and those that merely boasted—using a half-remembered lesson from an old maester that served your house—when footsteps crunched across the gravel.

You did not turn at first, but the princess did, and her expression brightened just a fraction.

“Cousin!”

And your world tilted when you looked up.

Valarr Targaryen stood at the garden’s edge, sunlight catching faintly in the pale streak threaded through his dark hair. He looked… older. Not merely in years, as is obvious, but also in bearing. He looked broader through the shoulders, straighter in the spine. The softness that once clung to his expressions had now hardened into something disciplined, almost severe. His jaw was sharper now, his mouth set in a line that seemed practiced in restraint.

He bowed first to the princess. “Your Grace.”

Only then did his gaze shift and find you.

The world did not stop. The fountain still murmured, the breeze still stirred the roses. A bird even called somewhere beyond the hedges. Nevertheless, within that small circle of stone and sunlight, everything tightened as though a bowstring drawn too far.

It was not the startled stillness of prey in torchlight. It was the silence before a storm breaks over open sea.

His composure slipped, barely. There was a pause in his breath and the faintest narrowing of his eyes, not in anger, not quite in surprise—something deeper. Recognition. Memory.

You had imagined this moment a hundred times in the corridors of the Keep, in the privacy of your chamber before sleep claimed you. You had rehearsed calm greetings, measured smiles, a perfectly dignified nod.

None of it survived the reality.

You forgot how to breathe, and somehow, he recovered first.

“Your Grace,” he said evenly to the princess, drawing his gaze from you with deliberate control, “you sent for me?”

Sent for him? Your head turned so quickly toward the princess it was almost undignified. Confusion was written plainly across your face. You had not known. You would have prepared. You would have—

The princess merely lifted her cup, serene as ever. “Yes,” she said lightly. “I only wished to ask about your training. And whether you will accompany your father to the Riverlands for the name tourney of Lord Harroway’s grandson.”

There was something in the way she phrased it, in a manner too smooth and too careful to be truly casual.

Valarr inclined his head. “I am to go. My father believes it… advantageous.”

His tone was respectful, attentive—yet his shoulders held a stiffness that had not been there when he first approached. He has his hands clasped behind his back, fingers curling once against his palm before stilling. His weight shifted, not away from you yet not quite toward you either, as though he were standing on uncertain ground.

You noticed none of it, of course, for you were too busy noticing everything else.

The changes are more prominent to you, now that you have beheld him longer. How much taller he seemed. How his hair was unmistakably shorter than how he usually wore it from years past. How his voice had deepened, roughened at the edges. How the sunlight caught against his cheekbone and made him look carved from something stronger than flesh. He truly was refined now. A man contained, no longer the boy who had once laughed too freely and spoken too quickly.

You had wondered for days what it would be like to see him again, but you had not been prepared for this.

The princess gestured toward an empty chair. “Will you sit, Cousin?”

He hesitated—only a breath, barely perceptible—before inclining his head and doing as she asked. He did not take the seat beside you. Instead, he chose one angled just so: close enough to be proper, distant enough to be intentional. The space between you felt measured, accounted for, as carefully placed as any word left unsaid.

The princess smoothed her skirts, unbothered, and turned the conversation forward.

“I must confess,” the princess said lightly, turning her cup in her hands, “I know the Riverlands through maps and songs at best. They always sound either terribly romantic or deeply inconvenient. Which is it truly?”

Valarr answered at once, grateful—perhaps—for the solid ground of the subject. “Both hold truths, Your Grace. The rivers make travel slow, but they also gather people. Lords who would not cross mountains will cross bridges.”

“And which houses will attend?” she asked. “I can never keep them straight.”

“Those of note are House Tully, of course. Likely the Freys, as well. Though whether they arrive early or late is always a matter of speculation. A handful of river knights are often quite eager to prove themselves.” His tone was calm, practiced. His eyes never strayed from her face.

You curled your fingers more tightly around your teacup.

“Is it common,” the princess went on, “for such a tourney to carry… meaning beyond the lists?”

“Yes,” Valarr said. “Especially now. A visible show of unity reassures uncertain bannermen. It reminds them where power sits.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “Interesting… So presence matters just as much as victory.”

“It does.”

Her gaze flicked to you then, soft but deliberate. “I have heard that Lady Baratheon has seen more tourneys than I ever will,” she said. “Perhaps she might have an opinion of it.”

You straightened instinctively. “In the Riverlands, spectacle carries weight,” you said carefully. “The lords there are proud men. They notice who attends, who is honored publicly. A strong showing—”

“—is already expected,” Valarr interjected smoothly.

You faltered.

He did not raise his voice. He did not look at you. He simply continued, as though you had not spoken at all.

“My father’s presence alone will satisfy most concerns,” he said to the princess. “Victory is secondary. Order is what they wish to see.”

The princess hesitated. “Still, Lady Baratheon’s point about pride—”

“Pride is easily managed,” Valarr said. “River lords posture, but they do not fracture so easily.”

You swallowed. “Some do,” you said quietly. “Old grievances linger. A careless slight—”

“I believe you overestimate the fragility of their loyalties,” he replied at once. Measured and polite, yes, but final. The words struck like a door closing.

You stared into your tea. “It was only an observation,” you said after a moment, your voice steadier than you felt.

“And I have acknowledged it,” Valarr said, still facing his cousin just as he raises his own cup to his lips. “We simply disagree.”

The princess shifted in her seat, the air between the three of you suddenly taut. “If it is any consolation, I find differing views most useful,” she said gently.

“As do I, Your Grace,” Valarr answered at once.

But he did not look at you when he said it. Soon, thick and unmistakable silence crept in. The fountain’s murmur seemed suddenly too loud. You focused on breathing, on not shrinking.

At last, Valarr rose.

“I should not keep you from your afternoon,” he said to the princess, bowing with impeccable courtesy. “I thank you for the tea.”

She inclined her head, regret flickering across her features so briefly you might have imagined it.

He turned then. For a heartbeat—only one—his gaze met yours again.

There was something there. Something tightly leashed. His jaw tightened, as if swallowing words that had nearly escaped. His fingers flexed once at his side. His throat moved with a restrained breath.

You saw none of it. You only saw the wall.

He inclined his head. “Lady Baratheon.”

No smile. No softness. No indication of fondly recalling the past. And then he was gone, gravel crunching beneath his boots until even that sound faded into the hum of the garden.

You sat very still even after he was completely out of reach.

The garden felt altered in his absence. It is not quieter, precisely, but it feels hollowed out to you now. The fountains continued their patient song, the birds flitted and called from the hedges, and sunlight still warmed the stone beneath your palms. Life went on with an almost insulting normalcy.

The princess watched the path he had taken, her expression thoughtful, then faintly troubled. She set her cup aside, fingers folding together in her lap.

“I fear,” she said gently, “that did not go as I had hoped.”

You glanced at her, surprised by the candor.

“He has grown… disciplined,” she added after a moment, as if searching for a kinder word. There was regret there now, unmistakable. Not disappointment in him, but in the sharpness he had allowed to surface. “And yet discipline need not be unkind.”

You managed a small, careful smile. “It suits him,” you said, because it was easier than admitting how thoroughly it had cut.

But the truth pressed close all the same.

It was not what he had said that lingered. To you, what struck was everything he had chosen not to. You were not so blind to not see the way his eyes had slid past you. You were not so foolish to not take note the way your name had never crossed his lips. You were not so wrapped in your own head to not notice the way he had looked at you as though you were no more than another voice at court, easily dismissed.

A stranger.

The sting came suddenly, bright and humiliating, and you had to look down lest it show too clearly on your face. 

And yet—even as it hurt—you knew.

You knew this small, sharp ache was nothing. Not truly. It could not compare to the quiet devastation you had left behind years ago, spoken so carelessly, laughing where you should have been gentle. He was the one who turned away in the end, leaving with a sharpness that cut through the air between you. But you remained where you were, rooted in place, watching his retreating back without running after him and without fully understanding what had just been broken—or how deeply you had wounded him.

This—this coldness, this distance—was restraint learned the hard way. The knowledge did not soften the pain, as it only settled heavier in your chest.

You reached for your teacup, then thought better of it, setting it aside with deliberate care. Your hands steadied as your resolve did.

“I am sorry,” the princess said softly, and though she did not name what for, you understood. She had seen enough. Perhaps more than she had intended.

You inclined your head to her, gratitude mingling with resolve. “You had no way of knowing.”

But you did.

You had known this reunion was inevitable, that it would not be gentle. You had simply underestimated how much it would still matter.

Very well, you thought. If this was the shape of the ground between you now—cold stone, measured distance, pride sharpened into armor—then you would cross it all the same. If he would not meet you halfway, you would take the first step. And the next. And however many it required.

You would make him forgive you. You would make him remember not the girl who laughed and left, but the one who stayed. He will have to remember that you were the one who chose him, even now, even late.

And if, in the course of that effort, a certain lady from Tyrosh found her future less certain than gossip promised— 

Well. She would just have to accept that certain storms did not retreat simply because someone else wished for clear skies.

YOU TOLD yourself, at first, that you would be subtle, measured, and reasonable. 

You swore you would allow time to do its work—that familiarity would soften him, that proximity would loosen the careful knots he had tied around himself. You were, after all, no green girl chasing attention in corridors. You were a lady of House Baratheon, trained in restraint, in wit, in the art of saying much while appearing to say very little.

So you began there, engineering coincidence.

A shared corridor at the hour he favored after training, when his hair was still damp at the nape and the scent of leather and steel clung faintly to him. You would pass with an idle remark—about the weather turning, about the guards changing rotation, about a tourney rumor spoken lightly enough to invite correction.

Once, you smiled and said, “I hear the yard has been dull of late. Either the men are improving, or you are growing too merciful.”

He paused. Then turned. Then, for one grueling, hopeful heartbeat, you thought you had him.

“Discipline discourages carelessness, Lady Baratheon,” he replied evenly. Then he inclined his head and walked on.

You stood there, smiling after him like a fool, heat creeping up your neck.

All right, then. 

Subtlety, you decided, was overrated.

You knew—intellectually—that this was unbecoming. You could not even begin to fool yourself into thinking that waiting around corners and timing footsteps was the sort of thing women—prudent, self-reliant women—who had sat at councils and spoken freely among lords, did in their free moments. This was something girls in songs would do, swooningly and utterly overcome with passion. You knew that desperation was an unbecoming color, and worse, that you had no real claim to him. 

You had no worthy title. You hadn’t even a promise to cling to. What you had only was a history you had fractured with your own hands.

And yet, confidence had always been your vice as much as your strength. Baratheon blood did not know how to retreat quietly, and you were far too used to being wanted, to being answered when you reached.

So you waited.

It was absurd, really—standing just out of sight near the turn of a gallery, pretending to examine a tapestry you had already memorized, counting breaths and footsteps like a conspirator in your own folly. You told yourself you were merely testing fate, convinced yourself that if he passed, he passed. If not, you would go on with dignity intact.

And he did. He passed. It just so happened that you stepped out at precisely the wrong—or right—moment.

The collision was sudden, solid. You gasped as you stumbled forward, a moment you hadn’t foreseen, the world tilting—

And Valarr caught you.

His hands came up instinctively, strong and sure at your waist, steadying you before you could hit the stone. For the briefest instant, you were pressed against him, close enough to feel the heat of his body, the sharp inhale he failed to hide. His grip tightened, just slightly, as though his body had remembered something his mind had not permitted.

For half a heartbeat, neither of you moved. Then he realized.

He released you as if he were burned. It happened so abruptly that it was almost comical, with you staggering back a step, skirts tangling, barely managing to keep your balance. He retreated as well, posture snapping into rigid control, jaw set hard enough to ache.

“I—” you began, then stopped, pulse racing. You forced a laugh that came out a touch too bright. “F— Forgive me. I should watch where I am going.”

His eyes flicked over you, sharp and quick, as if checking for injury—and then away just as fast as it passed.

“Yes,” he said shortly. “You should.”

There it was again. That distance, that restraint wound so tight it creaked. He inclined his head, already moving to leave.

You watched him go, heart pounding—not with triumph, but with something messier. Because for that fleeting second, when his hands had been on you, you had felt it. 

Not indifference. Not absence. Reaction.

And that was dangerous.

Because it made you bold where you ought to have been cautious. It made you tell yourself stories—that if you pushed just a little more, teased just a little harder, forced him to remember the ease between you, the laughter, the almosts—

You would get him back.

You did not like how possessive that thought sounded, how little it cared for propriety or patience or the quiet dignity expected of you now. You did not like how easily you justified it—how you told yourself that you were only reclaiming something that had once been yours, even though it had never been named, never promised.

Manipulative, perhaps. But storms were not known for their restraint. And you were far from done.

You became… inventive. If subtlety had failed, then information would not.

You learned quickly that the Red Keep ran on whispers as much as it did on banners. You’ve come to learn that maids talked when they folded linen. Pages talked when they thought themselves unseen. Guards talked when wine loosened their tongues. You listened—never too intently, never so directly as to invite suspicion, but with the practiced ease of someone raised among courts and camps alike.

You asked about schedules in the guise of courtesy. You asked about quiet places one might visit within the Keep under the pretense of needing space for your duties. Sometimes you laughed and said, “I am forever losing people in this castle,” and the servants, eager to be useful, gladly told you where one might be found.

You did not often ask the princess.

It is not because she would not tell you—on the contrary, you suspected she would answer with disarming honesty—but because there was something in her gaze now. A knowing softness, a patience that suggested she saw far more than she said. You had the distinct sense that if you pressed her too directly, she might smile that gentle, prophetic smile of hers and say something altogether too revealing.

So you kept your scheming elsewhere. And inevitably, one truth surfaced again and again. 

If Valarr was not at court, nor in the training yard, then he was in the library.

Always.

The realization struck you with a strange pang of fondness before you could stop it. You remembered him telling you once—years ago, sprawled across a bench with ink-smudged fingers and a book balanced precariously on his knee—that his love of reading came from both his parents, though especially his mother. Lady Jena Dondarrion, gentle and sharp-minded, who had loved stories and histories and passed that love on quietly, against all assumptions. She had been the one, he’d said, to coax Prince Baelor into lingering longer over pages instead of parchments.

It felt… intimate, remembering that.

And so you went to the library. Casually, of course.

You told yourself—very reasonably—that it made sense. The princess had mentioned wanting certain correspondence copied. You enjoyed reading. Libraries were public spaces. It was entirely innocent.

Never mind that you timed your arrival with surgical precision. Never mind that you waited just long enough for him to be well and truly settled, for the likelihood of him leaving to be minimal. Once he began reading, you knew, it took effort to pull him away. He would not abandon a chapter lightly.

You entered as though summoned by chance.

The library was cool and hushed, sunlight slanting through high windows, dust motes drifting lazily in the air. And there he was—seated at one of the long tables, a book open before him, brow faintly furrowed in concentration.

Your heart tripped.

You approached with measured steps, schooling your expression into mild interest. When you were close enough to see the title, you tilted your head and said lightly, “That one puts men to sleep by the third chapter. I would have thought you braver.”

You had meant it teasingly. Familiar. A bold grasp for an opening.

He did look at you then, properly this time. His gaze lingered just a fraction too long—on your face, your posture, the way you held yourself as though this were all effortless. Something unreadable flickered there before it vanished behind reserve.

“It teaches patience,” he said. Then, after a pause, “And restraint.”

You laughed, a little breathless despite yourself. “I see. Such riveting qualities.”

He inclined his head once, as if acknowledging a point already concluded, and returned to his reading. 

Dismissed.

You lingered for another heartbeat—long enough to feel foolish—then drifted away before your composure could crack. Your retreat felt infinitely louder than your arrival.

Another day, another attempt.

You tried conversation next—safe, neutral ground.

“You always favored histories,” you remarked once, gesturing to the stack beside him. “Have you ever considered that you might enjoy something lighter? Poetry, perhaps?”

“No,” he replied without looking up.

You smiled anyway. “Straightforward as ever.”

Silence.

Another time, you dared a softer approach. “You read like your mother used to,” you said quietly, testing the words as one might test ice.

That earned you a reaction—his hand stilled on the page. But when he spoke, his voice was carefully blank. “That is not a comparison I make lightly.”

“I— I meant no offense, Your Grace,” you said quickly.

“I know,” he answered. And turned the page.

Every exchange ended the same way. With your words reaching toward him, his responses closing ranks. It was polite, correct, impenetrable. All in all, the most painfully awkward of all conversations you ever struck.

You began to feel like a ghost haunting his periphery—noticed only enough to be avoided. And yet, for all his distance, there were moments you could not quite explain. The way his shoulders tensed when you came too close. The way he always acknowledged you, however briefly, even when he ignored others. The way he never told you to leave.

You told yourself these things meant nothing. After all, you were the one orchestrating these encounters. The one lingering where you ought not. The one pretending coincidence where there was intent.

You were not proud of it, but you were not ready to stop. Not yet.

So next came games.

It is not in the form of light sparring upon supper-table debates, for that had been proven too easy for him to deflect. No, if you were going to reach him, you would have to reach the boy he had once been. The one who delighted in puzzles, the one who would abandon sleep to chase the satisfaction of a riddle solved.

You remembered, with painful clarity, the afternoons nearly three years ago when you would sit with him on the parapets trading clues back and forth, each more elaborate than the last. You had liked riddles well enough—but he had loved them. He thoroughly loved the chase, the pattern. The satisfying click of revelation.

So you built one.

It was, in hindsight, unhinged.

You began with a scrap of parchment slipped into a book you knew he had already borrowed from the library—a book of old Valyrian histories he had read twice before. The note was written in a cipher you both used to tease one another with in the past.

Where dragons once bowed and lions pretended not to notice.

He would know it referred to the small carved antechamber near the throne room—an old alcove where statues of past kings stood half-forgotten.

He found it, of course, with little to no difficulty. You learned this later from a breathless page who had witnessed the prince examining the statues with narrowed eyes before discovering the next clue tucked behind a loose stone.

You had anticipated his path carefully. Each location you chose had meaning. From the training yard where he had once insisted on teaching you how to properly grip a practice sword, to the balcony overlooking Blackwater Bay where he had confessed his hatred of storms despite your lineage, and even the old rookery tower where you had argued about boundless of things, including fate, whether it was written or forged.

At each place, there was a riddle. At each riddle, a memory.

You even enlisted the princess.

It had taken only the slightest explanation and a promise that it would do no harm. She had listened with that soft, knowing look and agreed.

When Valarr reached her solar, following a clue that read Seek the dreamer who sees what others do not, he had apparently smiled—actually smiled—and bowed in amused confusion.

“I did not know you conspired in children’s games, Cousin,” he had said. The princess gushes to you much later how it had been so long since he last regarded her as such.

“Enlightening days invite unusual pastimes,” she had replied serenely, handing him the next folded parchment.

By then, you were certain. You were decisively certain that he knew, that he had begun to suspect the hand behind the hunt. You were quite assured that each clue was stirring something old and familiar within him. Why else would he continue? He could have stopped at any time. Instead, he followed every thread.

By the time he reached the final location—the small, sun-warmed alcove overlooking the sea where you had once spent an entire afternoon arguing about whether he would make a better king or a better knight—his steps were quick, eager.

You were already there, waiting, and in your hands, you held the prize.

It was a small leather-bound book—its edges worn, its spine carefully mended. The very same volume of riddles he had once lent you and never received back. You had kept it all these years. Inside, tucked between the pages, was a pressed stormflower from Storm’s End. It was a quiet offering, a memory returned.

When he stepped into the alcove and saw you, his expression was incandescent. For a heartbeat.

His smile—bright, unguarded, triumphant—lit his entire face as he lifted his gaze, already beginning to say something. And then he realized.

It was you.

The smile vanished as though struck. His features did not harden all at once. They faltered first—confusion, recognition, something dangerously close to hope flickering in his eyes before discipline slammed down over it like a portcullis.

His jaw set. His hand, which had half-lifted in anticipation of accepting whatever prize awaited him, curled slowly into a fist.

You swallowed, forcing brightness into your voice. “You solved it.”

Silence.

“I thought,” you continued, holding the book out, “you might like your property returned.”

He stared at it. He looked on at the worn leather, at the familiar edges, at the stem of the stormflower peeking just slightly from between the pages. His throat worked.

For a moment—a fragile, breathless moment—you thought you had him. Thought he might step forward, take it, let the past bridge the distance you had both been circling for days.

He did take a step and your heart hopelessly leapt. But then something shuttered behind his eyes. His hand flexed once more, not reaching but resisting. And instead of closing the space between you, he drew back.

“You should not have,” he said, voice tight.

“I wanted to,” you answered, too quickly.

“That is precisely the problem.”

The words struck harder than any dismissal before them.

Before you could respond, before you could salvage the fragile thing hanging between you, he turned and he left. Not briskly, not angrily. But decisively.

You stood there alone in the sunlight, the book still extended in your hand, feeling absurd and small and terribly, terribly young.

For the first time since you had begun this campaign of coincidences and cleverness, you did not know what to do next. And added to the long ledger of things you did not know—he did not truly flee.

He did not stop until the salt left the air and the corridors closed around him, stone swallowing sound. Only then did he falter. His hand struck the wall, then slid flat as if to steady himself. He dragged his fingers through his hair, once—twice—jaw tight, breath measured and failing all the same. His knuckles pressed to his mouth. He bit down until copper bloomed.

Unwanted flashes cut through him. From your waist beneath his hands days ago when you collided in the passage, to your face lit warm by lanterns and candles in the library as you tried—again—to banter, and the small, unmistakable fracture in your composure when he turned cold and left the book of riddles untouched.

He squeezed his eyes shut. He had known it was you—known from the first clue, the phrasing only you favored, the memories threaded too carefully to be coincidence. He had followed anyway, and that was the cruelty of it.

He could still see you at the end, bright with hope, holding the past as though it were something he might simply take. His fist curled, then tightened.

He could not.

Whether bound by pride, by penance, or by a future already being shaped for him beyond these walls, he refused to name it. Wanting you did not make you possible. So he stood there, miserable and silent, and told himself, again, that he cannot.

For you, each attempt only ended the same way—not in cruelty, not in anything sharp enough to justify indignation, but in distance. Distance which he drew that is still polite, considered, unassailable. He gave you nothing that could be seized and shaken into meaning.

And the most infuriating part of it all was that you understood.

You understood why he did this. You understood why he kept his voice even, his gaze measured, his courtesy intact like armor. You understood that you were no longer simply someone he had once loved—or once been hurt by—but a disruption, a risk. A temptation he had no right to indulge. Whispers traveled faster than truth in the Keep, and those whispers spoke of Tyrosh, of alliances spun in silk and salt, of a woman he had not yet met but already owed fidelity to in spirit if not in name.

You told yourself—often—that he was being honorable. Valiant, even. Loyal to a future that did not include you.

And in your clearer moments, you thought you deserved this coldness. You had been careless once. You were cruel even without intending to be. You had left wounds that did not bleed until much later, and now he bore the scars while you bore only regret. Perhaps he could sense the selfishness beneath your efforts, the wanting disguised as reconciliation. Perhaps he saw through you entirely. 

But while that thought should have quieted you, it did not.

Understanding did nothing to soothe the resentment crawling beneath your skin, sharp and restless, furious at circumstance, at timing, at the sheer unfairness of wanting something that had already decided it would not be yours. You could admit fault and still feel wronged by the world for remembering it. The contradiction made your head ache.

By the time the dinners blurred into one another, you told yourself—firmly—that this would be the last time.

Wine loosened your resolve before it dulled your pride. Your thoughts slurred not into recklessness, but into honesty. When the table thinned and conversation softened into murmurs, you found yourself speaking without quite deciding to.

“Do you think,” you asked lightly, too lightly, “that people truly change—or do they simply learn which parts of themselves to keep hidden?”

He paused, appraised you under a dismantling gaze, just long enough for hope to be cruel, and looked away.

“They change,” he said at last, eyes on his cup rather than on you. “Or they should. Growth requires leaving some things behind.”

The words were not unkind, and that was exactly what ended it.

You nodded, as though he had confirmed something you already suspected. You did not press. You did not smile. You let the silence settle between you like a final stone laid carefully in place.

That night, you lay awake despite the wine still swimming through you, head aching, thoughts stubbornly clear. You replayed his answer until it lost all ambiguity. It was not a warning. It was not an invitation. It was a line, drawn cleanly and without malice.

You were not a girl so easily discouraged—never had been. But even you knew when persistence turned into trespass. And as bitter as it tasted to admit, you knew this too: He deserved peace.

And whatever he had become, it was no longer someone who could afford to want you.

THE ARRIVAL of the lady from Tyrosh became the Keep’s only language for an entire week.

It crept into every corridor and bled into every conversation—murmured between servants polishing bannisters, traded like coin between ladies at embroidery, speculated upon openly by guards who pretended not to care. Preparations swelled until even the stones seemed to hum with anticipation. Drapes were changed, menus were revised, and even the courtyards were scrubbed twice over. It was said she would arrive on the eve of Prince Matarys’ name day, as though fate itself had chosen spectacle over subtlety.

You learned her name late. Too late.

Kiera.

It came to you in passing, spoken casually by another lady-in-waiting as though it had always been known, and the sound of it landed with an unexpected weight. You felt a sharp, belated shame bloom beneath your ribs—hot and undeserved. You had spent weeks thinking of her as an idea, a rumor, a threat. Never as a woman with a name, with a life already entangled in expectation before she had even crossed the sea.

That stung more than jealousy ever could.

You had always been better than that. A champion of female companionship, through and through. The sort who bristled at careless cruelty, who knew too well how often women were turned into symbols rather than people. And yet, wrapped up in Valarr—his silence, his restraint, the ache of unfinished things—you had allowed yourself to forget that there was another woman standing at the edge of this story, blameless and unknowing.

You corrected yourself quietly, thoroughly. And from then on, you made yourself scarce.

You buried your hours in duty, shadowing the princess from dawn until candlelight, anticipating needs before they were spoken, volunteering for tasks no one else wanted. You rearranged schedules, took longer routes through the Keep. You learned which corridors Valarr favored and avoided them with strategic precision. If he entered a room, you found reason to leave it. If his name surfaced in conversation, you redirected it with practiced ease.

Avoidance, you discovered, was its own kind of discipline.

By the time the banners were raised and the final preparations set in place—by the time the Keep held its breath for the arrival of Lady Kiera—you had convinced yourself you were ready. You had persuaded yourself to believe that you had done the decent thing, that whatever bitterness lingered beneath your composure was contained, managed, mastered.

Some things were already in motion long before you understood them. Some choices, once made, could not be unmade by cleverness or persistence or longing. And this, you told yourself quietly, was one of them.

Lady Kiera of Tyrosh was received with all the ceremony the moment demanded, and more.

The court gathered in full splendor, not merely out of courtesy, but calculation. This was no simple visit of a noblewoman from across the Narrow Sea. Tyrosh had long been a sympathetic harbor to the Blackfyre cause, its ports and coin too often turned toward exile and rebellion. To welcome the daughter of its Archon was to make a statement: that old loyalties were being rewritten, that the Iron Throne’s reach now extended into waters once hostile.

Prince Baelor himself stood at the forefront, composed and gracious, his presence lending the occasion its gravity. Beside him was Prince Maekar, solid and stern as ever, his wife the princess radiant in silk chosen carefully for Tyroshi eyes. Their sons were arrayed nearby—Daeron with his easy charm, Aerion sharp-eyed and restless, and young Aegon watching everything with a curiosity far older than his years—while their daughters Daella and Rhaella fidgeted with their own frocks.

Prince Matarys hovered close to Valarr, excitement barely contained—his name day looming, his world suddenly fuller for it.

And Valarr himself… Well, you did not look at him. You stood where you belonged, half a step behind the princess as her lady-in-waiting, posture perfect, expression serene. You answered when spoken to, inclined your head at the proper moments, and kept your gaze precisely where it ought to be. Still, you felt it—the unmistakable weight of his attention, like heat against your skin. Especially then. Especially then.

You did not return it.

Lady Kiera was presented at last, and she did not disappoint expectation. She moved with an ease that spoke of sunlit courtyards and salt air rather than rigid halls, her smile unguarded, her eyes bright with curiosity rather than calculation. She greeted the princess with warmth and respect and familiarity, developed from their shared correspondence for the past few moons.

“And you must be her lady,” Kiera said next, turning to you without hesitation, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to include you. “I was hoping I might meet you. The princess speaks of you fondly in her letters.”

You blinked—just once—before smiling.

“I’m honored, my lady,” you replied. “I hope the journey treated you kindly.”

She laughed softly. “As kindly as the sea ever does. I believe it sensed I was in good spirits.”

“I have never seen Tyrosh,” you admitted lightly. “Only heard it described. They say the markets are all color and noise—nothing like court.”

Lady Kiera’s smile widened. “That is a generous way of saying chaos. But yes—color everywhere. Even the fishmongers dress as though they are attending a festival.”

You laughed before you could stop yourself. “Then King’s Landing must seem terribly gray by comparison.”

“Hopelessly,” she said, good-natured rather than critical. “I may have to bring half the Free Cities’ silks with me next time, just to survive it.”

“I would welcome the improvement,” you replied, meaning it.

She inclined her head, warm and sincere. “I hope we’ll speak again.”

“As do I, my lady.”

She drifted away then, drawn into greetings with other lords and ladies—still smiling, still effortless. And only once she was gone did the weight of it settle in your chest. The ease, the kindness, the fact that she had given you nothing but goodwill.

And guilt settled into you like a stone.

Because she was kind. Because she was real. Because she was not the faceless rival you had once allowed her to be in your mind, but a woman standing before you—warm, earnest, and wholly undeserving of your earlier bitterness. And Valarr… Valarr deserved someone untouched by old wounds and half-healed regrets.

She had barely stepped away when you felt the shift again—that subtle tightening in the air that always preceded him.

You did not look at first. You told yourself you would not. But the sound reached you anyway—the soft cadence of his voice, courteous and warm in a way he had not been with you. When you finally glanced, only briefly, you saw it. Valarr was bowing now over Lady Kiera’s hand, pressing a gentleman’s kiss to her knuckles. Careful, correct, and impeccably princely.

She smiled at him. But it is not the polite smile of court obligation, rather something lighter, genuine.

Something in your chest lurched, sharp and instinctive, and you looked away at once—too quickly, almost guiltily. As if you had been caught witnessing something you had no right to see. Which, you told yourself firmly, you did not.

You schooled your expression before anyone could read it. You forced the reaction down into the quiet places where you had been storing so many other feelings lately. No one noticed. No one ever did. You had always been good at that.

You had wanted him back, there was no point to deny this truth. But standing there—having already been greeted, already included, already treated with courtesy by a woman who owed you nothing—you understood something with aching clarity: wanting did not grant you the right to take. Not from him. Not from her.

So you smiled. You wished her welcome. And you meant it.

No matter how much it cost you.

“STOP FUSSING,” the princess said gently, not even turning from the mirror. “You will crease the fabric before you ever wear it.”

“I am not fussing,” you muttered, attempting—and failing—to smooth the skirt of the gown you had very clearly been fussing over.

Around you, her chambers were alive with silk and laughter. The other ladies of her entourage moved in a whirl of color and perfume, fastening clasps, adjusting sleeves, arguing amiably over ribbons. The princess had refused—flatly refused—to have them dressed in matching, somber hues like ornamental servants.

“If I must sit through hours of ceremony,” she had declared earlier that afternoon, “I will at least be surrounded by beauty.”

And so beauty there was.

Lysa wore a dark purple satin embroidered with tiny silver stars at the hem. Elenei had chosen a soft rose silk with gauze sleeves that floated when she moved. Another had donned green velvet cut daringly square at the neckline. None of them matched. None of them looked diminished.

And the princess herself—

Her gown lay across the bed like poured sunlight. Cloth-of-crimson threaded with darker maroon dragons, the bodice structured and regal, the skirts layered in cascading panels of deep silver silk that caught the light with every shift. Pearls traced the neckline as garnets winked at the wrists.

You, meanwhile, held up your own selection with clear reluctance.

“It is too much,” you insisted. “I am your lady-in-waiting, not a rival spectacle. This one is perfectly suitable.” You gestured toward the far more modest gown draped over a chair—soft brown with minimal embellishment.

The princess finally turned, eyebrow lifting. “That one might as well be fit for mourning, my lady, not celebration.”

“It is appropriate.”

“It is dull,” she corrected serenely. “Wear the gold.”

The gold in question was hardly scandalous—but it was beautiful. A deep topaz silk that mirrored sunlight, with subtle silver beading at the cuffs and along the square neckline. It was elegant, striking. And, to top it off, it had been in the shade of your house colors. Hues you have missed oh-so-dearly to don since you arrived in the Keep more than a fortnight ago.

“You will not overshadow me,” she added, amused. “If necessary, I shall simply wear something more magnificent.”

“You already are,” you said dryly, helping her step into the first linen layer.

Laughter rippled through the room. Layer by careful layer, you and the other ladies dressed her: chemise, corset pulled firm and laced tight, underskirts arranged for volume, the heavy outer gown settled over her shoulders. You fastened the tiny pearl closures at her back while another adjusted the train so it fell in perfect symmetry.

When at last the final ribbon was tied and the last crease smoothed, she drew a measured breath and said lightly, “Leave us, please.”

There was no protest, no visible offense. The princess had always been careful of that.

You had heard whispers of favoritism before—quiet murmurs from lesser courts about ladies elevated too high in their mistress’s confidence, but she had never allowed such talk to root here. If she asked you to remain, she would later send you on an errand while another stayed behind. If she sought your counsel, she would later seek theirs too. She cultivated harmony deliberately, insisting her ladies be companions rather than competitors.

Tonight was no different. As the others departed, she called after them, “Find the emerald clasp for my hair, if you would be so kind, my ladies. I believe I left it in the cedar chest.”

They left cheerfully enough.

When the door closed, silence settled softly between you. She met your eyes in the mirror.

“You have been very diligent in avoiding my cousin,” she said.

You stilled only briefly before resuming the arrangement of her hair. “I am being sensible.”

“Is that what we are calling it?”

You exhaled slowly. “I am merely an observer now, Princess. As I should have been from the start.” You focused on pinning a section into place. “The distance between us took root because of my own doing. It is only fitting I respect it. Perhaps it is better this way. I broke his heart once. I have no right to disrupt what peace he has found now.”

Her gaze softened, but she did not relent. “And the scavenger hunt?”

Heat crept up your neck at the memory it wrung out.

“I apologize,” she added quickly. “I should have asked sooner. Maekar’s duties have consumed much of my time. I did not mean to ignore what was happening beneath my own roof.”

“It was childish,” you said, sharper than intended. “An elaborate attempt to reclaim something that was never mine to begin with. I behaved like a spoiled little girl who could not tolerate not being wanted.”

“Is that truly what you believe?” she asked quietly.

You hesitated.

“You are not spoiled,” she continued. “And you are rarely childish. Why do you think you tried so hard?”

You opened your mouth—closed it. Because you were proud? Because you hated losing? Because you resented Tyroshi silks and distant promises?

Or—

Because you loved him.

The thought rose unbidden, unwelcome, undeniable.

You would not have orchestrated riddles across the Keep for pride alone. You would not have humiliated yourself repeatedly for vanity. You would not have felt your chest fracture at the sight of him kissing another woman’s hand if it were merely wounded ego.

You swallowed.

“I do not like what it makes me look like,” you admitted finally.

She reached for your hand, squeezing it gently. “I did not ask what it looks like,” she said. “I asked what it is.”

And for the first time in weeks, you had no clever answer.

Love.

It had always sounded like something other people were certain about.

You had never been.

You knew, in the abstract, that your parents loved one another. You had been told as much often enough. But your childhood had kept you at a distance from their quieter moments. You remembered departures more than embraces. You recalled of their letters more than laughter. Whatever tenderness existed between them had unfolded largely beyond your sight, tucked into spaces children were not invited to linger.

So you had grown up understanding love as fact, not feeling.

Then there was your Uncle Lyonel—surrounded perpetually by beautiful women, draped across feasts and balconies like ornaments. He called them sweet names. They called him worse ones when he was out of earshot. There had been heat there, certainly. Desire. Amusement. Possession. But it was all so temporary. A rotation of faces and favors. Flesh-love, if one were honest, bright and consuming and gone by morning.

You had seen enough of that to know it was not the thing poets bled over.

And you had read the poets. You have listened to ladies sigh over ballads and septas speak of devotion as though it were a divine affliction. You had heard housemaids whisper about knights who swore themselves to one woman alone, about longing that made food taste like ash and sleep impossible.

It had always seemed… excessive.

Men had admired you before. Knights had written verses in your honor. Lords had angled for your favor with polished compliments and earnest promises. You had entertained some of it, deflected most of it, never once feeling as though something vital hung in the balance. Attention was pleasant. Attraction was easy. None of it rooted deeply enough to frighten you.

You had never measured your pulse after parting from any of them. You had never orchestrated riddles across an entire castle. You had never felt resentment burn beneath your skin at the sight of a courteous kiss.

Perhaps that was why you had not named what you felt for Valarr. Because naming it meant admitting it was not pride, not wounded vanity. Not mere habit or nostalgia.

It meant it was something that could break.

You stared at your reflection in the mirror, thoughts spiraling inward, until the princess’s voice cut cleanly through them.

“You have been quiet for far too long.”

You blinked, pulled back into the room. She studied you—not unkindly. Simply waiting.

You hesitated, then allowed the smallest, most cautious concession.

“Perhaps,” you said slowly, testing the word as though it might shatter, “it is possible that I… care for him more than I intended.”

It was not a declaration, not a vow. But it was still the faintest warming to the idea.

THE CORRIDOR toward the Great Hall grew warmer with every step.

Music seeped through the stone first—muted strings and laughter softened by distance—followed by the unmistakable swell of voices gathered in celebration. The princess walked ahead of you, unhurried and luminous, her gown whispering over the floor. You lifted its train slightly, smoothing the heavy silk where it threatened to catch, while another lady adjusted the fall of her sleeves and a third lightly coaxed a curl back into place among her silver hair.

“You’ll fuss a hole through it if you’re not careful,” the princess murmured, amusement threading her voice as you reached to tame a stubborn fold for the third time.

“You look perfect,” you replied reflexively, fingers retreating. “I only fear the hall may not survive it.”

She laughed softly, then glanced back at you. “Are you ready?”

You inhaled once, steadying yourself. “Yes, Princess.”

At the doors, you inclined your head to the herald and gave the signal.

His staff struck stone, and his voice rang clear and ceremonial. “Her Grace, Princess of Summerhall—daughter of Prince Aerys Targaryen, wife to Prince Maekar Targaryen, of the blood of the dragon.”

The doors swung wide.

If anyone noticed that she was fashionably late, no one dared remark upon it—nor did they seem inclined to. The hall turned as one body, conversation dipping in a soft, reverent hush before swelling again with unmistakable warmth. This was not the pause of judgment. It was the pause of recognition, of affection.

Smiles bloomed openly. Lords straightened in their seats. Ladies leaned forward, eager to behold rather than critical. Even the servants seemed to slow, as though unwilling to break the moment too quickly. The princess moved through it all as if she had been expected precisely then, as if the night itself had waited for her arrival before truly beginning.

You followed a respectful pace behind her, heart swelling with something close to pride. It was impossible not to feel it. She wore her welcome with effortless grace—not preening, not shrinking—but simply being. Radiant in deep scarlet silk threaded through with silver, her gown caught the candlelight like ruby under water. The embroidery along her bodice gleamed subtly, intricate rather than ostentatious, as though it had been made not to demand attention but to reward it.

She looked, absurdly, like something sent down rather than born—late not out of carelessness, but because the heavens themselves had taken their time.

You felt honored simply to walk in her wake, to be counted among her retinue. To belong, even in this small way, to her brilliance.

At the high table, King Daeron II rose slightly, his expression warm rather than formal, and beside him Queen MyriahMartell smiled with an open fondness at their granddaughter. The princess bowed, perfect and unhurried. They inclined their heads in return, not merely as monarchs, but as family.

A heartbeat later, Prince Maekar stood.

He crossed the space between them without ceremony, offering his arm. The way his face softened as she took it was unmistakable. Whatever the court whispered of alliances and duty, this—this quiet ease, this pride—was not feigned. He looked at her as though the hall had rearranged itself around her presence, as though her lateness had only sharpened his relief to see her at last.

They moved together to their seats amid renewed applause. 

Only then did you withdraw, as was proper, stepping back to your place farther down the table. And only then—traitorously, unbidden—did your gaze lift.

Across the hall, nearly opposite you, sat Valarr—between his father and Matarys—with Lady Kiera to his other side and Prince Daeron beyond her, already flushed and unsteady with drink. You told yourself not to search for him, yet your gaze found his all the same.

Valarr was not watching his luminous cousin. He was watching you.

The realization struck like a misstep on stone. You looked away at once, forcing your attention back where it belonged—to the princess, to her place at Maekar’s side, to the way the hall seemed brighter simply for having her in it.

You told yourself that was enough. You told yourself not to think of anything else.

When the hall at last settled into something resembling order, King Daeron II rose from his seat.

He did not need to raise his voice as the room quieted for him all the same.

“My lords, my ladies,” he began, hands resting lightly on the carved edge of the table, “tonight we are fortunate enough to celebrate more than one blessing.”

A murmur of approval rippled outward.

“We welcome Lady Kiera of Tyrosh to our court—daughter of the Archon, and honored guest beneath our roof. The Narrow Sea has too often divided friend from friend, kin from kin, and worse—fanned old embers into flame.” His gaze swept the hall meaningfully, and no one mistook his reference. “Let it be known that we prefer bridges to bonfires. If there is to be fire in this realm, let it warm our halls—not burn our future.”

Polite laughter followed that, warm and approving.

“Tyrosh is a proud city. Westeros is a proud kingdom. Pride, when tempered by wisdom, need not lead to strife. It may instead lead to partnership. May this visit mark not merely courtesy, but confidence—confidence that peace is forged not only in battlefields, but at tables such as these.”

He turned slightly then, smile deepening.

“And as though that were not cause enough for celebration, we mark also the name day of my grandson, Prince Matarys—who grows another year older and, I trust, another year wiser.”

Cheers broke out properly at that, Matarys grinning unabashedly. The king waited for the sound to soften before continuing.

“Life grants us many duties,” he said, more quietly now. “Some we choose. Others are chosen for us. We do not always control the path set before us—but we do control the manner in which we walk it. With resentment… or with grace. With division… or with loyalty. The realm endures not because we are spared hardship, but because we meet it together.”

Your throat tightened unexpectedly. You kept your gaze lowered, fingers tightening briefly around your goblet.

“We must remember,” the king went on, “that what strengthens one branch strengthens the whole tree. Alliances are not chains. They are roots. And roots, though unseen, are what allow us to weather storms.”

There it was—that quiet, piercing wisdom he was known for. So gentle it felt almost like comfort, so precise it felt almost like rebuke.

You swallowed the lump rising in your throat.

Alliances are not chains.

You told yourself it was only politics. You told yourself it was only the language of rulers and realms. It had nothing to do with the sharp ache beneath your ribs, nothing to do with wanting something that perhaps had been set aside for the good of more than just two foolish hearts.

You forced the thought down and smoothed your expression.

The king lifted his cup. “To Tyrosh. To Westeros. To growth, to loyalty, and to the years yet ahead.”

The hall erupted in agreement. Goblets rose. Servants moved in seamless unison. Music swelled once more as the feast properly began.

You ate, spoke when spoken to, and laughed at the proper moments and kept your posture composed. You made sure to have your hands folded neatly, your wine never more than half-finished. From a distance, you might have looked perfectly at ease.

From the inside, you were cataloguing everything—perhaps because looking outward felt safer than turning inward.

You could not help but admire the family gathered at the high table. King Daeron sat close to Queen Myriah, his hand resting over hers more often than not, their heads inclined together in quiet, practiced intimacy. It was not showy affection, but something settled and enduring, the kind that had survived decades and burdens alike. When she spoke, he listened. When he laughed, it was softer for her.

Prince Baelor, ever the dutiful heir, looked content in a way that surprised you. He had no romantic companion at his side, yet there was no bitterness to him—only a gentle pride as he watched his youngest brother, Maekar, with open fondness. He clapped Maekar on the shoulder at one point, said something that made the prince groan and grin all the same. It struck you then how love took many shapes, not all of them romantic, and how Baelor seemed full of it nonetheless.

Further down the table, Aerion leaned toward Daella, whispering something that made her scowl before she flicked a grape at him with impressive aim. He laughed; she did not—but her lips twitched despite herself. Aegon and Rhaella, seated nearby, were less discreet, rolling grapes between their fingers as though plotting some small mischief, their heads bent together conspiratorially until a sharp look from an elder sent them into feigned innocence.

Prince Daeron was… well. Daeron. Loud, flushed, already halfway to drunk and raising his cup at anyone who glanced his way, whether they deserved a toast or not.

And then there was Valarr.

He sat in polite conversation with Lady Kiera, his posture impeccable, his smile courteous. Too courteous. He nodded as she spoke, murmured replies at the right intervals, laughed softly when she did. And all the while—all the while—his gaze kept straying.

To you.

It is not boldly, not enough for anyone else to notice. They were just brief glances, stolen and swift, as though his eyes betrayed him before his discipline reined them back in.

It unnerved you. Not only because it felt improper—because he was speaking with the woman everyone believed would be his future wife—but because of the sheer contradiction of it all. Days ago, he could barely acknowledge your presence without icing his voice. Now he watched you as though anchoring himself, as though you were something he needed to keep within sight.

The emotional whiplash left you dizzy.

You looked away. Then back. Then resolutely down at your plate.

When the music softened and shifted into a livelier tune, it was the princess who rose first.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, delighted, already tugging at Prince Maekar’s sleeve. “This was played at our wedding banquet, do you remember?”

He groaned theatrically. “How could I forget? You danced until your slippers were ruined.”

“And I would do it again,” she declared, beaming.

He rolled his eyes, but the fondness in his smile ruined any pretense of complaint as he stood and offered his hand. She took it eagerly, skirts gathered, and the two of them made their way to the floor amid warm applause.

Their joy was infectious. One couple joined them. Then another. Laughter soon rose, and the hall loosened, as if the night itself had taken a deeper breath.

That was when you saw Valarr lean toward Prince Daeron.

He said something low, brief. Daeron waved him off with an exaggerated flick of his wrist and a grin that suggested he had not listened at all.

Valarr straightened, then he turned to Lady Kiera and offered his hand. She smiled—bright, unguarded—and wrapped her fingers around his.

You told yourself, again, that you could bear it.

You told yourself that you had borne worse things than this. From silence, distance, to the slow, unspoken unmaking of whatever you and Valarr had once been. This, at least, had form. This had music and steps and smiles that could be explained away as duty, as courtesy, as inevitability.

So you watched him offer his hand to Lady Kiera and told yourself it meant nothing.

You held your chin high, your shoulders set back, your expression carefully neutral. You even managed a sip of wine as they took their places on the floor, as if the sight before you was no more than another pair among many. Of course he would dance with her. Of course he would. She was Tyroshi, noble, newly arrived—his future, if rumor was to be believed. What did it matter whether it meant something or not? What did it change, really?

Nothing, you insisted.

At first, their steps were measured and polite. It was the sort of dance that could belong to anyone. You clung to that, to the idea that it was all surface and ceremony. You watched the patterns instead of their faces, the sweep of silk and the precise turns, the way the light caught on jewels and embroidery.

Then Valarr laughed.

It was not the restrained kind of curve of the mouth he offered most of the court. It was not the courteous, practiced smile he had worn these past days—cold, distant, almost unfamiliar. This was bright and insouciant. It broke from him easily, as if summoned without effort.

Your breath caught.

You told yourself not to look at him, and failed. His head was tilted toward Lady Kiera, his expression alight, eyes crinkled with genuine amusement. She said something you could not hear, and he laughed again, louder this time, as if the sound had been waiting in him all along.

It struck you then, sharp and unmerciful, how he had only ever laughed like that with you.

Memory rose unbidden, of other halls, other nights. The way you and Valarr used to dance at banquets, how the steps would dissolve into something lighter, freer, until you were laughing breathlessly, conspirators against the stiffness of courtly expectation. How he would lean in to murmur some absurd observation, just to make you laugh harder. How the world had once narrowed to the space between you, warm and certain.

You had thought that laughter belonged to the past. Watching him now, you wondered—painfully—if he looked even happier than he had been then. If this was simply how he was, now, with her.

Your fingers tightened around your cup. You barely noticed.

The dance carried on, and with it came a familiar figure: the turn where one partner’s hand rose, briefly, to cradle the other’s cheek. An intimate gesture, fleeting enough to be proper, bold enough to mean something all the same.

Valarr’s hand lifted.

Lady Kiera laughed as he did it, bright and easy, her head tipping into his touch without hesitation. They were still laughing when the step ended, still caught in that shared moment, as though nothing else in the hall existed.

Something inside you gave way.

It was not a dramatic shattering. It was quieter than that—a final, exhausted crack. The last place you had been bracing yourself simply collapsed.

You rose from your seat too quickly. Your chair shifted just a fraction too loud in your ears, though no one else seemed to notice. You stilled yourself at once, schooling your movements, forcing grace back into your limbs. You would not make a scene. You would not let this be seen as weakness.

But you could not stay.

You set your cup aside with care and smoothed your skirts. You walked, then, not fast enough to be called fleeing but not slow enough to pretend you were lingering. Each step toward the doors felt deliberate, controlled, as though you were walking out of the hall by choice rather than necessity.

Your heart ached with every pace. You did not look back—but you felt it, all the same. The weight of Valarr’s gaze, sudden and sharp, as he noticed your absence. As he turned, perhaps, mid-laughter, to see you going.

You kept walking. You told yourself you were fine. You told yourself you could endure this, too. And you told yourself—over and over—not to turn around.

THE GODSWOOD had never been sacred to you in the way it was meant to be.

You had never been one for gods, old or new. The Seven were stories you had learned because you were expected to learn them, names and virtues recited by rote, their temples grand and echoing and somehow distant. And the old gods, the weirwoods, the faces carved into bark—those had always felt like someone else’s faith, someone else’s history. You had never knelt properly nor have you ever prayed with any real conviction.

And yet, a few days after you first arrived at the Keep, you had wandered—half-lost, half-avoiding the noise of court—and found the Godswood by accident. There were no heralds, no marble. There were just earth and leaves and the hush of wind through branches. The weirwood stood at its heart, pale and ancient, its red leaves scattered like embers against dark soil, its carved face solemn and watchful.

You had stopped there without knowing why.

Breathing had come easier, your shoulders loosened. The constant, invisible weight you carried—expectation, propriety, restraint—had slipped, just a little. You had not prayed. You had simply stood, hands folded, listening to the quiet.

From then on, it became something uniquely yours.

When the days pressed too close, when words crowded your thoughts, when you needed to remember how to be only yourself and nothing else—you came here. You paced the paths. You sat beneath the branches. You breathed. You thought. Or, sometimes, you just didn’t.

It was no surprise to you that your feet carried you there now.

The night air was cool against your flushed skin, the sounds of the feast already distant, dulled to something indistinct and harmless. You barely noticed when the path gave way to roots and leaves, when the pale trunk of the weirwood came into view. You only knew that your chest felt too tight, your thoughts too loud.

You stopped beneath the tree and dragged in a breath, then another.

Your hands went to your hair, fingers threading through it, tugging slightly as if grounding yourself might keep you from unraveling completely. Jealousy burned sharp and ugly in your chest—jealousy, and regret so heavy it felt like grief. Regret for every unsaid word. Every step not taken. Every moment you had convinced yourself to be sensible, to be patient, to be quiet.

And then—worse than all of it—the realization you could no longer outrun.

You loved him.

It is not simple fondness. It is not mere habit. It is not some lingering affection that time might have dulled. It was love, clear and undeniable, settling into you with aching certainty now that it was far too late to do anything with it. You had loved him when it was easy. You had loved him when it was complicated. And somehow, foolishly, you had kept loving him even when he pulled away.

You pressed your palm to the rough bark of the weirwood, grounding yourself in its cold solidity, breathing hard as if you had run a great distance.

Get a hold of yourself, you told yourself fiercely. This changes nothing.

Then, you feel a presence shifted behind you.

You did not hear footsteps—not really. Just the subtle awareness of another body, another warmth in the cool night air. A hand lifted, hesitated, and then brushed your shoulder lightly, tentative, as if asking permission rather than taking it.

You flinched.

“Of course you’re here right now,” you said, the words sharp with sarcasm and something far more wounded beneath it, before you even turned.

The hand withdrew at once.

There was a pause—long enough to stretch, long enough for the tension to thicken between you. When Valarr spoke, his voice was measured, carefully even, as though he were choosing each word with deliberate calm.

“I do not know what you mean.”

You turned then, finally, to face him.

He stood a few paces back, posture composed but eyes searching, dark hair catching the faint silver of moonlight through the branches. Up close, he looked much as he always had—and yet entirely different, too. He is still guarded, uncertain. As if he had followed you here on instinct and was only now realizing what he did, how fragile the moment he intruded on was.

“You never do, don’t you?” you said, a bitter little smile tugging at your mouth. “Funny how that works.”

His brow furrowed slightly, but he did not retreat. “You left the hall,” he said instead. “Abruptly.”

“I needed air.”

“So I gathered.” His gaze flicked, briefly, to the weirwood at your side. “I thought—” He stopped himself, then tried again. “I wanted to make sure you were well.”

You laughed softly, humorless. “And are you satisfied?”

Valarr hesitated before he shakes his head once. “You do not look well.”

“Insightful as ever.” You folded your arms, as much to hold yourself together as to keep him at a distance. “Shouldn’t you be dancing?”

Something shifted in his expression at that. It is not anger nor defensiveness. This was something closer to guilt—or frustration, carefully contained. Which, you had to admit, you did not quite understand what for.

“I was,” he said quietly.

“Good.” You inclined your head, mockingly polite. “Then by all means, Your Grace, please do not let me detain you.”

“That is not fair.”

You met his gaze then, really met it, and felt the old pull. That dangerous, familiar, unwelcome tug. “Neither is following me into the one place I go to be alone.”

Silence fell between you, thick and charged. The weirwood loomed above, ancient and impassive, bearing witness without judgment.

Valarr exhaled slowly. “I did not come to argue.”

“Then you came poorly prepared,” you said, though the edge in your voice wavered now, thinning under the weight in your chest. “Because I do not think I can keep pretending I have nothing to say.”

For a moment, he only looked at you. It was not a look of wariness or being distant. It was a gaze that was just there. Waiting.

“Then… say it,” he murmured. “I am here now.”

You let out a breath you hadn’t realized you were holding. It came out shaky, almost a laugh, though there was nothing funny about it.

“I have been awful,” you said suddenly. “To you. For longer than I care to admit. I see that now.”

His brows knit together at once. “You have not—”

“No,” you cut in, softer but firm, because if you let him interrupt now, you’d lose your nerve. “Let me finish. Please.”

He stilled. His mouth opened as if to protest, then closed again. He nodded once.

You swallowed a lump that grew in your throat, gaze dropping to the roots at your feet, twisted and exposed like the truth you were finally forcing into the open.

“I was sharp when I shouldn’t have been. Petty. I said things just to see if they would land, just to see if you still noticed me.” Your fingers curled at your sides. “And when you didn’t—when you pulled away—I panicked.”

You shook your head, a rueful, broken thing. “So I tried to be clever about it. Casual. As if I wasn’t trying at all.”

You glanced up at him then, just briefly, to make sure he was still listening. He was—utterly still, eyes fixed on you with an intensity that made your chest ache. He looked like he wanted to speak, like something sat heavy on his tongue, but he stayed silent.

“I struck up conversations I’d rehearsed in my head,” you went on, voice trembling now. “I ‘accidentally’ bumped into you in corridors I had no business being in. I timed my visits to the library down to the bell, just to make sure you would already be there—head bent over some book, pretending not to notice me.”

A breathy laugh escaped you, wet with tears. “Gods, and the riddles. The damned scavenger hunt. I told myself it was harmless. That it was just… fun. But it wasn’t. It was me clawing for your attention because I did not know how else to ask for it.”

Valarr shifted then, just slightly. His jaw tightened. His hand flexed at his side, like he wanted to reach for you and didn’t dare.

“I told myself I was just bored,” you said. “Or mischievous. O— Or that I hated the idea of you changing because change is inconvenient and I’m selfish.” Your voice cracked. “But that was a lie. Or at least—only part of one.”

You drew in a breath, sharp and unsteady. “I was afraid. Afraid of losing you in a way that didn’t come with a clean ending. I was so afraid that one day you would belong to someone else and I’d have to stand there smiling, pretending it did not hollow me out completely.”

Your eyes burned now, and you didn’t bother blinking it away.

“I do not want you to marry her,” you said quietly, suddenly aware of the wet streaks on your cheeks. “It is not because Lady Kiera is unworthy, or because I think I deserve you more—but because the thought of it feels like watching a door close that I never realized I was standing in front of.”

Valarr inhaled sharply at that. “You—”

“I know,” you rushed on, the words tumbling faster now, afraid if you slowed you’d falter. “I know how it sounds. It is messy and it is— I know it is far too late. I know I do not get to demand anything from you, least of all after the way I acted.”

Your voice softened, dropping into something achingly sincere. “But this is not a game. It never was. And it isn’t jealousy for jealousy’s sake, or wounded pride, or some foolish need to be chosen.”

You lifted your gaze fully to him now, tears clinging stubbornly to your lashes. “I care about you, Valarr. Deeply. Irrevocably. I think I have for a long time—I just didn’t know how to name it, and I was terrified of what would happen if I did.”

Silence stretched between you, heavy and electric.

Valarr looked like he was holding himself together by sheer will alone. He took a step forward, then stopped, as if afraid of breaking something fragile.

“I didn’t plan to say any of this,” you whispered. “I just… couldn’t keep carrying it.”

The Godswood remained quiet, the weirwood’s carved eyes watching without judgment, as the truth settled between you—aching, irrevocable, and terribly alive.

For a long moment after you finished, the world did not move.

The wind stirred the red leaves overhead. Somewhere beyond the trees, a faint echo of laughter drifted from the hall. But between you and Valarr—nothing.

He stood very still. A bit too still than what you would have hoped for. His face had gone unreadable in that careful way he wore at court, but you saw the pulse in his throat, the tightness in his jaw. He was absorbing it. Every reckless word. Every trembling confession.

And he was saying nothing.

The silence began to rot inside you.

“Well?” you demanded at last, the vulnerability curdling into defensiveness. “Don’t you have anything to say?”

Valarr blinked, as if startled by the sharpness in your tone. Then he huffed out a breath—almost a laugh. Not amused, not kind. It was disbelieving.

His head dropped, dark hair falling forward as he shook it slightly, like he could not quite fathom what he’d just heard.

“You…” He let out another short, incredulous breath.

And then—without answering—he turned. He turned as if to leave. The sight hit harder than anything else that night.

Of course, you thought numbly. Of course this is how it ends.

You swallowed down the sting, the humiliation rising hot and choking. “Right,” you muttered, mostly to yourself. “That was foolish of me.”

You turned away too, because if he was going to walk back into the light and leave you standing here with your heart flayed open, you would not give him the satisfaction of seeing you break. You made it two steps toward the weirwood before your composure fractured.

Fresh, hot tears came again quietly, stubborn and humiliating. You pressed your palm to the pale bark again, forehead nearly following, shoulders trembling despite your effort to steady your breathing. The Godswood, your sanctuary, felt cruelly indifferent tonight.

You had done it. You had said it. And it had not been enough.

But then, footsteps crushed softly against fallen leaves behind you.

You stiffened but did not turn.

“I was never going to marry Kiera.”

The words were so abrupt, so out of place, that for a second you thought you had imagined them.

You turned slowly.

Valarr stood a few paces away again, closer than before, his expression no longer composed—no longer controlled.

“She was promised to Daeron,” he said, more firmly now. “From the beginning.”

You stared at him.

Oh.

Oh.

“W-What?”

That was all that came out. Small and bare and entirely awestruck.

Your mind scrambled backward, replaying every assumption you had made. Every glance. Every whispered conversation. You come to the dawning awareness that not once—not once—had anyone explicitly said it was Valarr.

You had simply… decided. Because he was the only prince who had ever mattered to you.

The realization landed with quiet, devastating clarity.

It had always been him. Even when you pretended otherwise. Even when you told yourself you were only irritated, only competitive, only restless.

It had been him.

Valarr let out a frustrated sound, running a hand through his hair. “Do you have any idea,” he began, his voice tight, “what it has been like—these past weeks?”

You opened your mouth, ready to defend yourself, to argue—

“Don’t,” he cut in immediately, sharper now. “Not yet. You have said your piece. Let me say mine.”

You closed your mouth.

He stepped closer.

“I pulled away because you were hurting me,” he said, not cruelly, but plainly. “Because every jest you made felt barbed. Every ‘accident’ you have admitted to be orchestrated felt like a test I did not know I was taking. You would lean close one moment and freeze me out the next. Do you know what that does to a man who—”

He stopped himself, jaw clenching.

“To a man who what?” you whispered.

His eyes flashed—not just with anger, but with years of something far deeper.

“To a man who has been in love with you for years.”

The words didn’t explode. They landed heavy, wholly unquestionable.

“You broke my heart once already,” he went on, voice roughening. “Do you remember? That night at a tourney, with the lord you nearly kissed in your uncle’s tent.” His jaw tightened. “And when I confronted you, you defended him. You defended him instead of choosing me. You made me feel as though I had imagined everything between us.”

Your breath caught sharply.

“I hated you for that,” he admitted, the confession torn from somewhere old and festering. “Or I tried to. I told myself I did. It was easier than admitting I was still thinking about you every waking hour.”

His laugh this time was hollow. “Years. I have measured years by whether you were in the room.”

The ache in his voice deepened.

“And these past weeks?” He shook his head. “Torture. Watching you try to draw me back in—smiling at me one moment, needling me the next. Do you know how much restraint it took not to respond? Not to keep holding you close in the corridor when you ‘accidentally’ ran into me? Not to stay in the library when you lingered, pretending to search for a book you had already read twice?”

You stared at him.

“I knew,” he said softly. “I knew you timed it. I knew the riddles were an excuse. I let you believe you were clever. Because... Because if I admitted I knew, I would have had to admit how desperately I wanted you to keep trying.”

The honesty stripped him bare.

“I thought I imagined it at first,” he continued, voice uneven. “Thought perhaps I had mistaken friendliness for something more. But then you would look at me like I was the only person in the room. And the next day you would treat me as though I’d offended you merely by existing.”

You flinched.

“Yes,” he pressed, frustration bleeding through. “You were sharp. You were cruel sometimes. You made me feel foolish for hoping. So I stopped hoping. I thought that was what you wanted.”

“It wasn’t,” you breathed.

“I know that now,” he shot back. “But you never said it.”

His chest rose and fell unevenly.

“I tried to be sensible,” he said more quietly. “Tried to tell myself that whatever this was between us was one-sided. That you enjoyed the attention, the game, the chase—but that you would never choose me.”

The hurt in his voice was naked now, painstakingly unshielded.

“And still,” he went on, stepping even closer, “I could not stop.”

You looked up at him fully then, tears tracking freely down your cheeks.

“I love that you are sharp,” he said, the words tumbling out faster now, urgent and unguarded. “I love that you argue with maesters twice your age because you cannot stand half-truths. I love that when you are nervous, you twist the ring on your finger without realizing it. I love that you hum under your breath when you think no one is listening—and that it is always the same half-finished melody.”

Your breath hitched.

“I love that you pretend to dislike sweetwine but always finish a cup of it when served, or steal a sip from mine. That you read the last page of a book first because you cannot bear uncertainty. That you care too much about people who do not deserve it and then act as though you do not care at all.”

His voice shook.

“The world may call you difficult. Too proud. Too willful. But those are the very things that make you… you. And I would not trade them for a softer, quieter woman who never challenges me.”

You shook your head faintly, overwhelmed. “Valarr—”

“I was cold because I was wounded, my lady,” he admitted. “Not because I felt nothing. But because I felt too much. Because loving you has never been mild. It has always been consuming.”

The confession settled between you, thick and trembling.

“I have watched you walk into rooms and pretend you do not feel,” he said softly. “But I see it. I have always seen it. Even when you pretended to choose someone else. Even when I tried to hate you for it.”

His hand lifted, hesitant at first, before brushing a tear from your cheek with aching gentleness.

“And tonight,” he murmured, voice breaking just slightly, “when you left the hall—I thought you were walking away from me again. And I… I realized I could not survive that twice.”

The vulnerability in his eyes was raw. Petrifying and hopeful.

“It has always been you,” he said quietly. “Even when you made it unbearable. Even when you made it hard. Even when I told myself I was done.”

The Godswood seemed to close in around you, the world narrowing to the space between your breaths. And for the first time that night, the pain in your chest shifted— no longer sharp and splintering, but trembling with something that felt dangerously like being chosen.

For a suspended, fragile moment, neither of you moved. Nonetheless, the air between you had changed.

All the sharp edges—the resentment, the pride, the misread silences—had dissolved into something unbearably clear. There was no more guessing now. No more strategizing. No more pretending not to feel.

You loved him. 

You loved him not in the restless, impulsive way you had once disguised as teasing or possession, not in the shallow thrill of wanting to be wanted. You loved him in the terrifying, steady way that demanded you choose him openly.

And he loved you—not despite your flaws, not in ignorance of them—but because of them. Through them. Around them.

Your hand lifted without conscious thought, settling against his chest. You felt the rapid beat of his heart beneath your palm, strong and unguarded.

“You infuriate me,” you whispered, voice trembling but soft now.

A faint, breathless huff of a laugh escaped him. “I am aware.”

“And you are unbearably certain of yourself.”

“Only about you.”

That did it.

You closed the distance first—but he met you halfway.

The kiss was not tentative. It was an impact.

Valarr’s hands came up immediately—one sliding to the back of your neck, fingers threading into the hair at your nape, not rough but firm, anchoring. The other hand enveloped the side of your face, thumb brushing your cheek as if confirming you were real before pulling you fully to him.

Your breath vanished. Your other hand slid from his chest up into his hair, gripping at the base of his skull, holding him as tightly as he held you. There was nothing restrained about it. No courtly politeness of careful moderation.

It was years of yearning and waiting igniting all at once.

His mouth moved against yours with urgency—not careless, not frantic—but hungry in a way that felt earned. Every restrained glance. Every swallowed word. Every almost and never and what-if poured into that single point of contact.

You felt him exhale against you, felt the tremor in his hands as his fingers tightened slightly in your hair. Your body pressed closer without thought, as if drawn by gravity.

You had been kissed before. You were not naive.

But this— This was not a kiss meant to impress or distract or amuse. This was a claiming and a surrender all at once. It felt like the world narrowing to heat and breath and the sharp, dizzying realization that you were exactly where you were meant to be.

When you finally parted, it was not from lack of want—but from lack of air. Your foreheads hovered close. Your noses brushed. Your breaths tangled together, warm and uneven.

For a moment, neither of you spoke. His thumb was still resting against your cheek.

“You taste like sweetwine,” he murmured softly.

You huffed a breath that might have been a laugh. “Did you not just say I disliked it?”

“Darling, I will never put it past you to lie.”

You did laugh then—quiet, disbelieving, a little breathless. Your heart felt different now. It was not frantic any longer, not fractured. Steady.

You had spent so long acting from jealousy. From fear. From the need to reclaim something you thought you were losing. But this—this was not about losing.

It was about choosing. Choosing him with full knowledge of the risks, choosing him without games. Without pride to hide behind.

“I do not want to be that person anymore,” you admitted softly. “The one who pushes and pulls. The one who hurts you just to see if you’ll stay.”

His forehead rested against yours. “Then don’t be.”

“I want to choose you,” you said. “Not because I’m afraid of someone else having you. But because I love you.”

The words did not tremble this time. They settled.

His breath caught. He pulled back just enough to look at you properly, his hands still warm at your face, his eyes searching as if committing this version of you to memory.

“Marry me.”

Your eyes widened slightly. “Valarr—”

“I have loved you through pride and pettiness,” he said, almost fiercely. “Through misunderstanding and resentment. I have tried to bury it and failed. I have tried to replace it and failed.”

A faint, crooked smile tugged at his mouth. “I am done pretending I want anything else.”

You stared at him, heart pounding anew—but not from fear. “Are you proposing to me in the Godswood at night without witnesses?” you asked faintly.

“Yes.”

“You realize that is terribly improper.”

“I find I no longer care.”

You studied him—this man who had yearned for you for years, who had been wounded by you, who had still chosen you.

“And if I say yes?” you asked softly.

His hand slid fully into yours, fingers lacing with intention. “Then I will spend the rest of my life arguing with you in libraries and pretending not to notice when you steal my wine.”

A slow smile spread across your face as you close the distance and kiss him again. He returns it gladly, like a man starved of affection, passionate and undone all at once. You pull away just as he settles into the rhythm of it.

“You will,” you said thoughtfully, ignoring his mumbled protest at the sudden departure, “have to endure my sharp tongue—”

“I adore your sharp tongue—” A kiss.

“—And my pride—”

“—I admire it—” Another.

“—And my tendency toward dramatics.”

“—I expect it.” And another.

You exhaled, a sound halfway between laughter and awe. For so long you had been the girl who flirted to distract herself. You had been the woman who toyed with affection because true love felt too heavy to name. Now you stood here, stripped of artifice, choosing—choosing him—openly.

“Yes,” you said.

The word felt like stepping forward instead of circling endlessly.

“Yes,” you repeated, stronger this time. “I will marry you.”

The relief that broke across his face was almost boyish—raw and luminous. He pulled you into him again, less desperate this time but no less certain, his arms wrapping fully around you as if anchoring both of you to this new reality.

Above you, the red leaves of the weirwood stirred softly. And for the first time in years, there was no misreading. No almost.

Only alignment.

IT HAD been three moons since the night in the Godswood.

Three moons since Valarr had asked for your hand beneath red leaves and watchful branches. Three moons since you had said yes—not out of jealousy, not out of pride, but out of something steady and terrifyingly certain.

The Keep had not been quiet about it.

As expected, the princess had been the first to know.

You had barely finished your halting explanation—tripping over the words proposal and Godswood and yes—when her eyes widened to an almost scandalized degree of delight.

“I knew it,” she breathed, clutching your hands in hers. “I absolutely knew it.”

The composure lasted all of three seconds.

Then she let out a barely contained squeal, dragging you into an embrace that smelled faintly of roses and parchment and expensive ink. She pulled back only to grip your shoulders, shaking you lightly in disbelief before pressing her hands over her mouth in an attempt to muffle another shriek of laughter.

“You are going to marry him,” she whispered, as though it were the most delicious secret in the realm.

You felt your own giddy laughter bubbling up in answer, the two of you dissolving into quiet, girlish giggles that would have scandalized half the court had they witnessed it. She leaned her forehead against yours, eyes shining.

“It is about time,” she declared at last, though her grin betrayed how thoroughly she had enjoyed every dramatic step that led here.

Prince Baelor had reacted with less subtlety. 

There had been a long stare, a heavy exhale, and then a clap on Valarr’s shoulder that nearly knocked him forward. When he turned to you, he inclined his head with deliberate courtesy. “You will find,” he said evenly, “that my son is steadfast once he has chosen.” A pause—brief, almost private. “And I believe he has chosen well.”

Later, you had learned that he drew Valarr aside that evening, away from the noise and congratulations. Whatever passed between them had not been meant for you—but Valarr told you enough.

“He said,” Valarr recounted softly, a rare vulnerability flickering across his face, “that my mother would have liked you.”

He did not say tolerated, or approved of. He had said, that Lady Jena Dondarrion would have liked you.

And coming from Prince Baelor, that had felt like the highest blessing of all.

Lady Kiera, gracious as ever, had smiled with genuine warmth when the announcement was made. Daeron at her side—her Daeron, as it had always been—looked quietly pleased, fingers laced with hers as though the matter had never been in question.

It had never been in question, and that was the mortifying part.

No one had ever said Valarr was to be betrothed to Lady Kiera. No proclamation had named him. No formal hint had been dropped. You had simply assumed, and you had not confessed that particular misunderstanding to the lady from Tyrosh. Some dignities were better left buried.

Valarr, unfortunately, did not share that philosophy.

Now, months later, seated across from Kiera and Daeron at supper, you found yourself uncharacteristically… bashful. You, who had once thrived on provocation and spectacle, now carefully avoided meeting Kiera’s knowing gaze for too long. You spoke politely. You smiled with composure. You did not make dramatic declarations across the table.

Valarr noticed, because of course he did.

Later that evening, when the hall had thinned and the torches burned lower, he leaned toward you, voice warm against your ear. “You were very well behaved tonight.”

You narrowed your eyes slightly. “I am always well behaved.”

He hummed. “Mm. Shall I remind you of the night you nearly declared war on me over a misunderstanding of your own invention?”

You stepped lightly on his boot beneath the table. He only grinned.

“You could at least have the decency not to look so pleased about it,” you muttered.

“I am pleased,” he replied easily. “It is poetic.”

“It is humiliating.”

“It is romantic,” he corrected softly.

You opened your mouth to argue, but he reached for your hand, thumb brushing over your knuckles in a gesture so gentle it stole the sharpness from your tongue.

“You chose me,” he said quietly. “Before you even knew you had.”

The teasing faded from his expression, replaced by something steadier. Something that still, even now, made your chest tighten.

You had changed in these months—not softened exactly, but steadied. The jealousy that once drove you had dissolved into something far braver. You no longer needed to test him. No longer needed to wound to measure devotion. You chose him openly now, and in doing so, found yourself less restless.

But you were still Baratheon.

You still laughed too loudly when something struck you as absurd. You still rode your horse faster than was entirely prudent. You still spoke before thinking when provoked.

The difference was this: You were no longer ashamed of it. And he no longer flinched from it.

Valarr loved you in your fire as much as in your tenderness. He met your recklessness not with restraint, but with balance. When you surged forward, he steadied. When he overthought, you pulled him into motion.

You fit—not because you were tamed, but because you were understood.

“You are staring,” he murmured now, brushing his thumb along your jaw.

“I am allowed,” you replied. “You are to be my husband.”

His mouth curved slowly. “Gods help the realm.”

“The realm will thrive,” you said loftily. “Under your influence.”

He leaned closer, laughter softening into something warmer. “Under our influence.”

Your breath caught just slightly at that.

He kissed you then—not the desperate, world-altering kiss from the Godswood, but something quieter. Intentional. His hand cupped your cheek, your fingers curled into the front of his tunic. It was slower now, familiar in the way only chosen love can be. When he pulled back, your foreheads rested together, a shared smile lingering between you.

The storms within you had not vanished. They had simply found a sky wide enough to hold them. 

And perhaps that was the most significant thing in the end. You had never needed to be less wild, less fierce, less Baratheon. You had only needed someone who would stand beside the thunder—and call it beautiful.

You were Targaryens. Cousins. Dragon to dragon. The realm had swallowed stranger unions from your house and named them sacred once crowns were set upon the right brows. No one gasped merely because Aerion’s eyes followed the line of your throat when you turned your head, or because his hand lingered too long when he took a cup from your fingers, or because the sight of another man standing near you made his beautiful mouth go cruel. These were old customs in an old house. Old flames. Old songs. The blood of Valyria did not run in straight lines, it circled itself like a serpent eating its own tail.

But even serpents knew when to stop swallowing.

Aerion did not.

You had grown into the full terror of your beauty by then. Girlhood had not left you so much as been crowned. The soft wonder of childhood had sharpened into command. Your face, once praised as pretty by indulgent women, had become the sort of face that altered rooms. You entered, and conversation learned humility. Men forgot which cup was theirs. Ladies watched the fall of your hair with resentment disguised as admiration. Knights stared as if songs had lied all their lives and then, at last, been proven true in flesh.

Your gowns became matters of state.

If you wore red, lords whispered that Baelor meant to remind the realm whose blood ran nearest the throne. If you wore white, septas sighed over your purity, blind to the amusement in your eyes. If you wore black, Aerion stared as though you had dressed yourself in his own thought. If you wore jewels from Dorne, men remembered Baelor’s mother and spoke of alliances. If you wore pearls, suitors doubled.

They came now not in trickles, but in floods.

Ravens flew. Fathers requested audiences. Mothers sent compliments folded in silk. Younger sons dreamed beyond their station, elder sons dreamed within it. Great houses offered horses, ships, relics, ancient swords, promises, flatteries, songs composed badly and performed worse. A lord of the Reach compared you to the Maiden and the morning star in the same sentence, which made Valarr cough into his wine and you smile so sweetly the poor man mistook mockery for mercy. A storm lord swore that no rain would touch you beneath his roof. A river lord said your beauty had haunted him since a tourney three years before, though you could not remember his face. A Westerlander sent a necklace of yellow diamonds, gaudy as pride.

Baelor returned it.

He returned many things.

Your father’s desk became a battlefield of parchment. Every morning brought new petitions, new offers, new careful suggestions from men who believed themselves subtle because they did not write the word marriage too early. Baelor read each letter with a stillness that frightened his attendants more than anger would have. He burned some. He answered others. He delayed most. And when you came to him in his solar, trailing silk and sunlight, he would cover the papers with one hand as though shielding you from arrows.

“You know I can read,” you told him once.

“I have long suspected it,” he said.

“You cannot hide every proposal from me.”

“I can try. A father must have his hobbies.”

You laughed, and his face softened as it always did when your laughter sounded young. Then your gaze fell to the seal half hidden beneath his palm. A black boar upon green wax.

“Crakehall?” you asked.

Baelor sighed.

“Is he hideous?”

“He is ambitious.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the answer that matters.”

You came around the desk and plucked the letter from under his fingers before he could stop you. Not because you cared for Lord Crakehall, whose face you vaguely remembered as square, red, and damp with effort, but because you liked watching even Baelor Breakspear fail to command you sometimes. Your father leaned back in his chair, resigned and fond and troubled.

You read enough to learn that Lord Crakehall praised your grace, your lineage, your father’s honor, and the womb you might lend to his house, though he dressed the last in phrases soft enough for court.

Your mouth curved.

“Ah,” you said. “He admires my soul.”

Baelor took the letter back. “He admires proximity.”

“To me?”

“To power.”

“Same thing, in this case.”

Your father’s eyes lifted to yours then, and there it was again...the grief of being seen by someone good.

“Do not let them teach you that,” he said.

“They did not teach me. They only confirmed it.”

Baelor folded the letter slowly. “Power is not the same as worth.”

“No. But men kneel to both if the light is dim enough.”

For a moment he only looked at you.

Then he smiled sadly. “You have your mother’s face when you are being wicked.”

“And yours when I pretend not to be.”

That won him. It always did, though never completely. He laughed, but the worry did not leave his eyes. It had lived there longer now, deepening each season, taking root each time Aerion’s name passed too close to yours.

“You are receiving more attention,” Baelor said.

“I had noticed.”

“You encourage some of it.”

“I am courteous.”

“You are lethal.”

That pleased you. You tried not to let it show. Failed, perhaps. Baelor saw. Baelor always saw.

Before he could speak again, a voice came from the doorway.

“She is bored,” Aerion said. “That is why she does it.”

You did not turn at once.

You had known he was there. Not by sound, for Aerion could move softly when he chose, not by sight, for you had your back to him...but by the tightening of the air, the old animal knowledge in your blood. Aerion entered rooms the way fire entered curtains, first as heat, then as inevitability.

Baelor’s face became courteous stone. “Nephew.”

“Uncle.”

Aerion stepped into the solar without waiting to be invited. He wore black that day, severe and lovely, the red at his throat dark as clotted rubies. There was no mark upon his cheek anymore, but sometimes you still saw your own handprint there in memory, bright as a banner.

His eyes went first to you. They always did. Then to the letters on Baelor’s desk.

“How many today?” he asked.

“That is not your concern,” Baelor said.

Aerion smiled. “Everything concerning her eventually becomes mine.”

Your father rose.

It was not dramatic. Baelor did not need drama. He merely stood, and suddenly the room remembered that he was the better prince, the truer knight, the man the realm would have followed into fire because he would never ask them to burn alone.

“Careful, Aerion,” Baelor said.

Aerion’s smile did not falter, but something sharpened behind it.

You moved between them before either man could name the thing already standing there.

“Lord Crakehall offers admiration,” you said lightly. “And presumably pigs.”

Aerion looked at you. “Do you want pigs?”

“I might. They are loyal creatures.”

“They root in filth.”

“So do princes.”

Baelor closed his eyes for the briefest moment.

Aerion laughed. Not pleasantly. He almost never laughed pleasantly. His amusement was a blade drawn halfway from its sheath.

“There you are,” he said.

Baelor’s eyes opened. The words were nothing, to anyone else. To your father, they were a key turning in a lock he had hoped remained hidden. You saw his fear before he could bury it. Aerion saw it too, and loved it.

That was another of Aerion’s sins...he enjoyed frightening men who were hard to frighten. Servants, stableboys, squires, little lordlings, girls too low in rank to defend themselves, those were sport. But Baelor Breakspear’s fear was a feast. Aerion did not want your father dead. Not then. Perhaps not ever, in any simple sense. He wanted him defeated. He wanted Baelor to understand that all his honor, all his love, all his patient discipline could not reach the part of you Aerion touched with two words.

There you are. As if you had been lost before him. As if your father had loved only the wrong shape of you.

After that day, Baelor began arranging your days with a care that looked accidental only to fools.

You were invited to ride with ladies when Aerion had sword practice. You were sent to visit the queen’s apartments when Aerion dined with Maekar. You were asked to accompany your father to small councils where no one had thought to include you before. You sat beside Baelor while men spoke of roads, levies, harvests, disputed boundaries, Dornish tempers, Ironborn petitions, and the endless trembling web of rule. You listened more than you spoke. When you did speak, men turned toward you in surprise, then interest, then caution.

That was how power tasted best...when others noticed too late you had already swallowed it.

Baelor watched you in those meetings with pride and pain together.

“You learn quickly,” he said afterward.

“I listen.”

“You listen like a spider.”

“Would you prefer a dove?”

“I would prefer my daughter.”

You paused beside him in the corridor, where late afternoon light fell in long golden bars across the floor.

“You have her,” you said.

Baelor touched your cheek, and for a moment the court, the proposals, Aerion, all of it seemed distant. He looked tired. Not weak, never that, but tired in the way honorable men became tired when they were made to guard what they loved from dangers with familiar faces.

“Do I?” he asked softly.

You had no answer worthy of him. So you kissed his hand and smiled as though that could mend it.

But Aerion hated being managed.

He noticed every closed door. Every changed hour. Every walk you took without him. He noticed when your horse was saddled and his was not. He noticed when your ladies lied badly. He noticed when servants glanced away too quickly. He noticed when Baelor’s guards appeared at the end of corridors where once only shadows had stood.

Most of all, he noticed absence.

One morning, you rode beyond the city with your father’s men, Valarr, two ladies, and a little train of attendants. It was innocent enough. A hawking party. A bright sky. A temporary escape from stone walls and hungry eyes. Baelor had meant to come, then been detained by a dispute between two crownland lords who had both perfected the art of being intolerable. Aerion had not been told.

That was the insult. Not that you rode. Not that Valarr rode beside you. Not even that a young knight of House Mooton held your stirrup and looked up at you as though you had descended from the heavens to ruin him.

No. The unforgivable thing was that Aerion learned of it secondhand. From your maidservant. Her name was Jeyne, a soft eyed girl with nimble fingers who knew how to lace your gowns tightly without pinching and how to keep silence without looking afraid of it.

Aerion caught her in the passage outside your chambers with a bundle of pale riding gloves in her arms.

“Where is she?” he asked.

Jeyne curtsied too quickly. “Princess?”

Aerion smiled.

The girl went white.

“There are many princesses in this keep,” he said. “Do you think I ask after all of them?”

“She has gone riding, my prince.”

“With whom?”

“My prince, I—”

His hand moved. Not to strike. That would have been too easy, too crude in a hallway where witnesses might multiply. He only took one of the gloves from the top of the bundle and examined the pearl buttons at the wrist.

“With whom?” he repeated.

Jeyne told him.

You learned later that he laughed when she said Valarr’s name. That laugh followed him all the way to the stables.

The boy he found there was named Tommen, though no one of rank had troubled to remember it until Aerion made the name dangerous. He was freckled, quick handed, and kind to nervous horses. He had been your favorite stableboy since you were young enough to sneak sugared apples in your sleeves and too proud to admit you were afraid of a new mare’s teeth. Tommen never spoke to you improperly. He never stared too long. He knew the names of your horses, the moods of your palfrey, the way you preferred your saddle checked twice but not fussed over. You liked competence. You liked quiet devotion. Tommen had both.

Aerion knew this. Of course he knew. That was why he chose him.

No one ever told you precisely what was said. Servants stories came in fragments, as frightened stories do. Aerion asking who had saddled your horse. Tommen answering that he had, my prince. Aerion asking whether the boy had touched your boot when helping you mount. Tommen stammering. Aerion smiling. A riding crop lifted from the wall. The horses screaming in their stalls when the first blow cracked not against wood, but flesh.

By the time you returned, the stable yard had been washed, poorly. Blood diluted by water leaves a pink memory. You saw it before anyone spoke.

Valarr dismounted beside you, his laughter fading. Your ladies went quiet. The groom who came for your reins would not meet your eyes.

“Where is Tommen?” you asked.

No one answered.

Then Aerion emerged from the shadowed stable door. He had changed his gloves. That was the first thing you noticed. The second was the riding crop in his hand. The third was the speck of blood he had missed near the cuff of his sleeve, small and dark, nearly hidden by black fabric.

The world became very still.

“What did you do?” you asked.

Aerion looked at Valarr, then at the young knight of House Mooton, then back to you.

“You rode without telling me.”

A lady gasped.

Valarr took one step forward. “Aerion.”

Aerion ignored him. “You took my morning and gave it to dogs.”

“You hurt him because I went riding?”

“I hurt him because he touched what was mine and thought himself alive enough afterward to continue breathing easily.”

The silence that followed was different from court silence. Court silence was silk. This was iron.

Everyone heard it. Everyone understood something then, though not yet all of it. The grooms, the ladies, the guards, Valarr, the pale knight still holding his reins, they understood that Aerion’s jealousy was not a lover’s foolishness, not a cousin’s temper, not a pretty scandal to be whispered over wine. It was ownership made visible. It was punishment by proxy. It was a prince placing his hand around the throat of the world because he could not place it around yours in public.

You dismounted without help. Aerion watched, eyes bright.

“Where is he?” you asked.

“In the straw, if he has not crawled elsewhere.”

Valarr swore and pushed past him into the stable. One of your ladies began to cry. The Mooton knight looked as if he wanted to draw steel and remembered just in time that princes were not obstacles ordinary men survived.

You walked to Aerion. Not quickly. You would not give him haste. Haste was confession. When you reached him, he tilted his head, studying your face like a man reading scripture in a language only he knew.

“You are angry,” he said.

“You wanted me angry.”

“Yes.”

“You hurt someone I favored.”

“Yes.”

“You wanted me to know you knew.”

His smile deepened. There you are, his face said, though his mouth did not.

You lifted your hand. He did not flinch. That infuriated you more than fear would have. So you did not slap him. Instead, you took the riding crop from his hand as gently as though accepting a flower. He let you. Then you struck him across the face with it. The crack rang through the yard. A thin red line opened along his cheek, lower than the old mark from your palm. One of the horses screamed again. Someone behind you whispered a prayer.

Aerion’s head had turned with the blow. Slowly, he looked back. His eyes were fever bright.

“You should not leave me behind,” he said.

“You are not my keeper.”

“No,” he said. “I am worse.”

You stepped closer. “If Tommen dies, I will never speak to you again.”

Aerion’s smile vanished. There. At last. Not guilt. Not remorse. Not pity for the broken boy in the straw. But fear of deprivation. Fear of silence from you, which to Aerion was worse than any wound.

“He will live,” Aerion said.

“You had better pray he does.”

“I do not pray.”

“Then learn.”

You turned from him before he could answer and entered the stable.

Tommen lived.

He was carried to the maester with his back torn, one eye swollen shut, and three fingers broken where he had raised his hand against the crop. Baelor heard before sunset.

Your father came to your chambers that evening with no guards, no herald, no softening smile. He found you seated by the window, still in your riding gown, hands folded in your lap. You had not cried. That seemed to hurt him too.

“Tell me,” he said.

So you did. Not all. Never all. But enough. Baelor stood through the telling like a man being carved in stone.

When you finished, he turned away and looked out over the city. The sun was setting behind him, turning his profile dark against fire. For one wild moment you thought he looked like the sort of prince singers believed Aerion wished to be...a dragon made noble by restraint.

“He cannot be permitted to continue,” Baelor said.

“No.”

“You say that as though agreement costs you.”

“It does.”

He turned back. You hated how sorrow moved through his face. You hated that he knew before you knew what you would say.

“He did it because of me,” you said.

“He did it because of himself.”

“He chose Tommen because of me.”

“Yes.”

“So I am not absent from it.”

Baelor came to you then. He knelt before your chair, though princes did not kneel to daughters. He took your hands in his. His were warm. Yours were cold.

“My star,” he said, “do not mistake being desired by cruelty for causing cruelty. Aerion would make the sun guilty for casting his shadow.”

“But he does not look at the sun the way he looks at me.”

“No.” Baelor’s voice lowered. “He does not.”

You looked down at your joined hands.

“He sees me,” you whispered.

Your father closed his eyes. That was confession enough.

The days after Tommen’s beating changed the court.

Not openly. Nothing in courts changed openly until blood forced it. But servants moved differently around Aerion now. Ladies ceased smiling behind fans when he entered beside you. Knights watched him with the careful hatred men reserved for princes they could not challenge. The story spread, as all stories did, acquiring embellishment and losing none of its truth. Some said the stableboy had died. Some said Aerion had ordered his tongue cut out, though Tommen still had his tongue and, once the swelling receded, used it to curse beautifully when the maester changed his bandages. Some said you had struck Aerion hard enough to draw bone. Some said Aerion had laughed.

That last was almost true. He did not laugh in the yard. But later, when he found the bloody line on his cheek in a mirror, he smiled. You knew because he told you.

He found you two nights later in the old queen’s gallery, where portraits of dead Targaryen women watched from dim walls with the patient disappointment of ancestors. You had gone there because the court below was too loud, because Baelor had begun placing more men near your chambers, because Valarr kept looking at you as if he wanted to say something brotherly and impossible, because Tommen’s injuries had become a weight you could not set down.

Aerion came from the darkness as if made by it.

“You have been avoiding me,” he said.

“I have been enjoying peace.”

“You lie better when you care less.”

“You overestimate your importance.”

“No.” He came closer. “I estimate it exactly.”

The cut on his cheek had darkened, a narrow line beneath one eye. It made him look even more like something from a doomed song, all beauty marred by violence and improved by it. You hated that your gaze went there.

He noticed.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

“No.”

“Liar.”

“You are very proud of being struck.”

“By you? Yes.”

You turned away, but he caught your sleeve. Not your wrist this time. Your sleeve. Silk between his fingers. A concession so small another woman might have missed it. You did not.

“Tommen lives,” he said.

“No thanks to you.”

“He will heal.”

“And if he does not?”

“Then you will be angry longer.”

You looked at him with revulsion so sharp it nearly became wonder. “Is that all it is to you?”

“No.”

“What, then?”

His fingers tightened in the silk. “Proof.”

“Of what?”

“That even your pity can be made to turn toward me.”

For a moment, the gallery seemed full of ghosts listening. You should have been horrified. You were horrified. But beneath horror, beneath fury, beneath the moral shape your father had tried so carefully to give you, something cold and honest understood him. Aerion had not wanted Tommen’s pain. Not truly. The boy was nothing to him. A cup broken after drinking. A door slammed for sound. What Aerion wanted was your attention dragged back by the hair. Your anger, your disgust, your threat never to speak again...all of it was still yours. All of it meant he had reached into your day and seized the center of it.

“You are a child,” you said.

“I am a dragon.”

“You are a child with prettier delusions.”

His mouth twitched. “Say it again.”

“No.”

“Say something cruel.”

“You are begging for me.”

That struck him. For a heartbeat, rage flashed across his face so nakedly that you thought he might forget where he stood. Then he laughed under his breath.

“You were made for me,” he said.

“I was made by my mother and father.”

“You were made by blood older than both.”

There it was again. Blood. That sacred obscenity. That inheritance Aerion wore like a crown and wielded like a knife.

He stepped nearer, and this time you did not retreat.

“Look at them,” he said, nodding toward the portraits. “Our grandmothers. Our great grandmothers. Queens who married brothers, nieces who married uncles, cousins joined to cousins so the dragon would not thin itself into mud. They knew.”

“They knew duty.”

“They knew purity.”

“They knew loneliness.”

He smiled. “So do you. ”

That was the danger of him. Not that he lied. Lies you could have dismissed. Aerion’s horror was that he found truths and dragged them through blood until they looked like permission.

“You think every hunger holy if it has a Targaryen name,” you said.

“And you think every hunger can be dressed in silk until your father blesses it.”

You slapped him then. Not because he was wrong. Because he had come too close.

His face turned, then returned. The mark joined the cut, red over red. He smiled with his mouth closed, as though keeping something precious behind his teeth.

“There,” he whispered.

“Do not say it.”

“There you are.”

You hated him. You hated the heat that moved through you when he said it. So you punished him the only way that mattered.

At the next feast, you gave your favor to someone else.

Not a boy this time. Not a harmless courtling whose hope could be crushed beneath your heel by morning. You chose Ser Jon Wylde, a stormlands knight with a scar through one brow and shoulders broad enough to carry his own arrogance comfortably. He had asked for your favor twice before and been denied with courtesy. On the third attempt, before half the court and beneath Aerion’s watching eyes, you removed a ribbon from your sleeve and tied it around his arm yourself.

Ser Jon went crimson with triumph.

Aerion went still.

You did not look at him afterward. That was the art of it. Any fool could provoke openly. Real cruelty required restraint. You smiled at Ser Jon. You asked him whether he meant to win. You let him say something gallant and foolish about victory being worthless unless laid at your feet. You lowered your lashes at exactly the right moment.

Across the hall, a silver cup bent in Aerion’s hand.

By midnight, Ser Jon Wylde was drunk on hope.

By dawn, he was found in an alley below the Street of Silk, alive but ruined for tourney glory, his sword hand broken in two places and three teeth missing from his handsome mouth. He swore he had been set upon by men in cloaks. He swore one of them laughed like a prince.

No proof was found. None was needed.

You received the news while your ladies dressed your hair.

One gasped. Another crossed herself. Jeyne, pale as milk now whenever Aerion’s name hovered near the room, dropped a comb.

You looked into the mirror. Your reflection looked serene.

“Poor Ser Jon,” you said.

The ladies stared. You selected a ruby pin and slid it into your hair.

That afternoon, you found Aerion in the training yard. He was watching two squires beat each other bloody with blunted swords, though his attention was elsewhere. It was always elsewhere when you were near. He stood with his arms folded, black doublet unfastened at the throat, sunlight turning his hair into white flame. When you approached, the squires faltered.

“Continue,” Aerion snapped.

They did, badly.

“You are predictable,” you said.

“I am constant.”

“You broke his hand.”

“He touched your ribbon.”

“I tied it there.”

“I know.”

“Then perhaps you should break my hand.”

The squires stopped entirely.

Aerion turned to them slowly. “Did I tell you to stop?”

They resumed with panic. Then he looked back at you.

“You would like that,” he said.

“You think you know what I like.”

“I know you better than your suitors.”

“My suitors do not leave men in ditches.”

“Only because they lack imagination.”

You stepped closer, lowering your voice. “One day you will do this to the wrong man.”

Aerion’s eyes gleamed. “Then he will become the right warning.”

“You are not invincible.”

“No,” he said. “I am royal. It is better.”

“Dunk a prince in enough blood and he looks like any other butcher.”

His smile thinned. You liked that. You liked finding the seam.

Then, as if sensing the pleasure in you, Aerion leaned nearer.

“You are angry for him?”

“No.”

“You are angry because I answered.”

“I am angry because you think every man who looks at me owes you pain.”

“They do.”

“And what do I owe you?”

His gaze moved over your face slowly, with terrible reverence and terrible greed.

“Truth,” he said.

Before you could answer, Valarr entered the yard.

Aerion stepped back at once, not from shame but strategy. Valarr looked between you, handsome face tightening. The prince and the monstrous one shared a moment of silent hatred bright enough to light the yard.

“Cousin,” Valarr said.

“Cousin,” Aerion returned, making the word sound like an insult carved in silver.

Valarr offered you his arm. “Father asks for you.”

Aerion laughed softly. “Of course he does.”

You took Valarr’s arm without looking away from Aerion.

That night, Aerion made you jealous. He did it with the exactness of a man placing poison in a cup.

Her name was Lady Helicent, a narrow waisted girl from a proud but nervous house that had learned to survive by attaching itself to greater flames. She had pale brown hair, quick eyes, and the kind of beauty that became sharper when reflected near someone more beautiful. She had spent months pretending admiration for you while hating you with all the quiet devotion of a lesser star orbiting a sun.

Aerion chose her because she had once said your beauty was “almost unnatural” in a tone that made almost do all the work.

You found them in the gardens. Or rather, he arranged to be found.

The moon was thin above the cypress trees. The fountains whispered. You had gone there after supper with only Jeyne trailing at a distance, your mind full of Baelor’s warnings and Aerion’s latest violence and the strange suffocation of being guarded by love on one side and hunted by obsession on the other.

Then you heard laughter. A girl’s laugh. Breathless, flattered, false.

You turned the corner.

Aerion stood beneath an arbor of white roses, one hand braced against the stone beside Lady Helicent’s head. He was close enough to ruin her reputation if anyone kinder than you had found them. He wore indolence like a cloak, but his eyes flicked to you the instant you appeared.

He had been waiting.

Helicent’s mouth was flushed. Aerion’s smile was lazy. The girl saw you and stiffened.

“Princess,” she said, curtsying too late.

You looked at Aerion. He looked back. No shame. No apology. Only challenge. It was almost funny, how badly he wanted to hurt you and be punished for it.

“Lady Helicent,” you said. “How brave.”

Her eyes narrowed before she could stop them. “My princess?”

You smiled.

Aerion’s expression sharpened faintly. Warning, perhaps. Interest, certainly.

“To walk alone in gardens where princes wander hungry,” you said.

Helicent recovered enough to smile. “Prince Aerion has been perfect courtesy.”

You nearly laughed. Aerion did.

“Has he?” you asked.

“To me,” she said, and there was the little blade. The foolish little blade. “Though perhaps some ladies do not inspire gentleness.”

The garden went silent.

Jeyne, behind you, stopped breathing. Aerion’s smile vanished.

It was a small thing. A court girl’s spite, sharpened by jealousy and ignorance. But Lady Helicent had misread the entire world. She had mistaken being used by Aerion for being favored by him. She had mistaken his cruelty toward you for permission to be cruel herself.

Only Aerion could do that.

The thought crossed his face before he moved.

He took Helicent’s chin in his hand. Not tenderly. The girl froze, confusion blooming into fear as his fingers pressed just enough to make her understand the difference between being touched and being handled.

“Apologize,” he said.

Her eyes widened. “My prince?”

“To her.”

“Aerion,” you said.

He did not look at you. “Apologize.”

Helicent’s lips trembled. “I meant no offense.”

“That is not an apology.”

You watched her realize, too late, that she had never been standing beside a man. She had been standing beside a beautiful cliff edge and calling the fall romantic.

“My princess,” she whispered, “forgive me.”

You regarded her for a long moment. Then you smiled with all the sweetness court had ever taught you.

“No.”

Aerion looked at you then. The delight in his eyes was immediate and terrible. Helicent fled before either of you could decide what else she deserved.

When she was gone, the roses seemed whiter.

“You used her poorly,” you said.

“She was useful.”

“You kissed her.”

“I wanted to see if you would bleed.”

“Did I?”

His gaze lowered, then rose. “Not where others could see.”

You stepped toward him. “You chose a stupid girl.”

“I chose a jealous one.”

“You chose a mirror with cracks and hoped I would hate my reflection.”

“And did you?”

You reached up and touched the place on his cheek where the crop had marked him. He went still at once, every line of him tightening under your fingers.

“No,” you said. “I hated that she thought you gentle.”

Aerion’s breath changed.

There were moments when his arrogance fell away not into humility, never that, but into something more naked and more dangerous. Want without performance. Hunger without theatre. He caught your wrist and turned his mouth against your palm, pressing a kiss there like a brand.

“You are jealous,” he said.

You curled your fingers against his cheek, nails biting lightly.

“Do not flatter yourself.”

“Lie better.”

“You first.”

He kissed you then, beneath the white roses, while Lady Helicent’s apology still trembled somewhere in the dark.

This kiss was colder than the first and worse because neither of you could pretend surprise. You knew the shape of him now. The violence in his grip. The worship hidden inside command. The way he seemed always to be punishing you for having power over him. You kissed him back because you wanted to win, because you wanted to wound him with wanting, because part of you had been waiting since the terrace and hated him for making that true.

When you bit his lower lip hard enough to draw blood, he made a sound almost like laughter.

“There you are,” he breathed against your mouth.

You pushed him away.

“Say that again and I will give your next scar somewhere less convenient.”

His eyes burned. “Promise?”

You left him there smiling.

Your revenge upon Helicent came three days later. Not with blood. Blood was Aerion’s crude instrument. You preferred ruin with clean hands.

Lady Helicent had a brother seeking appointment among Valarr’s companions, a cousin hoping for a marriage in the Reach, and a mother desperate to appear nearer the royal women than she was. All three ambitions rested upon perception, and perception was a silk thread...beautiful, useful, easily cut.

At the queen’s embroidery circle, you praised Helicent.

That was the beginning of the end.

You praised her discretion in such careful tones that the older ladies glanced up. You mentioned, with sympathetic vagueness, that young women could hardly be blamed for losing judgment when princes made games of them. You said nothing directly. You never needed to. By evening, half the court believed Helicent had been caught in the gardens with Aerion. By morning, the other half believed worse. By the next feast, her mother’s smile had gone brittle, her brother’s appointment had quietly vanished, and the Reach cousin’s family had begun remembering urgent reservations.

Helicent passed you in the corridor with red eyes.

You stopped her. She curtsied. Poor thing. She had learned.

“My lady,” you said, and adjusted the fall of her veil yourself, a gesture so kind that every watching woman softened. “You must be more careful where you place your trust.”

Her eyes filled with tears of hatred.

“Yes, princess.”

You kissed her cheek. The court saw mercy. Aerion, watching from the far end of the corridor, saw the corpse beneath the flowers.

Later, he found you in the sept.

That amused you. Aerion in a sept always looked like blasphemy had dressed itself for court. He moved beneath the painted eyes of the Seven with no reverence whatsoever, boots quiet against stone, face lit by devotional candles. You were kneeling before the Maiden, though not praying. Prayer had never come naturally to you unless you wanted something badly enough to be dishonest with gods.

“You destroyed her,” he said.

You did not turn. “She destroyed herself.”

“You smiled while doing it.”

“I smiled while forgiving her.”

“You are monstrous.”

Now you looked back. Aerion stood in the aisle, silver hair bright in candlelight, expression almost reverent. The word monstrous should have sounded like accusation. From him, it sounded like beloved.

“Careful,” you said. “Only you may call me that?”

“Yes.”

“How proprietary.”

“Yes.”

You rose. “You say that too easily.”

“I say true things easily.”

“No. You say ugly things easily and hope truth will admire it”

He came closer, stopping beneath the gaze of the Father. “You enjoyed it.”

“I did.”

“You are not sorry.”

“No.”

“Good.”

That word moved through you like a hand along a locked door.

Good.

Baelor would have asked whether justice had required cruelty. He would have asked whether mercy might have served better. He would have looked at you with that terrible tender disappointment and made you feel, somehow, both loved and summoned upward. Aerion looked at your revenge and approved. Not despite its coldness. Because of it.

That was the seduction.

Not his beauty. Not only his blood. Not only the shared past, the childhood violence, the kisses that felt like wounds learning to speak. The seduction was this...Aerion never asked you to be better. He asked you to be more. More proud. More vicious. More honest. More dragon. And dragons, in all the old songs, were never asked to apologize for flame.

The weeks that followed became a courtship made of shadows.

No one named it. Naming would have made it vulnerable to judgment. Instead it lived in glances, absences, sudden cruelties, and the quiet rearrangement of other people’s lives around Aerion’s desire.

A young knight from the Vale who wrote you three poems found his lute floating broken in a fishpond. A Tyrell cousin who asked you to dance twice in one evening was challenged by Aerion to a sword practice bout the next morning and left the yard with his pride bleeding worse than his nose. A page who delivered you a love letter from his master vanished from court service and reappeared months later in Maidenpool, refusing to say why the sight of dragon banners made him shake. A lordling who cornered you beneath a stair and spoke too warmly of your mouth was discovered before dawn tied to the same stair by his own belt, gagged with his own love token, his face swollen purple.

No one saw Aerion do it. Everyone knew. That was how power worked best...when proof was unnecessary because fear had already testified.

Baelor knew too. His patience began to thin.

Your father summoned Aerion after the stair incident. You were not meant to hear, but you had learned from court that doors were only suggestions and servants only obstacles when treated kindly enough. You stood in the passage behind a tapestry, still as a carved saint, while Baelor’s voice came through the wood.

“You shame your house.”

Aerion answered lightly. “Men shame themselves. I only assist.”

“You terrorize boys who cannot answer you.”

“I instruct them in distance.”

“You injure men for looking at my daughter.”

A pause.

Then Aerion said, “They should look elsewhere.”

The silence after that was colder than winter.

“She is not yours,” Baelor said.

Aerion’s reply came softer, “No?”

“No.”

“She is Targaryen.”

“So are many.”

“She is my blood.”

“She is mine.”

You closed your eyes.

Inside the room, Aerion laughed once.

“There,” he said. “At last, we are honest.”

Baelor’s voice lowered. “Do not confuse my love for weakness, boy.”

“Do not confuse my wanting for a boy’s game.”

“She is not a prize to be taken because you desire her.”

“No,” Aerion said. “She is a dragon pretending to be a prize because it pleases court to bid.”

Your heart struck hard. Baelor said nothing.

Aerion continued, each word quieter and more poisonous than the last. “You dress her in honor. They dress her in songs. I know what she is beneath both.”

You had to press your hand over your mouth.

The door opened so suddenly you nearly failed to move. Aerion stepped into the passage and looked directly at the tapestry. Directly at you. He had known. Of course he had known. He walked away smiling. Baelor did not come after him.

That night, your father found you in the dragon gallery.

It was always the dragons you returned to when torn between men. The skulls rested beneath the Keep like old crimes too large to bury, black and vast and silent. Balerion’s skull loomed above all others, a darkness shaped like memory. Torchlight crawled along his teeth. You stood before him with your arms wrapped around yourself, feeling very small and not small at all.

Baelor approached without speaking.

For a while, the two of you stood together beneath the dead dragon.

“Were you listening?” he asked at last.

“Yes.”

“I should reprimand you.”

“You may.”

“I am too tired.”

That hurt.

You looked at him then. “Father.”

He turned to you, and whatever speech he had prepared seemed to die when he saw your face. He reached for you, then stopped, as if uncertain whether you would permit comfort. You hated that uncertainty. You stepped into his arms before pride could stop you.

Baelor held you tightly.

Not as court held you. Not as suitors imagined holding you. Not as Aerion seized you, with hunger disguised as destiny. Your father held you as though you were alive and breakable and beloved beyond usefulness.

“My star,” he murmured into your hair.

You shut your eyes.

“I am not what they think,” you said.

“I know.”

The words should have soothed. Instead they terrified.

“I am not gentle.”

“I know.”

“I wanted Ser Jon punished.”

His arms tightened, but he did not release you.

“I know.”

“I ruined Helicent because she angered me. Not because she deserved it.”

A long breath. “I know.”

“Then why do you still look at me as if I can be saved?”

Baelor drew back enough to hold your face between his hands, as he had when you were a child with blood on your palms.

“Because needing discipline is not the same as being damned,” he said. “Because darkness in the blood is not commandment. Because you are mine, and I will not surrender you to the worst thing that recognizes you.”

You looked away. “Aerion says you love a star.”

“I love my daughter.”

“He says he sees me.”

Baelor’s eyes shone then, not with tears quite, but with something too deep for pride to bear.

“He sees what flatters his own hunger,” he said. “And perhaps he sees some true part of you, yes. I will not lie. That is why he is dangerous. Lies are weaker than truth. But he would take that true part and feed it until it consumed every other thing you are.”

You thought of Aerion’s mouth stained with his own blood beneath the roses. Aerion’s voice in the sept calling you monstrous as though laying a crown at your feet. Aerion telling Baelor that he knew what you were beneath honor and songs.

“And if I want to be consumed?” you whispered.

Baelor’s face broke.

Not fully. Baelor Breakspear was made of stronger stuff than that. But something in him flinched, and you felt crueler than you had with Helicent, crueler than with Ser Jon, crueler than any time you had smiled while men destroyed themselves hoping for you.

“Then I will stand in the fire as long as I can,” he said.

You could not answer. Far above you, the dead dragon grinned.

After that, Baelor tried to send you away. Not far. Not cruelly. He suggested Dragonstone first, with companions and guards, under the pretense of visiting old household shrines and taking sea air. When you refused, he suggested Summerhall. When you refused that, he spoke of Dorne, of your kin, of sun and distance, of court growing too crowded and your name too often on unworthy tongues.

“You mean Aerion,” you said.

“I mean danger.”

“You mean Aerion.”

Baelor did not deny it.

Aerion heard by nightfall.

You had begun to suspect the walls loved him more than you. They carried him every secret. Or perhaps secrets, like lesser creatures, feared what he would do if kept from him.

He came to your chamber door after midnight.

Jeyne tried to bar him. Poor brave Jeyne, who still trembled when he entered a room yet stood before him with one hand on the latch because she loved you in her small mortal way. You heard his voice from within.

“Move.”

“My prince, the princess is retired.”

“Move.”

“She cannot receive—”

The door opened.

Not violently. That was almost worse. Aerion had not broken it. He had simply made the guard open it. Your guard. Baelor’s guard. The man stood outside looking sick with shame.

Aerion entered.

You were by the window in a silver robe, hair unbound, the moon making you look like something already dead and sung about. Jeyne remained near the door, pale and shaking.

“Leave,” Aerion said.

She looked to you. You nodded once. Jeyne fled.

Aerion closed the door.

“You are not coming into my chamber at night like some sellsword in a bad song,” you said.

“I am already here.”

“Leave.”

“No.”

You almost smiled despite yourself. “You do enjoy being simple.”

He crossed the room. “Baelor means to send you away.”

“My father means to protect me.”

“From me.”

“Yes.”

He stopped before you. The moonlight loved him too, traitorous thing. It silvered his hair, hollowed his cheeks, turned his eyes into dark violet flame. He looked less like a man than a curse dressed in royal skin.

“You would go?” he asked.

“If I wished.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the only one you deserve.”

His hand closed on the window ledge beside you. Stone scraped beneath his ring.

“You will not leave me behind.”

“You keep saying that as though the world obeys repetition.”

“It obeys blood.”

“No. You obey blood because it tells you what you want to hear.”

“You want it too.”

You looked at him sharply.

Aerion leaned closer. “Do you think I do not feel it? When we are in a hall and every lesser creature vanishes? When some lord speaks and you smile like a painted idol, but your eyes are empty until I make you angry? When your father calls you star and you soften, yes, but some part of you looks past him for fire?”

“You are vile.”

“I am right.”

“You are vile because you are right only often enough to make your wrongness dangerous.”

His smile came then, sudden and brilliant.

“You should have been born my sister.”

The words struck the room like a dropped torch.

Not because they were impossible. In your house, impossibility had long ago been made subject to royal will. But because he spoke them not as jest, not as scandal, not as wicked flirtation. He spoke them with envy. As though cousinhood were too weak a chain. As though he resented even the small distance blood had placed between you. As though he wished the old dragonlords had bound you closer before either of you drew breath.

“You are mad,” you said.

“No. I am devout.”

“To yourself.”

“To us.”

“There is no us.”

Aerion touched your hair then.

You should have stopped him. Instead, you watched his fingers move through silver gold strands as though handling a holy relic he intended to steal from its shrine.

“There has always been us,” he said. “Before words. Before shame. Before Baelor tried to make you good and court tried to make you harmless.”

“I am not harmless.”

“I know.”

“You do not make me powerful.”

“No.” His hand tightened slightly in your hair. “I make you honest.”

You caught his wrist.

For a moment, you were children again over a dying beetle, over a broken horse, over blood in a rosebush. For a moment, there were no proposals, no guards, no fathers, no dead dragons beneath the Keep, no future tourney waiting to open its jaws. Only Aerion looking at you as if you were the only altar he had ever approached without mockery.

Then he kissed you.

This time, it was almost gentle at the start, which made it more frightening. His mouth touched yours like a question he would punish you for answering incorrectly. His hand remained in your hair. Yours remained around his wrist. The whole room seemed to hold its breath.

Then you bit him again. He laughed into the kiss, and gentleness died.

You pushed him back first. Not far. Enough to make refusal plausible. Enough to make wanting deniable.

“You do not come here again,” you said.

“I will come wherever you are.”

“My father will kill you.”

“No,” Aerion said, touching his bleeding lip with his thumb. “Your father is too honorable to kill what he fears before it sins publicly.”

You went cold.

“What does that mean?”

“It means he will wait. Good men always wait. They call it justice while the world catches fire.”

You stared at him. Perhaps some god leaned close then. Perhaps some dead dragon stirred in whatever hell housed old Valyria. Perhaps fate, bored of subtlety, placed its hand upon the board. Because for a moment you saw it. Not clearly. Not enough to name. But something...a tourney field, shouting, bright armor, Baelor’s face beneath a helm, Aerion laughing somewhere beyond reach, blood on ground.

Then it was gone. Aerion saw the change in you.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“Lie better.”

You turned away. “Go.”

This time, after a long silence, he did.

At the door, he paused.

“If Baelor sends you away,” he said, “I will follow.”

You did not look back.

“If he locks you in a tower, I will climb it. If he gives you to a lord, I will make you a widow before you learn to sign your new name. If he sends you across the sea, I will teach the sea to burn.”

“You cannot burn water.”

Aerion smiled faintly.

“Then I will become the first dragon who can.”

The door closed behind him. You stood alone in moonlight with your heart beating like wings trapped beneath bone.

The next morning, you told Baelor you would not leave court.

He looked at you for a long time. Then, slowly, he nodded, as though you had confirmed something he had prayed to be wrong about.

That evening, the court gathered for another feast, because courts do not cease feasting merely because ruin has taken a seat among them. Musicians played. Lords drank. Ladies glittered. Valarr laughed too loudly with friends. Maekar sat stern and unsmiling beside men who feared him. Baelor watched you from the high table with love sharpened into vigilance.

Aerion stood across the hall in black and red. He did not approach you at first. He let others do so. That was worse.

He watched a young lord from the riverlands bow over your hand. Watched a Reachman praise your gown. Watched a knight ask whether you would honor the lists at the next tourney. Watched you smile, answer, withdraw, grant nothing while seeming to grant warmth enough to keep them alive another day.

Then a lordling too drunk on wine and courage leaned close and said something no man should have said to Baelor Breakspear’s daughter. You did not flinch. You smiled. The lordling smiled back, relieved, stupid, doomed.

Across the hall, Aerion began to move. You lifted one finger. Barely. A command so small no one else saw it. Aerion stopped.

The lordling continued speaking, unaware that his life had just passed through your hand like thread through a needle. You leaned nearer, listening as though amused. Then you answered him softly enough that no one else heard. Whatever you said drained the color from his face. He bowed. Stumbled. Left the hall before the next song began.

Aerion watched him go. Then he looked at you. For the first time all evening, you smiled at him. Not sweetly. Not gently. Not as the perfect princess. His face changed. There you are, his eyes said.

But this time, beneath the dragon banners, with Baelor’s gaze upon you and half the realm unknowingly gathered around the mouth of a tragedy, you did not look away.

You raised your cup. Aerion raised his. Blood calling to blood. Fire answering fire.

And somewhere beyond the walls, beyond court and candlelight and all the fragile laws men made to keep princes from becoming monsters, Ashford waited.

Your shop is rather small, but you love it.

Behind the sturdy wooden counter—which itself is laden with misshapen plants sprouting from old teacups and half-filled bottles of sparkling powder—sits rows upon rows of shelves. The shelves are stocked full of your natural remedies and creations, vials big and small, pouches of linen and pouches of ribboned silk. You have everything, perfectly organised, by remedy and in alphabetical order.

For years, you’ve operated out of your little shop in a narrow side-street in the heart of King’s Landing, just a stone’s throw from the main thoroughfare. You’ve helped countless travellers and residents with a range of issues: from sedatives for unruly hounds and salves to treat festering hoof-rot, to fast-acting contraceptives and bitter-tasting hallucinogens.

You can make anything.

And because you can make anything, you’ve become familiar with many a noble and knight in your time.

The door to your shop opens as you’re serving a little old lady, handing her a parcel of dried mushrooms. A cool breeze smelling faintly of winter rain and freshly baked bread sweeps into your shop, jostling the bundles of herbs you have hanging from your ceiling. You wave goodbye to the elderly women as you look up, smiling politely as you catch the unmistakable glint of midday sun against white armour.

“Ser Donnel,” you greet with a small bow of your head as the older kingsguard enters your shop, his gleaming armour making him appear like a pearl in the sand amongst your dim wooden shelves. “How is your finger? I trust the salve I made you helped the wound heal?”

Ser Donnel approaches the counter, offering you a small smile as he lifts his hand. He flexes his fingers, eyes lingering on the index, which he had sliced open a week prior.

“It did, thank you,” Ser Donnel says, his eyes lingering now on the shelves behind you.

“What can I do for you?” You ask, drumming your fingers on the solid wood of your counter, watching as the older knight spins slowly on his heel, taking in the other shelves and tables packed into your small shop.

“Don’t suppose you have something for horses?” He asks, back to you. When he turns, however, he gives you a rueful smile, then laughs. “Of course you do.”

“Of course I do,” you mimic, rounding your counter and leading the older knight across the room. You find a shelf near the shop’s far side, gesturing to an array of small vials, many labelled “Dog – Rash” or “Cat – Sneezing” and even “Chicken – Eggbound.” Ser Donnel looks at the array of small vials with complete amazement as you turn back to him. “What’s wrong with your palfrey, ser?”

Ser Donnel points to his own eye for emphasis. “Got something in her eye. All red and weepy and that. Not pleasant.”

“I see,” you say, then turn to your shelf. It takes you less than a second before you’re plucking a vial with dark brown glass off of the shelf. You hold it out to Ser Donnel. “Sounds like conjunctivitis. Very common, and, lucky for you, easy to treat. Just a few drops of this, morning and night, and she should be all better in a couple of days.”

Ser Donnel looks at you, visibly pleased, as you gently press the small vial into his palm. “You’re an absolute darling, you know that?”

“I try,” you reply, smiling as you return to your counter. Ser Donnel follows you, dropping the vial into a pouch and pulling out his coin purse at the same time. He drops several stags onto the counter, and you gape at him as they clatter loudly against the wood. “Ser Donnel, this is too much—”

“For the eye-drops,” Ser Donnel insists, pushing the stags towards you. “And for your services, okay? Now, I don’t want to hear another word of it.”

You bite your lip, hiding your smile as you reluctantly scoop up the stags and slip them into the coin pouch on your belt.

“Well, can I at least give you something for your generosity?” You ask, ducking beneath the counter before he could even open his mouth to reply. You snatch up a small pouch and get to your feet, offering it to the knight, who peers at you as if you had grown another head. You sigh through your nose, amused. “Sourleaf. Fresh in this morning.”

Ser Donnel offers you another kind smile, taking the pouch of painkillers and slipping it alongside the pouch with the vial.

“Thank you,” he says, bowing his head, just as the door to your shop opens and another gust of wind blows in.

The cold breeze sweeps through the store, and the door bangs harshly against the side wall, creaking on its hinges from the force. You startle, and Ser Donnel whips around. Composing yourself, you’re quick to sink back, making yourself appear smaller, as Aerion Targaryen bursts into the room with eyes spitting embers.

“How long could it possibly take to buy an ointment for a fucking horse?” The prince seethes as he steps into the shop, looking around with genuine distaste. His eyes linger on a murky liquid in a large bottle on the wall beside him, before they drag through the dim to Ser Donnel. He makes a face, eyebrows raising like he’s expecting something. “Well? Did you get it?”

You hear Ser Donnel release a short, quiet breath.

“Yes, your grace,” he says, glancing back over his shoulder sympathetically before stepping towards the prince. “We may be off now.”

Aerion scoffs, allowing Ser Donnel to brush past him, but his eyes lift and land on you. He peers at you, as if just noticing your presence, his gaze burning holes right through the centre of your face. He looks at you half with distaste—probably due to the leaves in your hair and the powder dusted across your arms and apron—and half with interest, like a merchant admiring a newly minted coin.

“So you are the woods witch Ser Donnel speaks so highly of…” Aerion comments, eyes unwavering in their stare. You shift your eyes to the floor. Aerion huffs, partially amused. “I expected an ugly old thing, but this—”

“Your grace,” Ser Donnel warns with a sternness akin to a strict father.

“—is unexpected,” Aerion continues, unphased. He traipses into the shop, cloak swishing behind him like a pair of raven’s wings. His eyes scan the walls of bottles and vials and jars, and he plucks a small one from the closest shelf. Spinning it between his fingers, he speaks with considerable disinterest, “How exactly do you know how to make all of this?”

You lift your head slowly, hands clasped in front of you. “My… my mother taught me, your grace.”

The vial he holds holds a sticky green liquid, the colour of forest moss. He peers at it strangely. The liquid inside sticks to the glass, viscous and slow-moving as he turns it.

“What’s this for?” He asks, and you know he doesn’t actually care. You lock eyes, and you realise he’s testing you.

“Eases infant colic,” you reply straight away.

Aerion drops the vial on the floor and it shatters against the wood. You flinch, startled by the sudden noise. You hear Ser Donnel protest with a gruff call of the prince’s title, but Aerion is undeterred, slipping behind the counter and appraising the towering shelves behind you. He takes another vial, the liquid inside a deep, mustard yellow.

“And this?”

“Inflamation caused by pox,” you answer. “Soothes the skin.”

He huffs, and drops that vial too. It shatters, but this time, you don’t flinch. You watch the syrupy yellow liquid leech between the floorboards, glass shimmering in the ghostly light streaming in through the only window near the door.

Aerion walks further behind the counter, and you shift until the small of your back is pressed to the solid wooden lip. The prince closes in on several vials on the very top shelf, and he has to stand on his toes to reach one of them. Your heart leaps into your throat, and you open your mouth to say something, but no words fall.

Aerion’s pale fingers snatch a small bottle from the top shelf. The glass is clear, and it’s labelless, but you know exactly what it is. The substance inside resembles wine: a deep, blood-red that bubbles a little on the surface as the prince sloshes the liquid around. There’s a small, oil-like sheen to it as he holds it up, violet eyes finding yours.

“What’s this?” He presses, and you wonder if he catches the fear in your eyes.

You clear your throat. “I, uh, it’s—”

He uncorks it, and you raise an arm.

“It’s a stimulant,” you blurt out, stopping yourself from pulling the vial from his hands. Aerion continues, unphased, as he lifts the bottle to his nose and sniffs. You can almost smell it yourself: overripe grapes, crushed honeysuckle, and what smells uncannily like the perfumed skin of an expensive courtesan. Aerion pauses, something flashing in his eyes as you continue shyly, “To… increase desire and maintain… maintain a man’s excitement.”

Aerion stares at you, slowly lowering the little bottle from his nose.

He holds it carelessly, and as Ser Donnel sends another warning from across the room, you attempt to prise the bottle from his fingers, your touch slow and gentle.

“Please be careful, your grace,” you utter, fingers skimming the cool glass of the vial. “It’s incredibly potent in large doses—”

Aerion jerks away, and you snap your hand back as though you’d been burned. 

The prince hisses at you, serpent-like as the pointed ivory of his teeth glint in the grey light. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

You withdraw. “Your grace, please—”

“You’re trying to scare me,” he seethes, shaking the bottle enough for a few droplets to flick out and onto the pale skin of his fingers. It stains like mulled wine. He continues, staring you down. “How dare you even—”

“Your grace,” Ser Donnel’s voice booms through the small room, and you find yourself cowering back against the counter, stuck between two brewing storms. Ser Donnel sighs loudly. “Listen to her. She knows a lot more than you do, believe me.”

Aerion lets out a bitter laugh. “Don’t mock me.”

You chime in hesitantly. “Please, your grace. It’s a concentrated mixture. I wouldn't want you to—”

“I can do what I want,” Aerion spits out, and before you can even react, he downs the entire vial in two quick mouthfuls.

You gasp out. “Your grace—!”

Aerion drops the vial and it shatters right at your feet. You jump back, avoiding the splash of broken glass, as the prince turns on his heel and makes for the door. You scramble after him, but you’re stopped by Ser Donnel, who places a gentle hand on your shoulder.

At the door, Aerion turns and gives you one last look, eyes trailing up and down your figure, before he rolls his eyes and vanishes back onto the street.

You’re breathing deeply, overcome with guilt. Ser Donnel strokes your shoulder gently, calming you.

“It’s alright, it’s his own doing,” Ser Donnel assures you, hand shifting up to pat you comfortingly on the cheek.

“But—he just—the entire thing.”

“Will it harm him?” Ser Donnel asks. His voice is firm and it almost makes you want to cry. “Will it kill him?”

You quickly shake your head. “No, ser! It—it will be very intense, and very, uh, difficult to remediate without—without help, but it will not harm him, no.”

“Can a cure be made?”

You feel yourself warming beneath your clothes, and you clear your throat, soothing your hands over your apron and your skirts.

“I suppose I can give you something to ease the racing heart,” you say quietly, ducking off to the side to pluck another small vial from a nearby shelf. You hand it to Ser Donnel. “Mix with hot water and it will ease the fast-moving heart, but I’m afraid… I’m afraid the other symptoms will have to be cured… in other avenues.”

Ser Donnel chuckles, taking the vial. “I suppose I’ll be taking him to the Street of Silk later tonight then?”

You offer Ser Donnel a sympathetic smile, nodding and trying to ignore the warmth in your belly. You put it down to the shock of the whole thing, and you give Ser Donnel a polite wave as he leaves your shop without another word.

You sigh, turning and examining the broken glass and spilled liquid across your floors. You grab your broom from near the door and set to work.

—✿—

Later that night, you’re setting a new set of vials on a shelf across the store, extinguishing the wall-mounted candles as you move. You hum to yourself, skirts brushing the dusty floor, the street beyond the small window empty and pitch-black as night falls across King’s Landing. A crescent moon hangs, thin and pale, above the horizon.

You take your apron off and place it neatly on a hook near the door behind the counter—the door which leads up a narrow flight of stairs to your home above. As you do this however, there’s a thud at the locked door. It rattles the old wood where it settles on its hinges, and your heart flutters a little in fright as you look over, spying a shadow through the stained glass. Taking a knife from a block behind you, you approach the door with your hand obscured behind your back.

There’s another thud. More like a knock this time.

“Are you alright?” You ask through the stained glass, the outer pane caked in grime kicked up from the street. You gently unbolt the door and open it a crack, peering out at the shadowed figure that hunches in your alcove. “I’m closed for the night, but if you are ill—”

“Let me in,” comes a familiar voice, and you squeak in fright when you recognise it. 

Quickly, you pull open the door, still holding your knife, and the shadowed figure slips into your shop. You close and bolt the door behind you, turning with your back to the surface as the figure drops his hood, and subsequently, his cloak, and you watch as Aerion Targaryen turns slowly as the thick black fabric pools at his feet.

“Your grace,” you mutter, dropping into a polite bow. Worry clenches tightly in your chest as the prince looks at you with narrowed eyes, features appearing gaunt in what remains of the shop’s fading candlelight. You spare a glance through the stained glass of the door, then through the pane of the window adjacent. “Your grace, I’m not sure if—”

“What have you done to me?” Aerion interrupts you, his question slicing through the nervous quiet like the blade you clutch. He takes a step forward and you suck in a startled gasp, slipping around him and hurrying towards your counter. You just want to put as much distance between him and you as possible. He groans when you breeze by him, slowly turning as he speaks, “You’ve poisoned me.”

You’re behind your counter now. “I’ve done no such thing.”

“You have,” Aerion hisses, and he takes another step forward. You notice he’s slightly wobbly on his feet, pitching forward chest-first as though his legs are too heavy. He catches himself on a nearby shelf, bottles clinking together as the wood trembles. “This is your fault. You’ve poisoned me. You’ve—you’ve cursed me.”

Your eyes grow wide. You shake your head. “Your grace, please, I would never.”

In the low candlelight, sweat sparkles like broken glass on Aerion’s forehead. His white-blond hair clings to his skin, damp near his temples, and there’s a dip in his brow that casts a dark shadow over his eyes. But when he cocks his head, staring you down, you see them flash violet in the ochre light, his pupils slowly expanding.

“Ser Donnel informed me of what I had taken, and what it would do to me,” Aerion mutters, his voice hoarse as he pushes himself off the shelf. His palms slam down on the counter directly across from you, and you take a step back, fingers tight on the bone handle of your knife. Aerion huffs, “So I drank your little tea for my heart, and I fucked a couple of whores, but nothing is working.”

You swallow, heart in your throat.

“I tried to sleep,” Aerion says, dragging himself around the counter. You mimic his actions on the other end, slipping to the other side to avoid him. He continues, one of his hands shifting to the thin buttoned tunic he’s wearing. He pops open the top button. “I tried to bathe, I tried to pleasure myself, and I went back to that fucking whorehouse twice more and nothing—” He groans, and undoes another button. “—is working. What have you done to me?”

Slowly, he exposes the pale, unblemished skin of his chest. He’s damp with sweat as you round the counter, skirts flowing around your ankles. Your heart hammers wildly in your chest as he advances on you lazily, eyes drawn to the movement of your body like a falcon.

“You drank the stimulant,” you tell him as gently as possible.

You’re at opposite ends of the counter now. He pauses, undoing another button.

“So it’s my fault?” Aerion hisses out. 

You watch as he pushes his hips against the lip of the counter and he groans, hoarse and animal-like from the back of his throat. It strings across a whimper, and heat floods your belly. You curse yourself, watching as the prince—the Targaryen prince Aerion Brightflame—ruts himself slowly against your counter. You can see the stimulant’s effects on him: the tent pitched in the front of his trousers, the beads of sweat that trek down beneath his now open-tunic, rolling between the grooves of his abdomen.

“Yes,” you say boldly, holding the knife. “You shouldn’t have drank it.”

Aerion huffs out, then groans again as he looks up at you, hips pressed firmly to the edge of the counter. “You’re a witch. Fix me.”

You release a shaky breath, then approach him. You move behind your counter, and he watches you with serpent-like concentration as you slowly place your knife onto the surface. He smirks at that, moving behind the counter too.

“You…” Your heart is wild beneath your ribs, and you can smell him as he nears. He smells expensive: smoked oud, honey-washed skin, patchouli incense from the Street of Silk. You smell sweat and wine too when he gets within a foot of you. You continue, “I cannot fix you, your grace. The easiest fix is to find… find a woman, or a man, I suppose, and engage in sexual intercourse until the effects wear off.”

You hope you sound confident enough. You fear you may faint as he looks you up and down, bare chest rising and falling, smoke trapped beneath shifting scales.

“This is your doing,” he says, seemingly ignoring your previous statement. One of his hands finds your hip and you seize up. “You will fix me. You will fix this.”

You find yourself shifting then as he pushes you up against the counter, the print of his hard cock pressing between your thighs as he pins you. You frown as he groans, the hand on your hip tightening while the other slowly rises to take your chin between his thumb and forefinger.

“I can’t fix it,” you whisper as he forces your eye contact. You’re trapped beneath him, but there’s a heat in your belly you can’t deny, and the pounding of your heart travels south, settling between your thighs despite your racing mind. “I, well, I can try and make a cure—”

“I don’t want an elixir or a salve or a bunch of dried fucking herbs,” Aerion utters as his fingers tighten on your jaw. He ruts his pelvis against your thigh, and you watch as something flits through his eyes, the black of his pupils having engulfed the violet of his irises. “I want you to fix me.”

You swallow. “Your grace—?”

“I want your mouth on my cock, and I want you bent over this fucking counter,” Aerion interrupts with a voice strewn through gravel, dark and hoarse. Something twists deep in your belly as he bends his head, dipping his nose against the curve of your jaw. He grunts when he inhales, lips vibrating against your skin when he speaks again. “Will that fix me?”

Your hands are tight around the edge of the counter. “Yes, your grace, but—”

Aerion hums, teeth just skimming the skin of your jaw before he pulls back. “Good. Then get on your knees.”

The heat of his body leaves yours then, and you blink up at the ceiling. Aerion Targaryen was telling you to get on your knees? Aerion Targaryen was currently pulling apart the knots of his trousers, panting like a wounded dog as he dips his hand into his breeches to fist himself? Your mind was a mess.

But you did what you were told. You could have easily overpowered him in this state. Simply leapt from his reach and locked yourself in your room. But you didn’t want to. There’s a heavy fire kindling in your belly, fanning out over your womb as blood pumps hot between your thighs.

You sigh gently, slowly pushing yourself off the counter and sinking to your knees, your powder-dusted skirts flowing out around you. The wooden ground is hard but well-worn from years of footfall, and you settle on your knees as the prince takes a step forward, his trousers gathered just beneath the curve of his arse. The print of his cock strains against the white linen of his breeches, the front wet with pre-cum, and the way his fingers tremble when he attempts to unknot them makes you whine.

“My prince…” you whisper, reaching your hands to take hold of the strings of his breeches. 

He stills above you, muscles in his abdomen clenching as you pull the knots apart. While you do this, one of his hands comes to rest on the back of your head, and he pulls you to him. Adrenaline is thick and viscous in your veins, but you let yourself be guided despite the hammering of your pulse up the side of your neck. You’re dizzy with both need and fear as you open your mouth and press it, hot and wet, to the front of his breeches.

He bites down a hiss. “That’s right.”

You kiss over the line of his cock, open-mouthed and messy against the soft linen. You smell perfume and imagine the skilled hands of trained sex workers pulling the prince’s breeches down for him. You squeeze your thighs together at the thought, and you finally manage to pull apart the knots beneath his navel.

“Kiss me, that’s it,” Aerion groans out, holding your head firmly as your lips move across his covered cock. He’s burning hot and rigid beneath the fabric, and your hands find his thighs as you lave your tongue. That earns you a groan, and your eyes flit upwards to find him already looking at you. His tongue darts out to wet his lips. “That’s it, fix me… fix this.”

Your head rocks beneath his hand as you mouth at his covered length. You feel him twitch beneath your lips, tip drooling out onto the fabric as you run the point of your tongue across it. Aerion hisses, hips bucking so harshly he knocks against your nose. Tears well along your waterline as he pulls you away then, just long enough to shove his breeches down.

He pulls his cock out, pale fingers wrapped tightly around the shaft. He groans at the raw contact, and you can’t help but gape as he clutches himself, tip a bruising red and wet with pre-cum. Pearlescent beads roll down the dip of his frenulum, and down his length as he slaps it against your cheek, then the other. He groans again when he pushes the tip across your lips, your eyes glassy as you watch him.

“Didn’t think witches could be as pretty as you,” he says suddenly as he ruts his cock along the warm lines of your face: over the curve of your cheekbones, rolling beneath the angle of your jaw. You kneel there, breathing hard, as he rubs himself over your skin. His words have heat flooding from your belly to your chest. The prince continues, “Might take you back to the Keep with me, huh? Keep you locked away…”

He tapers off when he groans, his balls drawing up tight. He grips the back of your head as he slides the head of his cock across your wet lips. He manages to bite out a quick “open” and you listen, opening your mouth and letting him slide just the tip in before he’s spilling in thick, hot spurts. Aerion groans, a shaking timbre from his chest as he rubs the head of his cock against the front of your tongue and spills into the warmth of your mouth. Some hits the back of your throat, and you squeeze your eyes shut, willing yourself not to choke as he releases, fingers firm on the back of your head.

After a moment, his cock jerks, but doesn’t soften. A loud, frustrated groan rips from Aerion’s throat as he pulls out and smears the remnants back over your cheek again.

“You did this to me,” he growls out as he shoves himself back into your mouth, barely giving you enough time to swallow. You open your eyes when he feeds himself into you, cock a velvet warmth against your tongue. He releases a stuttered breath, his other hand finding the back of your head as well. “So you’re going to take it.”

You gag when his hips rock forward and the leaking tip nudges down the back of your throat. You swallow, huffing out of your nose, and he groans loudly enough for it to echo. His hands tighten on your head and he physically starts moving you, pulling your head back and forth and fucking his cock down your throat. You try your best to lax your jaw, minding your teeth as you slide your tongue along the underside—you find a prominent vein easy enough, and you squeeze your thighs together as he whines, the muscles in his abdomen shifting.

The velvet of his trousers is plush beneath your fingers as you grip his thighs. They sit low on his hips, ties swaying as he pitches his hips, pulling your head back and forth. Every other thrust, he’s pushing you deep against him with a guttural groan, forcing your lips to the very root as the tip knocks against the back of your mouth. Your nose finds the neat white hair at the base, and the smell of perfumed oil should be a turn off, but it isn’t.

You whimper around him, cheeks hollowing. Your eyes are glassy and there’s a thin rivulet of saliva running from the corner of your mouth as he fucks your throat. Heat settles deep in the marrow of your bones, fluttering heart between your thighs. The feeling of spit rolling down your chin makes you whimper again, and suddenly, his eyes are on you. They’d been closed in, what you can only assume, is ecstasy as he chases another high. But now, he stares down at you with a subtle pinch in his brows. Like he can’t quite believe you’re there.

“If I knew you’d take my cock like this,” Aerion utters, petting the back of your head as he stretches your lips apart. “I’d’ve skipped the fucking whores and come straight here.”

You moan, something like a protest, but it’s shoved right back down your throat by the leaking head of his cock. You choke and splutter when he rolls his hips and he, somehow, goes even deeper. Aerion pulls back with a groan draped across a chuckle, letting you suckle the head as you catch your breath. His balls twitch as he slowly ruts back in, and once you blink the tears from your eyes, you reach a hand up to cup them.

He hisses out, “Fuck, fuck, oh gods—”

You let him press you to his pelvis, nose between the prominent lines of his hips. Your fingers and thumb work gently, rubbing over smooth skin as the grip on either side of your head tightens as he thrusts once, twice more before he begins to lose his rhythm.

“That’s it, that’s it, take it,” the prince moans, still looking at you, eyes black with lust as his hips slow and he forces you right down onto his cock again. He moans again when he spills—another thick, hot release that splatters down the back of your throat. You squeeze your eyes shut, practically holding your breath as his cock jerks, balls drawing up beneath your fingers. When your eyes close, Aerion lets out a quiet, “Look at me.”

It’s surprisingly soft. You blink up at him. His hand finds your warm cheek then, petting you two times like he’s trying to be gentle, and the effort puts a pit in your stomach. But it doesn’t last: his cock, still hard, dribbles as he pulls it from your mouth, taking a step back but still holding your head in one hand. His other hand finds the base of his slick cock and he moans as it pumps hot against his palm.

His bare chest is flushed, as are his cheeks. He pants like a dog too, and as he grips his cock, you watch with lowered lids as cum beads against the slit, then strings out like a spider’s web. It drips onto the floor as he groans, his lip curling up in a frustrated snarl.

“Why isn’t it working?” He asks you, fingers on the crown of your head.

You flick the point of your tongue across your teeth before you speak, tasting his release in the grooves. Overripe grapes linger in the back of your throat.

“You drank six doses worth,” you whisper, hands caressing his thighs.

“Fuck,” Aerion curses, and he watches with dark eyes as you lean forward, testing the waters, and press a wet kiss to the tip of his flushed cock.

You continue speaking as you slowly kiss down his shaft. “A single dose will usually allow a normal man three or four releases, if he’s lucky.”

Aerion grunts as you lick over the vein on the underside. It’s throbbing and hot against the flat of your tongue.

“But you, my prince…” Your tongue lowers and you lick a stripe from root to tip, and the sound that leaves him is more animal than human. You hide your smile. “Are not a normal man, are you?”

“Fucking witch,” Aerion seethes, but he’s preening. Like a cat being praised, a small groan lifts from his chest like a purr, and something flashes across his eyes. Pride. His hand pets your hair softly despite the venom in his tone, and he watches you in awe when the tip of your tongue darts out to collect a welling bead of pre-cum. He grunts then, pulling his cock away from your mouth with great effort. “Stand up.”

You do as you’re told. You clamber to your feet, and you feel slightly silly as you wait for him to kiss you. Of course he doesn’t—he spins you around with a grunt and pushes you roughly against the table. It hits your tummy as you bend, and you exhale a little “oof” as his hands make quick work of flipping up your skirts. He gathers them at your hips before he’s ripping your smallclothes away from your core.

“Cunt this wet from sucking my cock?” Aerion plasters himself to your back, leaning over to whisper in your ear as he runs the length of his cock from your arsehole to your pussy. You whine as he spreads you apart, slick webbing between your folds before they snap where he runs his cock through you. He groans at your heat, head dropping to rest between your shoulder blades as he rocks back and forth. “Gods, you’re dripping, sweet girl.”

The pet name has you reeling.

You hadn’t been expecting it, and it seems like he hadn’t been either. The length of his body stiffens behind you, as if his words were involuntary beneath the haze of his pleasure. With a grunt, he pulls back, taking the flat of his palm and muscling you down from between your shoulder blades until your tits are pressed tightly to the surface of the counter.

“Fucking witch,” Aerion seethes, still holding his cock as he drags the flushed tip through your folds. You suck in a breath, mewling when he slaps it against your clit. He makes a pleased sound, squeezes it out between clenched teeth, before he circles the tip at your entrance. “You did this to me. You did this to yourself.”

He pushes in with a low moan. There’s no slow stretch. There’s no slow.

The prince shoves himself in like it’s all he can do, the thick of his cock pulling you apart from the inside out. There’s a sting low in your pelvis and a dull kind of ache that festers like a bruise in the base of your womb as he bullies himself into you. A deep, keening sound is pushed involuntarily from your chest as you clutch the counter, followed by a gasp of “my prince” as he bottoms out, hips flush with your arse.

Your pussy is slick and warm around him and you squeeze tight when he pauses.

He’s panting. You can feel him straining behind you, his hands gripping your hips so hard it’s like he’s anchoring himself to you. The walls of your cunt hug around the thick of him in such a way that he’s completely lost himself.

“I—fuck… gods above…” Aerion mutters, slowly pulling out.

You press your cheek to your counter, attempting to look back at him, but the angle is awkward and you can only just make out the look of pure awe on his face. His dark eyes focus on the tight pull of your cunt as he slides out, shaft slick with you. A small whimper—he covers it quickly with a grunt—falls from his parted lips when his head notches at your hole.

“Maybe you belong in a whorehouse,” he whispers after a moment of tense silence. He rolls his hips and shoves himself back in, ears picking up the wet schlick as he slides home, balls coming to rest against the curve of your arse. He hums, pulling out again, then pushing back in. “Men’d pay good coin for a cunt like this.”

The prince sets a rhythm that rocks you against the counter. It’s sharp, desperate. You clutch onto the edge as if he might push you over, his cock rutting in and out of you at such a pace you’re becoming dizzy. He’s panting, frantic, the speed of his hips filling your small, dark shop with the echoing sounds of skin-on-skin.

His previous words settle and then he hisses like he’s offended himself. A disgruntled jeer as he grips your hips and fucks you back onto him.

“Too bad you’re here,” he utters. His thighs are a firm bracket behind yours as he fucks you. The way he speaks is dark and smooth. Dangerous flashes through your mind as you moan, a solid heat collecting in the very depth of your belly. He continues, “Too bad you’re here. With me. Too bad no one’ll stuff this cunt like your prince.”

You gasp around a small moan at his words. They hit you right in the stomach, churning something erotic inside you. You grip the counter, bottles nearby clinking at the movement, and you try to turn your head to look at him again.

“My prince—”

“Shut up and take it,” Aerion interrupts with a bite. A gnashing of ivory as he fills you over and over, the head of his cock finding that spot inside you that has you arching for more. 

Your body trembles, shaking against the counter as he folds you over it. The fat of your arse shifts with each of his thrusts, his fingers a bruising hold on your hips. Sweat builds beneath your dress, damp along the dip of your spine as you grow hotter and hotter. It’s an unbearable sort of heat that sparks in your womb, then spreads. It spreads up and out, flaring like a pair of glowing wings.

“Fuck, I can feel you, sweet girl,” Aerion says, his pace slowly losing it’s pattern. He’s scrambling now, sweat tracing down the back of his neck as his heart clatters against his ribs. Your pussy flutters around him like she doesn’t want to let him go. He groans, eyes slipping up your body, before resuming on where you take him. “Let me have it. Give it to me.”

You gasp out. “My prince, I—”

“Don’t fuss,” he snaps, hips stuttering. “Don’t fucking fuss and do what you’re told.”

There’s a heaviness in his tone that pins you down, but you expect nothing less. You instead focus on those gold-guilded wings spreading out inside you—filling your tummy, fanning heat through your chest as your tits squeeze almost uncomfortably against the wooden counter. The flames of pleasure are crawling down your spine now too, and with four more heavy thrusts of his cock against that perfect spot inside you, it reaches your core.

You can’t help what happens next: you call for him, his name, a sickeningly sweet “Aerion!” as you come around him, pussy pulling tight as the warmth overwhelms you. Your release is bulky as it takes hold, dragging you into ecstasy as his cock drives you through it. Your eyes squeeze shut, body shaking, as it takes over.

He mutters something under his breath then, hips rolling as he slowly begins to lose focus. You feel his cock jerk inside you as he slams inwards, tip nudging up towards the plug of your cervix. The feel of him is muddled in your brain and you feel sick with need as your orgasm begins to fizzle out, embers flickering.

“Yes, yes, yes,” Aerion groans. 

He spills then, with his cock flattened deep inside you and his fingers vice-like on your hips. He curls forward, dewy forehead finding your shoulder blades as his cock twitches, filling you in hot strings. It’s thick and viscous and makes you moan, and Aerion matches the sound with his own, feeling the clutch of your pussy tighten around him.

Some long seconds pass and he’s still spilling. Your eyes fly open as his cock, still pulsing and hard and hot inside you, jerks with his release. Spurts of it, again and again. You whine at the feeling. Too full, too full, you want to mutter, but you can’t. Your tongue is heavy in your mouth, throat dry as the prince rolls his hips, rutting himself against you with his face in the laces of your dress. You writhe, and he groans, open-mouthed and pained as he holds your hips, unwilling to let you go.

“No, stop, fuck,” he hisses out, muffled in the material of your dress. “Don’t fucking move—don’t—ah, ha, fuck, fuck.”

You still immediately, freezing like a scolded puppy. The prince breathes heavily against you as his cock jerks and jerks inside you. He whines into your dress. The sound has your heart fluttering.

“Gods above…” Aerion whispers after another long moment. 

His cock stills now, but he’s still hard. And he doesn’t pull out. He does, however, lift himself from you gingerly. His hands tremble on your hips, but you pretend not to notice.

“I can’t…” He tapers off, breathing heavily. 

There’s a searing pleasure in his abdomen that’s almost painful now, and his cock aches something fierce—like he needs to release again, like he’s edged himself for an hour. But he hasn’t. He’s spilled more times than he can count, but the pent-up need is making him nauseous with desire. His heart is beating too fast in his chest, and his skin feels too hot against his flesh.

He swallows thickly as he plugs your pussy full of his seed. His cock twitches and, much to his horror, he feels the hot press of tears behind his eyes. “I can’t… I need…”

“I know,” you whimper.

The change in his tone, in his demeanour, is a slap across the face. It’s abrupt and unexpected. You almost feel sorry for him—sorry for the man he’s become as he slowly rolls his hips, his cock barely moving inside of you—but you don’t. He’s done this to himself.

“One more,” he whispers, pulling out until only his flared head rests inside you.

“One more,” you repeat after him.

He groans, pushing back in once he’s caught his breath. You moan quietly, body pliant and spent beneath him now. There’s a prickle of overstimulation in your belly, but you don’t complain. His cock knocks right back up against that perfect spongy spot inside you and you shut your mind up with a string of whimpers.

The prince builds his pace again. His cheeks are pink with the effort, and strands of his white hair cling to his forehead as he ruts into you. A thin white ring builds at the base of his cock as he thrusts, his seed drooling through your folds as he bends and fucks you. It’s wet and loud, and paired with the little whimpers you’re trying to hide, it’s better than any sex he’s ever bought. And he didn’t spend a single coin on you.

“No one else took me like this,” he utters as thoughts of you, you, you clatter around his skull. You’re a witch. You’ve poisoned him. He grunts, almost mad at himself. “You take me like you were made for it.”

“Aerion,” you whisper, eyes drooping, another orgasm encroaching on you. This one is even heavier than before. You can feel it in your bones, seeping into your marrow as he fucks you and rambles all the while.

“Made for me,” he continues. “Made for the dragon.”

His thrusts are loosening, and he chases his release with his cock barely leaving you. He rolls his hips, sliding against you as he huffs and bends. To your surprise, he places a kiss between your shoulder blades, teeth tugging briefly at the laces of your dress before he pulls back. He rocks and rocks, a thick moan fighting its way out of his throat as the counter trembles. A glass vial topples with the force, rolling off and onto the floor. It shatters, but neither you or Aerion flinch, too consumed in your pleasure to pay it any mind.

“Ah, fuck, fuck, oh fuck, sweet girl—” Aerion rambles, and then he’s spilling again.

He moans loudly as he ruts himself through it, cock shuddering inside you as he comes in more thick spurts. Back dipping, you feel him fill you even more than before, and you feel the heat of it seep like honey into your womb. It makes you dizzy, and it makes your own orgasm reveal itself from the ashes of the first.

You come with his name on your tongue again, holding onto the counter as you stiffen up. He groans when your pussy tightens around him, fluttering as the tension releases like blood pouring from an open wound. He falls over you as you tremble, sweat-slick chest finding your back as his cock gives one last jerk while your orgasm tapers off, slipping back into the shadows. He pants behind you, hands still on your hips, cock still inside you—but it’s softening.

The prince moans in relief as his cock slowly softens, his seed leaking from your spread pussy as he slowly, slowly pulls himself from you. A quiet moment passes before he exhales, presses one last almost imperceptible kiss to the covered space between your shoulder blades, then rights himself.

“I trust you have something to deal with… this,” Aerion mutters, and you feel two thick fingers drag through your folds before pressing inside you. Despite his words, obviously slightly concerned with the fact you’re filled with him, he plugs you, knuckles against your core.

You release a shaky breath. “Yes, my prince.”

“Good,” he huffs, still catching his breath.

You’re still bent over the counter. And his fingers are still inside you. He sighs, more to himself than to you.

“Thank you,” he whispers, sounding the most unlike himself of the entire night. 

That’s all he says, and you know he doesn’t want a reply.

—✿—

Three days—and several cups of moon tea and other fast-acting contraceptives—later, you’re restocking the shelf behind your counter when the door opens. You cast a glance over your shoulder, finding Ser Donnel entering, white armour gleaming as his mass fills the doorway. You turn and greet him properly.

“Ser Donnel,” you say, bowing your head respectfully. “How is your horse?”

Ser Donnel smiles. “Fine. You fixed her right up.”

You smile back, busying your idle fingers by stuffing a small pouch with crushed willow bark. “That’s great to hear. What can I do for you?”

The knight clears his throat, looking around the empty shop for a moment before speaking. “He requires your presence. At the Keep.”

“I beg your pardon?” You cock your head. “Who?”

“The prince,” he says pointedly.

You frown, tying a knot around the little pouch and placing it to the side. Nerves spike in your chest as you wait for Ser Donnel to continue. He does.

“He’s earned himself a nasty gash—” Ser Donnel gestures to his own bicep for specification. “—during training. And he’s, uh, refusing the help of his maesters. He wants you.”

You gape. “But I’m not a maester—”

“But you can help him, can you not?” Ser Donnel interrupts you before you spiral. “You’re a smart wee thing. You can fix anything.”

You bite your lip, nervous. “Ser Donnel, I don’t think—”

“Unfortunately, it wasn’t a request,” he says as gently as possible. “He won’t be taking no for an answer. I’m here to escort you.”

“Right…” You sigh, turning back to the shelf and gathering some supplies.

You shouldn’t have expected anything less from Aerion Targaryen.

———

be nice to the woods witch ❌

fuck her against her shop counter ✅

idiot (need him)

tags 🌿

But.

The lights are mellow and fluorescent-like when they fall in fleets over the bodies dancing in the ballroom. The lights are mellow and romantic, reflecting over the bone white drapers around the room and the pristine, crystal chandelier hanging above them. The music simmers in the background like a long lost incantation. It’s tasteful to a fault. It’s perfect . Nauseatingly, excruciatingly perfect.

So is he.

You tell yourself you aren’t staring, per say. You are keeping tabs. You are clocking the time and space and the electrifying, unbreachable gap between your bodies because everything seems so unlikely anyway. Valarr Targaryen sauntering around the ballroom full of prideful lords and ladies with you hovering in the periphery. Valarr smiling with grudging politeness at some old-money heiress. His dark hair is slicked back with a sparse, renegade piece of hair flopping back endearingly on his forehead, the silver streak there damning and visible—catching stray lights from the chandelier above. Somehow you feel nausea rise in your throat, imagining the mismatched colors of his eyes, attentive to someone else. He stands straight, beautifully formal, too polite, blended in like a picture and you wonder—not for the first time, not the second—what you are doing here.

And his date...

You don’t mean to stare, but she’s tall and curvy and has a ringing, high pitched, good-natured laugh that’s been clanking around the back of your head since you heard her laugh appreciatively at Lord Lannister. She has her arm sling around the crook of Valarr’s and the way her tanned arm is just there—careless and easy with the slope of her elbow resting over his and the smile she has on her lips is delicate and gracious when she taps taps taps her index against his thumb—pricks at something deep and dark inside you.

You’re afraid to name it.

In the midst of the crowded room filled with people—flashy people, important people, people you are supposed to impress—your gaze catches—like a hook to an eye—on the girl who looks like she belongs next to Valarr Targaryen.

Because, the fact of the matter is—you don’t. You hardly belong in this room as it is. You are here on a charity call. You are here to manage the event where people far more important than you will decide the prices of the artefacts supposed to be auctioned tonight. Your job is to make sure their champagne does not run out.

The colour of her arm length hair is a bright, tumultuous pink that blooms on the sleek, silvery silk of her floor length evening gown.

“You’re staring awfully hard, my love,” Tanselle whispers, a little too conspicuously, in your ear.

Your breath catches in your throat. “I’m not—”

“Yeah, you are.” Tanselle kisses your cheek. Her palm smooths over your shoulder before she stands right in front of you. Her face is full of that insipid, pre-wedding glow that only highlights the knowing smirk she has plastered. You purse your lips tightly and in the scathing, saccharin smile you reserve for itchy clients before answering that you have no idea what she’s talking about.

“Her name is Kiera,” Tanselle says as a matter of fact, twirling a strand of her dark hair.

“Who?” 

“She’s the daughter of a media mogul—”

“I don’t—”

“ —from Tyrosh.”

“— care.”

“ And she’s planning to bag that Parthian amulet of yours.”

This stops you. There’s an extremely uncomfortable, glaringly imprudent weight in the middle of your throat. It’s one of your most prized collections. It… it’s something you will never be able to afford. And it shouldn’t matter. “I didn’t know,” you say quietly.

The smile on your best friend’s lips grows wider. She leans in, completely unperturbed by your stupor, and whispers coyly, “Bet you didn’t know another thing.”

Pink fucking hair.

“What?”

“He’s staring, too.”

There’s a slick, studding moment of silence. Your thoughts, ringing and glaring, stop and click in the back of your head, like bolts and screws. You feel a telltale heat in the back of your neck and before you know what you’re doing, you tilt your head to the side.

Across a sea of people, your eyes meet.

You forget to breathe.

In a moment—the next moment—you find yourself stuttering a bleak, surreptitious excuse. You find yourself running back, sliding past people with your sanity clutched like the purse in your hand and it’s really nothing, you just need a moment to rationalise and compartmentalise and fucking breathe because—

Because it’s really nothing. It’s none of your business who he’s with, especially since—

The door of the study slams with a force loud enough to almost ground you. You drop your purse to the floor as the woods bangs in its place. Your heart stutters, creaks and stomps as you walk shakily to the desk. The room is dead silent except for the slow, syrupy sound of the music wafting from the ballroom—a frail reminiscent. Still too loud—too bright. You still can’t rationalise why, after all this time, all the little pieces of your life he set in, it still feels surreal. The difference between you and him is too stark and rough in that room, with you making sure the canapes are fresh and Valarr with his date. Kiera of Tyrosh. Yes, you remember that you have heard of her before. Kiera. With her sensible laugh and brilliant pink hair and taste enough to buy your most prized collection. The difference… the contradiction settles something you have never been brave enough to attempt.

You take a deep breath, you take two and let the scent of old books and sharp ink settle in you, brew into something like comfort. You don’t have much time. Lord Baratheon might be looking for you to commence the auction. You aren't allowed the luxury to lament the date of your fuck-buddy… if he is even that.

“Hey.”

You snap back, inadvertently leaning against the edge of the desk. Like a habit, the weight in your chest dissolves a little as your lips part in surprise. 

You don’t make a sound as Valarr locks the door with a flick of his hand.

He takes a step, and it’s as if you can really—for the first time tonight—appreciate how good he’s looking. The muscular slope of his shoulder, the blunt out, barely there dents under his eyes. The light of the lamp—golden, illuminating—shines on his face and reverts the usual asymmetrical light in his eyes into something spectacular, something remarkable, something—

“You look—” he can’t finish, because you have already breached the few steps between you and thrown yourself over him.

You feel him topple back, feet stuttering, hand bracketing your back, bare with low cut of your rented dress, with an uncertain kind of softness. It takes him a moment to respond, his fingers drum on the sliver of bare skin of your back before you moan into his mouth, part his lips with yours in knee-shaking urgency. He tastes the same as before. Mint and wine and the synthetic nicotine of the electric cigarettes you bought him. His hand sneaks up to touch your braided hair, and it’s soft, it’s sweet despite the gravelled beat of his heart under your palm and you—

Normally you love it.

But the image of Kiera in silver and her arm between his makes a glitzy, technicolour shot in your head and you bite his lower lip. You push against the gravity and you’re back against the wall. You blame jealousy, hot-headed and senseless, useless jealousy as you cranes your neck, push your hand past his trousers to touch him, already half hard. Valarr groans, his breath falls, hot and heavy on your neck and he asks if you’re okay, if it’s okay to—

“Why did you come?” you blurt out.

He stops. His hands come to a shaky halt and there’s a dead beat second of absolute silence when he pulls back, just a little, just enough, to look at you inquisitively and—

You instantly regret asking it. Your palms rest on his shoulder and he… he— halts and your breaths, indrawn, pushed out, deep, melt and swirl between the barely there gap of your mouth and you hope, haphazardly, foolhardily, that he’ll say—You silly dove, why do you think? I’m here for you.

But his eyes settle into something solid, something harsh and decisive and he tells you—

“Business. Father asked me to meet with this Lyseni investor and—”

He doesn’t need to finish. You dig the heel of your palms into the crooks of his neck and her fingers push in his hair. And you kiss him before he can spew out anything more insidious. It’s a routine, it’s a trip; the tips of your fingers find the most delectable point of his head like memory, like a charm itself and he moans. It’s a hungry, guttural, greedy sounds that makes you feel, for a split second, that he might actually want you and not the escape.

But you know better.

You’ve been doing this for a while now.

And, as pathetic as it is, you don’t care.

Because Valarr has backed you against the wall. You gasp, partly from the harsh cold of the stone setting into the fabric of your dress and partly because his hand is already sneaking through the slit of your gown, fingers tapping along the ribbon-like, upturned skin of the old, old scar. He plays with the strap of your garter; you clutch onto him harder, harsher. Your breaths come out like pants in the shell of his ear as you push your body forward with an urgency that’s not new. Not after all this time. Not when—

He is leaving a wet trail of kisses past your neck, toys with the idea of breaking skin, his teeth grazing, lilting, teasing her. “Still want me, baby?”

You hate him. Him with his smirk that’s never smug enough or mean enough or anything else, really. Too sweet, too him, almost a smile— soft and tender and genuine and you hate it when he can pretend so good and you can’t at all. You hate his eyes as he stares at you. He slides his hands in your knickers and dips his finger inside you. You are so wet he slides in fully, without a stop and you whimper at the contact. Your hands find the front of his trouser—his cock a hard line against the zip as your walls clench and his fingers go deep deep deep and there’s the sparse bit of friction when the pulp of his thumb rubs on your clit and you think you’re hazy, you’re half gone, it’s—

It’s got to be jealousy. 

You help him get out of his trousers before he bunches up your dress, a fistful of lavender silk in his hands…

“Don’t ruin it,” you hiss, not even embarrassed. “It’s rented.”

“Fuck it.” He kisses you again, smiling. “I’ll buy you one,” he says as his hands go up and up. Enough to guide himself inside you. He slides your leg up as the burn of the stretch, the hot, sticky point where you meet is too much and too good. You yank at his collar to pull his face on yours.

“I don’t need anything from you.”

He barely hears you. You feel the hot, moist breath whirl on your cheeks when he groans, tells you it feels good, so good and moves—and moves—

And the people the lights the sounds his date floats away like dust, like they never mattered. The long, aching strokes, his grip on your waist, the friction—not in rhythm, not in sync, not in anything enough—on your clit when you move, when he moves just how you likes, every moment drawn out and it’s soft and slow just before he picks up his speed and you whimper helplessly. The scene—the memory around you melts into nothing, into a thin, blue sphere and you try, like all other times, to focus. To remind yourself that this is just two bodies, just sex, just just just…

It doesn’t matter.

“I want you to come first,” he whispers in your hair.

You nod desperately. Yes, you’d like that. You’d really—

Long, rhythmic strokes. His fingers flatten on top of your cunt and he taps on your clit and you—you come with a helpless cry.

Your arm hangs loosely on his shoulder when you both slide against the wall and onto the floor. Your back against the hardwood floor makes a thud of a sound. Your come makes a slippery, sticky noise when he moves for the last of his hasty, erratic strokes. You cup his cheeks, make him look at you before moving up, catching his lips. And the hiss, the helpless sigh that melts on your open mouth is rough, scaly like something ancient, something raw and bitting and it… you know what it is. It's Valyrian, the language he speaks when he's lost all control, when he is entirely immersed in you.

But you don’t let the trail of your thoughts wander too far.

No; you let him finish. Let his body, hot and heavy fall on you in the familiar weight. You feel the warm and soft trickle of it—the high, the ache, his come—down your thigh. Valarr is still inside you when he rests his forehead against you, noses bumping—a hazy, post-coital flush on his cheeks. His hair is a mess. The silver in it is spiked in all the wrong places. He is smiling.

Your heart does something entirely unsanctioned.

It slows down.

Valarr bites his lower lip. Still inside you, the weight of him is an ache in itself, and he stares at you with the expression—bright eyes and the easy slant of his lips like he’s in on some joke you don’t have any idea about. He drags out the words, “The collection is exquisite.”

“Is it?”

“Don’t do that.” He frowns. “I know how hard you’ve worked on this.”

“All for the pieces to go home with people who don’t really care about them.” You look away and notice for the first time that the room has a fireplace, too. “They just can afford them.”

He doesn’t answer for a moment. He knows money is a sore spot; he has to tread lightly around you—only because he has so much and you have so little. Because it’s one of the most deciding factors of your difference. His money his name his blood his beauty, all of it, all of him is an opposite from you.

But, to your eternal chagrin, he is good at ignoring the obvious. “Shut up and accept that you did a good job.”

You roll your eyes. “Alright.”

He licks his lips before leaning down to press a kiss on the side of your cheek. You frown, he shouldn’t do that. You think somewhere along the way you made a rule for him to not do that. “And you look—”

“Pretty?” 

“No.”

You snort, your throat suddenly tight with a sharp shooting shrapnel in the middle of your chest. “Now, now, my lord Targaryen, just because you’ve come with a perfect young—”

“What?” he scoffs. “It’s not—”

“Who even is she? I don’t—”

“ —what I meant.”

“ —know her. So—”

“Darling.”

“What?”

“You don’t look pretty.”

“Again? Valarr, the least you can do it lie—”

You can’t finish. His lips, soft and wet, press on top of yours and you kiss him back before you can tell yourself not to. Before you can remind yourself that he is the heir to the Targaryen dynasty and you are the girl who shelves their antique collection because they have too many. That whatever happens between the two of you is the unfortunate result of a drunken proximity. The prospect of Kiera of Tyrosh with him is far more appropriate than what happened in this study. 

“You look more,” he breathes out when he finally lets you go. The blue in his eyes are like the ocean, deep and dangerous. The brown is your darkened doom.

You feel a whiplash in your head. “What?”

“More than pretty.” He traces his finger on your frame, pushes back a hair that’s twisted off from your braid. “Or beautiful… You look like someone who shouldn’t exist... You’re unreal.”

You blink. The world begins to melt again, disintegrate into some sort of a translucent dream. Like some fairy tale stupid girls like to read. The music drifting from the cracks of the closed door of Lord Baratheon’s study feels like a background music to some stupid, senseless film. You grip on his collar. I hate you, you want to say, not meaning it, meaning something entirely, breathtakingly opposite.

In the end you say nothing, you let the silence hang. Because it's already been too late and you have convinced yourself that this is the only way you are allowed to have him.

In silence.

In pieces.

In secret.

more of my stories

You stared at the screen for a few seconds. You were wide awake, and you definitely didn’t have the energy to start on your own work.

You giggled at your own message before hitting send.

YOU: I sold it oops

The reply came before you could even exit the app.

UNKNOWN: stop fucking around man im not in the mood

YOU: I dont think this is the right number lol

A minute passed with the typing bubbles flickering on and off a couple times.

UNKNOWN: the fuck

YOU: If ur stuck on his class just check the 2022 archive

There was no response after that. You eventually drifted off to sleep, figuring that was the end of a weird interaction.

Four days passed, and you completely forgot about the random text until friday when you received a notification from the same number.

UNKNOWN: it worked

You blinked at the message, trying to remember who it even was.

YOU: Yeah

UNKNOWN: howd you know about that

YOU: I saw his desktop open with that site and took my chances

UNKNOWN: youre actually not michael?

YOU: No im pretty sure im not a guy

You thought the conversation would end there, but about ten minutes later, you got another text.

UNKNOWN: any other shortcuts u know about

YOU: Maybe

Over the next two weeks, the texts became a weird regular thing. It wasn’t a constant back and forth, but it turned into a daily routine.

You’d get a text in the middle of the afternoon about whatever, or you’d send a quick message about random things in your life.

You didn’t know each other. There was no pressure. You didn't have to put on a performance to try to impress whoever it was you were talking to.

UNKNOWN: what were u saying

UNKNOWN: just got to the gym

YOU: Tf didnt you just leave ur room

UNKNOWN: yeah

YOU: Is the gym right next to ur house or smth

UNKNOWN: the gyms downstairs

YOU: Oh you live in an apartment??

UNKNOWN: no

UNKNOWN: i have a gym in my house dumbass

YOU: Oh!!!!!

YOU: Different tax bracket

UNKNOWN: funny

You found yourself looking forward to those short, blunt messages. He was definitely arrogant, but he was always honest and that pulled you in.

By the third week, the conversations started stretching later into the night. You’d be lying in bed, messaging your friends, and a text would pop up at 1 AM.

👻: why the fuck are you awake

YOU: Im readingg

YOU: why are YOU awake

👻: driving

YOU: Ur gonna die

YOU: Get off ur phone

👻: You sound like my dad

👻: He’s the reason im driving

YOU: Shit is he at the hospital??

👻: no im clearing my head

YOU: Oh

YOU: You okay?

👻: family dinner was so fucking annoying

👻: just micromanaging my schedule like im some kid

YOU: I feel that, my parents keep controlling my life its so stupid

👻: exactly its pathetic

👻: honestly its weird talking to you

You: Ok whyd i catch a stray hello

👻: no i mean its off talking to someone who isnt trying to get something out of me

YOU: idek who u are so theres nothing to get

👻: keep it that way

Then during one morning, you walked into the lecture hall for Professor Davis’s class.

The room was already buzzing with students and you took your usual seat next to Tanselle who was busy drawing sketches on her paper.

“Did you finish the reading he gave last week?” Tanselle asked, not looking up from her page.

“Barely,” you muttered, pulling your laptop out of your bag. “I read like two pages.”

Down in the fourth row, right near the aisle, Aerion Targaryen was slouched back in his seat. He had his dark leather jacket slung over the back of his chair and was surrounded by his usual crowd.

One of them said something, and Aerion let out a short laugh. The guy looked around the group with triumph all over his face, proud that he managed to impress Aerion.

Just then, your professor began talking and it didn't take long for you to lose focus.

Bored out of your mind as Professor Davis started droning on about the text you guys were supposed to read, you pulled your phone out under the desk.

YOU: Im bored entertain me

You hit send.

You kept your eyes on your screen, but then out of habit, your gaze drifted back down toward the front of the room.

Down in row four, you watched Aerion reach into his pocket. He pulled out his phone, a small smirk tugging on the corner of his lip.

His jaw set as he read something, and his thumbs immediately typed out a fast response before he shoved the phone face down on his desk.

Your phone vibrated in your palm.

👻: go entertain yourself

Your breath hitched. You stared at the screen, your heart doing a weird thud against your ribs.

No way, you thought. The lecture hall is massive. At least forty people were on their phones. It’s a coincidence.

Your fingers hovered over the keyboard. You needed to be absolutely sure. You typed out a reply, keeping your eyes glued directly on the back of his silver head.

YOU: Ok unkind

YOU: So ur actually paying attention to class?

The exact moment your text delivered, you watched as Aerion’s head tilted down. He picked his phone back up, scoffing under his breath. His thumbs moved around the screen, typing quickly.

Buzz.

👻: no im looking at my phone because a dumbass is texting me

A cold wave of panic hit you.

Your eyes darted from the screen to the back of his leather jacket. Your mind was short-circuiting, trying to connect the dots.

Aerion Targaryen.

Aerion Targaryen who had a reputation for being, well, himself— was the exact same person who had been texting you until midnight.

You spent the remaining minutes of that lecture staring into the wall. Every time Aerion shifted, your eyes snapped straight to him.

When the bell finally rang, the sudden noise of chairs scraping against the floor made you jump.

“Thank god,” Tanselle muttered, slamming her notebook shut. “You coming to the library?”

“I don’t think so,” you replied after a beat, shoving your things into your bag.

At the front, Aerion was already walking. One of the guys threw an arm over his shoulder and Aerion swatted him off with a grin.

He didn’t look back once. He had absolutely no idea.

For the next three days, every time your phone buzzed, your stomach did a flip. You knew exactly who was on the other side of the screen now, while he remained clueless.

During a late saturday night, you were eating with your friends when your screen lit up.

👻: this movies terrible

👻: why would you recommend this

You stared at the text. Knowing it was Aerion, reading the texts felt completely surreal.

YOU: Ok my bad ill just die

YOU: Its good tho idk what ur on

👻: its not

You: Lol turn it off then

👻: im already an hour in

👻: wouldnt wanna hurt your feelings

YOU: Aww how sweet

YOU: Stubborn bitch…

You bit your lip as you sent the second message. No one would dare to call him that in person, it was thrilling.

👻: lmao

👻: what are you doing anyway

YOU: Eating cheesecake

YOU: Wait have u done the assignment due next week

👻: nah im dreading the partner assignment on monday

👻: if i get paired with one of the idiots im doing it alone

You swallowed hard, grabbing your glass to drink the strain away.

YOU: Maybe youll get someone decent

👻: doubt it

You closed your phone and pressed it onto your chest. He was so different in real life.

When monday came, the room was silenced as Professor Davis tapped his microphone, turning on the massive projector behind him.

“Alright, I’ve randomized the pairings for the research,” he announced. “Check the board, find your partner, and spend the rest of the period discussing with them.”

Your eyes scanned the list, stopping as you found your name near the center column.

Your lungs locked up.

Aerion Targaryen was written right next to it.

“Oh, jeez,” Tanselle said, looking at you with worry. “You got Aerion… Good luck babe.”

Down in row four, Aerion didn’t even bother looking back to find his partner. He simply opened his laptop, ignoring the rest of the room while his friends started moving around. He clearly expected whoever his partner was to come to him.

You took in a deep breath, grabbing your bag.

Walking down the steps felt like walking a plank. As you got closer to his seat, a couple of his friends looked up at you. One of them nudged the guy next to him to clear a seat for you, leaving an empty chair next to Aerion.

You gave them a light smile before sliding into the seat, setting your laptop on the desk. Up close, he smelled like expensive cologne and musk.

“You’re my partner?” he asked, his voice a careless drawl. He still didn’t look at you, opening a blank document.

“Yeah.” You kept your voice as even as possible.

“Type in your email,” he said, turning the laptop just an inch so you could see the screen. “I’ll do the body and everything else. You do the outline and introduction.”

You blinked at him, the contrast hitting you like a physical punch. No jokes, no banter, no casualty.

You were aware he had a reputation for being a ‘womanizer.’ So why was he so cold to you?

“Okay,” you mumbled as you awkwardly reached out to type in your email.

He didn’t say another word to you for the rest of the hour. You sat right next to him, occasionally looking at the side of his sharp profile, realizing this was the same guy who had texted you about the miserable movie you recommended to him just two nights ago.

By 10 PM that same day, you were sitting on your bed, staring at the shared Google Docs. He had already finished his sections before you did.

Your phone buzzed on your blanket.

👻: just wrapped up that history project early so i dont have to deal with it later

You read his message, a sour feeling building up in your chest. You picked it up, your expression hardening.

YOU: Lucky, im still doing mine

You lied.

👻: thats sad

Chewing on your inner cheek, your thumbs moved before you could stop.

YOU: Hows ur partner

The typing bubbles appeared immediately.

👻: its some girl in my section i didnt pay attention

👻: she didnt mess anything up, shes whatever

She’s whatever.

Your eyes fixed on his message until they blurred. You had spent weeks listening to him, laughing at his texts, sharing personal concerns to each other—and yet in real life, you were just a boring, insignificant whatever to him.

The irritation flared up. You tossed your laptop onto your bedside table and sat back against the headboard of your bed.

YOU: Cool

A minute passed without a response.

👻: just cool?

YOU: Yeah

👻: youre acting weird

You left the text on read. Not like it mattered, his read receipts were off. Throwing the phone somewhere in your bed, you didn’t reply.

For the next few days, you struggled returning to how you normally were.

He didn’t text you the next morning but eventually did at night, and you left it unreplied for two hours before sending a short answer.

👻: you alive?

YOU: Yes

👻: ok whats wrong then

YOU: Nothing

👻: ???

YOU: What

👻: fine

It felt petty, but each time you looked at your phone, you remembered him sitting right next to you and not even glancing your away. You felt stupid, but his words hurt too.

If you were just a blank space to him in person, you figured it would be better if you were that way on every platform.

By the end of the week, the silence between your texts was heavy. He didn’t text you back after the last chat, and you definitely weren’t going to break first.

You were sitting in class when Tanselle walked in, settling in the chair beside you.

Professor Davis cleared his throat before speaking. “Alright, before we start today’s lecture, I’ve set up a group thread for the upcoming peer reviews. Click on the link and make sure you’re in it by the end of the day.”

You opened your phone to join the chat, then automatically shoved the phone back into your bag. You had no intention of participating.

The period of the lecture ended with a few minutes remaining and your phone started vibrating nonstop.

You tried to ignore it, but the constant noise was getting frustrating. You reached into your bag and pulled it out, looking to mute the group.

A new message popped up at the bottom of the chat. A classmate tagged your number directly because you hadn’t put your name on the sheet yet.

Too annoyed with the whole class to care, you swiped the app and locked your screen.

Then, your eyes subconsciously drifted toward Aerion. You watched as he pulled his phone out.

He was scrolling through the mass text thread when suddenly, he froze.

His head tilted slightly. Narrowing his eyes, he looked at the only text tagging a number. The number he’d been texting every day.

Up front, the classmate who had sent the message lost his patience. He turned around, looking up at where you and Tanselle were sitting.

The guy called out your name, his voice turning multiple heads in the quiet room. “I just tagged your number in the group, you need to upload your topic.”

The sound of your name echoed through the lecture.

Aerion’s head snapped up.

He didn’t look at the guy talking to you. His eyes darted straight up until they locked dead onto you.

The usual expression on his face dropped away. His eyes searched your entire face, his brows drawing in closer.

He saw the phone in your hand before going back to your face.

It clicked.

You stilled under his gaze, the blood rushing loud in your ears.

Beside you, Tanselle nudged your shoulder. “Babe. Babe? He’s talking to you?”

“Yeah,” you managed to choke out. Your fingers felt like wood as you uploaded the topic into the sheet. “Done. It’s in there.”

The classmate muttered a quick thanks and turned back around.

But Aerion didn’t.

He stayed shifted in his seat, his body turned toward your row. One of his friends said something, laughing and clapping him on the shoulder, but Aerion blindly shrugged the guy’s hands off without looking at him. His dark gaze remained on you.

You looked down at your screen, pretending to type, but you could feel the weight of his stare.

A quick glance back down confirmed it. He was staring at you like he was seeing you for the first time, his mind putting the pieces together.

Some girl in my section, she’s whatever. He finally understood why you had iced him.

When the bell rang, you instantly stood up, already packing your bag.

“Why are you in such a rush?” Tanselle asked, shaking her head with confusion.

You gave her a tight smile. “I just need to get back.”

You wanted to wait out the crowd, hoping he’d leave first, but Aerion was already standing by the row exit.

He leaned his back against the desk, ignoring his friends as they stood confused as to why he was still there.

Panic flared in your chest. You didn’t think this through properly.

Without thinking, you threw yourself into the small crowd shuffling through the other exit at the top of the hall.

You basically sprinted across the stone of the parking lot, your keys already clutched in your hand. Unlocking the car, you threw your bag into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut.

You slumped on the headrest, gripping the steering wheel as you finally let out a breath.

Then, your phone lit up with two notifications.

There were two missed calls and above them another notification popped up. It was a text.

Because the Backrooms aren't empty. You learn that fast. There are sounds in the deeper hallways, wet dragging things, clicking, something that might be breathing if breathing sounded like it was coming from a throat that was never designed for air.

The first time you hear it (really hear it, close, too close) you freeze, and Better Bobby is already moving. He steps in front of you. Puts his body between you and the sound without hesitation, without even breaking his sentence, one arm reaching back to keep you behind him. His hand finds your wrist and holds it. Firm. Certain.

"Stay behind me, baby. I got you."

And he does. He always does.

He knows which hallways to avoid, which doors not to open, what corners to take wide. He navigates this place like it's his, and maybe it is, and you try not to think about what that means.

When something skitters in the walls at night (at what passes for night, when he dims the lights in whatever room he's chosen and curls around you like a barricade) he doesn't flinch. Just pulls you closer, mouth against your temple, murmuring you're okay, I'm here, nothing's getting past me. And nothing does.

Real Bobby wouldn't even stay for a night shift.

That thought makes your chest hurt every time. You try to push it away but Better Bobby's already noticed the expression on your face. He notices everything, because he's always watching you with that soft, focused attention that reminds you of how real Bobby used to be behind the camera. Seeing things before they happen. Anticipating you.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Liar." But he says it gently. Kisses your forehead. Doesn't push.

And you start asking questions. Carefully at first, then less so.

How did you get here?

"Same way you did, baby. Found a way in."

But when? How long have you been here?

"Long enough to know how to keep you safe. Isn't that what matters?"

That's not an answer.

"Sure it is." That smile. The one that used to make your chest ache when real Bobby aimed it at you across a room. "You're just not hearing what you want to hear. Ask me something else."

What are you?

"Bobby."

You're not Bobby.

"I'm Better Bobby." He says it like it's obvious, like you're being a little slow, and there's even a flash of that real-Bobby sharpness in it, that dry teasing edge, and it's so perfectly him that it makes your throat close. "I'm the one who stays, baby. That's all you need to know."

But where did you come from?

"Where did you come from? Where does anyone come from?" He tilts his head at you the way real Bobby does (did) when you said something he found cute. "You're going in circles, you know that?"

And you are. That's the thing. Every question leads back to the same place: I'm here, I love you, stay. It's a closed loop. A hallway that turns and turns yet looks different at every corner but deposits you right back where you started, standing in front of Better Bobby while he smiles at you like you're the whole world.

The architecture of this place and the architecture of his answers are the same. Endless. Repeating. Warm enough that you stop noticing you're already lost.

Because he does love you. Or whatever he does, it's close enough that it feels the same in the dark when he's holding you and the things in the walls are quiet, his heartbeat steady under your ear. It feels like love. It fits in all the spaces where love used to be. And he never gets tired of you. Never rolls over with his back to you. Never sighs when you walk into the room like your presence is a weight he didn't ask to carry.

He carries you willingly. Happily. Endlessly.

And somewhere above you, somewhere beyond the yellow and the hum, real Bobby is probably just now noticing your side of the bed is cold. Probably just now checking his pager. Probably frowning, not out of worry but out of inconvenience. Because your absence is a disruption to his routine and not a hole in his chest. Or is it?

Better Bobby presses his lips to your hair. "You're thinking about him again."

You don't answer.

"He's not coming for you." It's not cruel, the way he says it. It's gentle. It's the gentlest thing anyone's said to you in months. "You know that, right? Baby, look at him. You know he's not coming."

You can hear him step closer, feel the sudden bent in the atmosphere. “What are you doing?”

“Exploring.” You bite your tongue. “Not that it is any of your business.”

“Anything my good-sister does is my business.” His words, heard separately, would sound sweet. Would sound kind and gentleman-like. But there is the matter of his voice—it is sharp and cutting like a silken blade.

“What are you doing here?”

“Following you,” he says, and there’s a danger in his tone. Something flickering, burning like spice. It tastes of treason.

“Did Valarr send you?” you ask, knowing very well that Aerion is the last person your betrothed would send to look for you. Yet, you wanted to say his name. You wanted the reminder—that you are bound to Valarr Targaryen. And anything that comes out of his cousin’s mouth should regard this fact very carefully.

“My cousin does not even know you are gone.”

Your heart pricks, and you feel foolish. The sentence is intended to hurt you, to disquiet you. Yet the knowledge does not make it better.

“I was… exploring,” you say slowly, still not turning, “I wanted a moment alone.”

“Alone from the good prince?” he says cruelly. 

“Alone from all the noise.”

“Ah, because there is enough noise inside your head.”

You shiver. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Look at me.”

The command comes sudden and stark. His cursed voice slithers inside your skin, like a bad word, a malediction. You feel your blood warm as you turn back, unable to disobey. 

Aerion Brightflame stands, leaning against the other pillar of the alleyway. His head is tilted, violet eyes boring into you. And even in the dark, the silver in his head shines. The red from his chainmail shirt sends blisters of spark on his face. The moonlight always does inexplicable things to his complexion. That Valyrian paleness, the light eyes, that sharpness in his face are cut from marble—from something ancient that hasn’t been replicated in another creature quite so alluringly. When you first saw him, you thought he was the most beautiful person alive.

You tell yourself that it was because you were promised to him.

“I know what you mean. I know what you want. Because you were betrothed to me first.”

His words, accusations, burn your skin. “Aerion—”

“Before you betrayed me and went to him.”

“That’s a vile accusation.”

“Vile, is it?” He comes closer, and you still yourself, you don’t back away because you don’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing how he affects you still. “Am I vile? Is that why you ran away to precious, golden Valarr?”

“I went to Valarr because I love him.”

He chuckles, it is a dangerous, joyless sound. “You did not love me, then?”

“No,” you lie.

His eyes flash cold. He steps closer and closer until you feel yourself step back, just to delay the gap between you. You feel your heart skid to a stop when your back meets with the stone of the alleyway. You will yourself to stare at him with force. With some of the fire everyone keeps telling you is inside you too.

Aerion reaches his hand to smooth the rough hair fluttering over your forehead. You stay still, not even breathing as he leans down, down, down until his pale nose touches your throat. 

He sniffs, predatory, insane. “You smell the same—cardamon, vanilla. Valarr likes that, does he?”

“Yes,” you hiss out, turning your face.

Aerion’s hand comes to touch your throat, his thumb brushes over your pulse point at the junction of your jaw. “But there’s something else, too. Something my good cousin cannot even fathom.”

“Aerion—let me go…” you breathe out.

“Blood,” he says, and you can feel his tongue lap out, for a fraction of a second. Tasting you. “That tangy, metallic taste of it. Something forbidden. Something rotten.”

You scoff in anger, pushing him back on instinct. “You are unbelievable.”

He leans back, undeterred, as if your hands weigh nothing. “He cannot smell that. He cannot smell you.”

You say nothing. There is nothing to say. Because whatever argument he has concocted inside his maggot-infested head is fallacy. Is nothing. You wish you never loved Aerion, never laughed at his cruel jokes, never touched his hand, never ran with him in the nooks of the Red Keep hiding from everyone else. You wish you never let him kiss you, pressed agaisnt his chest, his hands roaming everywhere in your body before settling on your face. 

You still wake up in sweat at night, feeling his tongue drinking you in—claiming you, maiming you.

“You cut off the finger of Lord Redwyn,” you say, surprised to find your voice calm despite the tremor in your heart.

“He brushed his hand against your skin.”

You shake your head in disbelief. “It was a dance.”

He laughs, and the sound echoes off the stone with razor-sharp intensity. “I do not like sharing…”

“That is insanity—”

“... and they have given you to someone I cannot fight. Cannot kill.”

“This is treason.”

“All my life Valarr was the one I pitied,” he hisses, clutching your wrist so hard it sends a stab of pain through your skin. “The good one, that docile lamb, the one those boring septons praised. He never had the courage to look inside his head, never had the courage to feel the dragon in his blood—a waste of an heir. I thought.” His grip tightens. But you stay still. “Yet he got the only thing I ever wanted without even trying.”

“I am not a thing you can possess,” you bite back, tilting your head to challenge him. “I am a woman and I would not have someone who deemed me any less.”

“Oh you are not a woman,” he hisses. “You are my doom.” The violet of his iris is burning bright, burning through you. “I tried to soften myself for you. I stopped cursing for you. I turned away from brawls whenever I wanted to pick up my knife and slit someone’s throat, I let that demon Egg maim my hand and did nothing. I let those meandering maesters give me potions for sleeping when I wanted to bash their heads and burn their useless hands. I wanted to appear sane for you. And yet the one time I slipped, you left me and went to bed with my dear, green cousin. The only one who I cannot touch. You are a witch, a temptress, a vile seductress. You say I could not possess you? You possess me.”

You want to be mad at him, want to pull him apart with your bare hands. And yet, the pain in his poisonous speech touches a deep, dark part of you. The one that was betrothed to him, the one that thought you could tame him.

“You scared me,” you whisper. “I realised I couldn’t change you.”

He stares at you, his eyes turning softer. For a quirt, forgiving moment, you think you see him again, the way you saw him first time. You were fresh off your ship and your feet barely touched the squalor of King’s Landing. He was there, standing by the royal carriage, head tilted at you in palpable surprise. As if he did not expect you. 

The months after, you saw him, again and again. He was willful, he was cruel. He was forever cursed with the blood of the dragon. You thought you saw inside him, that supple, rotten core of his heart. The seeds of madness swon so deep he could not extricate it without damaging himself. You thought you saw him softer, too. Yet. The lines blurred. More often than not. His softness becomes his cruely. His words become his blade. His kiss at once romantic and bruising.

“I wonder if you could… love me,” he says, there is a tender pang hanging there at the end of it. “Because you seemed the only one who could.”

The word—that cursed word—shakes you. Reverberate inside your head like a coin. Even in this momnet of damning clarity, you cannot tell him the whole truth. You did. “I wanted to love you good. I tried to.”

“And you failed,” he says, and the words are curiously flat. “And you left. Like everyone else.”

You chest pricks, it bleeds. Because that is the truth. You failed, like everyone else—everyone before you. People see him and they touch him and then they leave him in his own little prison. People see the curse and the pain and they decide that he is not worth the trouble. That his malice is both the question and the answer. And he stays there, wallowing in his own darkness, wondering what is wrong with him. Alone.

Without quite thinking what you are doing, you reach out your hand, the one he hasn’t gripped in anger, to touch his hair. It is soft, smooth, silken. It feels like a boy’s hair, it feels dangerously malleable. He feels ruinously malleable at the mouth of the darkened alley.

His breath hitches. There is an almost imperceptible shift in his expression. Almost not there. But you see it, and you feel your heart break clean in two. Because despite everything, the betrayal and the humiliation, Aerion Targaryen still loves you. 

“Why are you lurking the shadows?” he asks.

“I do not know,” you reply truthfully.

“I do. It is because the darkness calls you, too. It is because you liked when you were the only one who could chain me. Because the thought of a suitable life with a doting husband scares you almost as much as the opposite scares you. You want a gentle prince? Or do you want one who burns for you?”

Your voice is lower than a whisper. “You’d burn anyway.”

“I still love you.”

And you love him, too. But not enough to spend the rest of your life trying to soften his blows, trying to save him from ruining himself and others. Valarr, when he found you crying in the royal garden, scratching your wrist where Lord Redwyn had touched—you thought it was the reason of it all, you were the reason of all the violence— knelt in front of you. He touched your hand and soothed the brun of the scratch. You decided to love him, for the moment. And then, you decided to love him forever.

The man in front of you is staring at you in utter infatuation. You look at him and realise that you have never known your heart, not fully. You do not know how much you can bear. Your hand is still in his hair, and you lean in to press a chaste kiss to his cheek. You whisper that you are sorry. That someone brave enough to tame his mind would come. That his heart will not burn. That he will find reason, just not through you.

“They’re sending me off to Lys,” he says. “That far enough for you?”

“I never asked for that.”

“Your betrothed did.”

Surprise hits you with a blunt force. Your breath hitches. When Aerion notices it, he chuckles.

“So he did not tell you.”

“I am sure he plans to.”

“When, I wonder? My ships leaves on the morrow.” He leans in again, resting his mouth on your neck. You feel your knees buckles, without a will of their own. You almost fall over before his hands bracket your waist.

“Aerion.” His name on your lips is both a plea and a warning.

“I know you love him,” his words drench your skin. “Just pretend for a minute. Pretend you are mine.”

You nod, haze covering your senses. You find your hands reaching up to catch his neck, hold him in place. He is right, you love Valarr, and this is only pretend. You have been called a mad child enough in your life to avoid all intensities. You do not want the burn of Aerion’s fire, do not want his passion, do not want to feel the graze of his teeth marking his territory on your skin. You don’t want his madness or his desires because you know he’d ruin you. So you only pretend, you allow yourself to pretend as he holds you, as you pull him close for one last time.

When his teeth close around your skin, it is surprisingly tender. You whimper as he bites you, marks you, ruins you. The night wind flutters your clothes, the smell of the dark alleway is intoxicating, ruinous. But you stay there, you stay his for this moment.

Because for one, strange and sparking moment, it feels disastrously like true love.

-------++++++-------

aerion is my doomed noodle, my cursed bunny :)

When Queen Dowager Myriah began to miss Dorne in earnest, the whole Red Keep felt it.

It came upon her in the mornings first, when the sea wind off Blackwater Bay blew damp and chill through the carved stone screens of Maegor’s Holdfast, and she would sit wrapped in saffron silk with her hands held out over a brazier as if the coals might remember a kinder sun. Then it came at supper, when she picked at river trout and barley and sighed for blood oranges split open with a dagger, for peppers fried in oil, for figs so ripe they stained the fingers.

Sometimes it took her when the court musicians played for her. They would pluck their harps and scrape their fiddles, and the Queen Dowager would close her eyes and say, in a voice tired enough to make old men look away, “It is not the music. It is only noise. Bring me a Dornishman with a lute, and then I shall tell you if you play.”

King’s Landing laughed at much and remembered little, but it remembered that Myriah Martell had once been a princess beneath a hotter sky. In the first years she had been beautiful in the way a bright blade is beautiful. Age gentled nothing essential in her. It only made her quiet. A quiet Queen Dowager was a dangerous thing. People lowered their voices around her without knowing why.

In the ninth year after her husband’s death, she sent for you.

Your mother kissed your brow at Sunspear and called you a comfort sent to the capital in her stead. Your brothers argued over which of them ought to accompany you and who ought to kill whichever lordling first made you cry. Your grandmother muttered that the capital was a nest of rats in velvet. But Queen Dowager Myriah had written in her own hand, and when the Queen Dowager of the realm asked for blood, blood went.

So they wrapped you in soft orange silk and pearls from the Greenblood, set you in a litter beneath a canopy to keep off the sun, and carried you from the only world you had known.

You were eight years old when you first saw the Red Keep, all red stone and black shadow, crouched above the city like some old beast with its paws dug into the hill. The air smelled wrong. King’s Landing had no clean heat to it. It smelled of smoke, salt, horse piss, fish, and people packed so close together that the city seemed to sweat.

You shrank behind your Septa Elia’s skirts when they led you through the outer yards. Men shouted. Wheels shrieked against stone. Armor flashed. Somewhere high above, gulls screamed like angry women.

And then a boy’s voice said, “That cannot be her.”

You looked up.

He was all dark-hair and solemn mismatched purple and brown eyes, standing in the sunlight with one hand on the pommel of a practice sword. He was older than you by some years, long-limbed already, though youth had not yet left his face. There was a bruise darkening one cheekbone and a rent in his sleeve. Even then he carried himself as if people stepped aside for him as naturally as water flows downhill.

Prince Valarr Targaryen. The first time you saw him, he looked at you as if disappointed that the living thing before him did not match the tale.

Queen Dowager Myriah, seated beneath a shaded gallery, snorted softly. “And what were you expecting, grandson? A full-grown lady with golden cups for breasts and a train of singers at her heels?”

Valarr went red beneath the bruise. “I was not.”

“No?” Your great-aunt crooked a finger at you. “Come here, my sweet summer child.”

You came, though the prince was still staring.

Queen Dowager Myriah took your chin and turned your face toward the light. “There. Do you see her now? Your father’s cousin’s daughter. Brought all the way from Sunspear because I grew weary of all your pale northern faces.”

He looked. His expression changed.

You never forgot that change.

One instant he was a prince annoyed at being made to wait in the yard. The next he was a boy quite struck dumb by what he had found where he had expected a child. Later, when you were older, women would say that men first looked at beauty as if it were a gift, and only after that as if it were a thing they might take. Prince Valarr did not look at you that second way then. Not yet. He only looked as if some part of him had shifted in its place.

Your great-aunt laughed beneath her breath. “Well?”

Prince Valarr came forward with all the grave importance of eleven. “She looks like a water lily.”

You blinked at him.

“A what?” said Queen Dowager Myriah.

“A water lily.” He said it stubbornly now, because children once challenged will sooner bite than retreat. “One of the white ones in the pools. Only prettier.”

Queen Dowager Myriah’s gaze flicked from him to you and back again, and something old and knowing stirred in her eyes. “Does she?”

You ought to have curtsied. Septa Elia had hissed it into your ear all the way from Dorne. Instead you said, because children in Dorne were not bred to still their tongues as carefully as those at court, “You look as if someone struck you.”

The bruise on his face had gone almost black at the edges. One corner of his mouth twitched.

“He did,” said Queen Dowager Myriah dryly. “Your cousin Aerion. Valarr believed himself faster. He was wrong.”

Prince Valarr lifted his chin. “I knocked him down first.”

You considered that with all the fierce seriousness of eight. Then you fished in the folds of your sleeve for the sugared orange peel you had been saving and held it out to him. “For the bruise.”

The prince of Dragonstone stared at the small sticky curl in your palm as if no one had ever offered him anything so ridiculous in all his life.

Then he took it.

That was how it began.

//

After that, Prince Valarr was everywhere.

He came to the Queen Dowager’s quarter under one pretext and another; to ask Queen Dowager Myriah about Dornish spear-work, to return a book he had not borrowed, to complain of his tutors, to escape his mother’s ladies, to sit and listen while old men played cyvasse with the Queen Dowager and pretended not to be losing. If Queen Dowager Myriah was amused, she would hide it badly.

“Again?” she would say when he arrived.

“I am fond of your company, grandmother.”

“You are fond of pestering my household.”

“I can be fond of both things.”

He always had something for you. A carved horse from the toy market, though one of its legs was slightly crooked. A ribbon the color of pomegranate seeds. A smooth black shell he had found beside the river and cleaned with his own sleeve. Once, a white lily from the pool in the godswood gardens, its stem wrapped in wet cloth so it would not droop before he reached you.

“For the water lily,” he said, holding it out.

You took it as carefully as if it had been made of glass.

He watched your face as you smiled, and the looking on his own face made Queen Dowager Myriah say, in a voice like silk drawn over steel, “Careful, prince. Such names become dangerous if spoken too often.”

Prince Valarr looked at her. “How can a flower be dangerous?”

“Flowers are never dangerous,” said Queen Dowager Myriah. “Only the promises men make when handing them over.”

He was too young then to understand, and perhaps too proud ever to admit confusion. He only glanced at you again, stubborn and bright. “I make none I do not mean.”

Queen Dowager Myriah drank her wine and said no more.

//

You grew in the Red Keep the way a greenhouse flower might, protected from harsh weather by other people’s hands. Your great-aunt kept you close. Septa Elia watched you like a hawk. Men-at-arms escorted you to lessons, to the gardens, to the Queen Dowager’s private sept. You did not ride wild across the sands as your brothers did. You did not run the roofs at dusk with a knife in your teeth the way the Sand girls were said to do. In King’s Landing you learned other things; how to sit still for hours while needlewomen fitted gowns to your changing body, how to dance the stately court dances, how to hear insults hidden inside flattery and answer with a smile sharp enough to draw blood.

But some softness survived the city.

Prince Valarr saw to that.

He taught you the secret ways through the Red Keep no septa knew, the postern stairs that turned twice and opened behind old tapestries, the place where the wall over the sea had crumbled just enough that a slim child might squeeze through and sit with her feet dangling over the drop while the gulls wheeled below. He let you touch the warm velvet nose of a young dragon-horse mare though the stablemaster had forbidden it. He brought you to the rookery once to watch the ravens fed, and laughed when one hopped up on your wrist and stole the fig from your hand.

“You are too gentle,” he told you.

“You are too proud,” you told him back.

He grinned. “So? I am a prince.”

“And I am a princess.”

“A little one.”

“So are you. You are only a little prince.”

That sent him lunging for you. You fled shrieking through the rookery while ravens beat their wings above your heads. When he caught you at last in the turn of a stair, both of you breathless and laughing, his hands circled your waist. It should have been nothing, only a boy’s game. But even then his hold was strangely sure, as if your shape belonged there. His laughter faded first. You looked up and found him looking down.

For an instant neither of you moved.

Then Septa Elia called your name from the yard below, furious as judgment, and Prince Valarr let you go so quickly it was almost a shove.

“Go on,” he muttered.

You ran, though you looked back twice before the stairs turned.

That night Queen Dowager Myriah brushed your hair with a silver brush and asked, lightly, “And what mischief did my prince lead you into today?”

You, half asleep already beneath the brush’s rhythm, told her about the ravens and the fig and the chase up the stairs.

Queen Dowager Myriah’s hand slowed.

When she spoke again her voice was very quiet. “You must take care with my grandson, my summer child.”

“He would never hurt me.”

Your great-aunt set the brush aside. In the polished bronze mirror you could see her face behind yours, lined and beautiful still, hard with the kind of tenderness that had lived too long beside power.

“Men rarely mean to do the worst hurts,” she said. “That is what makes them so dangerous.”

You did not understand her then.

If you had, perhaps some part of you would have hardened in time.

But children who are cherished too carefully grow up believing love can be trusted. It is a costly belief.

//

By the time you flowered into girlhood, the court had begun to speak.

Not loudly, not where kings or queens might hear, but in alcoves and behind painted fans and along the edges of feast halls where ladies sat with their cups and measured other people’s futures. Prince Valarr and the Dornish princess. The Queen Dowager’s lovely dornish niece and the heir’s son. What prettier match could the realm desire, people asked, as if pretty things had ever once guided kings. Dorne would smile on it. The Queen Dowager would bless it. And everyone knew how the prince looked at her.

You heard it first from a serving girl pinning your sleeve.

“He will wed you one day,” she blurted, unable to keep such sweetness behind her teeth.

Septa Elia sent her away, white with fury.

But the words had gone in.

You watched Prince Valarr after that with new eyes.

He had grown handsome in a way that made older women looked twice and younger girls clumsy with their hands. He was tall now, his shoulders broader, his face losing the last softness of childhood. Purple and brown eyes beneath dark lashes; a mouth made for pride and cruelty, though you had known it gentled by laughter. When he came from the yard damp with sweat and sun, stripped to linen and leather, the kitchen maids forgot their work. When he wore black velvet at court, lords twice his age watched him and thought of crowns.

Yet with you he could still become the boy on the stairs.

He mocked your singing and then sat silent when you truly sang. He stole slices of pear from your plate and complained that Dornish cooks drowned everything in spice, only to take second helpings when your great-aunt served peppered lamb. He brought you stories from his lessons and listened, half smiling, while you read to him from old Rhoynish romances.

When you pricked your finger on a needle once and hissed, he took your hand without asking and pressed your fingertip to his lips to stop the bead of blood.

The two young serving girls by the washstand froze with a folded length of linen between them, each staring openly before remembering themselves and dropping their eyes. One of the older slave women, who had been pouring wine for the Queen Dowager, halted with the flagon suspended in midair, red wine trembling at the lip but not falling. Near the carved screen, a pair of eunuch attendants went motionless as statues, their careful court faces emptied of all expression save for that flicker—brief, dangerous, human—of astonishment. Even the old nurse who had been sorting sewing silks in the corner stopped with thread wound round her fingers, her mouth parting as if she had witnessed an obscenity or a prayer.

No one spoke.

No one dared.

But you felt their seeing as sharply as if every gaze had laid a hand upon your skin.

You could not breathe.

His mouth against your finger was no more than the briefest touch, a princely courtesy if named aloud, but it did not feel courteous. It felt intimate in a way that made your pulse falter. There was nothing mocking in it, nothing careless. He held your hand as though it mattered to him. As though the tiny wound had struck him too. As though he had forgotten every eye watching in the room and remembered only you.

That was the most dangerous part.

Not that he touched you.

That he touched you like a man who had wanted to do so for longer than he ought.

You could not breathe.

Prince Valarr seemed not to notice what he had done until he looked up and found your face.

For one ruinous instant, he was no prince at all. Not the heir, not the polished darling of the court, not the boy trained from infancy never to reveal more than he chose. He was only Valarr—young, unguarded, and caught bare before you, with your blood at his mouth and something like hunger in his eyes.

Then, as if waking, he saw the room.

Saw the stillness of the servants. Saw the bowed heads that had been too slow in bowing. Saw the older slave woman standing with the wine as if she had turned to carved salt. Saw the heat rising in your face. Saw what he had made plain without meaning to.

For the first time in your life, the prince was speechless.