Sofie

209 A.C Flea Bottom

The first thing you ever remembered was your brother’s hands.

Not your mother’s face, that was gone, worn away like a coin passed through too many fingers. You could summon the shape of her if you concentrated: the blurred watermark of a jawline, the suggestion of a mouth that laughed like a cracked bell, the smell of cheap wine and cheaper perfume that clung to her hair long after she stopped breathing. But her face? No. That belonged to the dark now, along with everything else from before.

But the hands, those you remembered. Dunk’s hands. Too large for a boy of eight, the knuckles already crosshatched with scars from street fights and kitchen fires, but impossibly gentle as they lifted you from the straw mattress where your mother lay cold and still. You had been five years old. You had not understood death, only that Mother would not wake. It was Dunk who wrapped you in a blanket thin enough to see through. Dunk who carried you out into the grey morning, your face pressed to his neck so you would not see the body being hauled away. Dunk who said, in a voice that splintered because he was barely more than a child himself, “I’ve got you. I’ve always got you.”

And he had, you slept in doorways at first, curled together like kittens against the cold that seeped up through the cobblestones. Dunk learned quickly which bakers threw out day old bread and which watchmen could be bribed with a sad eyed look. He found work at an inn in Flea Bottom and the innkeeper’s wife let you sleep in the stables so long as Dunk scrubbed the floors and hauled the kegs and made himself useful in a dozen small ways. You would sit in the corner while he worked, your knees drawn up to your chin, watching him. Watching the boy melt away, season by season, into something that looked more like a man. He grew taller and broader and harder, his shoulders widening, his voice dropping. He was three years older than you, but sometimes he felt like thirty. He had never been a child. Neither of you had.

But you had each other. And that was enough. It had to be.

Every night, after his labors were done, Dunk would come to you in the stables. He would reek of sweat and sour ale, and he would lower himself onto the hay beside you with a groan that belonged to a man three times his age. And then he would tell you stories he’d gathered like dropped coins from travelers and old soldiers and the septon who sometimes came to beg a bowl of soup. Stories of knights who never faltered, dragons who spoke in riddles, castles of white stone that caught the sunrise like mirrors. Maidens so beautiful that kingdoms burned for a single glance.

You were twelve when the men began to notice you. It happened on an ordinary night, with an ordinary drunk who’d had too much ale and too little sense. You were carrying a tray of empty cups back to the kitchen, your arms aching with the weight, when a hand came out of nowhere and closed on your backside. You froze, no understanding of what the sudden heat crawling up your neck meant or why your body had locked itself rigid as a board. The man laughed and then Dunk was there.

One moment the drunk was leering at you, his hand still on your body, and the next he was on the floor with blood fountaining from his nose and Dunk standing over him like a thunderhead. He threw the man out into the mud, and when he came back inside his hands were trembling with a rage so profound it seemed to warp the air around him. “Stay close to me,” he said, and it was not a request. His voice was quiet, too quiet, the kind of quiet that lives on the far side of fury. “Always. Do you understand? Always.”

You understood. From that day forward, you were never more than arm’s reach from your brother. When he walked to the market, you walked beside him, your fingers sometimes hooked into the rope that acted like a belt, when the crowds pressed too close. The men still looked, by fourteen, you had grown into the kind of beauty that stilled conversations mid sentence, your mother’s eyes and your unknown father’s soft mouth arranged on a face that seemed to belong in a ballad rather than a Flea Bottom inn, but they looked from a distance. Dunk saw to that.

You were inseparable. Joined at the hip, the innkeeper’s wife liked to say, shaking her head with a fondness that bordered on bewilderment. “Never seen the like. That boy would tear the world apart for his little sister.”

You were sixteen when everything ended. The festival came in the spring, an eruption of color and noise that spilled from the gates of the Red Keep and flooded through the city like a tide. Mummers on stilts, jugglers with flaming torches, singers with harps slung across their backs, knights in armor that caught the sun and threw it back in a thousand glittering shards. Dunk had been given the night off—a rarity—and he had taken your hand with a grin you hadn’t seen since you were children hiding from the rain under a stolen tarp. “Come on,” he said, and his eyes were bright in a way that made your chest ache.

You laughed and followed. The crowd was too thick. The torches made everything swim, light and shadow bleeding together until faces became masks and masks became faces. Dunk kept his hand clamped around your arm for the first hour, his grip unwavering, but then a knot of drunkards staggered between you and in the space of a single heartbeat, you lost him.

“Dunk?”

You rose onto your toes, straining above the heads of the crowd. You saw him turn, saw his mouth open to call back to you, saw the sudden alarm flash across his features, and then the surge of bodies carried you sideways, a riptide of flesh and noise, and you stumbled into an alley to escape the crush.

That was when they took you. There were three of them. You never saw their faces clearly, only hands. Rough and quick and impossibly strong, one clamping over your mouth, another banding around your waist and lifting you clean off the ground. You tried to scream. You bit down on the palm pressed against your lips, tasted blood and salt and felt the man curse and shift his grip, but there was no time. A sack came down over your head, coarse and stinking of something you did not want to name, and the world went dark and muffled and small.

The last thing you heard was the festival. The music, the laughter, the endless churn of celebration. It went on without you, as if you had never been there at all.

Dunk searched for three days. He did not sleep. He did not eat. He tore through Flea Bottom like a storm given flesh, overturning carts and kicking down doors, bellowing your name until his voice shredded into something barely human. He went to the City Watch, and they laughed, a girl from the slums, what did he expect? He went to the sept, and the septon only clasped his hands and murmured prayers that tasted like ash. He went to every inn, every brothel, every lightless corner of the city where a girl might be hidden or sold or worse, and he found nothing. Nothing. Nothing and nothing again.

On the fourth day, a woman came to him, she found him in the alley where you had vanished, sitting against the wall with his head in his hands, and she knelt beside him.

“You’re the one,” she said. Not a question. “Looking for the girl with the H/C hair. The pretty one.”

Dunk’s head came up so fast his neck cracked. “Where is she?”

The woman shook her head. Slowly. Deliberately. A gesture that held everything he did not want to know. “They found her in the water this morning, lad. Some men…” She paused, and something that might have been pity flickered across her ruined face. “They took her. And when they were done—” Her hands made a twisting motion, a brutal pantomime that needed no translation. “The women who found her said she was hardly recognizable. They’ve already burned the body. Too much damage, they said. You don’t want to see that. Trust me. You’re better off remembering her the way she was.”

Dunk did not speak. He simply sat there, staring at the woman’s face, and something inside him cracked straight down the middle and bled dry.

“Who?” His voice did not sound like his voice. “Who did it?”

“No one knows. Drunkards, maybe. Travelers passing through. They’re long gone now.” The woman rose, joints creaking, and looked down at him with something that was not quite pity and not quite indifference. “I’m sorry, lad. Truly.”

She left him there. And Dunk stayed. He stayed in that alley as the sun bled out and the moon rose pale and indifferent and the city settled into its night noises around him. His little sister was dead. He had promised—promised—to protect her, and she was dead. And the world, which had never been kind to either of them, now seemed to hold no color.

—

213 A.C Ashford

The gardens of Ashford Castle were not as grand as the ones in Summerhall but they were still beautiful. You had been here for less than a fortnight, arrived as part of Prince Maekar's retinue for the tourney celebrating Lord Ashford's daughter's nameday, and already the place had worked its way under your skin. The roses were in full bloom, cascading over stone walls in waves of crimson and gold and softest pink. The hedges were trimmed into the shapes of birds and beasts.

The little girl was running through the grass ahead of you, her silver gold hair streaming behind her like a banner caught in a high wind, her bare feet slapping against the earth with the unselfconscious joy of someone who had never known hunger or fear or the back of a stranger's hand. She was two years old, small for her age but fierce, so fiercely alive that it stopped your breath sometimes, with violet eyes that missed nothing and a laugh that could fill an entire hall and still demand more room.

"Rhaenyra," you called, and you tried to sound stern, you really did, but the smile kept breaking through no matter how firmly you set your jaw. "Come back here before you trip and ruin that dress."

"Won't," the child announced, with the absolute conviction of someone who had never been wrong about anything in her life, and kept running.

You sighed, gathered your skirts in both hands, and gave chase. The dress you wore was finer than anything you had owned before Aerion had claimed you, a gift he had given you specifically for this journey. Pale blue silk that whispered when you moved, with silver embroidery at the sleeves and neckline. He had wanted you to look presentable at Ashford. You suspected, though you had not said it aloud, that he also wanted to show you off. To remind his family, and perhaps himself, what he possessed.

You were twenty years old now, no longer the trembling girl who had been thrown into a black carriage while a brothel burned behind her, no longer the hollow eyed creature who had learned to disappear inside her own body while men did what they pleased. The past months and years had reshaped you, smoothed some of the sharp edges and hardened others.

But there was something new in you now, something forged in the long nights of learning to survive Aerion Targaryen and the longer days of learning to love your daughter. You knew how to bend without breaking. And you knew, with a certainty that lived in your bones like marrow, that you would kill any living soul who tried to harm your child.

Rhaenyra had tripped over an exposed root and was sitting in the grass, more affronted than injured, examining a smudge of dirt on her palm with the grave concentration of a maester confronted with an ancient and inscrutable text. You scooped her up before the tears could organize themselves, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head, breathing in the smell of sunshine and crushed grass and something warm and sweet that was just her.

"Told you," you murmured into her hair. "You fell."

"Didn't cry," Rhaenyra pointed out. This was technically true, and there was a note of such fierce pride in her small voice that your heart performed an odd, painful little flip in your chest.

"No," you agreed, pulling back to look at her solemn face. "You didn't. You're a brave little dragon, aren't you?"

The child beamed. She adored being called a dragon. It was one of the few gifts Aerion had given her that did not make your stomach twist into complicated knots. This inheritance of fire and blood and the unshakeable conviction that she was meant for something magnificent.

You carried her back toward the castle, her small arms wrapped tightly around your neck, her voice a ceaseless ribbon of chatter about the butterfly she had almost caught and the bird that had flown directly over her head and the flower she had picked that was pink, Mama, pink and pretty and can I keep it forever please please please. You made the appropriate sounds of wonder and encouragement, your eyes scanning the courtyard as you crossed it, your body perpetually aware of who was watching.

The servants of Ashford avoided your gaze, much as the ones at Summerhall did. They had learned, over the course of the tourney's first days, to treat you with a careful neutrality. Not quite respect, not quite disdain, something suspended in the ambiguous space between. They knew what you were. Prince Aerion's paramour. The woman he had brought with him from Summerhall, installed in a guest chamber near his own, paraded through the grounds like a provocative piece of art he wanted everyone to see whether they wished to or not. They did not speak to you unless absolutely necessary, did not meet your eyes, did not acknowledge the child in your arms except to incline their heads stiffly and step aside.

Ashford Castle was a crowded place during the tourney. Lord Ashford's daughter Gwin had turned thirteen, and to honor her nameday, her father had declared a tourney that would last five days. Knights and lords from across the Reach and beyond had gathered to compete, their banners snapping in the spring breeze, their pavilions spreading across the fields like a crop of colorful mushrooms.

Prince Maekar's entire family had come with his children. You saw them sometimes, in the corridors or the courtyards or the great hall at supper, but you never spoke to them. You were not permitted. Prince Maekar had made that blisteringly clear from the very beginning, his voice cold with a disgust he did not bother to disguise.

"The woman stays in her chambers," he had told Aerion when he first met you. "I will not have her parading about in front of the children. She is a whore, Aerion. A whore and you will not embarrass this family."

Aerion had not argued. He rarely argued with his father directly. But he had kept you anyway, had dressed you in silk and silver, had installed you in a room that connected to his own. And now you were here, carrying your daughter back toward the keep while the roses nodded in the breeze and the distant sounds of the tourney grounds drifted over the walls like distant thunder. You had not been permitted to attend the jousts. Not since the yesterday.

You closed your eyes for a moment against the memory. It had been horrible. Aerion's tilt against Ser Humfrey. You had been watching from the stands, Rhaenyra on your lap, your heart in your throat the way it always was when he rode. He was a skilled jouster, your prince, but he rode with a recklessness that bordered on suicidal, and sometimes you thought he would not be satisfied until he left someone broken in the dirt.

This time, he had aimed too low. Deliberately, you were almost certain, though you would never say so aloud. His lance had struck Ser Humfrey's horse in the neck, a brutal, illegal blow that sent the animal crashing to the ground with a scream that would haunt your nightmares for weeks. Ser Humfrey had been thrown, his leg twisted at an angle that made your stomach lurch, and the horse had thrashed in the dirt with blood pumping from its throat.

The crowd had broken through the barriers. Prince Baelor Breakspear himself had risen from his seat, his face a mask of disgust, and you had seen the way he looked at Aerion. The way everyone looked at Aerion. Like he was something monstrous. Something broken beyond repair.

Aerion had found you afterward, still flushed with adrenaline, his eyes too bright. He had forbidden you from attending any more of the jousts.

"It's not safe," he had said, his grip on your arm just shy of bruising. "The crowds are unpredictable. The horses are dangerous. You and Rhaenyra will stay in the castle or the gardens. I don't want you anywhere near the lists."

You had not argued. You rarely argued with him about things that mattered. But you had seen the truth behind his words, the truth he would never admit. He did not want you to see him lose. He did not want you to see the way the other knights looked at him after what he had done.

So you had stayed away. You had walked in the gardens, and played with Rhaenyra, and smiled your careful smile whenever Aerion returned to your chambers in the evenings, bruised and bristling and desperate for the praise only you could give him.

"Up," Rhaenyra demanded as you approached the castle's side entrance. "Up high, Mama. I want to see."

You lifted her higher, settling her higher on your hip with the practiced ease of two years of motherhood, and she gazed around the corridor with the same wide eyed wonder she brought to everything. You loved her so much it scared you sometimes. Loved her with a ferocity that made the love you had felt for your own mother, dim and distant and blurred at the edges, seem like a candle held up against the sun.

"You spoil her."

The voice came from behind you, and you did not startle. Months with Aerion had taught you the particular cadence of his footsteps, the faint jingle of the sword he wore even at peace, the way the air in a room seemed to tighten and grow watchful when he entered. You turned, shifting Rhaenyra to your other hip with a fluidity that had become second nature, and offered him the smile you had perfected over your time together.

It was not a false smile. That was the strange thing, the thing that still surprised you when you stopped to examine it. It was not false at all. There was calculation in it, yes. There was calculation in everything you did, a habit you could not have broken if you tried. But there was warmth there too. The warmth of a woman looking at a man she had somehow, against all odds and reason, come to care for.

Love. The word still felt strange in your mouth, like a garment that did not quite fit. Aerion was not kind. He was not gentle. He was not good, in any sense that your brother Dunk would have recognized. But he was yours, in his possessive, consuming, infuriating way, and you were his, and somewhere in the crucible of the past years, that mutual belonging had transmuted into something that looked, from certain angles, remarkably like love.

He was not a tall man, standing at five and a half feet, and you knew it rankled at him. Knew that every inch he lacked compared to the warriors he trained with was a splinter under his skin. But what he lacked in height he more than compensated for in presence. The way his boots struck the stone floors, deliberate and commanding. The sharp, hawkish beauty of his face, all angles and shadows. The particular weight of his attention when it landed on you, heavy as a hand on your shoulder.

"My dragon," you said, and the word was warm, intimate, a private jest between you that no one else would recognize. "She wanted to explore the gardens. You know how she loves the roses."

He stepped closer, and Rhaenyra immediately lunged toward him, her small arms outstretched, her face alight with the uncomplicated adoration of a child who had never been given a reason to fear her father. "Papa! Papa, I found a flower!"

She had dropped the flower somewhere in the garden, of course. You had seen it fall, a little pink bruise against the green grass, left behind in her headlong rush toward the next thing and the next and the next. But Aerion did not know that, and you suspected he would not have cared if he did. He took the girl from your arms with an ease that still surprised you, settling her against his chest as naturally as if he had been doing it all his life.

Aerion, who was never gentle with anyone. Aerion, whose hands had left bruises on your body in the early days. Aerion, who had aimed his lance at a horse's throat and watched it die without flinching.

But Rhaenyra had never seen that side of him. Rhaenyra saw only the father who bounced her on his knee and called her his little dragon and looked at her as if she were the single good thing he had managed to produce in a life full of sharp edges and bad decisions. And you saw both versions of him, the monster and the man, and you had learned to hold them both in your mind at once, to love the whole complicated, contradictory mess of him.

"A flower," Aerion repeated, bouncing Rhaenyra gently against his chest. "What color?"

"Pink!"

"Pink," he said, with the solemnity of a man receiving a sacred revelation. "Pink is an excellent color. You have impeccable taste."

Rhaenyra giggled, burying her face in the curve of his neck, and Aerion's eyes met yours over the top of her head. There was something in his gaze. A flicker of warmth, a flicker of something that might have been gratitude. It made your heart clench in that way you had long since stopped trying to explain away.

I love him, you thought, and the thought did not feel like a lie. It felt like the truth, strange and inconvenient and slightly terrifying though it was. Gods help me, I truly do.

You knew what people would say if they could hear your thoughts. How can you love him? After what he did to that horse? After what he did to you? After what he is? And they would not be wrong to ask. The early days had been brutal; there was no use pretending otherwise. He had hurt you, in ways that still surfaced in your dreams on bad nights. He had fucked you without asking, had demanded without giving, had treated your body like territory to be conquered and your compliance like tribute to be extracted.

But then something had shifted. Slowly, incrementally, in the way of seasons changing. He had begun to see you. The woman who praised him when no one else would. The woman who listened to his fears and his rages and his strange, tangled dreams of dragonfire and destiny. The woman who had given him a daughter and held his hand through the disappointment and taught him, patient as a stone worn smooth by water, how to be something other than cruel.

And you had seen him, the man underneath, the one who craved praise because he had never received it, the one who lashed out because he had never learned another way to ask for what he needed. You had seen him, and against all wisdom, against all self preservation, you had loved him.

He still hurt you, sometimes. When his black moods descended and his hands grew rough and the words that came out of his mouth were designed to wound. But those moments were rarer now, spaced further and further apart, and after each one he would come to you with his arms full of gifts. Dresses of silk and velvet, jewels that glittered in their velvet nests, books with leather bindings and gold leaf on the pages that you devoured in the quiet hours when he was training and Rhaenyra was napping. He would hold you afterward, his face pressed into your hair, his arms wrapped around you like a cage he was afraid you might slip through.

"You understand me," he would whisper, and his voice would crack on the words in a way that made your heart splinter. "You're the only one who does. The only one who ever has. Don't leave me. Promise me you won't leave."

And you, holding him in the dark, would stroke his short silver hair and murmur the words he needed to hear. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. I'm yours."

You meant them, too. That was the strangest part. After everything, you meant them.

Where would I even go? you thought, watching him bounce your daughter in his arms in this borrowed garden in a borrowed castle, surrounded by roses that belonged to someone else.

You looked at Rhaenyra, at the small, fierce face that was so clearly her father's, and you thought about the day she had been born.

It had been the longest day of your life.

The labor had lasted nearly eighteen hours. You had screamed until your voice gave out entirely, had bitten straight through the leather strap the midwife had given you, had prayed to gods you had not believed in since childhood to make it stop, please make it stop, I can't do this, I'm going to die, please let me die. Aerion had paced outside the door like a caged animal, his boots wearing a groove in the stone, demanding updates every few minutes and threatening bodily harm to the maester whenever the news was not to his liking.

"Is it a boy?" he had shouted through the door, over and over, his voice fraying at the edges. "Tell me it's a boy. It has to be a boy. I'm going to name him Maegor. A strong name. A dragon's name. Tell me!"

You had heard him, even through the wall of agony that had swallowed the world, and you had felt a cold dread settle into the pit of your stomach like a stone dropped into deep water. Maegor. He wanted to name his son after Maegor the Cruel. You had prayed then, harder than you had ever prayed in your life, with what remained of your shredded voice and your failing strength. Not a boy. Please, not a boy. Whatever else you give me, don't give me a boy who will carry that name.

The gods, for once in their capricious existence, had listened.

When the baby had finally emerged, slick and furious and impossibly, breathtakingly alive, the maester had looked between her tiny legs and pronounced, with the careful neutrality of a man who knew exactly how dangerous this moment was: "A girl, my prince. A healthy girl."

The silence that followed had been more terrifying than any scream.

Aerion had burst into the room, his face pale as milk, his short hair standing up in wild disarray from running his hands through it for eighteen hours. He had stared at the child in the maester's arms. At the tuft of silver gold hair plastered to her scalp, at the violet eyes that were already open and glaring at the world with an indignation that seemed profoundly personal. His expression had twisted into something ugly.

"A girl," he had said, and his voice was flat. Hollow. A room with all the furniture removed. "I waited nine moons. Nine moons. For a girl."

He had not touched you. He had not touched the baby. He had simply turned on his heel and walked out of the room, and you had heard his boots ring down the corridor, and then the distant slam of a door, and then nothing.

The next three days had been the darkest of your new life. Aerion did not come to your room. He did not send for you. He did not acknowledge the existence of the child at all. He ate his meals with his family, trained in the yard with a brutality that left his sparring partners bloodied and bewildered, and refused to speak to anyone who so much as mentioned the baby's existence. The girl, the servants called her in whispers, because she had no name yet, and a child without a name was a ghost.

You lay in your bed, your body slowly knitting itself back together, your breasts aching with milk, and you held your daughter against your chest and wondered if this was the end. If Aerion would cast you both out, send you back to the streets of King's Landing with nothing but the clothes on your back and a bastard child in your arms. You made plans in the dark hours. Foolish, desperate plans, the kind of plans that only seemed reasonable at three in the morning when you were alone and terrified and your stitches still pulled every time you moved. You would run. You would find Dunk if he was still alive, throw yourself at his feet, beg him to take you back even though you were ruined and used and nothing like the sister he had lost. You would find work, honest work, kitchen work, anything, and you would raise your daughter to be strong and fierce and free, and she would never, ever know what it felt like to be owned.

But on the fourth day, the door had opened.

Aerion stood in the frame, and you barely recognized him. His eyes were ringed with shadows so dark they looked like bruises, his short hair a disheveled mess, his fine clothes rumpled and stained as if he had been sleeping in them, or not sleeping at all. He had been wrestling with something, you realized. Himself, his pride, his expectations, his disappointment. And from the look of him, he had lost.

"Let me see her," he said. His voice was hoarse, scraped raw, as if he had been shouting or weeping or both. "Let me see my daughter."

You did not trust yourself to speak. You simply lifted the baby from your chest. She was awake, her violet eyes tracking the movement with that unnerving intensity newborns sometimes had. And you held her out toward him.

Aerion approached slowly, cautiously, like a man approaching a wounded animal that might bite. He looked down at the small, wrinkled face, at the silver gold fuzz on her head, at the tiny fists that clenched and unclenched in the air as if she were already fighting battles only she could see. And something in his expression shifted. Not softened. Aerion did not soften, not in any way you had ever witnessed. But cracked. A fissure in the ice, unexpected and profound.

"She looks like me," he said. It was not a question.

"Yes," you whispered, your voice still ruined from screaming. "She's a true dragon, my prince. Just like her father."

He reached out one finger, just one, his hand trembling almost imperceptibly, and touched the baby's cheek. Rhaenyra turned her head toward the contact, her tiny mouth opening and closing in that instinctive rooting reflex.

"Rhaenyra," he said. "I'll call her Rhaenyra."

You knew the name, of course. Everyone in Westeros knew the name. The princess who had been called Maegor with teats, who had fought a war that tore the realm in half and refused to surrender even when the odds were hopeless. It was a name soaked in controversy, in blood, in the stubborn refusal to be anything other than what she was. It was a cruel name to give an infant daughter, in some ways. A challenge. A provocation. A reminder that girls could be as dangerous as boys, if they were bold enough.

But it was not Maegor. It was not the name of the Cruel. And on that fourth day, with your daughter finally named and Aerion's hand resting awkwardly, almost shyly, on your shoulder, you had decided to be grateful for small mercies.

"Rhaenyra," you repeated, trying the name on your tongue. It tasted like strength. Like fire. Like survival. "My little dragon."

And now, two years later, watching that same daughter tug impatiently at Aerion's doublet while he laughed, that hope had only grown. Rhaenyra was fierce and stubborn and clever and alive, so vibrantly alive, and you would make certain she stayed that way. You would die before you let that happen. You would kill before you let that happen. And the truth of that, the absolute crystalline certainty of it, was the most liberating thing you had ever felt.

"Y/N."

Aerion's voice pulled you back from the precipice of memory. He was watching you over Rhaenyra's silver gold head, his expression hovering somewhere between amusement and irritation.

"You're brooding again," he said. "You get that look on your face when you're thinking too hard. I've told you. I don't like it."

You let your expression shift, the distant look replaced by something warmer, more present. But you did not apologize; you had learned, over your time together, that apologizing for your thoughts only made him more suspicious. Instead, you reached out and straightened the collar of his doublet, letting your fingers brush the skin of his throat, a gesture of casual intimacy that you knew he craved even if he would never admit it.

"I was thinking about how happy she looks," you said, and it was the truth, or a version of it. "You make her happy, Aerion. You know that, don't you?"

He grunted, but you caught the flicker of satisfaction that crossed his features before he could suppress it. Praise. He could never get enough of it, had been starved for it his entire life, and you had learned to feed him with the same regularity you fed your daughter. All this time, and he still turned toward your words like a flower toward the sun, drinking in every affirmation, every acknowledgment, every whispered you are magnificent, you are powerful, you are loved.

"She's a dragon," Aerion said, adjusting Rhaenyra on his hip with practiced ease. "Dragons don't get sad. They incinerate the things that upset them."

"Papa," Rhaenyra said, with the sudden, intense solemnity that only a two-year-old can muster, "I want to incinerate something."

Aerion threw back his head and laughed. A real laugh, full throated and genuine, the kind of laugh that transformed his sharp features into something almost boyish, almost approachable. "That's my girl," he said, and pressed a kiss to her forehead with an uncharacteristic tenderness. "That's my little dragon. We'll find you something to burn later."

You watched them, this strange, fierce man and this strange, fierce child, and your heart performed that complicated maneuver it had been practicing for years, folding affection and exasperation and hope and fear all into one impossible shape.

This is real, you told yourself. Whatever else is happening, whatever else they say about us, this is real. He is my Aerion, and she is my daughter, and this is my life, and it is real.

Aerion shifted Rhaenyra to his other arm and extended his free hand toward you. His earlier tension seemed to have eased, replaced by something almost eager, a restless energy that crackled just beneath his skin.

"There's a play tonight," he said. "Some puppeteers have set up in the village. I've heard it's about a dragon." His mouth curved into that sharp, knowing smile you had come to recognize. "I thought we might go after supper. You and me and the little dragon here. She should see something worthy of her name."

Rhaenyra's head came up at the word dragon, her violet eyes bright. "A dragon play, Papa?"

"A dragon play," Aerion confirmed, tweaking her nose. "With fire and scales and everything a proper dragon ought to have. Would you like that?"

Rhaenyra's shriek of delight was answer enough. She bounced in his arms, clapping her small hands together, already launching into a stream of questions about whether the dragon would be big or small, whether it would breathe real fire, whether she could meet it afterward and be its friend.

You smiled, and this time there was no calculation in it at all. Aerion was trying. In his own strange, possessive way, he was trying. He had brought you to Ashford to wound his cousin, yes. He had paraded you in front of his family like a trophy, yes. But he was also here, in this sunlit corridor, planning an evening at a play with his paramour and his bastard daughter, and there was something in his face that you had learned to recognize as hope.

"That sounds wonderful," you said, and meant it. "Rhaenyra will be talking about it for weeks."

"She'll be talking about it regardless," Aerion said dryly. "The child never stops talking. She gets that from you."

"From me?" You pressed a hand to your chest in mock offense. "I am the very soul of silence, my prince."

Aerion snorted. It was an undignified sound, entirely at odds with the sharp, cruel prince the rest of the world knew. "You are a terrible liar, Y/N. You always have been."

But he was smiling when he said it, and when he offered you his arm, you took it without hesitation. Rhaenyra was still chattering about dragons, her small voice filling the corridor with improbable questions and even more improbable declarations. Aerion answered her with patience, with warmth, with the particular tenderness he reserved for her alone.

And you walked beside them through the halls of Ashford Castle, your hand on Aerion's arm, your daughter's laughter echoing off the stones, and for this moment, this single bright moment, you let yourself believe that everything would be all right.

—

The screaming started before you understood what was happening.

One moment there had been music, the thin reedy piping of a flute and the thump of a hand drum, and Rhaenyra had been bouncing on your hip with her small hands clapping together in delight. The painted dragon had been swaying above the stage on its strings, its wings catching the torchlight, its jaws opening and closing in roar while the puppeteer below made a rumbling growl deep in her throat to give it voice. Rhaenyra had laughed. You could still hear the echo of that laugh, bright and silver and utterly without fear.

Then Aerion and the white cloaks moved, and the world splintered. The first tent pole went down with a sound like a thunderclap. Silk billowed inward, red and gold and orange, catching the torchlight and becoming flame even as it fell. People were screaming. People were running. A woman stumbled into you from behind and you curled around Rhaenyra on pure instinct, your spine curving, your arms locking, your body becoming a shell with your daughter at its center. Someone's elbow drove into your ribs and you felt something grind and shift and send a bright white bolt of pain up your side.

"Mama," Rhaenyra whimpered, and her voice was small, so terribly small, the voice of a child who did not understand why the world had turned cruel between one heartbeat and the next. "Mama, I want to go. I want to go home."

"Shh," you breathed into her hair, though your own voice was shaking so badly the word hardly had a shape. "Shh, my love, my dragon, Mama's here. Mama's got you. Close your eyes, sweetling. Close your eyes and it will be over soon."

She buried her face in the curve of your throat. You could feel her tears, hot and wet, soaking through the silk of your gown. You could feel her heart beating against your chest, a frantic bird trapped in a cage of bone. You could feel every tremor that ran through her small body, and each one was a knife slipped between your ribs.

The guard Aerion had assigned to you stood at your back like a statue carved from ice. Ser Harrold, his name was, you had begged him to escort you from the pavilion the moment the violence began. You had turned to him with Rhaenyra clutched against your chest and pleaded with him to let you leave, to let you take your daughter somewhere safe, somewhere the screaming did not reach.

He had looked at you with eyes that held no more warmth than a winter pond. "Prince's orders," he had said, and the words fell from his mouth like stones dropped into still water. "You stay until he says otherwise."

"But she's frightened," you had said, and you had hated the tremor in your voice, hated the way it made you sound weak when you needed to be strong. "She's two years old, Ser Harrold. She doesn't understand what's happening. Please."

"Prince's orders," he had repeated, and he had not looked at you again.

On the stage, Aerion had the puppeteer by the wrist. She was young. That was the detail that lodged itself in your memory like a splinter, the detail that would come back to you in the dark hours of the night for years afterward. She was young, perhaps your age. Her mouth was open in a scream that you could not hear over the roaring of the crowd, and her free hand was beating uselessly against Aerion's chest, against his arm, against the unyielding iron of his grip.

She had made a dragon out of paint and wood and string. She had painted scales on its wings with her own hands, had worked its jaws with her own fingers, had given it a voice that made children laugh and grown men cheer. She had made the terrible, fatal mistake of letting her dragon be killed in the story she told. The knight had slain it with his sword and the audience had gasped and clapped and cheered the hero's victory.

Aerion had not cheered. Aerion had stared with a face like a thunderhead, and then the Kingsguard had begun to move, and now he was on the stage with the puppeteer's wrist in his hand and her dragon lying forgotten at his feet.

He started with her fingers. The first one broke with a sound like a dry branch snapping underfoot in the depths of winter. It was surprisingly quiet, that sound, almost delicate, almost polite. The puppeteer's index finger bent backward at an angle that made your stomach contract violently, and she screamed, a high thin shriek that cut through the chaos of the pavilion like a blade through silk.

Rhaenyra flinched in your arms. "Mama," she whimpered, "why is the lady screaming? Is she hurt? Mama, I want to go."

"Close your eyes, sweetling," you whispered again, and your voice was breaking now, splintering into pieces you could not put back together. "Close your eyes and think of something nice. Think of the roses in the garden. Think of the pink flower you picked. Think of anything but this."

The second finger broke wetter than the first. A muffled, grinding crack that seemed to echo in the hollow of your chest. The puppeteer's legs gave out beneath her, but Aerion held her up by her ruined hand,ìand his face, his beautiful face that you had kissed and praised and learned to love, was alight with something that went beyond cruelty into a territory you had no name for.

Pleasure. A bright, burning pleasure that lit him from within like a lantern lights a room. His violet eyes were wide and shining, his lips parted slightly around his bloodied teeth, his breath coming in short sharp bursts that were almost sexual in their rhythm. He was enjoying this. He was enjoying this in a way he had never enjoyed a single moment of the years you had spent together, and the realization crashed into you like a wave into rocks, cold and brutal and undeniable.

You love him, you had thought earlier in the gardens. No, you hate him. That was the horror of it, the horror that would never leave you no matter how many years passed. You loved him, you loved the father of your child, you loved the man who had burned down a brothel for you. You loved him, and he was standing on a stage in a village called Ashford, breaking a girl's fingers one by one because her puppet show had insulted his pride.

The third finger made a sound like a walnut being crushed in a vise.

"Please," you heard yourself saying, and you did not know if you were speaking to Aerion or to Ser Harrold or to the gods who had never listened to a single prayer you had ever sent their way. "Please, someone stop him. Someone make him stop."

Ser Harrold's hand closed around your upper arm, immobilizing you. He was wearing gauntlets, the leather stiff and unyielding against your skin. "Hold still," he said, and his voice was the voice of a man who had learned long ago that obedience was safer than conscience.

The puppeteer's fourth finger snapped.

Then the giant came out of the crowd. His hair was dirty blonde, cut short against his skull in a way that suggested practicality rather than fashion, and it was matted with sweat and dust and something that might have been blood. His face was a shadowed blur in the torchlight, his features obscured by the angle and the distance and the chaos, but his size. Gods above and below, his size.

He was enormous. Seven feet of bone and muscle and righteous fury, with shoulders broad enough to block out the firelight behind him and hands the size of dinner plates curled into fists at his sides. He did not slow. He did not hesitate. He cleared the edge of the stage in a single stride, and then he was on Aerion, and his fist was connecting with the prince's face with a sound like a hammer striking an anvil.

Aerion staggered backward. His grip on the puppeteer's wrist broke, and she crumpled to the stage in a heap of brown wool and ruined hands, sobbing. Blood flew from Aerion's mouth in a dark arc that caught the torchlight and glittered like rubies scattered across the stage. He hit the wooden planking hard, his head snapping back against the boards, and for one impossible, crystalline moment, the entire pavilion went silent.

Then the Kingsguard moved. They came from every direction at once, white cloaks streaming behind them like wings, white enameled armor flashing in the firelight. Six of them. Seven. More, perhaps. They swarmed the big man the way wolves swarm a bear, throwing themselves onto his back and his arms and his legs, trying to drag him down by sheer weight of numbers. He fought them. Gods, he fought them. You saw one Kingsguard reel backward with blood pouring from the visor of his helm. You saw another take an elbow to the throat and go down choking, clawing at his gorget. You saw the big man's fists rise and fall and rise again with the relentless rhythm of a blacksmith's hammer, each blow carrying the weight of a righteous anger that no amount of white armor could withstand.

But there were too many. There were always too many. They dragged at his legs and his arms and his neck, six white cloaked knights and then seven and then eight, and still he nearly threw them off, still he nearly got free, still he nearly made it back to his feet with his massive hands reaching for Aerion again. Then one of the Kingsguard drove the pommel of his sword into the back of the big man's skull, and his knees buckled. Another kicked his legs out from under him. Another twisted his arm behind his back at an angle that made the joint scream in protest even from where you stood watching.

They forced him to his knees on the stage. One of them, a tall man with a captain's bars on his white cloak, grabbed a fistful of that dirty blonde hair and yanked his head back, forcing his face up into the torchlight.

Aerion rose to his feet. He moved slowly, carefully, the way a man moves when he is holding onto his composure by the thinnest of threads. His lip was split open, a gash that ran from the corner of his mouth nearly to his chin. Blood sheeted down his jaw and dripped onto the white silk of his collar, staining it crimson. He probed at his teeth with his tongue, grimaced, and spat a wad of blood and saliva onto the stage. Something small and white and hard skittered across the wooden boards.

“Why did you throw your life away for this whore” Aerion said.

"You've loosened one of my teeth,"

The pavilion had gone very quiet. The screaming had stopped, or perhaps it had simply receded to a distance where it could no longer reach you. The only sounds were the crackle of the torches, the soft sobbing of the puppeteer still huddled on the stage, and the ragged, labored breathing of the big man as he knelt in the grip of the Kingsguard. Aerion's voice was soft, almost conversational, the voice of a man discussing the weather over a cup of wine. It was more terrifying than any scream could have been.

"So," Aerion continued, prodding at his mouth again with his thumb and forefinger, examining the blood that came away, "we'll start by breaking out all of yours."

"No." The word came out of your mouth before you could stop it, a reflex as automatic as breathing, as instinctive as flinching from an open flame. "Aerion, no."

He did not look at you. He was not capable of hearing you, not in this state, not with the blood of a puppet show on his hands and the taste of his own tooth in his mouth. He was looking at the big man the way a child looks at an insect he has caught in a jar. Curious. Utterly without pity.

One of the Kingsguard, the captain with his hand still fisted in the big man's hair, forced his head down toward the stage. Another moved to stand on either side of him, gripping his shoulders, pinning him in place. A third stepped forward, removing his gauntlets one finger at a time, flexing his bare hands with the deliberate precision of a man preparing to perform a task that required both strength and care.

"Hold him still," Aerion said. "I want to watch."

Rhaenyra was sobbing in earnest now, her small body shaking with the force of her terror. She did not understand what was happening. She understood only that her father was on the stage and there was blood on his face and the safe bright world of the puppet show had collapsed into screaming and white cloaks and a big man on his knees who was about to be hurt in a way she had no language for.

"Mama," she wept, "Mama, I want Papa to stop, make Papa stop, please make him stop."

"I can't," you whispered into her hair, and the admission was a wound that would never fully heal. "I can't, sweetling. Mama can't make him stop. Close your eyes. Close your eyes and don't look."

The Kingsguard with the bare hands stepped forward. He was flexing his fingers, working the joints loose, his movements unhurried and methodical. The captain still had the big man's head forced down at the angle required for what was about to happen. The other guards braced themselves, digging their heels into the wooden stage, preparing for the struggle they knew would come.

The big man lifted his head against the pressure of the captain's grip. It was a monumental effort; you could see the muscles of his neck straining, the veins standing out like cords, the sweat cutting tracks through the blood and dirt on his face. He lifted his head, and the torchlight fell full upon his features for the first time.

You saw his face.

Time did not slow. It did not fade. It stopped. It stopped completely, absolutely, as if some vast and terrible hand had reached down from the heavens and seized the mechanism of the world itself and held it motionless. The torches froze mid-flicker. The screaming faded to a hum that existed somewhere beyond the boundaries of hearing. The blood in your veins turned to ice and then to fire and then to something that had no name at all.

You knew that face. You knew the hands. The enormous hands that had lifted you from your mother's deathbed, that had carried you through the cold morning while the other whores watched with pity and disgust, that had wrapped you in a threadbare blanket and held you against his chest while he promised you in a cracking boy's voice that he would always, always have you.

Dunk. He was alive. He was on his knees on a stage in a village called Ashford with a Kingsguard's hand in his hair and another Kingsguard's bare knuckles preparing to break his teeth out of his skull one by one, and he was alive.

"Dunk."

You did not recognize your own voice. It did not sound like a voice at all. It sounded like something that had been torn out of you by the roots, something that had been buried so deep and so long that pulling it free left a bleeding hollow in the center of your chest.

"Dunk."

Louder this time. Louder, and it cracked on the second syllable, cracked like your mother's laugh had cracked, like a bell that had been rung too hard and too long and had nothing left inside it but splinters.

"DUNK."

Time restarted itself with a violence that made your vision swim. The torches flared back to life. The screaming returned, a wave of sound that crashed over you and through you and left you gasping. The Kingsguard hesitated, their hands pausing on their prisoner, their white helms turning toward you with the synchronized precision of hunting dogs catching a scent.

Dunk turned his head. The captain still had his fist twisted in his hair, still had his neck bent at that brutal angle, but Dunk turned his head against that grip with the slow, inexorable force of a continent shifting, and he looked at you.

His eyes found yours across the chaos of the ruined tent. You saw the recognition hit him. Saw it travel through his body like a physical blow, a shock wave that started in his eyes and rippled outward through his shoulders, his chest, his hands. His face went slack with it, the tension draining out of his jaw and his brow, replaced by something that was too raw and too vast to be called surprise. It was disbelief. It was hope, the kind of hope that had been dead for so long its resurrection was indistinguishable from agony. It was joy and grief and guilt and love, all of them crashing together in the space of a single heartbeat.

His mouth moved. Formed the shape of your name. You could not hear it over the screaming, over the roaring of your own blood in your ears, but you saw it, saw the way his lips shaped the syllables he had not spoken in years, the name he had called across a hundred alleys and a hundred dark streets while he searched for you, the name he had whispered to himself in the long nights when he believed you were dead and gone and never coming back.

He surged against the guards holding him. Not fighting to escape now. Fighting to get to you. His massive shoulders bunched and heaved, nearly throwing off the two Kingsguard who were gripping his arms. A third lunged in to reinforce them, his white cloak tangling around his legs in his haste. Dunk did not seem to notice. He did not seem to feel the hands dragging at him or the knees pressing into his back or the captain's fist still grinding into his scalp. He was looking at you and only at you, and he was trying to reach you, trying to cross the impossible distance between the stage and the place where you stood with Rhaenyra in your arms.

You surged forward to meet him. You did not think about it. You did not calculate the odds or weigh the consequences. Your body moved before your mind could catch up, driven by an instinct older than thought, older than fear, older than anything you had learned in the years since they took you from the festival. Your brother was here. Your brother was alive.

Ser Harrold's arm locked around your waist like an iron bar. "Hold still," he snarled, and he was no longer calm now, no longer indifferent. He was struggling to hold you, struggling to keep his grip on a woman who had spent years learning to be still and silent and obedient and had finally, in this single shattering moment, forgotten how.

"Let me go!" The words tore out of your throat with a force that made your vision white out at the edges. Rhaenyra was screaming in your arms, her small fists beating against your shoulders, her voice a thin high wail that you could barely hear over the roaring in your ears. "Let me go, that's my brother, that's my brother, let me GO!"

"Aerion!" You were screaming his name now, the name of the man you loved, the name of the monster on the stage, the name of the only person in this pavilion who had the power to make the nightmare stop. "Aerion, please, please, you have to stop, he's my brother,please, Aerion, PLEASE!"

Aerion turned to look at you.

His face was still smeared with blood, his lip still split and swollen, his violet eyes still bright with the pleasure of the violence he had been orchestrating. But something flickered in their depths when he saw your face, when he registered the raw, unvarnished desperation in your voice. Confusion first. Then irritation, a flicker of the familiar petulance that crossed his features whenever something did not go the way he had planned. And then something else, something that chilled you more than any cruelty could have done.

Something calculating.

"What," he said, and his voice was a blade drawn slowly across a whetstone, "the fuck are you doing? What is she screaming about?"

You could barely form the words. Your throat was raw, your chest heaving, your arms trembling with the effort of holding Rhaenyra while Ser Harrold's grip threatened to crack your ribs. But you forced them out, forced them past the sobs that were building in your chest, forced them into the space between you and the man who held your brother's life in his bloodstained hands.

"He's my brother. He's my brother, Aerion." Your voice cracked on his name, splintered into something that was half a plea and half a prayer. "The brother I told you about. Dunk. The one I thought was dead. The one who raised me. Please. Please don't hurt him. I'll do anything. I'll give you anything. Just please, Aerion, please don't hurt my brother."

Something moved in Aerion's face. A muscle in his jaw jumped. His eyes narrowed, the bright pleasure of the violence draining out of them, replaced by something harder and colder and infinitely more dangerous. He looked at you, and he looked at Dunk, and he looked back at you, and you could see him putting the pieces together. The brother you had wept for in the dark hours of the night, the brother whose name you had whispered in your sleep, the brother Aerion had forbidden you from ever mentioning again.

The brother who was now on his knees in front of him, bloodied and defiant, the man who had dared to strike a prince of the blood, and his expression closed like a door slamming shut in a winter gale.

"Take her back to her chamber," Aerion said. He was not looking at you anymore. He was looking at Dunk, and his voice was utterly without warmth, utterly without the history that stretched between you, utterly without anything that might have been mistaken for mercy. "Lock the door. No one goes in or out until I give the order."

"No." The word was barely a whisper. Ser Harrold was already dragging you backward, his arm still locked around your waist, his heels digging into the trampled grass of the pavilion floor. "Aerion, no, please, you can't do this."

"Take the child to the nursery," Aerion continued, as if you had not spoken, as if your voice did not exist, as if you were already gone. "She does not need to see any more of this. Make sure she stays there."

"No!" The scream that tore out of you was not a sound. It was a living thing, a creature with claws and teeth and a heart full of desperation, and it ripped its way out of your throat and into the torchlit air of the pavilion with a force that made the nearest Kingsguard flinch. "You can't separate us! She's my daughter! She's MY daughter!"

Rhaenyra was shrieking now, a high thin sound that rose above the chaos like a needle sliding into flesh. Her arms were wrapped around your neck so tightly that you could feel her small fingernails digging crescents into your skin, and her legs were locked around your waist, and her face was buried in the curve of your shoulder, and she was screaming, screaming, screaming. "Mama, Mama, don't let them take me, Mama, please, I want to stay with you, Mama, MAMA!"

Ser Harrold was dragging you backward. Another guard, a man in the pale grey of Prince Maekar's household, was trying to untangle Rhaenyra from your arms. His hands were gentle, gentler than you had expected, but that gentleness made it worse somehow, made it more real, made it a kindness that was not a kindness at all. He was murmuring something to Rhaenyra, some meaningless reassurance that neither you nor she could hear over the screaming, and his fingers were prying at her small grip one digit at a time.

"Don't," you sobbed. "Don't take her. Please. Please don't take my daughter."

But your arms were being pulled backward, and your strength was failing, and Rhaenyra's grip was slipping. You felt her fingers lose their hold on your dress. Felt the warmth of her body pulled away from yours. Felt the cold air rush in to fill the space where she had been, and that cold was worse than any physical pain, worse than the bruises blooming on your arm where Ser Harrold held you, worse than the raw burning in your throat from screaming, worse than anything you had endured in the brothel or the alley or the long dark nights when you believed your brother was dead.

"RHAENYRA!"

She was being carried away, still reaching for you over the guard's shoulder, her silver-gold hair bright as a candle flame in the torchlight, her violet eyes wide and streaming with tears. "Mama! I want my mama! Give me back my mama!"

You fought. You fought the way Dunk had fought, with every ounce of strength in your body, with your teeth and your nails and your fury. You twisted in Ser Harrold's grip and raked your nails across his face, felt the skin of his cheek tear beneath your fingers, felt the hot wet rush of his blood against your palm. He cursed and tightened his hold, and something in your side gave way with a sharp bright spike of agony, but you did not stop. You could not stop. Your daughter was being taken from you, your brother was on his knees with a prince's boot on his neck, and the world was ending, and you could not stop.

And then, cutting through the chaos like a blade through silk, a young voice rang out across the pavilion.

"No! Don't touch him!"

Everyone froze. The Kingsguard with his bare hands paused mid-motion, his knuckles inches from Dunk's clenched jaw. The captain's grip on Dunk's hair loosened slightly in surprise. Even Aerion turned, his bloodied mouth twisting into an expression of annoyed bewilderment.

The boy who stepped forward from the chaos of the crowd was small, skinny, with a shaved head that gleamed in the torchlight like a polished stone. He could not have been more than nine or ten years old, and he moved with the absolute, unshakeable confidence of someone who had never been told that the world did not bend to his will. He was bald and his clothes were the roughspun of a stable boy, dirty and sweat-stained, but he wore them like a prince wearing borrowed silks.

Dunk's voice was a ragged gasp, desperate and afraid in a way it had not been when the Kingsguard were beating him. "You stupid boy! Hold your tongue or they'll hurt you."

The boy did not slow. He did not even glance at Dunk. His eyes were fixed on Aerion, and there was something in them that made the prince's expression flicker with the first hint of uncertainty you had seen all night.

"No, they won't," the boy said, and his voice was calm, steady, the voice of someone stating a fact as immutable as the rising of the sun. "If they do, they'll answer to my father."

He stepped past the Kingsguard as if they were not there, as if the white cloaks and the white armor and the drawn swords were no more substantial than morning mist. He stopped directly in front of Aerion, this small bald boy in dirty clothes, and he lifted his chin and looked the prince full in the face.

"Let go of him," the boy commanded. "Wate, Yorkel, do as I say."

And the Kingsguard obeyed.

The captain released Dunk's hair. The other guards stepped back, their hands falling away from his arms and shoulders, their white helms inclining slightly in gestures of deference that stopped your heart in your chest. They knew this boy. They knew him, and they obeyed him, and that could only mean one thing.

Aerion stared at the boy. His violet eyes narrowed, studying the shaved head, the dirty clothes, the small defiant face that was upturned to his own. And then, slowly, recognition dawned across his bloodied features like a sluggish sunrise. It was followed immediately by annoyance, a deep and profound irritation that seemed to cut through even the pleasure he had been taking in the violence moments before.

"You impudent little rat," Aerion said. His voice dripped with contempt, but beneath it lurked something else, something that sounded almost like wariness. "What's happened to your hair?"

The boy did not flinch. He did not blink. He looked at Aerion with the steady, unblinking gaze of someone who had spent his entire life watching and learning and understanding things that others missed, and when he spoke, his voice carried the unmistakable weight of royal blood.

"I cut it off, brother," he said. "I didn't want to look like you."

Brother. The word landed in the center of the pavilion like a stone dropped into still water. Brother. This boy, this small bald boy in stable clothes, was Aerion's brother. Which meant he was Prince Aegon Targaryen, the youngest of Prince Maekar's sons, the one you had glimpsed occasionally in the corridors of Summerhall, the one who had looked at you like you were a puzzle he was trying to solve.

And he had just intervened to save your brother's life. The revelation halted the attack instantly. The Kingsguard could not carry out Aerion's orders now. Not against a man who was connected, through his squire, to the royal family. Not against a man who was protected by a prince of the blood, however young and however bald and however inexplicably dressed in the roughspun of a stable hand. The captain stepped back further, his white cloak settling around him like folded wings, and the other guards followed suit, leaving Dunk kneeling alone on the stage.

Aerion's face was a study in frustration. The pleasure had drained out of him entirely now, replaced by a seething, impotent fury that he could not express without defying his own brother, his own blood, in front of half a dozen witnesses. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. The blood from his split lip still dripped down his chin, and his violet eyes were dark with a rage that had no outlet.

But he was a prince, and he knew the rules, and striking a man who was connected to the royal family was a crime that even he could not simply burn his way out of.

"Take him to the cells," Aerion said finally, and his voice was flat and cold and utterly drained of the pleasure that had animated it before. "He struck a prince of the blood. That crime remains regardless of whose squire the little rat has chosen to become. He will await trial and judgment, and lock her in her chamber."

Ser Harrold hauled you backward through the ruins of the pavilion. Your legs gave out beneath you, and he dragged you the rest of the way, your heels scraping furrows in the trampled grass, your head lolling against his shoulder, your voice reduced to a raw and wordless keening that did not stop. You passed overturned benches. You passed torn silk and scattered cushions and a child's abandoned shoe.

The last thing you saw before the tent flap closed behind you was Aerion. He was still standing on the stage, his red tunic splattered with blood, his face a mask of cold, distant contemplation. He was not looking at you. He was looking at the place where Dunk had disappeared, and there was something in his expression that you had never seen before. Something that went beyond jealousy, beyond possessiveness, beyond the casual cruelty of a man who had never been denied anything.

He looked like a dragon counting its hoard, and finding a single coin out of place.

—

The door slammed shut behind you with a finality that echoed through your bones.

You had screamed until your voice gave out. You had beaten your fists against the iron banded oak until your knuckles split and bled, leaving dark smears on the wood that looked like accusations. You had thrown yourself at the door again and again, your shoulder bruising, your strength ebbing, until finally your legs had given way beneath you and you had slid to the cold stone floor with your back against the unforgiving wood and your face buried in your bleeding hands.

Rhaenyra was gone. Dunk was gone. Everyone you had ever loved had been ripped away from you in the space of a single night, and you were locked in a borrowed chamber in a borrowed castle with nothing but the silence and the dark and the terrible, circling thoughts that would not let you rest.

You pressed your forehead against your knees and tried to breathe.The hours crawled past like wounded animals dragging themselves toward death. You did not move from your place against the door. You did not lie down on the bed, though it was soft and wide and covered in Ashford's finest linens. You did not drink the water that had been left on the side table, though your throat was raw and burning from screaming. You simply sat, curled into yourself, and waited.

For Aerion. For news. For something, anything, that would tell you what was going to happen next. You thought about the look on Dunk's face when he recognized you. The shock. The joy. The desperate, agonized love. What must he have thought? What must he have assumed about you, about your life, about the choices that had led you to this place?

The shame of it burned in your chest like swallowed fire.

You did not know how long you sat there. It might have been hours. It might have been minutes. Time had lost all meaning in the darkness of the chamber, with the candles unlit and the fire unbuilt and the only light coming from the pale sliver of moon that crept through the narrow window high in the wall. But eventually, eventually, you heard the sound you had been dreading and hoping for in equal measure.

Footsteps in the corridor. Boots on stone, deliberate and unhurried, the particular cadence of a man who knew that the world would wait for him. The jingle of a sword at the hip. The faint, almost imperceptible sound of a key turning in a lock.

The door swung inward, and Aerion Targaryen stepped into the room.

He had cleaned the blood from his face since you last saw him. His lip was still swollen. His silver gold hair had been combed back from his face, still damp from washing. He had changed his clothes; replaced by a simple black doublet that made his pale skin look almost luminous in the moonlight. He looked almost calm. Almost controlled. But his violet eyes were too bright, too sharp, the eyes of a man who was holding onto his composure by the thinnest of threads.

He closed the door behind him. You heard the lock click into place.

"My dragon," you said, and your voice came out as a croak, raw and broken from screaming. You tried to rise to your feet, but your legs would not hold you, so you remained on the floor, your back against the wall, your hands still stained with your own blood. "Aerion, please. Please tell me what's happening. My brother. Where is my brother? Is he all right? What are they going to do to him?"

The change that came over Aerion's face was instantaneous and terrifying. The careful mask of composure cracked like ice hit by a hammer. His jaw tightened. His eyes narrowed. His hands, which had been relaxed at his sides, curled slowly into fists.

"I come to you," he said, and his voice was a blade being drawn from its sheath, slow and deliberate and full of promise, "after being attacked in front of half the nobility of the Reach. My lip is split open. My tooth is loose in my skull. My dignity has been trampled by some hedge knight with dirt under his fingernails and hay in his hair. And the first words out of your mouth are not 'Are you all right, my prince?' Not 'Let me tend your wounds, my love.' Not a single word of comfort or concern for me, the man who saved you from a brothel, the father of your child, the prince who has kept you fed and clothed and protected for years."

He took a step toward you. Then another. His shadow fell across you like a shroud, blocking out the pale moonlight, plunging you into darkness.

"Your first words," he said, and his voice was rising now, climbing toward a register you had learned to fear, "are about him. A stranger. A man who struck me. A man who loosened my tooth and spilled my blood in front of the Kingsguard. That is who you ask about. That is who you care about. Not me. Not your prince. Not the father of your child. Him."

"He's not a stranger," you said, and your voice was barely a whisper. You knew you should stop. You knew you should placate him, soothe him, tell him everything he wanted to hear. That was what you had done for years, what you had become so skilled at doing. But you could not. Not tonight. Not with Dunk's face still burned into your memory like a brand. "He's my brother, Aerion. He's my brother. He raised me. He protected me, and you have him locked in a cell like a criminal. Please. Please, just tell me he's all right. Just tell me you haven't hurt him."

Aerion stared at you for a long moment. The torch from the corridor outside cast his shadow long and dark across the floor, stretching toward you like a grasping hand. His breathing was audible in the silence, harsh and uneven, the breathing of a man who was losing a battle with his own rage.

"You love him," he said finally. The words were flat, toneless, utterly without inflection. "This brother of yours. This hedge knight with his dirty hands and his dirty hair. You love him more than you love me."

"That's not true," you said, and it was the truth and it was a lie and it was everything in between. "I love you, Aerion. You know I love you. But he's my brother. He's my blood. I thought he was dead. I mourned him for years. And now he's here, and he's alive, and I just want to know that he's safe. That's all. I just want to know that he's safe. Please."

"Safe." Aerion repeated the word as if it were a foreign language, a concept he had heard described but never experienced. "Safe. You want to know if the man who struck me is safe. You want to know if the man who humiliated me in front of my family and my father is safe."

He laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. It was the sound of something breaking.

"You're mine," he said, and his voice cracked on the word, splintering into something that was half rage and half desperation. "You have been mine since the night I bought you. I paid fifty gold dragons for you. I burned down a brothel for you. I gave you a home, a place in my household, a daughter who bears my name. I have given you everything. Everything. And you stand there, bleeding on my floor, asking about another man."

"I'm not standing," you whispered, and you did not know why that was the detail you chose to focus on. He crossed the distance between you in three swift strides. His hand closed around your arm, hauling you upright with a strength that would leave bruises, and you cried out as the blood rushed back to your legs and the pain in your side flared white hot.

"You are mine," he said again, and his face was inches from yours, his violet eyes blazing with a fire you had seen directed at others but never, never at you. Not like this. Not with this intensity. Not with this complete and absolute absence of restraint. "Say it. Say you're mine."

"I'm yours," you gasped. His grip on your arm was agony, his fingers digging into the bruises Ser Harrold had left, and tears were streaming down your face. "Aerion, please, you're hurting me."

"Good." He shook you, once, hard enough that your head snapped back and hit the stone wall behind you. Stars burst across your vision. "Good. Maybe if I hurt you enough, you'll remember who you belong to. Maybe if I hurt you enough, you'll stop asking about other men. Maybe if I hurt you enough, you'll finally understand that the only way you leave me is in a shroud."

"My brother," you sobbed. "He's my brother. Not another man. My brother. Please, Aerion, please try to understand."

"I understand perfectly." His free hand came up to grip your chin, forcing your face toward his, forcing you to look into his eyes. "I understand that you have spent years telling me you loved me while you dreamed of someone else. I understand that the moment he appeared, you forgot everything I have done for you. I understand that you are a whore I pulled from a brothel, and no matter how many silk dresses I put on you, no matter how much of myself I pour into you, you will never, ever stop being what you are."

The words hit you like physical blows. Each one was a fist to the gut, a slap to the face, a knife slipped between your ribs. You had known, intellectually, that this was how he saw you. You had always known. But hearing it spoken aloud, hearing it thrown at you like an accusation, like a crime you had committed against him simply by existing, was something else entirely.

"Aerion," you whispered, and your voice was so small, so broken, that you barely recognized it as your own. "I have never been unfaithful to you. I have never looked at another man. I have never wanted anyone but you. He is my brother. My brother. Why can't you understand that?"

"Because I don't care!" He screamed the words directly into your face, his spittle flecking your cheeks, his breath hot and sour with wine and blood. "I don't care who he is! I don't care if he's your brother or your father or your long lost lover! The moment you chose him over me, the moment you screamed his name instead of mine, the moment you fought my guards and clawed Ser Harrold's face to try to reach him, you made your choice! And now you will live with it!"

His hand released your chin and came across your face with a crack that seemed to echo off the stone walls.

The backhand caught you across the cheekbone, hard enough to snap your head to the side, hard enough to send a spray of blood from your already split lip, hard enough that your legs gave out beneath you entirely. You fell. You did not fall gracefully, did not fall the way women fell in the songs Dunk used to tell you, floating down like petals on a breeze. You fell like a sack of grain, heavy and graceless, your hip striking the stone floor with a jolt of pain that made you gasp, your palms scraping raw against the cold flagstones, your already injured side screaming in protest as you landed.

You lay there for a moment, stunned. The taste of blood filled your mouth, copper and salt and something that might have been despair. The world swam in and out of focus. The moonlight from the window seemed very far away, a distant silver promise of a world that existed somewhere beyond this room, beyond this night, beyond the man who was standing over you with his chest heaving and his eyes blazing.

Then he was on top of you. His weight pressed you into the cold stone floor, heavy and immovable, the weight of a man who had trained with sword and shield and lance, the weight of a prince who had never been denied anything in his life. His knees pinned your thighs. One hand caught both of your wrists and forced them above your head, pressing them into the stone with a grip that made your fingers go numb. His other hand was at your throat, not squeezing, not yet, just resting there, a reminder, a threat, a promise.

"You're my whore," he said, and his voice was a growl, low and guttural and utterly without the cultured refinement he wore like armor in the daylight. "Mine. You have been mine since the night I bought you, and you will be mine until the day you die. Do you understand? Do you understand what that means?"

"Get off me," you gasped. Your voice was barely audible, strangled by the hand at your throat and the weight on your chest. "Aerion, please, get off me, I can't breathe."

"It means," he continued, as if you had not spoken, as if your words were less than nothing, as if your voice did not exist in any way that mattered, "that I own you. Your body. Your heart. Your soul. Every breath you take, you take because I allow it. Every night you sleep in a warm bed, you sleep there because I permit it. Every moment you spend with our daughter, you spend because I have chosen to let you. And the only way you leave me, the only way you ever leave me, is if you are dead. Do you understand? Dead."

He was tearing at your dress as he spoke, the silk that he had given you, the dress he had chosen, the dress you had worn to the puppet show, the dress Rhaenyra's tears had soaked through. You heard the fabric rip, felt the cold air on your skin, and you found what remained of your strength and pushed against him. Your hands were still pinned above your head, but you bucked your hips, twisted your body, tried to throw him off the way Dunk had thrown off the Kingsguard.

It was useless. It was always useless. He was stronger than you, heavier than you, and he had the advantage of gravity and rage and years of training in violence that you had never received. He pressed you back down against the stone, and his hand left your throat to grip your jaw, forcing your face toward his, forcing you to look into his eyes.

"Say it," he demanded. "Say you're mine. Say you belong to me. Say that no one else matters. Not your brother. Not anyone. Say it."

You did not say it. You could not say it. The words were locked in your throat, trapped behind the tears and the blood and the terrible, crushing weight of what was happening to you.

You tried to squeeze your legs shut, but his knee drove between them, forcing them wide. He was hard and the sight of his cock made your stomach turn.

"Look at it," he hissed, grabbing a fistful of your hair and yanking your head forward. "Look at what you made me do. This is your fault. If you had just obeyed—"

He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to. He pressed the head of his cock against your entrance, already sore and swollen from the first time, and you whimpered, a high, broken sound that seemed to please him. He held there, just barely breaching you, letting you feel the pressure, the promise of invasion.

"Please," you whispered, your voice cracked and raw. "Please, Aerion, please don't—"

He thrust.

The sound you made was not a scream. It was something worse, a choked, guttural sob that tore from your throat as he buried himself inside you in one brutal push. The angle was wrong, too deep, too dry despite the precum already coating your thighs. You felt every ridge and vein of his cock as it forced its way deeper, splitting you open, claiming space that did not want him.

He paused, buried to the hilt, and let out a low groan that was almost human. Almost tender. Then he began to move.

Not fast. Not yet. He fucked you slowly, deliberately, with a cruelty that made every inch of the motion deliberate. He pulled almost all the way out, then slid back in with excruciating leisure, watching your face contort with each stroke. His eyes were locked on yours, challenging you to look away.

You did. You turned your head, pressing your cheek against the cold stone, staring at a crack in the floor until your vision blurred. But he would not allow that. He grabbed your jaw, forced your face back to his.

"Watch," he commanded. "Watch me take what is mine."

His pace increased. The slow, torturous rhythm gave way to a sharp, punishing fucking that drove the air from your lungs with every slam of his hips. The wet slap of skin against skin echoed off the walls, mingling with your ragged breaths and his grunts. He leaned down, his chest pressing against yours, and bit your shoulder, not a kiss, a bite, hard enough to break skin. You cried out, and he licked the blood, humming in satisfaction.

"That's it," he whispered against your ear, his breath hot and uneven. "Make sound for me. Let the whole castle hear how much you hate it. Let them know who you belong to."

He drove deeper, harder, angling his hips to hit that spot inside you that made your back arch despite yourself. A spark of unwanted pleasure shot through your pelvis, and you bit your lip so hard you tasted copper. He noticed. Of course he noticed. He slowed down, grinding against that same spot, watching your body betray you as your hips began to rock in counterpoint to his thrusts.

"There she is," he breathed, almost reverent. "There's the whore underneath. You can't hide her from me. She wants this. She needs this."

"No," you gasped, but your body said yes, clenching around him, drawing him deeper. Hot shame flooded through you, hotter than the pain, as your cunt began to slick with something that was not blood. He felt it too, he groaned, his rhythm faltering, his grip on your hips tightening.

"I'm going to fill you," he snarled, his composure cracking. "I'm going to pour every drop of my seed into this worthless hole until you're pregnant with my heir, a son this time, and then I'll do it again. And again. And—"

He came without warning, a guttural roar tearing from his throat as he shoved himself as deep as he could go, his hips stuttering, his cock pulsing inside you. You felt the hot flood of his cum, felt it spill out around him, felt it mix with the blood and your own unwanted wetness. He collapsed on top of you, his full weight pressing you into the stone, his breath hot and ragged against your neck.

For a long moment, neither of you moved. Then he shifted, pulling out with a wet sound that made you flinch, and rolled onto his back beside you. The moonlight had moved, illuminating his face now haunted gleam in his violet eyes that looked almost like regret.

But you knew better. You knew he would do it again. And again. And again. Because in his world, you were already dead. You just hadn't stopped breathing yet.

He did not speak. Neither did you. You lay on the cold stone floor with your torn dress twisted around your body and your wrists still aching from his grip and your thighs slick with the evidence of what he had done, and you stared at the ceiling, and you thought of nothing at all.

After a long time Aerion rose to his feet. He straightened his clothes with mechanical precision, adjusting his doublet, smoothing his hair back from his face. He did not look at you. He did not offer you a hand to help you up. He did not speak a single word of apology or comfort or explanation.

"Your brother will stand trial," he said, and his voice was the voice of a stranger, flat and cold and utterly devoid of the passion that had consumed him moments before. "For striking a prince of the blood. The sentence will be severe. How severe depends entirely on you."

He paused at the door, his hand on the latch, his back to you.

"If you try to see him again," he said, "if you try to contact him, if you so much as speak his name in my presence, I will have him executed. Do you understand? His life is in your hands. Remember that."

The remainder of the night passed in darkness. You did not move from the floor. You could not move from the floor. The torn silk of your dress had dried stiff and crusted against your skin, and you had not bothered to cover yourself. There was no one to see. There was no one to care. The moonlight crawled across the stone floor inch by inch, and you watched it the way a corpse might watch the shifting of its own shroud, with a detachment that went beyond despair into something vast and empty and still.

Morning came grey and cold through the narrow window. The sky outside was the color of old iron, heavy with clouds that had not yet decided whether to rain. You heard the castle waking around you. Footsteps in the corridor. The distant clang of the blacksmith's hammer. Servants calling to one another in voices too muffled to understand. The tourney, you remembered dimly. The tourney was still happening. Lord Ashford's daughter still needed her champion. The world was still turning, indifferent to the ruin of your life.

Someone brought food. You heard the door unlock, heard the tray scrape against the stone as it was pushed inside, heard the door lock again. You did not get up to look at it. The smell of bread and broth turned your stomach. You had not eaten since the puppet show, since before the puppet show, since the garden when Rhaenyra had found the pink flower and you had believed, foolishly and desperately, that everything would be all right.

The morning wore on. The light shifted. The clouds outside the window thickened and darkened and began to spit a thin, miserable drizzle that streaked the glass like tears.

And then, sometime in the afternoon, you heard the commotion.

It started as a distant murmur, a disturbance somewhere in the lower levels of the castle that grew louder and more urgent as it climbed toward your door. Shouts. Running footsteps. The clash of something metallic hitting stone. You lifted your head from the floor for the first time in hours, your neck aching, your vision swimming. Something was happening. Something was wrong.

The door crashed open. It was not Aerion who entered first but a maester, an old man in grey robes with a heavy chain around his neck and blood on his sleeves up to the elbows. Behind him came two guards, household men in the pale grey of Prince Maekar's service, carrying between them a litter on which lay a figure you recognized only by the silver gold of his hair.

Aerion. He was unconscious. His face was nearly unrecognizable. His lip had been split anew, a fresh gash that ran up toward his cheekbone. One of his eyes was swollen shut, the skin around it purple and black and glistening with some kind of salve. His chest was bare beneath a makeshift bandage that wrapped around his ribs, and the bandage was soaked through with blood, bright red and seeping, the color of life escaping. His right arm lay at an angle that was not natural, and his breathing was shallow and labored and made a wet, rattling sound that turned your stomach even as it ignited something else in your chest. Something you did not want to name. Something you did not want to feel.

You scrambled backward on the floor until your shoulder blades hit the wall. Your torn dress bunched around your knees. Your hands came up in front of you, a defensive gesture that was pure instinct, the instinct of a woman who had spent the night being broken and had no more pieces left to give.

"What," you said, and your voice came out as a croak, barely recognizable. "What happened? What is this?"

The maester did not look at you. He was directing the guards to lay the litter on the bed, his hands already reaching for the blood soaked bandages, already issuing orders about hot water and clean linen and milk of the poppy. But one of the guards, a young man whose face was pale and shocked and streaked with someone else's blood, paused long enough to answer.

"Trial of the Seven," he said, and the words meant nothing to you. "The prince demanded it. Against the hedge knight."

"Trial of the Seven?" The phrase was foreign, nonsensical, a collection of syllables that refused to resolve into meaning. "What are you talking about? What trial? What hedge knight?"

The maester looked up from his work at last. "The hedge knight," he said, and his voice was clipped and efficient, the voice of a man who did not have time for explanations. "Ser Duncan the Tall. The hedge knight demanded a trial by combat. The prince escalated it to a Trial of the Seven. Fourteen knights in the lists. The hedge knight's side won, but the prince was wounded. Gravely wounded. We have done what we can for the immediate injuries, but when he regained consciousness briefly, he insisted, quite forcefully, that he be brought to you. He said he wanted you to be his primary caretaker."

The words washed over you in a tide of incomprehensible information. Trial of the Seven. Fourteen knights. The hedge knight's side won. Dunk's side. Dunk had won. Your brother had won. Your brother was alive and he had won his trial and he was free, he must be free, because if the hedge knight's side had won the trial then the gods had judged him innocent.

But Aerion was on your bed with his ribs crushed and his arm broken and his face beaten into something barely human, and he had asked for you. Even after what he had done to you on this very floor. Even after the things he had said, the things he had called you, the violence he had visited upon your body. He had regained consciousness long enough to demand that you, and no one else, be the one to care for him.

You stared at the maester. The maester stared back at you, and something in his expression softened, just slightly, at whatever he saw in your face. Perhaps it was the bruises on your wrists. Perhaps it was the torn dress. Perhaps it was the way you sat huddled against the wall like a wounded animal that had learned to expect only more pain.

"I have done what I can for the immediate wounds," the maester said again, more slowly this time. "The prince will live, though his recovery will be long and painful. But he needs constant care. Someone to change his bandages, to administer his medicine, to watch for fever. He asked for you. Given his condition and his royal status, we are not inclined to refuse him."

You looked at the figure on the bed. The man who had raped you on the stone floor less than a day ago. The father of your daughter. The monster you loved. The prince who had promised to execute your brother if you so much as spoke his name. He lay unconscious and broken, his breath rattling in his chest, and you were being told that you would be his caretaker. That you would sit by his bedside and change his bandages and mop his brow and listen to him breathe.

The absurd cruelty of it was almost beautiful, in its way. A kind of poetry written in blood and bruises and the particular viciousness of men who believed they owned the women they had purchased.

"Leave us," you said, and your voice did not sound like your own. It sounded like the voice of someone much older, someone who had survived worse things than this and would survive worse things still. "I will care for him."

The maester hesitated. "My lady, there are instructions I must give you regarding the dressing of his wounds. The risk of infection is significant, and the milk of the poppy must be administered precisely. Too much will stop his breathing. Too little and the pain will be excruciating. Do you understand?"

"I understand," you said, though you understood nothing. You understood only that your brother was alive and free, and the man who had destroyed you was lying broken on your bed, and you were supposed to heal him. You were supposed to sit beside him and tend his wounds and keep him alive so that he could continue to own you, continue to threaten you, continue to hold your brother's life in his hands like a coin he might spend on a whim.

The maester gave you his instructions. You listened with half an ear, nodding in the appropriate places, filing the information away in a part of your mind that was still functioning, still capable of processing data and making decisions. Change the bandages every four hours. Watch for red streaks radiating from the wounds. Administer the milk of the poppy in doses measured by the small copper cup on the bedside table. If he wakes, give him water. If he develops a fever, send for the maester immediately.

And then they were gone, the maester and the guards, and the door was closed, and you were alone with him.

You stood in the center of the room for a long time, staring at the bed. At the rise and fall of his chest beneath the bloodied bandages. At the hand that lay limp and pale against the silk sheets, the hand that had struck you across the face, the hand that had pinned your wrists above your head, the hand that had held your chin and forced you to look into his eyes while he destroyed you.

You could let him die.

The thought came to you fully formed, as if it had been waiting in the back of your mind all along, biding its time. You could let him die. The maester had left you with the milk of the poppy and precise instructions about dosage. You could administer too much, or too little. You could neglect to change his bandages and let the infection take hold. You could hold a pillow over his face while he slept and press down until the ragged breathing stopped forever. There was no one else in the room. There were no guards at your door, not anymore. You could end this. You could end him. You could free yourself and your daughter and your brother with a single act of will.

You looked at the copper cup on the bedside table. You looked at the pillow beneath his head. You looked at your own hands, still bruised, still crusted with your own blood, still capable of doing what needed to be done.

And then you crossed the room, and you sat down in the chair beside his bed, and you began to prepare the first dose of milk of the poppy with hands that did not tremble at all.

If you let him die now, his father would investigate. There would be questions. There had been a maester here, and guards, and they had seen you alone with him. If Aerion died under your care, the blame would fall on you. You would be executed, or worse. And Rhaenyra would have no mother at all.

Not yet. But the knowledge was there now, a small cold seed planted in the dark soil of your heart. Not yet. But someday, perhaps. Someday, if the opportunity presented itself, if the circumstances aligned, if you could be certain of escaping the consequences. Someday, you might be free of him.

—

The days that followed blurred together like watercolors left in the rain. You were not permitted to leave the room. Aerion made that clear the first time you asked, your voice carefully neutral, your eyes on the floor. He had been awake for perhaps an hour, propped up on pillows that you had arranged behind his back with your own hands, his broken arm splinted and bound, his ribs wrapped tight in fresh linen. His face was still a ruin of purple and black and sickly yellow green, his lip still split, his eye still swollen half-shut. But his voice had lost none of its edge.

"Leave?" He had laughed, a humorless sound that turned into a wince as his ribs protested. "Why would you need to leave? Everything you require is here. Food will be brought. Water for washing. Fresh bandages from the maester. You have no reason to go anywhere."

"Aerion, please. I only want to see Rhaenyra. Just for an hour. Just to hold her and know she's all right. She must be so frightened. She's only two years old. She doesn't understand why her mother disappeared."

His expression had darkened, a cloud passing over the sun. "The child is fine. She is being cared for by the nurses. She does not need you hovering over her like a hen with one chick. What she needs is a father who is not an invalid, and what I need is a caretaker who does not spend every waking moment asking to leave."

"Aerion..."

"Enough." The word was a door slamming shut. "You will stay here. You will tend to my wounds. You will keep me company. You will not leave this room unless I give you permission. Is that understood?"

So you stayed. You woke when he woke, which was often, his sleep broken by pain and fever and the strange, feverish dreams that made him thrash and cry out in the darkness. You changed his bandages with the careful precision the maester had taught you, peeling back the old linen, examining the wounds for signs of infection, applying the salves and poultices with gentle fingers. You fed him broth when he could eat, spooning it into his ruined mouth one careful measure at a time. You helped him with the bedpan when he needed it, a humiliation that made his jaw tighten and his eyes go cold, as if his body's weakness were a personal insult you had somehow engineered.

You did all of this in silence, for the most part. He did not want conversation. He did not want to be soothed or coddled or reassured. The man who had craved praise like a drug, who had turned toward your words like a flower toward the sun, was gone. In his place was a creature of pure, distilled bitterness, a man whose humiliation had curdled inside him until it became something toxic.

He had lost. That was the core of it, the wound beneath the wounds. He had been beaten by a hedge knight in front of half the nobility of the Reach, and then he had demanded a Trial of the Seven, the most sacred and dramatic form of combat the gods permitted, and he had lost that too. His side had lost. The gods themselves had declared against him, had declared in favor of the dirt-smeared giant who had loosened his tooth and spilled his blood and stolen his dignity. Aerion Targaryen, the prince who had burned a man alive for making a joke, the prince who had broken a puppeteer's fingers for telling the wrong story, the prince who believed with every fiber of his being that he was a dragon in human form, had been brought low by a nameless hedge knight with hay in his hair and dirt under his nails.

And you, who had witnessed the beginning of that humiliation, had become the vessel into which he poured all his bile.

"I should have you hanged for being related to that oaf." His hand shot out and closed around your wrist, hard enough to make you freeze. "Why would a brother fight like that? Why would a brother look at a sister like that? Tell me the truth. Was he your lover before he was your brother? Did you share a bed in the slums of Flea Bottom, before I found you?"

The accusation was so vile, so utterly, grotesquely wrong, that for a moment you could not speak at all. You could only stare at him, at his swollen face and his blazing eyes and the jealousy that was consuming him from the inside out like a fire that would not be quenched.

"He is my brother," you said, and your voice was quiet and steady and utterly without the rage that was boiling in your chest. "My brother. My blood.Nothing more. Nothing less. I have never lain with him. I have never wanted to. The very thought is disgusting to me, and it should be disgusting to you too."

Aerion held your gaze for a long moment. Then he released your wrist and turned his face away.

"Finish the bandage," he said, and said nothing more for the rest of the day.

Sometimes, rarely, they brought Rhaenyra to see you. It was never for long. Ten minutes, fifteen, never more than half an hour. A servant would bring her to the door, and she would run across the room on her unsteady two year old legs, bewildered relief of a child who did not understand why her mother had vanished from her life. You would scoop her up and hold her against your chest and breathe in the smell of her, that particular sweetness of soap and milk and sunshine that you had missed like a severed limb.

"Mama," she would say, her small hands patting your face, your hair, your shoulders, as if reassuring herself you were real. "Mama, where did you go? I looked for you. I cried and cried but you didn't come."

"Mama was taking care of your father," you would say, and your voice would be steady even though your heart was breaking. "Your father is very sick, sweetling. He needs Mama's help. But Mama loves you. Mama thinks about you every moment. Do you understand? Every single moment."

She would nod, her small face solemn, and then she would launch into a breathless account of everything she had done since she saw you last. The bird she had seen on the windowsill. The game the nurses had taught her. The dreams she had dreamed. You drank in every word like water in a desert, memorizing the cadence of her voice, the animation of her expressions, the way her tiny hands moved when she was telling a particularly exciting part.

And then Aerion would stir in the bed behind you, and the servant would step forward, and Rhaenyra would be lifted from your arms.

"No," you would say, every time, reaching for her even as the servant pulled her away. "Please, just a few more minutes. Just a little longer. She's only just arrived."

"Prince's orders," the servant would say, and the door would close, and you would be alone with him again.

The nights were the worst.

During the day, Aerion was mostly manageable. Irritable, demanding, prone to dark silences and darker accusations, but manageable. You could distract yourself with the work of caring for him, the constant rhythm of bandages and medicine and meals. You could count the hours until the next time Rhaenyra might be brought to you. You could lose yourself in the small, finite tasks that kept your hands busy and your mind from wandering to places it should not go.

But at night, when the candles burned low and the fire died to embers and the only sound was the soft, labored rhythm of his breathing, the monster in him stirred.

It started on the fourth night. You had been dozing in the chair beside his bed, your neck cricked at an awkward angle, your body aching for the comfort of a proper mattress. You were dreaming of the garden, of Rhaenyra's laughter, of pink flowers crushed beneath bare feet. And then a hand closed around your forearm, and you were jolted awake with a gasp.

Aerion was looking at you from the bed. His eyes were fever bright in the near darkness, and his hand was hot and dry against your skin. The blanket had slipped down to his waist, and you could see the bandages around his ribs, the splint on his arm, the bruises that spread across his torso like storm clouds. But you could also see, in the shadows beneath the blanket, the unmistakable evidence of his arousal.

"Come here," he said. His voice was hoarse, rough with pain and desire in equal measure. "I need you."

"Aerion," you said carefully, "you're injured. The maester said you need to rest. You could reopen your wounds. You could..."

"I don't care what the maester said." His grip on your arm tightened. "I've been lying in this bed for four days. I've lost everything. My pride. The hedge knight walks free, and I am trapped in this room like a cripple. The least you can do," and his voice hardened on the words, "is give me this."

"You're not well. Please, just wait until you're stronger. I promise, when you're healed..."

"When I am healed, I will take what I want anyway." He pulled you closer, and you could smell the sourness of his breath, the stale sweat of his unwashed body, the cloying sweetness of the milk of the poppy that still lingered on his tongue. "But I want it now. I have spent four days flat on my back like a turtle overturned, watching you flutter around me with your careful hands and your careful voice and your careful eyes that never quite meet mine. I know what you think of me. I know what you think when you look at me. You think I'm a monster. You think I got what I deserved."

"No," you whispered, but it was a lie and you both knew it.

"Yes," he said. "You do. And I don't care. You can hate me all you like, in the privacy of your own mind. But you are mine.Now. Come. Here."

He could not be rough with you, not in his condition. His broken arm lay useless at his side, and his bandaged ribs prevented any sudden movement. But he did not need to be rough to make you feel the weight of your captivity. He directed you with his voice, that voice you had once praised and soothed and loved, telling you where to touch him, how to move, what he wanted from you. He could not take you the way he had on the stone floor, could not pin you down and force himself inside you while you sobbed and pushed at his chest. But he could make you take him in your mouth while he lay back against the pillows with his eyes half closed and his hand tangled in your hair. He could make you straddle him carefully, carefully, moving with the slow precision his injuries demanded, while his one good hand gripped your hip hard enough to bruise.

"That's it," he murmured, his voice thick with pleasure and pain and the strange, twisted satisfaction of ownership. "That's my good girl. My sweet girl. You know what I need. You always know what I need."

"Now you should rest." He was already drifting, the exertion combined with the milk of the poppy pulling him back toward unconsciousness.

"You're the only one," he mumbled, his voice slurring with sleep. "The only one who stays. The only one who doesn't leave. Don't leave me. Promise you won't leave."

You did not promise. You dried your hands on a cloth and returned to the chair beside his bed, and you watched him sleep, and you thought about the copper cup of milk of the poppy on the bedside table, and you thought about what it would be like to be free.

—

The servant came for you on the seventh day. You were sitting in the chair beside Aerion's bed, your hands idle in your lap for the first time in what felt like years. He was sleeping deeply, the milk of the poppy dragging him down into a place where even his dreams could not reach him.

The door opened without a knock. You turned, expecting another servant with a tray of food, another maester with fresh bandages, another summons from the nurses saying Rhaenyra was crying for you and would not be soothed. But the woman who stood in the doorway was not a servant you recognized.

"Prince Maekar requests your presence," she said. Her voice was flat, neutral, the voice of a woman delivering a message she did not fully understand. "You are to come with me immediately."

You stared at her. Prince Maekar. The man who had called you a whore to your face, who had forbidden you from speaking to his children, who had looked at you for years with an expression of cold, unwavering contempt. He had never once spoken to you directly, had never acknowledged your existence except as a problem to be managed. And now he was summoning you?

"Prince Maekar," you repeated, and your voice came out uncertain, almost afraid. "Why would Prince Maekar want to see me?"

The servant's expression did not change. "I was not told, my lady. Only that you are to come at once. Prince Aerion is sleeping. He will not miss you. Please, follow me."

You looked back at the bed. Aerion's chest rose and fell in the slow, steady rhythm of deep sleep. His good hand was curled loosely on the pillow beside his face, his fingers twitching slightly as he dreamed. If you left and he woke to find you gone, there would be consequences. There were always consequences. But the servant was watching you with her sharp grey eyes, and something in her manner told you that this was not a request. This was an order, delivered with the full authority of the man who ruled Summerhall.

You rose from the chair. Your legs were unsteady beneath you, your body still aching from the nights of sleeping in chairs and on pallets, from the strain of lifting and turning and tending a man who outweighed you by half.

The castle was quiet at this hour. The afternoon light slanted through the narrow windows, casting long shadows across the stone floors. You had not been outside Aerion's room in seven days. The world seemed larger than you remembered. Brighter. More dangerous.

The servant led you through corridors you did not recognize, up a flight of stairs, down another corridor, until you stood before a heavy oak door banded with iron. She knocked twice, a sharp, deliberate rap that echoed in the silence.

"The woman is here, my prince," she said.

A voice from within, muffled by the door, said something you could not make out. The servant pushed the door open and gestured for you to enter.

You stepped inside. The room was small, sparsely furnished. A table. A few chairs. A narrow window that looked out over the castle's eastern wall. The fire in the hearth had burned down to embers, casting the room in shadow and flickering orange light. And standing near the window, one hand braced against the wall for support, a thick piece of wood tucked under his other arm to hold him upright, was your brother.

Dunk.

You stopped in the doorway as if you had walked into a wall. Your heart seized in your chest. Your breath caught in your throat. Your hands flew to your mouth, pressing against your lips as if to hold in the sound that was trying to escape, a sound that was half sob and half scream and half something that had no name at all.

He looked terrible. His face was a mess of bruises, purple and black and yellow-green, one eye swollen nearly shut, a gash across his cheekbone held closed with clumsy stitches. His lip was split in two places. His left arm was wrapped in a sling, and the piece of wood under his right arm was a crutch, crude and hastily made, the kind a maester might fashion for a patient who refused to stay in bed. He was leaning heavily on it, his massive frame listing to one side, his shoulders hunched with exhaustion and pain. He looked like a man who had been through a war and had only barely survived.

"Y/N," he said, and his voice was exactly the same as it had been when he was eight years old and lifting you from your mother's deathbed. Cracked. Hoarse. Full of a desperate, aching tenderness that made your chest splinter into a thousand pieces.

One moment you were standing in the doorway with your hands pressed to your mouth, and the next you were in his arms, your face buried in his chest, your shoulders shaking with sobs you had been holding back for years. His good arm wrapped around you, pulling you against him, and you felt the crutch fall away, felt him stagger and brace himself against the wall so he would not fall. He was so big. He had always been so big. Even broken and bruised and barely able to stand, he surrounded you, enveloped you, made you feel for the first time in longer than you could remember that you were safe.

"I've got you," he said into your hair, and his voice was breaking, splintering, cracking into pieces that sounded like your mother's laugh and your father's name and every promise he had ever made you. "I've got you. I've always got you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I looked for you. I looked everywhere. They told me you were dead. They told me they found your body in the river. They said you were burned beyond recognition. I believed them. Gods forgive me, I believed them."

"I didn't know," you sobbed into his chest. Your fingers were twisted in his tunic, gripping the rough wool as if he might disappear if you let go. "I didn't know they told you that. I thought you were still looking. I thought you would find me. I waited for you. Every night, I waited for you. I never stopped believing you would come."

"I'm sorry, i believed them. I believed you were dead, and something inside me died with you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, little sister. I should have kept looking. I should have known. I should have..."

"Stop." You pulled back just enough to look up at his face, at the tears that were cutting tracks through the blood and the bruises. "Stop apologizing. You searched for me. You believed what they told you. Any man would have believed it. I don't blame you. I have never blamed you. I only ever wanted you to know I was alive. I tried to send word. I tried so many times. But Aerion..."

You stopped. The name hung in the air between you like a curse. Dunk's expression darkened. His good arm tightened around your shoulders. "Aerion," he repeated, and the word came out like a growl. "What happened to you, Y/N? Where have you been all these years? How did you end up here, with him?"

You pulled away from him gently. Your legs were shaking. You found a chair and sank into it, and Dunk lowered himself awkwardly onto the edge of the table, his injured leg stretched out in front of him, his crutch clattering to the floor. He did not take his eyes off you. He watched you the way he had watched you when you were children, with that fierce, protective intensity that had once been the only thing standing between you and the darkness of the world.

"They sold me," you said, and your voice was quiet and hollow and did not sound like your own. "The men who took me. They sold me to a brothel on the Street of Silk. A high end place, for lords and merchants. The madam... she was cruel. She said I was special. She said I would make them very rich."

Dunk's hands tightened on your shoulders. His face had gone very pale beneath the bruises, and his jaw was clenched so hard you could see the muscle jumping beneath the skin.

"And then," you continued, "Aerion came, he bought me and never left me"

And then you told him about Rhaenyra.

"Her name is Rhaenyra," you said, and your voice softened on the name, the way it always did. "She's two years old. She looks like her father. But she's kind. She's the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. She's the only good thing that has come out of any of this. And she's the reason I can't leave."

Dunk was silent for a long moment. His face was unreadable, a mask of bruises and exhaustion and something that might have been grief. When he spoke, his voice was low and rough.

"I'll take you away," he said. "Both of you. You and the little girl. I'll find a way. I have friends now. A prince and a lord. We can protect you. We can hide you somewhere Aerion will never find you."

You shook your head. The tears were streaming down your face again, hot and silent, dripping off your chin and onto your hands. "You don't understand. He would never let me go. He would hunt me down like a dog. He would burn cities to the ground to find me. He told me... the night after the puppet show, when he came to my room, he told me the only way I would ever leave him was in a shroud. He meant it, Dunk. I have seen what he does to people who defy him. I have seen him cut a servant's hand for spilling wine on him. I have seen him laugh while a man burned alive. If I tried to run, if I took Rhaenyra and disappeared, he would never stop looking. And when he found me, and he would find me, he would kill me. He would take my daughter and he would kill me, and Rhaenyra would grow up without a mother, raised by a monster who would teach her that cruelty is strength and kindness is weakness and love is just another word for ownership."

"He would have to go through me first," Dunk said, and his voice was hard, the voice of a man who had faced seven knights in single combat and emerged victorious. "I lost you once. I believed you were dead for years. I mourned you, Y/N. I sat in that alley and I let the darkness take me because there was no light left in the world. And then I found you again, alive, here, in this place, with that man. I am not going to lose you again. I don't care if he is a prince. I don't care if he has a hundred Kingsguard. I will find a way to get you out of here. I will find a way to keep you safe. I swear it. I swear it on our mother's grave. I swear it on everything I am."

"Dunk." You reached out and took his enormous hand in both of yours. His knuckles were swollen and bruised, the skin split and scabbed over. The hands that had lifted you from the mattress where your mother had stopped breathing. The hands that had carried you into the cold morning while the other whores watched with pity. The hands that had promised you silk and lemon cakes and a world where no one would hurt you. "I want to believe you. I want to believe there is a way out of this. But you have to understand what you're risking. He will kill you. He will kill you without hesitation, without a trial, without anything but the cold satisfaction of removing an obstacle. And if you die, if you die trying to save me, I will have nothing left. Nothing. Do you understand? You are my brother. You are the only family I have in this world besides my daughter. I cannot lose you again."

He squeezed your hands. His grip was gentle, impossibly gentle for a man who had killed knights and broken bones and fought his way through horrors you could only imagine. "You won't lose me," he said. "I promise you, little sister. You won't lose me."

—

You ran. Egg had barely finished speaking before you were out the door and flying down the corridor, your heart pounding so hard you could feel it in your teeth, your lungs burning with every breath. You did not care if anyone saw you. You did not care if there were questions. All you cared about was getting back to Aerion's room before he woke, before he realized you were gone, before the fragile illusion of your obedience shattered into a thousand irreparable pieces.

You reached the door to Aerion's chamber and paused, pressing your palm flat against the wood, forcing yourself to breathe. You could not go in looking like a woman who had just run across half the castle. You could not go in looking like a woman who had been crying in her brother's arms. You smoothed your hair with trembling hands. You wiped the tears from your cheeks. You arranged your face into the careful mask you had worn for years, and you pushed open the door.

Aerion was still asleep. He had not moved since you left. His breathing was slow and steady, his bruised face relaxed in the depths of his drugged slumber. The milk of the poppy still held him in its grip. The bandages on his ribs were unrumpled. His splinted arm lay exactly where you had arranged it. He had not woken. He had not called for you. He had not noticed your absence at all.

You closed the door behind you and leaned against it, your legs threatening to give way beneath you. You had made it. You had made it, and he did not know, and you were safe. For now. For this moment. For as long as you could keep the mask from slipping.

You returned to the chair beside his bed and sat down, and you waited.

Days passed. Aerion healed. Slowly at first, then with the stubborn, grinding determination of a man who refused to be seen as weak for a moment longer than absolutely necessary. The bruises faded from black to purple to yellow-green. The swelling around his eye went down until he could open it fully again. The split lip closed, leaving a thin white scar that tugged at the corner of his mouth when he spoke. The ribs were slower to mend, the maester said, and he would need to be careful for weeks yet, but the splint came off his arm and he began to flex his fingers, to test the range of motion, to push against the limits of his own body the way he pushed against everything else in his life.

By the end of the second week, he could walk with a stick. You were the one who helped him take his first steps. His arm draped over your shoulders, his weight pressing down on you until your knees buckled, his breath harsh and labored against your ear. You walked him across the room and back again, step by agonizing step, your body bearing the burden of his in a way that felt like a metaphor for everything your life had become.

"Good," he said through gritted teeth when he finally lowered himself back onto the bed. “That's good. I'll be out of this room by the end of the week.”

"My father is sending me away," he had said, and his voice was flat, toneless, drained of its usual fire. "Lys. A city of whores and perfumed merchants. He calls it self reflection. A chance to contemplate my actions and return a better man. But we both know what it really is. Exile. He cannot bear to look at me. He blames me for Baelor's death, even though it was his own blow that killed him. He blames me for everything."

You had not known what to say, so you had said nothing. That was safest. That had always been safest.

"You and the girl will come with me, of course, Lys is said to be beautiful. Warm. The sea is the color of sapphires, and the women walk around in silks so fine you can see their skin through the fabric. You will like it there."

You would not like it anywhere he was. But you had smiled, because that was what you did, and you had told him that Lys sounded lovely, and you had turned away to prepare his next dose of medicine so he would not see the despair in your eyes.

After that, things shifted slightly. Perhaps Aerion felt guilty for uprooting you. Perhaps he was simply trying to secure your loyalty before the journey. Whatever the reason, he began to allow you to visit Rhaenyra in the nursery. Not for long, not unsupervised, but every day. Every single day, you were permitted to leave his chamber for an hour and go to your daughter.

It was the only thing that kept you sane. You would sit in the nursery with Rhaenyra on your lap, her small body warm and solid and alive against your chest, and you would listen to her chatter about the games she had played and the songs she had learned and the dreams she had dreamed. You would brush her hair and sing to her in the soft voice you used for no one else. You would tell her that you loved her, that you would always love her, that there was nothing in the world she could do that would make you stop loving her. And you would try very hard not to think about the fact that in a few weeks, a few months at most, you would be on a ship to Lys, and the only world Rhaenyra had ever known would disappear behind her forever.

It was on one of these days, when you returned from the nursery with Rhaenyra's laughter still echoing in your ears, that everything fell apart.

You pushed open the door to Aerion's chamber and stopped dead in the doorway. There were two guards in the room. Between them, kneeling on the stone floor, was the servant. The one who had come to you days ago. The one who had said Prince Maekar requests your presence. The one who had led you through the corridors to the room where Dunk was waiting.

She was barely recognizable. Her face was a swollen mass of bruises, her lips split in three places, her nose broken and crusted with dried blood. One of her eyes was swollen completely shut, and the other stared at the floor with the glassy, unfocused gaze of someone who had retreated so far inside herself that she might never find her way back out. Her dress was torn, stained dark with blood and sweat and things you did not want to name. Her hands, folded limply in her lap, were missing three fingernails.

You knew, in that moment, that you were going to die.

Aerion was standing by the window, leaning on his stick, his back to you. He did not turn when you entered. He simply stood there, silhouetted against the grey afternoon light, his shoulders rigid, his free hand clenched into a fist at his side.

"Close the door," he said. His voice was calm. Too calm. The calm of a sea that had gone flat and glassy in the moment before a tidal wave.

You closed the door. Your hands were shaking so badly you could barely grip the latch.

"Aerion," you said, and your voice came out as a whisper, thin and reedy and full of the terror you could not hide. "What is this? What happened to her?"

Now he turned. His face was the face you had seen on the stage of the puppet show, cold and cruel and utterly without mercy. His violet eyes were dark with a rage that had been simmering for days, waiting for this moment, and his mouth was a thin hard line that made the scar at the corner of his lip stand out white against his skin.

"Is it true?" he asked. His voice was still calm. Still quiet. Still terrible. "Did you betray me? Did you see that treasonous bastard of your brother?"

Your heart stopped. Your blood turned to ice. The world narrowed to the space between you and him, the fire in the hearth, the broken woman on the floor.

"Aerion, please, let me explain..."

"Did you see him?" He did not shout. He did not raise his voice at all. But each word was a hammer blow, driving the breath from your lungs, the strength from your legs. "This woman, this servant, has told me everything. How she came to you while I was sleeping. How she led you through the castle. How my father, my own father, arranged for you to meet your brother in secret behind my back. Is it true? Answer me. Is it true?"

Your mind raced, scrambling for a lie, a deflection, anything that might save you. But the servant was kneeling on the floor with her fingernails torn out and her face beaten to pulp, and you knew that whatever you said, whatever excuse you offered, he had already made up his mind.

"It was not my choice," you said, and your voice cracked on the words. "The servant came and said your father wanted to see me. I did not know it was a trick. I did not know Dunk would be there. I went because I was afraid to refuse. Please, Aerion, you have to believe me. I did not seek him out. I would never..."

"Liar." He spat the word like a curse. "You have been lying to me since the moment you saw his face in the pavilion. You have been lying to me while you changed my bandages and brought my medicine and performed your little duties like the devoted whore you pretend to be. All this time, you have been dreaming of him. Planning with him. Scheming behind my back. Did you think I would not find out? Did you think I would not have you watched? Did you think I was stupid?"

"No, I never..."

"Be silent." He took a step toward you, and the stick thumped against the stone floor like a death sentence. "I have listened to your lies for years. I have listened to you whisper that you loved me while your eyes were always looking somewhere else. I have listened to you promise that you were mine while your heart belonged to another. I am done listening. Now you will listen to me."

He gestured to one of the guards. The man stepped forward, his face still grim and impassive. You barely had time to register the movement before his gauntleted hand cracked across your face.

The blow sent you sprawling to the floor. Your head hit the stone with a crack that made stars burst across your vision. The taste of blood filled your mouth. Your ears rang with a high, thin whine that drowned out everything else. You tried to push yourself up, but your arms would not hold you, and you collapsed back onto the cold stone, gasping.

"Take her away," Aerion said, and for a moment you thought he meant you. But the guard was already hauling the servant to her feet, dragging her toward the door, her head lolling on her broken neck. The other guard followed, and then the door closed, and you were alone with the dragon.

Aerion stood over you. The stick thumped against the floor as he took another step closer. You could see his boots from where you lay, the fine black leather, the silver buckles shaped like dragon wings.

"Let me tell you what happens now," he said, and his voice was soft, almost gentle, the voice of a man explaining something to a child. "You are going to Lys with me. You are going to share my bed and warm my sheets and perform your duties as you have always done. You are going to smile and praise me and tell me that I am magnificent. You are going to be exactly what you have always been. My whore. My property. My thing."

He lowered himself slowly, painfully, until he was crouching beside you. His hand came down and gripped your chin, forcing your face up toward his. His fingers were cold and hard and utterly without tenderness.

"If you ever see your brother again," he said, "if you ever speak to him, if you ever so much as learn his whereabouts and fail to tell me, I will not kill you. No. Killing you would be a mercy, and I am not feeling merciful. What I will do is make you pray for death. Every single day, you will pray for it, and it will not come. Do you understand?"

You tried to speak. No words came out. Only a thin, animal whimper that you barely recognized as your own.

"And Rhaenyra," he continued, and your blood turned to ice water. "If you betray me again, if you give me even the slightest reason to doubt your loyalty, I will take her from you. Not just for a few days. Not just to the nursery. I will sell her. Do you understand? I will sell her to a brothel the moment she has her first bleeding. She will spend her life on her back with strange men between her legs, just like her mother before her. Just like the whore who whelped her. That is what happens to the daughters of traitors. That is what happens to the children of women who forget who they belong to."

"No." The word tore out of you, a desperate, animal sound. "Aerion, no, please, she's your daughter, she's your blood, you can't..."

"I can do whatever I want." His voice was flat. Final. The voice of a god passing judgment. "She is mine. You are mine. Everything you have, everything you are, exists because I allow it. Your life is a privilege. Your motherhood is a privilege. Your identity as a mother, as a daughter, as anything other than what I tell you to be, is a privilege. And privileges can be revoked."

He rose to his feet with a grimace of pain, leaning heavily on his stick. He looked down at you, crumpled on the floor at his feet, and his expression was utterly without pity.

"Your only duty is to me," he said. "You are not a mother. You are not a sister. You are not a person with a past or a family or a soul. You are my whore. That is all you have ever been. That is all you will ever be. Everything else, every moment you have spent with Rhaenyra, every breath you have taken as a free woman, has been a gift. A gift that I gave you. A gift that I can take away."

He turned to the guard who remained. The man had been standing motionless by the door, his face a mask of professional indifference. He had watched the whole thing without flinching. You wondered, distantly, how many women he had seen broken on the orders of the men who paid him.

"Incapacitate her," Aerion said. "I want her unable to walk. Not permanently. I still need her to be able to perform her duties. But I want her to remember, every time she takes a step, what happens when she forgets who she belongs to."

The guard stepped forward. You saw him coming, saw the purpose in his eyes, and you tried to scramble backward on the floor, your heels slipping against the stone, your hands clawing for purchase. It did not matter. He was on you in three strides, his hands closing around your ankle, and you heard yourself screaming, heard Aerion's voice saying something you could not understand, and then there was a sound like a branch breaking in deep winter, and your leg exploded into white-hot agony.

The world went away for a while. When it came back, you were still on the floor. The guard was gone. Aerion was still standing over you, leaning on his stick, watching you with an expression that was almost curious. As if your pain were an experiment he had conducted and he was evaluating the results.

"The maester will come to set the ankle," he said. "You will tell him you fell down the stairs. You will not mention the guard. You will not mention this conversation. You will not mention your brother or your disobedience. You will smile, and you will thank me for my concern, and you will continue to perform your duties. Is that understood?"

You could not speak. The pain was too much. Your leg was a column of fire, and every heartbeat sent a fresh wave of agony through your body. But you managed to nod, a tiny, jerky motion of your head, and that seemed to satisfy him.

"Good," he said. "I am glad we understand each other."

He limped to the door, his stick thumping against the stone with every step. He did not look back at you as he left. He did not offer you a hand to help you up. He simply opened the door and disappeared into the corridor, and you were alone.

Dunk had promised. Dunk had sworn on your mother's grave, on everything he was. And Dunk had never broken a promise to you. Not once. Not ever.

You held onto that ember as the darkness closed in. You held onto it as the pain in your ankle pulsed and throbbed and dragged you toward unconsciousness. You held onto it as the door opened and the maester's voice exclaimed in shock and you heard yourself saying, over and over, the lie Aerion had given you. Fell down the stairs. Fell down the stairs. Fell down the stairs.

And when the maester's hands began to work on your ankle, when the world went white with pain and then mercifully black with oblivion, you held onto it still.

209 A.C Flea Bottom

The first thing you ever remembered was your brother’s hands.

Not your mother’s face, that was gone, worn away like a coin passed through too many fingers. You could summon the shape of her if you concentrated: the blurred watermark of a jawline, the suggestion of a mouth that laughed like a cracked bell, the smell of cheap wine and cheaper perfume that clung to her hair long after she stopped breathing. But her face? No. That belonged to the dark now, along with everything else from before.

But the hands, those you remembered. Dunk’s hands. Too large for a boy of eight, the knuckles already crosshatched with scars from street fights and kitchen fires, but impossibly gentle as they lifted you from the straw mattress where your mother lay cold and still. You had been five years old. You had not understood death, only that Mother would not wake. It was Dunk who wrapped you in a blanket thin enough to see through. Dunk who carried you out into the grey morning, your face pressed to his neck so you would not see the body being hauled away. Dunk who said, in a voice that splintered because he was barely more than a child himself, “I’ve got you. I’ve always got you.”

And he had, you slept in doorways at first, curled together like kittens against the cold that seeped up through the cobblestones. Dunk learned quickly which bakers threw out day old bread and which watchmen could be bribed with a sad eyed look. He found work at an inn in Flea Bottom and the innkeeper’s wife let you sleep in the stables so long as Dunk scrubbed the floors and hauled the kegs and made himself useful in a dozen small ways. You would sit in the corner while he worked, your knees drawn up to your chin, watching him. Watching the boy melt away, season by season, into something that looked more like a man. He grew taller and broader and harder, his shoulders widening, his voice dropping. He was three years older than you, but sometimes he felt like thirty. He had never been a child. Neither of you had.

But you had each other. And that was enough. It had to be.

Every night, after his labors were done, Dunk would come to you in the stables. He would reek of sweat and sour ale, and he would lower himself onto the hay beside you with a groan that belonged to a man three times his age. And then he would tell you stories he’d gathered like dropped coins from travelers and old soldiers and the septon who sometimes came to beg a bowl of soup. Stories of knights who never faltered, dragons who spoke in riddles, castles of white stone that caught the sunrise like mirrors. Maidens so beautiful that kingdoms burned for a single glance.

You were twelve when the men began to notice you. It happened on an ordinary night, with an ordinary drunk who’d had too much ale and too little sense. You were carrying a tray of empty cups back to the kitchen, your arms aching with the weight, when a hand came out of nowhere and closed on your backside. You froze, no understanding of what the sudden heat crawling up your neck meant or why your body had locked itself rigid as a board. The man laughed and then Dunk was there.

One moment the drunk was leering at you, his hand still on your body, and the next he was on the floor with blood fountaining from his nose and Dunk standing over him like a thunderhead. He threw the man out into the mud, and when he came back inside his hands were trembling with a rage so profound it seemed to warp the air around him. “Stay close to me,” he said, and it was not a request. His voice was quiet, too quiet, the kind of quiet that lives on the far side of fury. “Always. Do you understand? Always.”

You understood. From that day forward, you were never more than arm’s reach from your brother. When he walked to the market, you walked beside him, your fingers sometimes hooked into the rope that acted like a belt, when the crowds pressed too close. The men still looked, by fourteen, you had grown into the kind of beauty that stilled conversations mid sentence, your mother’s eyes and your unknown father’s soft mouth arranged on a face that seemed to belong in a ballad rather than a Flea Bottom inn, but they looked from a distance. Dunk saw to that.

You were inseparable. Joined at the hip, the innkeeper’s wife liked to say, shaking her head with a fondness that bordered on bewilderment. “Never seen the like. That boy would tear the world apart for his little sister.”

You were sixteen when everything ended. The festival came in the spring, an eruption of color and noise that spilled from the gates of the Red Keep and flooded through the city like a tide. Mummers on stilts, jugglers with flaming torches, singers with harps slung across their backs, knights in armor that caught the sun and threw it back in a thousand glittering shards. Dunk had been given the night off—a rarity—and he had taken your hand with a grin you hadn’t seen since you were children hiding from the rain under a stolen tarp. “Come on,” he said, and his eyes were bright in a way that made your chest ache.

You laughed and followed. The crowd was too thick. The torches made everything swim, light and shadow bleeding together until faces became masks and masks became faces. Dunk kept his hand clamped around your arm for the first hour, his grip unwavering, but then a knot of drunkards staggered between you and in the space of a single heartbeat, you lost him.

“Dunk?”

You rose onto your toes, straining above the heads of the crowd. You saw him turn, saw his mouth open to call back to you, saw the sudden alarm flash across his features, and then the surge of bodies carried you sideways, a riptide of flesh and noise, and you stumbled into an alley to escape the crush.

That was when they took you. There were three of them. You never saw their faces clearly, only hands. Rough and quick and impossibly strong, one clamping over your mouth, another banding around your waist and lifting you clean off the ground. You tried to scream. You bit down on the palm pressed against your lips, tasted blood and salt and felt the man curse and shift his grip, but there was no time. A sack came down over your head, coarse and stinking of something you did not want to name, and the world went dark and muffled and small.

The last thing you heard was the festival. The music, the laughter, the endless churn of celebration. It went on without you, as if you had never been there at all.

Dunk searched for three days. He did not sleep. He did not eat. He tore through Flea Bottom like a storm given flesh, overturning carts and kicking down doors, bellowing your name until his voice shredded into something barely human. He went to the City Watch, and they laughed, a girl from the slums, what did he expect? He went to the sept, and the septon only clasped his hands and murmured prayers that tasted like ash. He went to every inn, every brothel, every lightless corner of the city where a girl might be hidden or sold or worse, and he found nothing. Nothing. Nothing and nothing again.

On the fourth day, a woman came to him, she found him in the alley where you had vanished, sitting against the wall with his head in his hands, and she knelt beside him.

“You’re the one,” she said. Not a question. “Looking for the girl with the H/C hair. The pretty one.”

Dunk’s head came up so fast his neck cracked. “Where is she?”

The woman shook her head. Slowly. Deliberately. A gesture that held everything he did not want to know. “They found her in the water this morning, lad. Some men…” She paused, and something that might have been pity flickered across her ruined face. “They took her. And when they were done—” Her hands made a twisting motion, a brutal pantomime that needed no translation. “The women who found her said she was hardly recognizable. They’ve already burned the body. Too much damage, they said. You don’t want to see that. Trust me. You’re better off remembering her the way she was.”

Dunk did not speak. He simply sat there, staring at the woman’s face, and something inside him cracked straight down the middle and bled dry.

“Who?” His voice did not sound like his voice. “Who did it?”

“No one knows. Drunkards, maybe. Travelers passing through. They’re long gone now.” The woman rose, joints creaking, and looked down at him with something that was not quite pity and not quite indifference. “I’m sorry, lad. Truly.”

She left him there. And Dunk stayed. He stayed in that alley as the sun bled out and the moon rose pale and indifferent and the city settled into its night noises around him. His little sister was dead. He had promised—promised—to protect her, and she was dead. And the world, which had never been kind to either of them, now seemed to hold no color.

—

213 A.C Ashford

The gardens of Ashford Castle were not as grand as the ones in Summerhall but they were still beautiful. You had been here for less than a fortnight, arrived as part of Prince Maekar's retinue for the tourney celebrating Lord Ashford's daughter's nameday, and already the place had worked its way under your skin. The roses were in full bloom, cascading over stone walls in waves of crimson and gold and softest pink. The hedges were trimmed into the shapes of birds and beasts.

The little girl was running through the grass ahead of you, her silver gold hair streaming behind her like a banner caught in a high wind, her bare feet slapping against the earth with the unselfconscious joy of someone who had never known hunger or fear or the back of a stranger's hand. She was two years old, small for her age but fierce, so fiercely alive that it stopped your breath sometimes, with violet eyes that missed nothing and a laugh that could fill an entire hall and still demand more room.

"Rhaenyra," you called, and you tried to sound stern, you really did, but the smile kept breaking through no matter how firmly you set your jaw. "Come back here before you trip and ruin that dress."

"Won't," the child announced, with the absolute conviction of someone who had never been wrong about anything in her life, and kept running.

You sighed, gathered your skirts in both hands, and gave chase. The dress you wore was finer than anything you had owned before Aerion had claimed you, a gift he had given you specifically for this journey. Pale blue silk that whispered when you moved, with silver embroidery at the sleeves and neckline. He had wanted you to look presentable at Ashford. You suspected, though you had not said it aloud, that he also wanted to show you off. To remind his family, and perhaps himself, what he possessed.

You were twenty years old now, no longer the trembling girl who had been thrown into a black carriage while a brothel burned behind her, no longer the hollow eyed creature who had learned to disappear inside her own body while men did what they pleased. The past months and years had reshaped you, smoothed some of the sharp edges and hardened others.

But there was something new in you now, something forged in the long nights of learning to survive Aerion Targaryen and the longer days of learning to love your daughter. You knew how to bend without breaking. And you knew, with a certainty that lived in your bones like marrow, that you would kill any living soul who tried to harm your child.

Rhaenyra had tripped over an exposed root and was sitting in the grass, more affronted than injured, examining a smudge of dirt on her palm with the grave concentration of a maester confronted with an ancient and inscrutable text. You scooped her up before the tears could organize themselves, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head, breathing in the smell of sunshine and crushed grass and something warm and sweet that was just her.

"Told you," you murmured into her hair. "You fell."

"Didn't cry," Rhaenyra pointed out. This was technically true, and there was a note of such fierce pride in her small voice that your heart performed an odd, painful little flip in your chest.

"No," you agreed, pulling back to look at her solemn face. "You didn't. You're a brave little dragon, aren't you?"

The child beamed. She adored being called a dragon. It was one of the few gifts Aerion had given her that did not make your stomach twist into complicated knots. This inheritance of fire and blood and the unshakeable conviction that she was meant for something magnificent.

You carried her back toward the castle, her small arms wrapped tightly around your neck, her voice a ceaseless ribbon of chatter about the butterfly she had almost caught and the bird that had flown directly over her head and the flower she had picked that was pink, Mama, pink and pretty and can I keep it forever please please please. You made the appropriate sounds of wonder and encouragement, your eyes scanning the courtyard as you crossed it, your body perpetually aware of who was watching.

The servants of Ashford avoided your gaze, much as the ones at Summerhall did. They had learned, over the course of the tourney's first days, to treat you with a careful neutrality. Not quite respect, not quite disdain, something suspended in the ambiguous space between. They knew what you were. Prince Aerion's paramour. The woman he had brought with him from Summerhall, installed in a guest chamber near his own, paraded through the grounds like a provocative piece of art he wanted everyone to see whether they wished to or not. They did not speak to you unless absolutely necessary, did not meet your eyes, did not acknowledge the child in your arms except to incline their heads stiffly and step aside.

Ashford Castle was a crowded place during the tourney. Lord Ashford's daughter Gwin had turned thirteen, and to honor her nameday, her father had declared a tourney that would last five days. Knights and lords from across the Reach and beyond had gathered to compete, their banners snapping in the spring breeze, their pavilions spreading across the fields like a crop of colorful mushrooms.

Prince Maekar's entire family had come with his children. You saw them sometimes, in the corridors or the courtyards or the great hall at supper, but you never spoke to them. You were not permitted. Prince Maekar had made that blisteringly clear from the very beginning, his voice cold with a disgust he did not bother to disguise.

"The woman stays in her chambers," he had told Aerion when he first met you. "I will not have her parading about in front of the children. She is a whore, Aerion. A whore and you will not embarrass this family."

Aerion had not argued. He rarely argued with his father directly. But he had kept you anyway, had dressed you in silk and silver, had installed you in a room that connected to his own. And now you were here, carrying your daughter back toward the keep while the roses nodded in the breeze and the distant sounds of the tourney grounds drifted over the walls like distant thunder. You had not been permitted to attend the jousts. Not since the yesterday.

You closed your eyes for a moment against the memory. It had been horrible. Aerion's tilt against Ser Humfrey. You had been watching from the stands, Rhaenyra on your lap, your heart in your throat the way it always was when he rode. He was a skilled jouster, your prince, but he rode with a recklessness that bordered on suicidal, and sometimes you thought he would not be satisfied until he left someone broken in the dirt.

This time, he had aimed too low. Deliberately, you were almost certain, though you would never say so aloud. His lance had struck Ser Humfrey's horse in the neck, a brutal, illegal blow that sent the animal crashing to the ground with a scream that would haunt your nightmares for weeks. Ser Humfrey had been thrown, his leg twisted at an angle that made your stomach lurch, and the horse had thrashed in the dirt with blood pumping from its throat.

The crowd had broken through the barriers. Prince Baelor Breakspear himself had risen from his seat, his face a mask of disgust, and you had seen the way he looked at Aerion. The way everyone looked at Aerion. Like he was something monstrous. Something broken beyond repair.

Aerion had found you afterward, still flushed with adrenaline, his eyes too bright. He had forbidden you from attending any more of the jousts.

"It's not safe," he had said, his grip on your arm just shy of bruising. "The crowds are unpredictable. The horses are dangerous. You and Rhaenyra will stay in the castle or the gardens. I don't want you anywhere near the lists."

You had not argued. You rarely argued with him about things that mattered. But you had seen the truth behind his words, the truth he would never admit. He did not want you to see him lose. He did not want you to see the way the other knights looked at him after what he had done.

So you had stayed away. You had walked in the gardens, and played with Rhaenyra, and smiled your careful smile whenever Aerion returned to your chambers in the evenings, bruised and bristling and desperate for the praise only you could give him.

"Up," Rhaenyra demanded as you approached the castle's side entrance. "Up high, Mama. I want to see."

You lifted her higher, settling her higher on your hip with the practiced ease of two years of motherhood, and she gazed around the corridor with the same wide eyed wonder she brought to everything. You loved her so much it scared you sometimes. Loved her with a ferocity that made the love you had felt for your own mother, dim and distant and blurred at the edges, seem like a candle held up against the sun.

"You spoil her."

The voice came from behind you, and you did not startle. Months with Aerion had taught you the particular cadence of his footsteps, the faint jingle of the sword he wore even at peace, the way the air in a room seemed to tighten and grow watchful when he entered. You turned, shifting Rhaenyra to your other hip with a fluidity that had become second nature, and offered him the smile you had perfected over your time together.

It was not a false smile. That was the strange thing, the thing that still surprised you when you stopped to examine it. It was not false at all. There was calculation in it, yes. There was calculation in everything you did, a habit you could not have broken if you tried. But there was warmth there too. The warmth of a woman looking at a man she had somehow, against all odds and reason, come to care for.

Love. The word still felt strange in your mouth, like a garment that did not quite fit. Aerion was not kind. He was not gentle. He was not good, in any sense that your brother Dunk would have recognized. But he was yours, in his possessive, consuming, infuriating way, and you were his, and somewhere in the crucible of the past years, that mutual belonging had transmuted into something that looked, from certain angles, remarkably like love.

He was not a tall man, standing at five and a half feet, and you knew it rankled at him. Knew that every inch he lacked compared to the warriors he trained with was a splinter under his skin. But what he lacked in height he more than compensated for in presence. The way his boots struck the stone floors, deliberate and commanding. The sharp, hawkish beauty of his face, all angles and shadows. The particular weight of his attention when it landed on you, heavy as a hand on your shoulder.

"My dragon," you said, and the word was warm, intimate, a private jest between you that no one else would recognize. "She wanted to explore the gardens. You know how she loves the roses."

He stepped closer, and Rhaenyra immediately lunged toward him, her small arms outstretched, her face alight with the uncomplicated adoration of a child who had never been given a reason to fear her father. "Papa! Papa, I found a flower!"

She had dropped the flower somewhere in the garden, of course. You had seen it fall, a little pink bruise against the green grass, left behind in her headlong rush toward the next thing and the next and the next. But Aerion did not know that, and you suspected he would not have cared if he did. He took the girl from your arms with an ease that still surprised you, settling her against his chest as naturally as if he had been doing it all his life.

Aerion, who was never gentle with anyone. Aerion, whose hands had left bruises on your body in the early days. Aerion, who had aimed his lance at a horse's throat and watched it die without flinching.

But Rhaenyra had never seen that side of him. Rhaenyra saw only the father who bounced her on his knee and called her his little dragon and looked at her as if she were the single good thing he had managed to produce in a life full of sharp edges and bad decisions. And you saw both versions of him, the monster and the man, and you had learned to hold them both in your mind at once, to love the whole complicated, contradictory mess of him.

"A flower," Aerion repeated, bouncing Rhaenyra gently against his chest. "What color?"

"Pink!"

"Pink," he said, with the solemnity of a man receiving a sacred revelation. "Pink is an excellent color. You have impeccable taste."

Rhaenyra giggled, burying her face in the curve of his neck, and Aerion's eyes met yours over the top of her head. There was something in his gaze. A flicker of warmth, a flicker of something that might have been gratitude. It made your heart clench in that way you had long since stopped trying to explain away.

I love him, you thought, and the thought did not feel like a lie. It felt like the truth, strange and inconvenient and slightly terrifying though it was. Gods help me, I truly do.

You knew what people would say if they could hear your thoughts. How can you love him? After what he did to that horse? After what he did to you? After what he is? And they would not be wrong to ask. The early days had been brutal; there was no use pretending otherwise. He had hurt you, in ways that still surfaced in your dreams on bad nights. He had fucked you without asking, had demanded without giving, had treated your body like territory to be conquered and your compliance like tribute to be extracted.

But then something had shifted. Slowly, incrementally, in the way of seasons changing. He had begun to see you. The woman who praised him when no one else would. The woman who listened to his fears and his rages and his strange, tangled dreams of dragonfire and destiny. The woman who had given him a daughter and held his hand through the disappointment and taught him, patient as a stone worn smooth by water, how to be something other than cruel.

And you had seen him, the man underneath, the one who craved praise because he had never received it, the one who lashed out because he had never learned another way to ask for what he needed. You had seen him, and against all wisdom, against all self preservation, you had loved him.

He still hurt you, sometimes. When his black moods descended and his hands grew rough and the words that came out of his mouth were designed to wound. But those moments were rarer now, spaced further and further apart, and after each one he would come to you with his arms full of gifts. Dresses of silk and velvet, jewels that glittered in their velvet nests, books with leather bindings and gold leaf on the pages that you devoured in the quiet hours when he was training and Rhaenyra was napping. He would hold you afterward, his face pressed into your hair, his arms wrapped around you like a cage he was afraid you might slip through.

"You understand me," he would whisper, and his voice would crack on the words in a way that made your heart splinter. "You're the only one who does. The only one who ever has. Don't leave me. Promise me you won't leave."

And you, holding him in the dark, would stroke his short silver hair and murmur the words he needed to hear. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. I'm yours."

You meant them, too. That was the strangest part. After everything, you meant them.

Where would I even go? you thought, watching him bounce your daughter in his arms in this borrowed garden in a borrowed castle, surrounded by roses that belonged to someone else.

You looked at Rhaenyra, at the small, fierce face that was so clearly her father's, and you thought about the day she had been born.

It had been the longest day of your life.

The labor had lasted nearly eighteen hours. You had screamed until your voice gave out entirely, had bitten straight through the leather strap the midwife had given you, had prayed to gods you had not believed in since childhood to make it stop, please make it stop, I can't do this, I'm going to die, please let me die. Aerion had paced outside the door like a caged animal, his boots wearing a groove in the stone, demanding updates every few minutes and threatening bodily harm to the maester whenever the news was not to his liking.

"Is it a boy?" he had shouted through the door, over and over, his voice fraying at the edges. "Tell me it's a boy. It has to be a boy. I'm going to name him Maegor. A strong name. A dragon's name. Tell me!"

You had heard him, even through the wall of agony that had swallowed the world, and you had felt a cold dread settle into the pit of your stomach like a stone dropped into deep water. Maegor. He wanted to name his son after Maegor the Cruel. You had prayed then, harder than you had ever prayed in your life, with what remained of your shredded voice and your failing strength. Not a boy. Please, not a boy. Whatever else you give me, don't give me a boy who will carry that name.

The gods, for once in their capricious existence, had listened.

When the baby had finally emerged, slick and furious and impossibly, breathtakingly alive, the maester had looked between her tiny legs and pronounced, with the careful neutrality of a man who knew exactly how dangerous this moment was: "A girl, my prince. A healthy girl."

The silence that followed had been more terrifying than any scream.

Aerion had burst into the room, his face pale as milk, his short hair standing up in wild disarray from running his hands through it for eighteen hours. He had stared at the child in the maester's arms. At the tuft of silver gold hair plastered to her scalp, at the violet eyes that were already open and glaring at the world with an indignation that seemed profoundly personal. His expression had twisted into something ugly.

"A girl," he had said, and his voice was flat. Hollow. A room with all the furniture removed. "I waited nine moons. Nine moons. For a girl."

He had not touched you. He had not touched the baby. He had simply turned on his heel and walked out of the room, and you had heard his boots ring down the corridor, and then the distant slam of a door, and then nothing.

The next three days had been the darkest of your new life. Aerion did not come to your room. He did not send for you. He did not acknowledge the existence of the child at all. He ate his meals with his family, trained in the yard with a brutality that left his sparring partners bloodied and bewildered, and refused to speak to anyone who so much as mentioned the baby's existence. The girl, the servants called her in whispers, because she had no name yet, and a child without a name was a ghost.

You lay in your bed, your body slowly knitting itself back together, your breasts aching with milk, and you held your daughter against your chest and wondered if this was the end. If Aerion would cast you both out, send you back to the streets of King's Landing with nothing but the clothes on your back and a bastard child in your arms. You made plans in the dark hours. Foolish, desperate plans, the kind of plans that only seemed reasonable at three in the morning when you were alone and terrified and your stitches still pulled every time you moved. You would run. You would find Dunk if he was still alive, throw yourself at his feet, beg him to take you back even though you were ruined and used and nothing like the sister he had lost. You would find work, honest work, kitchen work, anything, and you would raise your daughter to be strong and fierce and free, and she would never, ever know what it felt like to be owned.

But on the fourth day, the door had opened.

Aerion stood in the frame, and you barely recognized him. His eyes were ringed with shadows so dark they looked like bruises, his short hair a disheveled mess, his fine clothes rumpled and stained as if he had been sleeping in them, or not sleeping at all. He had been wrestling with something, you realized. Himself, his pride, his expectations, his disappointment. And from the look of him, he had lost.

"Let me see her," he said. His voice was hoarse, scraped raw, as if he had been shouting or weeping or both. "Let me see my daughter."

You did not trust yourself to speak. You simply lifted the baby from your chest. She was awake, her violet eyes tracking the movement with that unnerving intensity newborns sometimes had. And you held her out toward him.

Aerion approached slowly, cautiously, like a man approaching a wounded animal that might bite. He looked down at the small, wrinkled face, at the silver gold fuzz on her head, at the tiny fists that clenched and unclenched in the air as if she were already fighting battles only she could see. And something in his expression shifted. Not softened. Aerion did not soften, not in any way you had ever witnessed. But cracked. A fissure in the ice, unexpected and profound.

"She looks like me," he said. It was not a question.

"Yes," you whispered, your voice still ruined from screaming. "She's a true dragon, my prince. Just like her father."

He reached out one finger, just one, his hand trembling almost imperceptibly, and touched the baby's cheek. Rhaenyra turned her head toward the contact, her tiny mouth opening and closing in that instinctive rooting reflex.

"Rhaenyra," he said. "I'll call her Rhaenyra."

You knew the name, of course. Everyone in Westeros knew the name. The princess who had been called Maegor with teats, who had fought a war that tore the realm in half and refused to surrender even when the odds were hopeless. It was a name soaked in controversy, in blood, in the stubborn refusal to be anything other than what she was. It was a cruel name to give an infant daughter, in some ways. A challenge. A provocation. A reminder that girls could be as dangerous as boys, if they were bold enough.

But it was not Maegor. It was not the name of the Cruel. And on that fourth day, with your daughter finally named and Aerion's hand resting awkwardly, almost shyly, on your shoulder, you had decided to be grateful for small mercies.

"Rhaenyra," you repeated, trying the name on your tongue. It tasted like strength. Like fire. Like survival. "My little dragon."

And now, two years later, watching that same daughter tug impatiently at Aerion's doublet while he laughed, that hope had only grown. Rhaenyra was fierce and stubborn and clever and alive, so vibrantly alive, and you would make certain she stayed that way. You would die before you let that happen. You would kill before you let that happen. And the truth of that, the absolute crystalline certainty of it, was the most liberating thing you had ever felt.

"Y/N."

Aerion's voice pulled you back from the precipice of memory. He was watching you over Rhaenyra's silver gold head, his expression hovering somewhere between amusement and irritation.

"You're brooding again," he said. "You get that look on your face when you're thinking too hard. I've told you. I don't like it."

You let your expression shift, the distant look replaced by something warmer, more present. But you did not apologize; you had learned, over your time together, that apologizing for your thoughts only made him more suspicious. Instead, you reached out and straightened the collar of his doublet, letting your fingers brush the skin of his throat, a gesture of casual intimacy that you knew he craved even if he would never admit it.

"I was thinking about how happy she looks," you said, and it was the truth, or a version of it. "You make her happy, Aerion. You know that, don't you?"

He grunted, but you caught the flicker of satisfaction that crossed his features before he could suppress it. Praise. He could never get enough of it, had been starved for it his entire life, and you had learned to feed him with the same regularity you fed your daughter. All this time, and he still turned toward your words like a flower toward the sun, drinking in every affirmation, every acknowledgment, every whispered you are magnificent, you are powerful, you are loved.

"She's a dragon," Aerion said, adjusting Rhaenyra on his hip with practiced ease. "Dragons don't get sad. They incinerate the things that upset them."

"Papa," Rhaenyra said, with the sudden, intense solemnity that only a two-year-old can muster, "I want to incinerate something."

Aerion threw back his head and laughed. A real laugh, full throated and genuine, the kind of laugh that transformed his sharp features into something almost boyish, almost approachable. "That's my girl," he said, and pressed a kiss to her forehead with an uncharacteristic tenderness. "That's my little dragon. We'll find you something to burn later."

You watched them, this strange, fierce man and this strange, fierce child, and your heart performed that complicated maneuver it had been practicing for years, folding affection and exasperation and hope and fear all into one impossible shape.

This is real, you told yourself. Whatever else is happening, whatever else they say about us, this is real. He is my Aerion, and she is my daughter, and this is my life, and it is real.

Aerion shifted Rhaenyra to his other arm and extended his free hand toward you. His earlier tension seemed to have eased, replaced by something almost eager, a restless energy that crackled just beneath his skin.

"There's a play tonight," he said. "Some puppeteers have set up in the village. I've heard it's about a dragon." His mouth curved into that sharp, knowing smile you had come to recognize. "I thought we might go after supper. You and me and the little dragon here. She should see something worthy of her name."

Rhaenyra's head came up at the word dragon, her violet eyes bright. "A dragon play, Papa?"

"A dragon play," Aerion confirmed, tweaking her nose. "With fire and scales and everything a proper dragon ought to have. Would you like that?"

Rhaenyra's shriek of delight was answer enough. She bounced in his arms, clapping her small hands together, already launching into a stream of questions about whether the dragon would be big or small, whether it would breathe real fire, whether she could meet it afterward and be its friend.

You smiled, and this time there was no calculation in it at all. Aerion was trying. In his own strange, possessive way, he was trying. He had brought you to Ashford to wound his cousin, yes. He had paraded you in front of his family like a trophy, yes. But he was also here, in this sunlit corridor, planning an evening at a play with his paramour and his bastard daughter, and there was something in his face that you had learned to recognize as hope.

"That sounds wonderful," you said, and meant it. "Rhaenyra will be talking about it for weeks."

"She'll be talking about it regardless," Aerion said dryly. "The child never stops talking. She gets that from you."

"From me?" You pressed a hand to your chest in mock offense. "I am the very soul of silence, my prince."

Aerion snorted. It was an undignified sound, entirely at odds with the sharp, cruel prince the rest of the world knew. "You are a terrible liar, Y/N. You always have been."

But he was smiling when he said it, and when he offered you his arm, you took it without hesitation. Rhaenyra was still chattering about dragons, her small voice filling the corridor with improbable questions and even more improbable declarations. Aerion answered her with patience, with warmth, with the particular tenderness he reserved for her alone.

And you walked beside them through the halls of Ashford Castle, your hand on Aerion's arm, your daughter's laughter echoing off the stones, and for this moment, this single bright moment, you let yourself believe that everything would be all right.

—

The screaming started before you understood what was happening.

One moment there had been music, the thin reedy piping of a flute and the thump of a hand drum, and Rhaenyra had been bouncing on your hip with her small hands clapping together in delight. The painted dragon had been swaying above the stage on its strings, its wings catching the torchlight, its jaws opening and closing in roar while the puppeteer below made a rumbling growl deep in her throat to give it voice. Rhaenyra had laughed. You could still hear the echo of that laugh, bright and silver and utterly without fear.

Then Aerion and the white cloaks moved, and the world splintered. The first tent pole went down with a sound like a thunderclap. Silk billowed inward, red and gold and orange, catching the torchlight and becoming flame even as it fell. People were screaming. People were running. A woman stumbled into you from behind and you curled around Rhaenyra on pure instinct, your spine curving, your arms locking, your body becoming a shell with your daughter at its center. Someone's elbow drove into your ribs and you felt something grind and shift and send a bright white bolt of pain up your side.

"Mama," Rhaenyra whimpered, and her voice was small, so terribly small, the voice of a child who did not understand why the world had turned cruel between one heartbeat and the next. "Mama, I want to go. I want to go home."

"Shh," you breathed into her hair, though your own voice was shaking so badly the word hardly had a shape. "Shh, my love, my dragon, Mama's here. Mama's got you. Close your eyes, sweetling. Close your eyes and it will be over soon."

She buried her face in the curve of your throat. You could feel her tears, hot and wet, soaking through the silk of your gown. You could feel her heart beating against your chest, a frantic bird trapped in a cage of bone. You could feel every tremor that ran through her small body, and each one was a knife slipped between your ribs.

The guard Aerion had assigned to you stood at your back like a statue carved from ice. Ser Harrold, his name was, you had begged him to escort you from the pavilion the moment the violence began. You had turned to him with Rhaenyra clutched against your chest and pleaded with him to let you leave, to let you take your daughter somewhere safe, somewhere the screaming did not reach.

He had looked at you with eyes that held no more warmth than a winter pond. "Prince's orders," he had said, and the words fell from his mouth like stones dropped into still water. "You stay until he says otherwise."

"But she's frightened," you had said, and you had hated the tremor in your voice, hated the way it made you sound weak when you needed to be strong. "She's two years old, Ser Harrold. She doesn't understand what's happening. Please."

"Prince's orders," he had repeated, and he had not looked at you again.

On the stage, Aerion had the puppeteer by the wrist. She was young. That was the detail that lodged itself in your memory like a splinter, the detail that would come back to you in the dark hours of the night for years afterward. She was young, perhaps your age. Her mouth was open in a scream that you could not hear over the roaring of the crowd, and her free hand was beating uselessly against Aerion's chest, against his arm, against the unyielding iron of his grip.

She had made a dragon out of paint and wood and string. She had painted scales on its wings with her own hands, had worked its jaws with her own fingers, had given it a voice that made children laugh and grown men cheer. She had made the terrible, fatal mistake of letting her dragon be killed in the story she told. The knight had slain it with his sword and the audience had gasped and clapped and cheered the hero's victory.

Aerion had not cheered. Aerion had stared with a face like a thunderhead, and then the Kingsguard had begun to move, and now he was on the stage with the puppeteer's wrist in his hand and her dragon lying forgotten at his feet.

He started with her fingers. The first one broke with a sound like a dry branch snapping underfoot in the depths of winter. It was surprisingly quiet, that sound, almost delicate, almost polite. The puppeteer's index finger bent backward at an angle that made your stomach contract violently, and she screamed, a high thin shriek that cut through the chaos of the pavilion like a blade through silk.

Rhaenyra flinched in your arms. "Mama," she whimpered, "why is the lady screaming? Is she hurt? Mama, I want to go."

"Close your eyes, sweetling," you whispered again, and your voice was breaking now, splintering into pieces you could not put back together. "Close your eyes and think of something nice. Think of the roses in the garden. Think of the pink flower you picked. Think of anything but this."

The second finger broke wetter than the first. A muffled, grinding crack that seemed to echo in the hollow of your chest. The puppeteer's legs gave out beneath her, but Aerion held her up by her ruined hand,ìand his face, his beautiful face that you had kissed and praised and learned to love, was alight with something that went beyond cruelty into a territory you had no name for.

Pleasure. A bright, burning pleasure that lit him from within like a lantern lights a room. His violet eyes were wide and shining, his lips parted slightly around his bloodied teeth, his breath coming in short sharp bursts that were almost sexual in their rhythm. He was enjoying this. He was enjoying this in a way he had never enjoyed a single moment of the years you had spent together, and the realization crashed into you like a wave into rocks, cold and brutal and undeniable.

You love him, you had thought earlier in the gardens. No, you hate him. That was the horror of it, the horror that would never leave you no matter how many years passed. You loved him, you loved the father of your child, you loved the man who had burned down a brothel for you. You loved him, and he was standing on a stage in a village called Ashford, breaking a girl's fingers one by one because her puppet show had insulted his pride.

The third finger made a sound like a walnut being crushed in a vise.

"Please," you heard yourself saying, and you did not know if you were speaking to Aerion or to Ser Harrold or to the gods who had never listened to a single prayer you had ever sent their way. "Please, someone stop him. Someone make him stop."

Ser Harrold's hand closed around your upper arm, immobilizing you. He was wearing gauntlets, the leather stiff and unyielding against your skin. "Hold still," he said, and his voice was the voice of a man who had learned long ago that obedience was safer than conscience.

The puppeteer's fourth finger snapped.

Then the giant came out of the crowd. His hair was dirty blonde, cut short against his skull in a way that suggested practicality rather than fashion, and it was matted with sweat and dust and something that might have been blood. His face was a shadowed blur in the torchlight, his features obscured by the angle and the distance and the chaos, but his size. Gods above and below, his size.

He was enormous. Seven feet of bone and muscle and righteous fury, with shoulders broad enough to block out the firelight behind him and hands the size of dinner plates curled into fists at his sides. He did not slow. He did not hesitate. He cleared the edge of the stage in a single stride, and then he was on Aerion, and his fist was connecting with the prince's face with a sound like a hammer striking an anvil.

Aerion staggered backward. His grip on the puppeteer's wrist broke, and she crumpled to the stage in a heap of brown wool and ruined hands, sobbing. Blood flew from Aerion's mouth in a dark arc that caught the torchlight and glittered like rubies scattered across the stage. He hit the wooden planking hard, his head snapping back against the boards, and for one impossible, crystalline moment, the entire pavilion went silent.

Then the Kingsguard moved. They came from every direction at once, white cloaks streaming behind them like wings, white enameled armor flashing in the firelight. Six of them. Seven. More, perhaps. They swarmed the big man the way wolves swarm a bear, throwing themselves onto his back and his arms and his legs, trying to drag him down by sheer weight of numbers. He fought them. Gods, he fought them. You saw one Kingsguard reel backward with blood pouring from the visor of his helm. You saw another take an elbow to the throat and go down choking, clawing at his gorget. You saw the big man's fists rise and fall and rise again with the relentless rhythm of a blacksmith's hammer, each blow carrying the weight of a righteous anger that no amount of white armor could withstand.

But there were too many. There were always too many. They dragged at his legs and his arms and his neck, six white cloaked knights and then seven and then eight, and still he nearly threw them off, still he nearly got free, still he nearly made it back to his feet with his massive hands reaching for Aerion again. Then one of the Kingsguard drove the pommel of his sword into the back of the big man's skull, and his knees buckled. Another kicked his legs out from under him. Another twisted his arm behind his back at an angle that made the joint scream in protest even from where you stood watching.

They forced him to his knees on the stage. One of them, a tall man with a captain's bars on his white cloak, grabbed a fistful of that dirty blonde hair and yanked his head back, forcing his face up into the torchlight.

Aerion rose to his feet. He moved slowly, carefully, the way a man moves when he is holding onto his composure by the thinnest of threads. His lip was split open, a gash that ran from the corner of his mouth nearly to his chin. Blood sheeted down his jaw and dripped onto the white silk of his collar, staining it crimson. He probed at his teeth with his tongue, grimaced, and spat a wad of blood and saliva onto the stage. Something small and white and hard skittered across the wooden boards.

“Why did you throw your life away for this whore” Aerion said.

"You've loosened one of my teeth,"

The pavilion had gone very quiet. The screaming had stopped, or perhaps it had simply receded to a distance where it could no longer reach you. The only sounds were the crackle of the torches, the soft sobbing of the puppeteer still huddled on the stage, and the ragged, labored breathing of the big man as he knelt in the grip of the Kingsguard. Aerion's voice was soft, almost conversational, the voice of a man discussing the weather over a cup of wine. It was more terrifying than any scream could have been.

"So," Aerion continued, prodding at his mouth again with his thumb and forefinger, examining the blood that came away, "we'll start by breaking out all of yours."

"No." The word came out of your mouth before you could stop it, a reflex as automatic as breathing, as instinctive as flinching from an open flame. "Aerion, no."

He did not look at you. He was not capable of hearing you, not in this state, not with the blood of a puppet show on his hands and the taste of his own tooth in his mouth. He was looking at the big man the way a child looks at an insect he has caught in a jar. Curious. Utterly without pity.

One of the Kingsguard, the captain with his hand still fisted in the big man's hair, forced his head down toward the stage. Another moved to stand on either side of him, gripping his shoulders, pinning him in place. A third stepped forward, removing his gauntlets one finger at a time, flexing his bare hands with the deliberate precision of a man preparing to perform a task that required both strength and care.

"Hold him still," Aerion said. "I want to watch."

Rhaenyra was sobbing in earnest now, her small body shaking with the force of her terror. She did not understand what was happening. She understood only that her father was on the stage and there was blood on his face and the safe bright world of the puppet show had collapsed into screaming and white cloaks and a big man on his knees who was about to be hurt in a way she had no language for.

"Mama," she wept, "Mama, I want Papa to stop, make Papa stop, please make him stop."

"I can't," you whispered into her hair, and the admission was a wound that would never fully heal. "I can't, sweetling. Mama can't make him stop. Close your eyes. Close your eyes and don't look."

The Kingsguard with the bare hands stepped forward. He was flexing his fingers, working the joints loose, his movements unhurried and methodical. The captain still had the big man's head forced down at the angle required for what was about to happen. The other guards braced themselves, digging their heels into the wooden stage, preparing for the struggle they knew would come.

The big man lifted his head against the pressure of the captain's grip. It was a monumental effort; you could see the muscles of his neck straining, the veins standing out like cords, the sweat cutting tracks through the blood and dirt on his face. He lifted his head, and the torchlight fell full upon his features for the first time.

You saw his face.

Time did not slow. It did not fade. It stopped. It stopped completely, absolutely, as if some vast and terrible hand had reached down from the heavens and seized the mechanism of the world itself and held it motionless. The torches froze mid-flicker. The screaming faded to a hum that existed somewhere beyond the boundaries of hearing. The blood in your veins turned to ice and then to fire and then to something that had no name at all.

You knew that face. You knew the hands. The enormous hands that had lifted you from your mother's deathbed, that had carried you through the cold morning while the other whores watched with pity and disgust, that had wrapped you in a threadbare blanket and held you against his chest while he promised you in a cracking boy's voice that he would always, always have you.

Dunk. He was alive. He was on his knees on a stage in a village called Ashford with a Kingsguard's hand in his hair and another Kingsguard's bare knuckles preparing to break his teeth out of his skull one by one, and he was alive.

"Dunk."

You did not recognize your own voice. It did not sound like a voice at all. It sounded like something that had been torn out of you by the roots, something that had been buried so deep and so long that pulling it free left a bleeding hollow in the center of your chest.

"Dunk."

Louder this time. Louder, and it cracked on the second syllable, cracked like your mother's laugh had cracked, like a bell that had been rung too hard and too long and had nothing left inside it but splinters.

"DUNK."

Time restarted itself with a violence that made your vision swim. The torches flared back to life. The screaming returned, a wave of sound that crashed over you and through you and left you gasping. The Kingsguard hesitated, their hands pausing on their prisoner, their white helms turning toward you with the synchronized precision of hunting dogs catching a scent.

Dunk turned his head. The captain still had his fist twisted in his hair, still had his neck bent at that brutal angle, but Dunk turned his head against that grip with the slow, inexorable force of a continent shifting, and he looked at you.

His eyes found yours across the chaos of the ruined tent. You saw the recognition hit him. Saw it travel through his body like a physical blow, a shock wave that started in his eyes and rippled outward through his shoulders, his chest, his hands. His face went slack with it, the tension draining out of his jaw and his brow, replaced by something that was too raw and too vast to be called surprise. It was disbelief. It was hope, the kind of hope that had been dead for so long its resurrection was indistinguishable from agony. It was joy and grief and guilt and love, all of them crashing together in the space of a single heartbeat.

His mouth moved. Formed the shape of your name. You could not hear it over the screaming, over the roaring of your own blood in your ears, but you saw it, saw the way his lips shaped the syllables he had not spoken in years, the name he had called across a hundred alleys and a hundred dark streets while he searched for you, the name he had whispered to himself in the long nights when he believed you were dead and gone and never coming back.

He surged against the guards holding him. Not fighting to escape now. Fighting to get to you. His massive shoulders bunched and heaved, nearly throwing off the two Kingsguard who were gripping his arms. A third lunged in to reinforce them, his white cloak tangling around his legs in his haste. Dunk did not seem to notice. He did not seem to feel the hands dragging at him or the knees pressing into his back or the captain's fist still grinding into his scalp. He was looking at you and only at you, and he was trying to reach you, trying to cross the impossible distance between the stage and the place where you stood with Rhaenyra in your arms.

You surged forward to meet him. You did not think about it. You did not calculate the odds or weigh the consequences. Your body moved before your mind could catch up, driven by an instinct older than thought, older than fear, older than anything you had learned in the years since they took you from the festival. Your brother was here. Your brother was alive.

Ser Harrold's arm locked around your waist like an iron bar. "Hold still," he snarled, and he was no longer calm now, no longer indifferent. He was struggling to hold you, struggling to keep his grip on a woman who had spent years learning to be still and silent and obedient and had finally, in this single shattering moment, forgotten how.

"Let me go!" The words tore out of your throat with a force that made your vision white out at the edges. Rhaenyra was screaming in your arms, her small fists beating against your shoulders, her voice a thin high wail that you could barely hear over the roaring in your ears. "Let me go, that's my brother, that's my brother, let me GO!"

"Aerion!" You were screaming his name now, the name of the man you loved, the name of the monster on the stage, the name of the only person in this pavilion who had the power to make the nightmare stop. "Aerion, please, please, you have to stop, he's my brother,please, Aerion, PLEASE!"

Aerion turned to look at you.

His face was still smeared with blood, his lip still split and swollen, his violet eyes still bright with the pleasure of the violence he had been orchestrating. But something flickered in their depths when he saw your face, when he registered the raw, unvarnished desperation in your voice. Confusion first. Then irritation, a flicker of the familiar petulance that crossed his features whenever something did not go the way he had planned. And then something else, something that chilled you more than any cruelty could have done.

Something calculating.

"What," he said, and his voice was a blade drawn slowly across a whetstone, "the fuck are you doing? What is she screaming about?"

You could barely form the words. Your throat was raw, your chest heaving, your arms trembling with the effort of holding Rhaenyra while Ser Harrold's grip threatened to crack your ribs. But you forced them out, forced them past the sobs that were building in your chest, forced them into the space between you and the man who held your brother's life in his bloodstained hands.

"He's my brother. He's my brother, Aerion." Your voice cracked on his name, splintered into something that was half a plea and half a prayer. "The brother I told you about. Dunk. The one I thought was dead. The one who raised me. Please. Please don't hurt him. I'll do anything. I'll give you anything. Just please, Aerion, please don't hurt my brother."

Something moved in Aerion's face. A muscle in his jaw jumped. His eyes narrowed, the bright pleasure of the violence draining out of them, replaced by something harder and colder and infinitely more dangerous. He looked at you, and he looked at Dunk, and he looked back at you, and you could see him putting the pieces together. The brother you had wept for in the dark hours of the night, the brother whose name you had whispered in your sleep, the brother Aerion had forbidden you from ever mentioning again.

The brother who was now on his knees in front of him, bloodied and defiant, the man who had dared to strike a prince of the blood, and his expression closed like a door slamming shut in a winter gale.

"Take her back to her chamber," Aerion said. He was not looking at you anymore. He was looking at Dunk, and his voice was utterly without warmth, utterly without the history that stretched between you, utterly without anything that might have been mistaken for mercy. "Lock the door. No one goes in or out until I give the order."

"No." The word was barely a whisper. Ser Harrold was already dragging you backward, his arm still locked around your waist, his heels digging into the trampled grass of the pavilion floor. "Aerion, no, please, you can't do this."

"Take the child to the nursery," Aerion continued, as if you had not spoken, as if your voice did not exist, as if you were already gone. "She does not need to see any more of this. Make sure she stays there."

"No!" The scream that tore out of you was not a sound. It was a living thing, a creature with claws and teeth and a heart full of desperation, and it ripped its way out of your throat and into the torchlit air of the pavilion with a force that made the nearest Kingsguard flinch. "You can't separate us! She's my daughter! She's MY daughter!"

Rhaenyra was shrieking now, a high thin sound that rose above the chaos like a needle sliding into flesh. Her arms were wrapped around your neck so tightly that you could feel her small fingernails digging crescents into your skin, and her legs were locked around your waist, and her face was buried in the curve of your shoulder, and she was screaming, screaming, screaming. "Mama, Mama, don't let them take me, Mama, please, I want to stay with you, Mama, MAMA!"

Ser Harrold was dragging you backward. Another guard, a man in the pale grey of Prince Maekar's household, was trying to untangle Rhaenyra from your arms. His hands were gentle, gentler than you had expected, but that gentleness made it worse somehow, made it more real, made it a kindness that was not a kindness at all. He was murmuring something to Rhaenyra, some meaningless reassurance that neither you nor she could hear over the screaming, and his fingers were prying at her small grip one digit at a time.

"Don't," you sobbed. "Don't take her. Please. Please don't take my daughter."

But your arms were being pulled backward, and your strength was failing, and Rhaenyra's grip was slipping. You felt her fingers lose their hold on your dress. Felt the warmth of her body pulled away from yours. Felt the cold air rush in to fill the space where she had been, and that cold was worse than any physical pain, worse than the bruises blooming on your arm where Ser Harrold held you, worse than the raw burning in your throat from screaming, worse than anything you had endured in the brothel or the alley or the long dark nights when you believed your brother was dead.

"RHAENYRA!"

She was being carried away, still reaching for you over the guard's shoulder, her silver-gold hair bright as a candle flame in the torchlight, her violet eyes wide and streaming with tears. "Mama! I want my mama! Give me back my mama!"

You fought. You fought the way Dunk had fought, with every ounce of strength in your body, with your teeth and your nails and your fury. You twisted in Ser Harrold's grip and raked your nails across his face, felt the skin of his cheek tear beneath your fingers, felt the hot wet rush of his blood against your palm. He cursed and tightened his hold, and something in your side gave way with a sharp bright spike of agony, but you did not stop. You could not stop. Your daughter was being taken from you, your brother was on his knees with a prince's boot on his neck, and the world was ending, and you could not stop.

And then, cutting through the chaos like a blade through silk, a young voice rang out across the pavilion.

"No! Don't touch him!"

Everyone froze. The Kingsguard with his bare hands paused mid-motion, his knuckles inches from Dunk's clenched jaw. The captain's grip on Dunk's hair loosened slightly in surprise. Even Aerion turned, his bloodied mouth twisting into an expression of annoyed bewilderment.

The boy who stepped forward from the chaos of the crowd was small, skinny, with a shaved head that gleamed in the torchlight like a polished stone. He could not have been more than nine or ten years old, and he moved with the absolute, unshakeable confidence of someone who had never been told that the world did not bend to his will. He was bald and his clothes were the roughspun of a stable boy, dirty and sweat-stained, but he wore them like a prince wearing borrowed silks.

Dunk's voice was a ragged gasp, desperate and afraid in a way it had not been when the Kingsguard were beating him. "You stupid boy! Hold your tongue or they'll hurt you."

The boy did not slow. He did not even glance at Dunk. His eyes were fixed on Aerion, and there was something in them that made the prince's expression flicker with the first hint of uncertainty you had seen all night.

"No, they won't," the boy said, and his voice was calm, steady, the voice of someone stating a fact as immutable as the rising of the sun. "If they do, they'll answer to my father."

He stepped past the Kingsguard as if they were not there, as if the white cloaks and the white armor and the drawn swords were no more substantial than morning mist. He stopped directly in front of Aerion, this small bald boy in dirty clothes, and he lifted his chin and looked the prince full in the face.

"Let go of him," the boy commanded. "Wate, Yorkel, do as I say."

And the Kingsguard obeyed.

The captain released Dunk's hair. The other guards stepped back, their hands falling away from his arms and shoulders, their white helms inclining slightly in gestures of deference that stopped your heart in your chest. They knew this boy. They knew him, and they obeyed him, and that could only mean one thing.

Aerion stared at the boy. His violet eyes narrowed, studying the shaved head, the dirty clothes, the small defiant face that was upturned to his own. And then, slowly, recognition dawned across his bloodied features like a sluggish sunrise. It was followed immediately by annoyance, a deep and profound irritation that seemed to cut through even the pleasure he had been taking in the violence moments before.

"You impudent little rat," Aerion said. His voice dripped with contempt, but beneath it lurked something else, something that sounded almost like wariness. "What's happened to your hair?"

The boy did not flinch. He did not blink. He looked at Aerion with the steady, unblinking gaze of someone who had spent his entire life watching and learning and understanding things that others missed, and when he spoke, his voice carried the unmistakable weight of royal blood.

"I cut it off, brother," he said. "I didn't want to look like you."

Brother. The word landed in the center of the pavilion like a stone dropped into still water. Brother. This boy, this small bald boy in stable clothes, was Aerion's brother. Which meant he was Prince Aegon Targaryen, the youngest of Prince Maekar's sons, the one you had glimpsed occasionally in the corridors of Summerhall, the one who had looked at you like you were a puzzle he was trying to solve.

And he had just intervened to save your brother's life. The revelation halted the attack instantly. The Kingsguard could not carry out Aerion's orders now. Not against a man who was connected, through his squire, to the royal family. Not against a man who was protected by a prince of the blood, however young and however bald and however inexplicably dressed in the roughspun of a stable hand. The captain stepped back further, his white cloak settling around him like folded wings, and the other guards followed suit, leaving Dunk kneeling alone on the stage.

Aerion's face was a study in frustration. The pleasure had drained out of him entirely now, replaced by a seething, impotent fury that he could not express without defying his own brother, his own blood, in front of half a dozen witnesses. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. The blood from his split lip still dripped down his chin, and his violet eyes were dark with a rage that had no outlet.

But he was a prince, and he knew the rules, and striking a man who was connected to the royal family was a crime that even he could not simply burn his way out of.

"Take him to the cells," Aerion said finally, and his voice was flat and cold and utterly drained of the pleasure that had animated it before. "He struck a prince of the blood. That crime remains regardless of whose squire the little rat has chosen to become. He will await trial and judgment, and lock her in her chamber."

Ser Harrold hauled you backward through the ruins of the pavilion. Your legs gave out beneath you, and he dragged you the rest of the way, your heels scraping furrows in the trampled grass, your head lolling against his shoulder, your voice reduced to a raw and wordless keening that did not stop. You passed overturned benches. You passed torn silk and scattered cushions and a child's abandoned shoe.

The last thing you saw before the tent flap closed behind you was Aerion. He was still standing on the stage, his red tunic splattered with blood, his face a mask of cold, distant contemplation. He was not looking at you. He was looking at the place where Dunk had disappeared, and there was something in his expression that you had never seen before. Something that went beyond jealousy, beyond possessiveness, beyond the casual cruelty of a man who had never been denied anything.

He looked like a dragon counting its hoard, and finding a single coin out of place.

—

The door slammed shut behind you with a finality that echoed through your bones.

You had screamed until your voice gave out. You had beaten your fists against the iron banded oak until your knuckles split and bled, leaving dark smears on the wood that looked like accusations. You had thrown yourself at the door again and again, your shoulder bruising, your strength ebbing, until finally your legs had given way beneath you and you had slid to the cold stone floor with your back against the unforgiving wood and your face buried in your bleeding hands.

Rhaenyra was gone. Dunk was gone. Everyone you had ever loved had been ripped away from you in the space of a single night, and you were locked in a borrowed chamber in a borrowed castle with nothing but the silence and the dark and the terrible, circling thoughts that would not let you rest.

You pressed your forehead against your knees and tried to breathe.The hours crawled past like wounded animals dragging themselves toward death. You did not move from your place against the door. You did not lie down on the bed, though it was soft and wide and covered in Ashford's finest linens. You did not drink the water that had been left on the side table, though your throat was raw and burning from screaming. You simply sat, curled into yourself, and waited.

For Aerion. For news. For something, anything, that would tell you what was going to happen next. You thought about the look on Dunk's face when he recognized you. The shock. The joy. The desperate, agonized love. What must he have thought? What must he have assumed about you, about your life, about the choices that had led you to this place?

The shame of it burned in your chest like swallowed fire.

You did not know how long you sat there. It might have been hours. It might have been minutes. Time had lost all meaning in the darkness of the chamber, with the candles unlit and the fire unbuilt and the only light coming from the pale sliver of moon that crept through the narrow window high in the wall. But eventually, eventually, you heard the sound you had been dreading and hoping for in equal measure.

Footsteps in the corridor. Boots on stone, deliberate and unhurried, the particular cadence of a man who knew that the world would wait for him. The jingle of a sword at the hip. The faint, almost imperceptible sound of a key turning in a lock.

The door swung inward, and Aerion Targaryen stepped into the room.

He had cleaned the blood from his face since you last saw him. His lip was still swollen. His silver gold hair had been combed back from his face, still damp from washing. He had changed his clothes; replaced by a simple black doublet that made his pale skin look almost luminous in the moonlight. He looked almost calm. Almost controlled. But his violet eyes were too bright, too sharp, the eyes of a man who was holding onto his composure by the thinnest of threads.

He closed the door behind him. You heard the lock click into place.

"My dragon," you said, and your voice came out as a croak, raw and broken from screaming. You tried to rise to your feet, but your legs would not hold you, so you remained on the floor, your back against the wall, your hands still stained with your own blood. "Aerion, please. Please tell me what's happening. My brother. Where is my brother? Is he all right? What are they going to do to him?"

The change that came over Aerion's face was instantaneous and terrifying. The careful mask of composure cracked like ice hit by a hammer. His jaw tightened. His eyes narrowed. His hands, which had been relaxed at his sides, curled slowly into fists.

"I come to you," he said, and his voice was a blade being drawn from its sheath, slow and deliberate and full of promise, "after being attacked in front of half the nobility of the Reach. My lip is split open. My tooth is loose in my skull. My dignity has been trampled by some hedge knight with dirt under his fingernails and hay in his hair. And the first words out of your mouth are not 'Are you all right, my prince?' Not 'Let me tend your wounds, my love.' Not a single word of comfort or concern for me, the man who saved you from a brothel, the father of your child, the prince who has kept you fed and clothed and protected for years."

He took a step toward you. Then another. His shadow fell across you like a shroud, blocking out the pale moonlight, plunging you into darkness.

"Your first words," he said, and his voice was rising now, climbing toward a register you had learned to fear, "are about him. A stranger. A man who struck me. A man who loosened my tooth and spilled my blood in front of the Kingsguard. That is who you ask about. That is who you care about. Not me. Not your prince. Not the father of your child. Him."

"He's not a stranger," you said, and your voice was barely a whisper. You knew you should stop. You knew you should placate him, soothe him, tell him everything he wanted to hear. That was what you had done for years, what you had become so skilled at doing. But you could not. Not tonight. Not with Dunk's face still burned into your memory like a brand. "He's my brother, Aerion. He's my brother. He raised me. He protected me, and you have him locked in a cell like a criminal. Please. Please, just tell me he's all right. Just tell me you haven't hurt him."

Aerion stared at you for a long moment. The torch from the corridor outside cast his shadow long and dark across the floor, stretching toward you like a grasping hand. His breathing was audible in the silence, harsh and uneven, the breathing of a man who was losing a battle with his own rage.

"You love him," he said finally. The words were flat, toneless, utterly without inflection. "This brother of yours. This hedge knight with his dirty hands and his dirty hair. You love him more than you love me."

"That's not true," you said, and it was the truth and it was a lie and it was everything in between. "I love you, Aerion. You know I love you. But he's my brother. He's my blood. I thought he was dead. I mourned him for years. And now he's here, and he's alive, and I just want to know that he's safe. That's all. I just want to know that he's safe. Please."

"Safe." Aerion repeated the word as if it were a foreign language, a concept he had heard described but never experienced. "Safe. You want to know if the man who struck me is safe. You want to know if the man who humiliated me in front of my family and my father is safe."

He laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. It was the sound of something breaking.

"You're mine," he said, and his voice cracked on the word, splintering into something that was half rage and half desperation. "You have been mine since the night I bought you. I paid fifty gold dragons for you. I burned down a brothel for you. I gave you a home, a place in my household, a daughter who bears my name. I have given you everything. Everything. And you stand there, bleeding on my floor, asking about another man."

"I'm not standing," you whispered, and you did not know why that was the detail you chose to focus on. He crossed the distance between you in three swift strides. His hand closed around your arm, hauling you upright with a strength that would leave bruises, and you cried out as the blood rushed back to your legs and the pain in your side flared white hot.

"You are mine," he said again, and his face was inches from yours, his violet eyes blazing with a fire you had seen directed at others but never, never at you. Not like this. Not with this intensity. Not with this complete and absolute absence of restraint. "Say it. Say you're mine."

"I'm yours," you gasped. His grip on your arm was agony, his fingers digging into the bruises Ser Harrold had left, and tears were streaming down your face. "Aerion, please, you're hurting me."

"Good." He shook you, once, hard enough that your head snapped back and hit the stone wall behind you. Stars burst across your vision. "Good. Maybe if I hurt you enough, you'll remember who you belong to. Maybe if I hurt you enough, you'll stop asking about other men. Maybe if I hurt you enough, you'll finally understand that the only way you leave me is in a shroud."

"My brother," you sobbed. "He's my brother. Not another man. My brother. Please, Aerion, please try to understand."

"I understand perfectly." His free hand came up to grip your chin, forcing your face toward his, forcing you to look into his eyes. "I understand that you have spent years telling me you loved me while you dreamed of someone else. I understand that the moment he appeared, you forgot everything I have done for you. I understand that you are a whore I pulled from a brothel, and no matter how many silk dresses I put on you, no matter how much of myself I pour into you, you will never, ever stop being what you are."

The words hit you like physical blows. Each one was a fist to the gut, a slap to the face, a knife slipped between your ribs. You had known, intellectually, that this was how he saw you. You had always known. But hearing it spoken aloud, hearing it thrown at you like an accusation, like a crime you had committed against him simply by existing, was something else entirely.

"Aerion," you whispered, and your voice was so small, so broken, that you barely recognized it as your own. "I have never been unfaithful to you. I have never looked at another man. I have never wanted anyone but you. He is my brother. My brother. Why can't you understand that?"

"Because I don't care!" He screamed the words directly into your face, his spittle flecking your cheeks, his breath hot and sour with wine and blood. "I don't care who he is! I don't care if he's your brother or your father or your long lost lover! The moment you chose him over me, the moment you screamed his name instead of mine, the moment you fought my guards and clawed Ser Harrold's face to try to reach him, you made your choice! And now you will live with it!"

His hand released your chin and came across your face with a crack that seemed to echo off the stone walls.

The backhand caught you across the cheekbone, hard enough to snap your head to the side, hard enough to send a spray of blood from your already split lip, hard enough that your legs gave out beneath you entirely. You fell. You did not fall gracefully, did not fall the way women fell in the songs Dunk used to tell you, floating down like petals on a breeze. You fell like a sack of grain, heavy and graceless, your hip striking the stone floor with a jolt of pain that made you gasp, your palms scraping raw against the cold flagstones, your already injured side screaming in protest as you landed.

You lay there for a moment, stunned. The taste of blood filled your mouth, copper and salt and something that might have been despair. The world swam in and out of focus. The moonlight from the window seemed very far away, a distant silver promise of a world that existed somewhere beyond this room, beyond this night, beyond the man who was standing over you with his chest heaving and his eyes blazing.

Then he was on top of you. His weight pressed you into the cold stone floor, heavy and immovable, the weight of a man who had trained with sword and shield and lance, the weight of a prince who had never been denied anything in his life. His knees pinned your thighs. One hand caught both of your wrists and forced them above your head, pressing them into the stone with a grip that made your fingers go numb. His other hand was at your throat, not squeezing, not yet, just resting there, a reminder, a threat, a promise.

"You're my whore," he said, and his voice was a growl, low and guttural and utterly without the cultured refinement he wore like armor in the daylight. "Mine. You have been mine since the night I bought you, and you will be mine until the day you die. Do you understand? Do you understand what that means?"

"Get off me," you gasped. Your voice was barely audible, strangled by the hand at your throat and the weight on your chest. "Aerion, please, get off me, I can't breathe."

"It means," he continued, as if you had not spoken, as if your words were less than nothing, as if your voice did not exist in any way that mattered, "that I own you. Your body. Your heart. Your soul. Every breath you take, you take because I allow it. Every night you sleep in a warm bed, you sleep there because I permit it. Every moment you spend with our daughter, you spend because I have chosen to let you. And the only way you leave me, the only way you ever leave me, is if you are dead. Do you understand? Dead."

He was tearing at your dress as he spoke, the silk that he had given you, the dress he had chosen, the dress you had worn to the puppet show, the dress Rhaenyra's tears had soaked through. You heard the fabric rip, felt the cold air on your skin, and you found what remained of your strength and pushed against him. Your hands were still pinned above your head, but you bucked your hips, twisted your body, tried to throw him off the way Dunk had thrown off the Kingsguard.

It was useless. It was always useless. He was stronger than you, heavier than you, and he had the advantage of gravity and rage and years of training in violence that you had never received. He pressed you back down against the stone, and his hand left your throat to grip your jaw, forcing your face toward his, forcing you to look into his eyes.

"Say it," he demanded. "Say you're mine. Say you belong to me. Say that no one else matters. Not your brother. Not anyone. Say it."

You did not say it. You could not say it. The words were locked in your throat, trapped behind the tears and the blood and the terrible, crushing weight of what was happening to you.

You tried to squeeze your legs shut, but his knee drove between them, forcing them wide. He was hard and the sight of his cock made your stomach turn.

"Look at it," he hissed, grabbing a fistful of your hair and yanking your head forward. "Look at what you made me do. This is your fault. If you had just obeyed—"

He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to. He pressed the head of his cock against your entrance, already sore and swollen from the first time, and you whimpered, a high, broken sound that seemed to please him. He held there, just barely breaching you, letting you feel the pressure, the promise of invasion.

"Please," you whispered, your voice cracked and raw. "Please, Aerion, please don't—"

He thrust.

The sound you made was not a scream. It was something worse, a choked, guttural sob that tore from your throat as he buried himself inside you in one brutal push. The angle was wrong, too deep, too dry despite the precum already coating your thighs. You felt every ridge and vein of his cock as it forced its way deeper, splitting you open, claiming space that did not want him.

He paused, buried to the hilt, and let out a low groan that was almost human. Almost tender. Then he began to move.

Not fast. Not yet. He fucked you slowly, deliberately, with a cruelty that made every inch of the motion deliberate. He pulled almost all the way out, then slid back in with excruciating leisure, watching your face contort with each stroke. His eyes were locked on yours, challenging you to look away.

You did. You turned your head, pressing your cheek against the cold stone, staring at a crack in the floor until your vision blurred. But he would not allow that. He grabbed your jaw, forced your face back to his.

"Watch," he commanded. "Watch me take what is mine."

His pace increased. The slow, torturous rhythm gave way to a sharp, punishing fucking that drove the air from your lungs with every slam of his hips. The wet slap of skin against skin echoed off the walls, mingling with your ragged breaths and his grunts. He leaned down, his chest pressing against yours, and bit your shoulder, not a kiss, a bite, hard enough to break skin. You cried out, and he licked the blood, humming in satisfaction.

"That's it," he whispered against your ear, his breath hot and uneven. "Make sound for me. Let the whole castle hear how much you hate it. Let them know who you belong to."

He drove deeper, harder, angling his hips to hit that spot inside you that made your back arch despite yourself. A spark of unwanted pleasure shot through your pelvis, and you bit your lip so hard you tasted copper. He noticed. Of course he noticed. He slowed down, grinding against that same spot, watching your body betray you as your hips began to rock in counterpoint to his thrusts.

"There she is," he breathed, almost reverent. "There's the whore underneath. You can't hide her from me. She wants this. She needs this."

"No," you gasped, but your body said yes, clenching around him, drawing him deeper. Hot shame flooded through you, hotter than the pain, as your cunt began to slick with something that was not blood. He felt it too, he groaned, his rhythm faltering, his grip on your hips tightening.

"I'm going to fill you," he snarled, his composure cracking. "I'm going to pour every drop of my seed into this worthless hole until you're pregnant with my heir, a son this time, and then I'll do it again. And again. And—"

He came without warning, a guttural roar tearing from his throat as he shoved himself as deep as he could go, his hips stuttering, his cock pulsing inside you. You felt the hot flood of his cum, felt it spill out around him, felt it mix with the blood and your own unwanted wetness. He collapsed on top of you, his full weight pressing you into the stone, his breath hot and ragged against your neck.

For a long moment, neither of you moved. Then he shifted, pulling out with a wet sound that made you flinch, and rolled onto his back beside you. The moonlight had moved, illuminating his face now haunted gleam in his violet eyes that looked almost like regret.

But you knew better. You knew he would do it again. And again. And again. Because in his world, you were already dead. You just hadn't stopped breathing yet.

He did not speak. Neither did you. You lay on the cold stone floor with your torn dress twisted around your body and your wrists still aching from his grip and your thighs slick with the evidence of what he had done, and you stared at the ceiling, and you thought of nothing at all.

After a long time Aerion rose to his feet. He straightened his clothes with mechanical precision, adjusting his doublet, smoothing his hair back from his face. He did not look at you. He did not offer you a hand to help you up. He did not speak a single word of apology or comfort or explanation.

"Your brother will stand trial," he said, and his voice was the voice of a stranger, flat and cold and utterly devoid of the passion that had consumed him moments before. "For striking a prince of the blood. The sentence will be severe. How severe depends entirely on you."

He paused at the door, his hand on the latch, his back to you.

"If you try to see him again," he said, "if you try to contact him, if you so much as speak his name in my presence, I will have him executed. Do you understand? His life is in your hands. Remember that."

The remainder of the night passed in darkness. You did not move from the floor. You could not move from the floor. The torn silk of your dress had dried stiff and crusted against your skin, and you had not bothered to cover yourself. There was no one to see. There was no one to care. The moonlight crawled across the stone floor inch by inch, and you watched it the way a corpse might watch the shifting of its own shroud, with a detachment that went beyond despair into something vast and empty and still.

Morning came grey and cold through the narrow window. The sky outside was the color of old iron, heavy with clouds that had not yet decided whether to rain. You heard the castle waking around you. Footsteps in the corridor. The distant clang of the blacksmith's hammer. Servants calling to one another in voices too muffled to understand. The tourney, you remembered dimly. The tourney was still happening. Lord Ashford's daughter still needed her champion. The world was still turning, indifferent to the ruin of your life.

Someone brought food. You heard the door unlock, heard the tray scrape against the stone as it was pushed inside, heard the door lock again. You did not get up to look at it. The smell of bread and broth turned your stomach. You had not eaten since the puppet show, since before the puppet show, since the garden when Rhaenyra had found the pink flower and you had believed, foolishly and desperately, that everything would be all right.

The morning wore on. The light shifted. The clouds outside the window thickened and darkened and began to spit a thin, miserable drizzle that streaked the glass like tears.

And then, sometime in the afternoon, you heard the commotion.

It started as a distant murmur, a disturbance somewhere in the lower levels of the castle that grew louder and more urgent as it climbed toward your door. Shouts. Running footsteps. The clash of something metallic hitting stone. You lifted your head from the floor for the first time in hours, your neck aching, your vision swimming. Something was happening. Something was wrong.

The door crashed open. It was not Aerion who entered first but a maester, an old man in grey robes with a heavy chain around his neck and blood on his sleeves up to the elbows. Behind him came two guards, household men in the pale grey of Prince Maekar's service, carrying between them a litter on which lay a figure you recognized only by the silver gold of his hair.

Aerion. He was unconscious. His face was nearly unrecognizable. His lip had been split anew, a fresh gash that ran up toward his cheekbone. One of his eyes was swollen shut, the skin around it purple and black and glistening with some kind of salve. His chest was bare beneath a makeshift bandage that wrapped around his ribs, and the bandage was soaked through with blood, bright red and seeping, the color of life escaping. His right arm lay at an angle that was not natural, and his breathing was shallow and labored and made a wet, rattling sound that turned your stomach even as it ignited something else in your chest. Something you did not want to name. Something you did not want to feel.

You scrambled backward on the floor until your shoulder blades hit the wall. Your torn dress bunched around your knees. Your hands came up in front of you, a defensive gesture that was pure instinct, the instinct of a woman who had spent the night being broken and had no more pieces left to give.

"What," you said, and your voice came out as a croak, barely recognizable. "What happened? What is this?"

The maester did not look at you. He was directing the guards to lay the litter on the bed, his hands already reaching for the blood soaked bandages, already issuing orders about hot water and clean linen and milk of the poppy. But one of the guards, a young man whose face was pale and shocked and streaked with someone else's blood, paused long enough to answer.

"Trial of the Seven," he said, and the words meant nothing to you. "The prince demanded it. Against the hedge knight."

"Trial of the Seven?" The phrase was foreign, nonsensical, a collection of syllables that refused to resolve into meaning. "What are you talking about? What trial? What hedge knight?"

The maester looked up from his work at last. "The hedge knight," he said, and his voice was clipped and efficient, the voice of a man who did not have time for explanations. "Ser Duncan the Tall. The hedge knight demanded a trial by combat. The prince escalated it to a Trial of the Seven. Fourteen knights in the lists. The hedge knight's side won, but the prince was wounded. Gravely wounded. We have done what we can for the immediate injuries, but when he regained consciousness briefly, he insisted, quite forcefully, that he be brought to you. He said he wanted you to be his primary caretaker."

The words washed over you in a tide of incomprehensible information. Trial of the Seven. Fourteen knights. The hedge knight's side won. Dunk's side. Dunk had won. Your brother had won. Your brother was alive and he had won his trial and he was free, he must be free, because if the hedge knight's side had won the trial then the gods had judged him innocent.

But Aerion was on your bed with his ribs crushed and his arm broken and his face beaten into something barely human, and he had asked for you. Even after what he had done to you on this very floor. Even after the things he had said, the things he had called you, the violence he had visited upon your body. He had regained consciousness long enough to demand that you, and no one else, be the one to care for him.

You stared at the maester. The maester stared back at you, and something in his expression softened, just slightly, at whatever he saw in your face. Perhaps it was the bruises on your wrists. Perhaps it was the torn dress. Perhaps it was the way you sat huddled against the wall like a wounded animal that had learned to expect only more pain.

"I have done what I can for the immediate wounds," the maester said again, more slowly this time. "The prince will live, though his recovery will be long and painful. But he needs constant care. Someone to change his bandages, to administer his medicine, to watch for fever. He asked for you. Given his condition and his royal status, we are not inclined to refuse him."

You looked at the figure on the bed. The man who had raped you on the stone floor less than a day ago. The father of your daughter. The monster you loved. The prince who had promised to execute your brother if you so much as spoke his name. He lay unconscious and broken, his breath rattling in his chest, and you were being told that you would be his caretaker. That you would sit by his bedside and change his bandages and mop his brow and listen to him breathe.

The absurd cruelty of it was almost beautiful, in its way. A kind of poetry written in blood and bruises and the particular viciousness of men who believed they owned the women they had purchased.

"Leave us," you said, and your voice did not sound like your own. It sounded like the voice of someone much older, someone who had survived worse things than this and would survive worse things still. "I will care for him."

The maester hesitated. "My lady, there are instructions I must give you regarding the dressing of his wounds. The risk of infection is significant, and the milk of the poppy must be administered precisely. Too much will stop his breathing. Too little and the pain will be excruciating. Do you understand?"

"I understand," you said, though you understood nothing. You understood only that your brother was alive and free, and the man who had destroyed you was lying broken on your bed, and you were supposed to heal him. You were supposed to sit beside him and tend his wounds and keep him alive so that he could continue to own you, continue to threaten you, continue to hold your brother's life in his hands like a coin he might spend on a whim.

The maester gave you his instructions. You listened with half an ear, nodding in the appropriate places, filing the information away in a part of your mind that was still functioning, still capable of processing data and making decisions. Change the bandages every four hours. Watch for red streaks radiating from the wounds. Administer the milk of the poppy in doses measured by the small copper cup on the bedside table. If he wakes, give him water. If he develops a fever, send for the maester immediately.

And then they were gone, the maester and the guards, and the door was closed, and you were alone with him.

You stood in the center of the room for a long time, staring at the bed. At the rise and fall of his chest beneath the bloodied bandages. At the hand that lay limp and pale against the silk sheets, the hand that had struck you across the face, the hand that had pinned your wrists above your head, the hand that had held your chin and forced you to look into his eyes while he destroyed you.

You could let him die.

The thought came to you fully formed, as if it had been waiting in the back of your mind all along, biding its time. You could let him die. The maester had left you with the milk of the poppy and precise instructions about dosage. You could administer too much, or too little. You could neglect to change his bandages and let the infection take hold. You could hold a pillow over his face while he slept and press down until the ragged breathing stopped forever. There was no one else in the room. There were no guards at your door, not anymore. You could end this. You could end him. You could free yourself and your daughter and your brother with a single act of will.

You looked at the copper cup on the bedside table. You looked at the pillow beneath his head. You looked at your own hands, still bruised, still crusted with your own blood, still capable of doing what needed to be done.

And then you crossed the room, and you sat down in the chair beside his bed, and you began to prepare the first dose of milk of the poppy with hands that did not tremble at all.

If you let him die now, his father would investigate. There would be questions. There had been a maester here, and guards, and they had seen you alone with him. If Aerion died under your care, the blame would fall on you. You would be executed, or worse. And Rhaenyra would have no mother at all.

Not yet. But the knowledge was there now, a small cold seed planted in the dark soil of your heart. Not yet. But someday, perhaps. Someday, if the opportunity presented itself, if the circumstances aligned, if you could be certain of escaping the consequences. Someday, you might be free of him.

—

The days that followed blurred together like watercolors left in the rain. You were not permitted to leave the room. Aerion made that clear the first time you asked, your voice carefully neutral, your eyes on the floor. He had been awake for perhaps an hour, propped up on pillows that you had arranged behind his back with your own hands, his broken arm splinted and bound, his ribs wrapped tight in fresh linen. His face was still a ruin of purple and black and sickly yellow green, his lip still split, his eye still swollen half-shut. But his voice had lost none of its edge.

"Leave?" He had laughed, a humorless sound that turned into a wince as his ribs protested. "Why would you need to leave? Everything you require is here. Food will be brought. Water for washing. Fresh bandages from the maester. You have no reason to go anywhere."

"Aerion, please. I only want to see Rhaenyra. Just for an hour. Just to hold her and know she's all right. She must be so frightened. She's only two years old. She doesn't understand why her mother disappeared."

His expression had darkened, a cloud passing over the sun. "The child is fine. She is being cared for by the nurses. She does not need you hovering over her like a hen with one chick. What she needs is a father who is not an invalid, and what I need is a caretaker who does not spend every waking moment asking to leave."

"Aerion..."

"Enough." The word was a door slamming shut. "You will stay here. You will tend to my wounds. You will keep me company. You will not leave this room unless I give you permission. Is that understood?"

So you stayed. You woke when he woke, which was often, his sleep broken by pain and fever and the strange, feverish dreams that made him thrash and cry out in the darkness. You changed his bandages with the careful precision the maester had taught you, peeling back the old linen, examining the wounds for signs of infection, applying the salves and poultices with gentle fingers. You fed him broth when he could eat, spooning it into his ruined mouth one careful measure at a time. You helped him with the bedpan when he needed it, a humiliation that made his jaw tighten and his eyes go cold, as if his body's weakness were a personal insult you had somehow engineered.

You did all of this in silence, for the most part. He did not want conversation. He did not want to be soothed or coddled or reassured. The man who had craved praise like a drug, who had turned toward your words like a flower toward the sun, was gone. In his place was a creature of pure, distilled bitterness, a man whose humiliation had curdled inside him until it became something toxic.

He had lost. That was the core of it, the wound beneath the wounds. He had been beaten by a hedge knight in front of half the nobility of the Reach, and then he had demanded a Trial of the Seven, the most sacred and dramatic form of combat the gods permitted, and he had lost that too. His side had lost. The gods themselves had declared against him, had declared in favor of the dirt-smeared giant who had loosened his tooth and spilled his blood and stolen his dignity. Aerion Targaryen, the prince who had burned a man alive for making a joke, the prince who had broken a puppeteer's fingers for telling the wrong story, the prince who believed with every fiber of his being that he was a dragon in human form, had been brought low by a nameless hedge knight with hay in his hair and dirt under his nails.

And you, who had witnessed the beginning of that humiliation, had become the vessel into which he poured all his bile.

"I should have you hanged for being related to that oaf." His hand shot out and closed around your wrist, hard enough to make you freeze. "Why would a brother fight like that? Why would a brother look at a sister like that? Tell me the truth. Was he your lover before he was your brother? Did you share a bed in the slums of Flea Bottom, before I found you?"

The accusation was so vile, so utterly, grotesquely wrong, that for a moment you could not speak at all. You could only stare at him, at his swollen face and his blazing eyes and the jealousy that was consuming him from the inside out like a fire that would not be quenched.

"He is my brother," you said, and your voice was quiet and steady and utterly without the rage that was boiling in your chest. "My brother. My blood.Nothing more. Nothing less. I have never lain with him. I have never wanted to. The very thought is disgusting to me, and it should be disgusting to you too."

Aerion held your gaze for a long moment. Then he released your wrist and turned his face away.

"Finish the bandage," he said, and said nothing more for the rest of the day.

Sometimes, rarely, they brought Rhaenyra to see you. It was never for long. Ten minutes, fifteen, never more than half an hour. A servant would bring her to the door, and she would run across the room on her unsteady two year old legs, bewildered relief of a child who did not understand why her mother had vanished from her life. You would scoop her up and hold her against your chest and breathe in the smell of her, that particular sweetness of soap and milk and sunshine that you had missed like a severed limb.

"Mama," she would say, her small hands patting your face, your hair, your shoulders, as if reassuring herself you were real. "Mama, where did you go? I looked for you. I cried and cried but you didn't come."

"Mama was taking care of your father," you would say, and your voice would be steady even though your heart was breaking. "Your father is very sick, sweetling. He needs Mama's help. But Mama loves you. Mama thinks about you every moment. Do you understand? Every single moment."

She would nod, her small face solemn, and then she would launch into a breathless account of everything she had done since she saw you last. The bird she had seen on the windowsill. The game the nurses had taught her. The dreams she had dreamed. You drank in every word like water in a desert, memorizing the cadence of her voice, the animation of her expressions, the way her tiny hands moved when she was telling a particularly exciting part.

And then Aerion would stir in the bed behind you, and the servant would step forward, and Rhaenyra would be lifted from your arms.

"No," you would say, every time, reaching for her even as the servant pulled her away. "Please, just a few more minutes. Just a little longer. She's only just arrived."

"Prince's orders," the servant would say, and the door would close, and you would be alone with him again.

The nights were the worst.

During the day, Aerion was mostly manageable. Irritable, demanding, prone to dark silences and darker accusations, but manageable. You could distract yourself with the work of caring for him, the constant rhythm of bandages and medicine and meals. You could count the hours until the next time Rhaenyra might be brought to you. You could lose yourself in the small, finite tasks that kept your hands busy and your mind from wandering to places it should not go.

But at night, when the candles burned low and the fire died to embers and the only sound was the soft, labored rhythm of his breathing, the monster in him stirred.

It started on the fourth night. You had been dozing in the chair beside his bed, your neck cricked at an awkward angle, your body aching for the comfort of a proper mattress. You were dreaming of the garden, of Rhaenyra's laughter, of pink flowers crushed beneath bare feet. And then a hand closed around your forearm, and you were jolted awake with a gasp.

Aerion was looking at you from the bed. His eyes were fever bright in the near darkness, and his hand was hot and dry against your skin. The blanket had slipped down to his waist, and you could see the bandages around his ribs, the splint on his arm, the bruises that spread across his torso like storm clouds. But you could also see, in the shadows beneath the blanket, the unmistakable evidence of his arousal.

"Come here," he said. His voice was hoarse, rough with pain and desire in equal measure. "I need you."

"Aerion," you said carefully, "you're injured. The maester said you need to rest. You could reopen your wounds. You could..."

"I don't care what the maester said." His grip on your arm tightened. "I've been lying in this bed for four days. I've lost everything. My pride. The hedge knight walks free, and I am trapped in this room like a cripple. The least you can do," and his voice hardened on the words, "is give me this."

"You're not well. Please, just wait until you're stronger. I promise, when you're healed..."

"When I am healed, I will take what I want anyway." He pulled you closer, and you could smell the sourness of his breath, the stale sweat of his unwashed body, the cloying sweetness of the milk of the poppy that still lingered on his tongue. "But I want it now. I have spent four days flat on my back like a turtle overturned, watching you flutter around me with your careful hands and your careful voice and your careful eyes that never quite meet mine. I know what you think of me. I know what you think when you look at me. You think I'm a monster. You think I got what I deserved."

"No," you whispered, but it was a lie and you both knew it.

"Yes," he said. "You do. And I don't care. You can hate me all you like, in the privacy of your own mind. But you are mine.Now. Come. Here."

He could not be rough with you, not in his condition. His broken arm lay useless at his side, and his bandaged ribs prevented any sudden movement. But he did not need to be rough to make you feel the weight of your captivity. He directed you with his voice, that voice you had once praised and soothed and loved, telling you where to touch him, how to move, what he wanted from you. He could not take you the way he had on the stone floor, could not pin you down and force himself inside you while you sobbed and pushed at his chest. But he could make you take him in your mouth while he lay back against the pillows with his eyes half closed and his hand tangled in your hair. He could make you straddle him carefully, carefully, moving with the slow precision his injuries demanded, while his one good hand gripped your hip hard enough to bruise.

"That's it," he murmured, his voice thick with pleasure and pain and the strange, twisted satisfaction of ownership. "That's my good girl. My sweet girl. You know what I need. You always know what I need."

"Now you should rest." He was already drifting, the exertion combined with the milk of the poppy pulling him back toward unconsciousness.

"You're the only one," he mumbled, his voice slurring with sleep. "The only one who stays. The only one who doesn't leave. Don't leave me. Promise you won't leave."

You did not promise. You dried your hands on a cloth and returned to the chair beside his bed, and you watched him sleep, and you thought about the copper cup of milk of the poppy on the bedside table, and you thought about what it would be like to be free.

—

The servant came for you on the seventh day. You were sitting in the chair beside Aerion's bed, your hands idle in your lap for the first time in what felt like years. He was sleeping deeply, the milk of the poppy dragging him down into a place where even his dreams could not reach him.

The door opened without a knock. You turned, expecting another servant with a tray of food, another maester with fresh bandages, another summons from the nurses saying Rhaenyra was crying for you and would not be soothed. But the woman who stood in the doorway was not a servant you recognized.

"Prince Maekar requests your presence," she said. Her voice was flat, neutral, the voice of a woman delivering a message she did not fully understand. "You are to come with me immediately."

You stared at her. Prince Maekar. The man who had called you a whore to your face, who had forbidden you from speaking to his children, who had looked at you for years with an expression of cold, unwavering contempt. He had never once spoken to you directly, had never acknowledged your existence except as a problem to be managed. And now he was summoning you?

"Prince Maekar," you repeated, and your voice came out uncertain, almost afraid. "Why would Prince Maekar want to see me?"

The servant's expression did not change. "I was not told, my lady. Only that you are to come at once. Prince Aerion is sleeping. He will not miss you. Please, follow me."

You looked back at the bed. Aerion's chest rose and fell in the slow, steady rhythm of deep sleep. His good hand was curled loosely on the pillow beside his face, his fingers twitching slightly as he dreamed. If you left and he woke to find you gone, there would be consequences. There were always consequences. But the servant was watching you with her sharp grey eyes, and something in her manner told you that this was not a request. This was an order, delivered with the full authority of the man who ruled Summerhall.

You rose from the chair. Your legs were unsteady beneath you, your body still aching from the nights of sleeping in chairs and on pallets, from the strain of lifting and turning and tending a man who outweighed you by half.

The castle was quiet at this hour. The afternoon light slanted through the narrow windows, casting long shadows across the stone floors. You had not been outside Aerion's room in seven days. The world seemed larger than you remembered. Brighter. More dangerous.

The servant led you through corridors you did not recognize, up a flight of stairs, down another corridor, until you stood before a heavy oak door banded with iron. She knocked twice, a sharp, deliberate rap that echoed in the silence.

"The woman is here, my prince," she said.

A voice from within, muffled by the door, said something you could not make out. The servant pushed the door open and gestured for you to enter.

You stepped inside. The room was small, sparsely furnished. A table. A few chairs. A narrow window that looked out over the castle's eastern wall. The fire in the hearth had burned down to embers, casting the room in shadow and flickering orange light. And standing near the window, one hand braced against the wall for support, a thick piece of wood tucked under his other arm to hold him upright, was your brother.

Dunk.

You stopped in the doorway as if you had walked into a wall. Your heart seized in your chest. Your breath caught in your throat. Your hands flew to your mouth, pressing against your lips as if to hold in the sound that was trying to escape, a sound that was half sob and half scream and half something that had no name at all.

He looked terrible. His face was a mess of bruises, purple and black and yellow-green, one eye swollen nearly shut, a gash across his cheekbone held closed with clumsy stitches. His lip was split in two places. His left arm was wrapped in a sling, and the piece of wood under his right arm was a crutch, crude and hastily made, the kind a maester might fashion for a patient who refused to stay in bed. He was leaning heavily on it, his massive frame listing to one side, his shoulders hunched with exhaustion and pain. He looked like a man who had been through a war and had only barely survived.

"Y/N," he said, and his voice was exactly the same as it had been when he was eight years old and lifting you from your mother's deathbed. Cracked. Hoarse. Full of a desperate, aching tenderness that made your chest splinter into a thousand pieces.

One moment you were standing in the doorway with your hands pressed to your mouth, and the next you were in his arms, your face buried in his chest, your shoulders shaking with sobs you had been holding back for years. His good arm wrapped around you, pulling you against him, and you felt the crutch fall away, felt him stagger and brace himself against the wall so he would not fall. He was so big. He had always been so big. Even broken and bruised and barely able to stand, he surrounded you, enveloped you, made you feel for the first time in longer than you could remember that you were safe.

"I've got you," he said into your hair, and his voice was breaking, splintering, cracking into pieces that sounded like your mother's laugh and your father's name and every promise he had ever made you. "I've got you. I've always got you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I looked for you. I looked everywhere. They told me you were dead. They told me they found your body in the river. They said you were burned beyond recognition. I believed them. Gods forgive me, I believed them."

"I didn't know," you sobbed into his chest. Your fingers were twisted in his tunic, gripping the rough wool as if he might disappear if you let go. "I didn't know they told you that. I thought you were still looking. I thought you would find me. I waited for you. Every night, I waited for you. I never stopped believing you would come."

"I'm sorry, i believed them. I believed you were dead, and something inside me died with you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, little sister. I should have kept looking. I should have known. I should have..."

"Stop." You pulled back just enough to look up at his face, at the tears that were cutting tracks through the blood and the bruises. "Stop apologizing. You searched for me. You believed what they told you. Any man would have believed it. I don't blame you. I have never blamed you. I only ever wanted you to know I was alive. I tried to send word. I tried so many times. But Aerion..."

You stopped. The name hung in the air between you like a curse. Dunk's expression darkened. His good arm tightened around your shoulders. "Aerion," he repeated, and the word came out like a growl. "What happened to you, Y/N? Where have you been all these years? How did you end up here, with him?"

You pulled away from him gently. Your legs were shaking. You found a chair and sank into it, and Dunk lowered himself awkwardly onto the edge of the table, his injured leg stretched out in front of him, his crutch clattering to the floor. He did not take his eyes off you. He watched you the way he had watched you when you were children, with that fierce, protective intensity that had once been the only thing standing between you and the darkness of the world.

"They sold me," you said, and your voice was quiet and hollow and did not sound like your own. "The men who took me. They sold me to a brothel on the Street of Silk. A high end place, for lords and merchants. The madam... she was cruel. She said I was special. She said I would make them very rich."

Dunk's hands tightened on your shoulders. His face had gone very pale beneath the bruises, and his jaw was clenched so hard you could see the muscle jumping beneath the skin.

"And then," you continued, "Aerion came, he bought me and never left me"

And then you told him about Rhaenyra.

"Her name is Rhaenyra," you said, and your voice softened on the name, the way it always did. "She's two years old. She looks like her father. But she's kind. She's the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. She's the only good thing that has come out of any of this. And she's the reason I can't leave."

Dunk was silent for a long moment. His face was unreadable, a mask of bruises and exhaustion and something that might have been grief. When he spoke, his voice was low and rough.

"I'll take you away," he said. "Both of you. You and the little girl. I'll find a way. I have friends now. A prince and a lord. We can protect you. We can hide you somewhere Aerion will never find you."

You shook your head. The tears were streaming down your face again, hot and silent, dripping off your chin and onto your hands. "You don't understand. He would never let me go. He would hunt me down like a dog. He would burn cities to the ground to find me. He told me... the night after the puppet show, when he came to my room, he told me the only way I would ever leave him was in a shroud. He meant it, Dunk. I have seen what he does to people who defy him. I have seen him cut a servant's hand for spilling wine on him. I have seen him laugh while a man burned alive. If I tried to run, if I took Rhaenyra and disappeared, he would never stop looking. And when he found me, and he would find me, he would kill me. He would take my daughter and he would kill me, and Rhaenyra would grow up without a mother, raised by a monster who would teach her that cruelty is strength and kindness is weakness and love is just another word for ownership."

"He would have to go through me first," Dunk said, and his voice was hard, the voice of a man who had faced seven knights in single combat and emerged victorious. "I lost you once. I believed you were dead for years. I mourned you, Y/N. I sat in that alley and I let the darkness take me because there was no light left in the world. And then I found you again, alive, here, in this place, with that man. I am not going to lose you again. I don't care if he is a prince. I don't care if he has a hundred Kingsguard. I will find a way to get you out of here. I will find a way to keep you safe. I swear it. I swear it on our mother's grave. I swear it on everything I am."

"Dunk." You reached out and took his enormous hand in both of yours. His knuckles were swollen and bruised, the skin split and scabbed over. The hands that had lifted you from the mattress where your mother had stopped breathing. The hands that had carried you into the cold morning while the other whores watched with pity. The hands that had promised you silk and lemon cakes and a world where no one would hurt you. "I want to believe you. I want to believe there is a way out of this. But you have to understand what you're risking. He will kill you. He will kill you without hesitation, without a trial, without anything but the cold satisfaction of removing an obstacle. And if you die, if you die trying to save me, I will have nothing left. Nothing. Do you understand? You are my brother. You are the only family I have in this world besides my daughter. I cannot lose you again."

He squeezed your hands. His grip was gentle, impossibly gentle for a man who had killed knights and broken bones and fought his way through horrors you could only imagine. "You won't lose me," he said. "I promise you, little sister. You won't lose me."

—

You ran. Egg had barely finished speaking before you were out the door and flying down the corridor, your heart pounding so hard you could feel it in your teeth, your lungs burning with every breath. You did not care if anyone saw you. You did not care if there were questions. All you cared about was getting back to Aerion's room before he woke, before he realized you were gone, before the fragile illusion of your obedience shattered into a thousand irreparable pieces.

You reached the door to Aerion's chamber and paused, pressing your palm flat against the wood, forcing yourself to breathe. You could not go in looking like a woman who had just run across half the castle. You could not go in looking like a woman who had been crying in her brother's arms. You smoothed your hair with trembling hands. You wiped the tears from your cheeks. You arranged your face into the careful mask you had worn for years, and you pushed open the door.

Aerion was still asleep. He had not moved since you left. His breathing was slow and steady, his bruised face relaxed in the depths of his drugged slumber. The milk of the poppy still held him in its grip. The bandages on his ribs were unrumpled. His splinted arm lay exactly where you had arranged it. He had not woken. He had not called for you. He had not noticed your absence at all.

You closed the door behind you and leaned against it, your legs threatening to give way beneath you. You had made it. You had made it, and he did not know, and you were safe. For now. For this moment. For as long as you could keep the mask from slipping.

You returned to the chair beside his bed and sat down, and you waited.

Days passed. Aerion healed. Slowly at first, then with the stubborn, grinding determination of a man who refused to be seen as weak for a moment longer than absolutely necessary. The bruises faded from black to purple to yellow-green. The swelling around his eye went down until he could open it fully again. The split lip closed, leaving a thin white scar that tugged at the corner of his mouth when he spoke. The ribs were slower to mend, the maester said, and he would need to be careful for weeks yet, but the splint came off his arm and he began to flex his fingers, to test the range of motion, to push against the limits of his own body the way he pushed against everything else in his life.

By the end of the second week, he could walk with a stick. You were the one who helped him take his first steps. His arm draped over your shoulders, his weight pressing down on you until your knees buckled, his breath harsh and labored against your ear. You walked him across the room and back again, step by agonizing step, your body bearing the burden of his in a way that felt like a metaphor for everything your life had become.

"Good," he said through gritted teeth when he finally lowered himself back onto the bed. “That's good. I'll be out of this room by the end of the week.”

"My father is sending me away," he had said, and his voice was flat, toneless, drained of its usual fire. "Lys. A city of whores and perfumed merchants. He calls it self reflection. A chance to contemplate my actions and return a better man. But we both know what it really is. Exile. He cannot bear to look at me. He blames me for Baelor's death, even though it was his own blow that killed him. He blames me for everything."

You had not known what to say, so you had said nothing. That was safest. That had always been safest.

"You and the girl will come with me, of course, Lys is said to be beautiful. Warm. The sea is the color of sapphires, and the women walk around in silks so fine you can see their skin through the fabric. You will like it there."

You would not like it anywhere he was. But you had smiled, because that was what you did, and you had told him that Lys sounded lovely, and you had turned away to prepare his next dose of medicine so he would not see the despair in your eyes.

After that, things shifted slightly. Perhaps Aerion felt guilty for uprooting you. Perhaps he was simply trying to secure your loyalty before the journey. Whatever the reason, he began to allow you to visit Rhaenyra in the nursery. Not for long, not unsupervised, but every day. Every single day, you were permitted to leave his chamber for an hour and go to your daughter.

It was the only thing that kept you sane. You would sit in the nursery with Rhaenyra on your lap, her small body warm and solid and alive against your chest, and you would listen to her chatter about the games she had played and the songs she had learned and the dreams she had dreamed. You would brush her hair and sing to her in the soft voice you used for no one else. You would tell her that you loved her, that you would always love her, that there was nothing in the world she could do that would make you stop loving her. And you would try very hard not to think about the fact that in a few weeks, a few months at most, you would be on a ship to Lys, and the only world Rhaenyra had ever known would disappear behind her forever.

It was on one of these days, when you returned from the nursery with Rhaenyra's laughter still echoing in your ears, that everything fell apart.

You pushed open the door to Aerion's chamber and stopped dead in the doorway. There were two guards in the room. Between them, kneeling on the stone floor, was the servant. The one who had come to you days ago. The one who had said Prince Maekar requests your presence. The one who had led you through the corridors to the room where Dunk was waiting.

She was barely recognizable. Her face was a swollen mass of bruises, her lips split in three places, her nose broken and crusted with dried blood. One of her eyes was swollen completely shut, and the other stared at the floor with the glassy, unfocused gaze of someone who had retreated so far inside herself that she might never find her way back out. Her dress was torn, stained dark with blood and sweat and things you did not want to name. Her hands, folded limply in her lap, were missing three fingernails.

You knew, in that moment, that you were going to die.

Aerion was standing by the window, leaning on his stick, his back to you. He did not turn when you entered. He simply stood there, silhouetted against the grey afternoon light, his shoulders rigid, his free hand clenched into a fist at his side.

"Close the door," he said. His voice was calm. Too calm. The calm of a sea that had gone flat and glassy in the moment before a tidal wave.

You closed the door. Your hands were shaking so badly you could barely grip the latch.

"Aerion," you said, and your voice came out as a whisper, thin and reedy and full of the terror you could not hide. "What is this? What happened to her?"

Now he turned. His face was the face you had seen on the stage of the puppet show, cold and cruel and utterly without mercy. His violet eyes were dark with a rage that had been simmering for days, waiting for this moment, and his mouth was a thin hard line that made the scar at the corner of his lip stand out white against his skin.

"Is it true?" he asked. His voice was still calm. Still quiet. Still terrible. "Did you betray me? Did you see that treasonous bastard of your brother?"

Your heart stopped. Your blood turned to ice. The world narrowed to the space between you and him, the fire in the hearth, the broken woman on the floor.

"Aerion, please, let me explain..."

"Did you see him?" He did not shout. He did not raise his voice at all. But each word was a hammer blow, driving the breath from your lungs, the strength from your legs. "This woman, this servant, has told me everything. How she came to you while I was sleeping. How she led you through the castle. How my father, my own father, arranged for you to meet your brother in secret behind my back. Is it true? Answer me. Is it true?"

Your mind raced, scrambling for a lie, a deflection, anything that might save you. But the servant was kneeling on the floor with her fingernails torn out and her face beaten to pulp, and you knew that whatever you said, whatever excuse you offered, he had already made up his mind.

"It was not my choice," you said, and your voice cracked on the words. "The servant came and said your father wanted to see me. I did not know it was a trick. I did not know Dunk would be there. I went because I was afraid to refuse. Please, Aerion, you have to believe me. I did not seek him out. I would never..."

"Liar." He spat the word like a curse. "You have been lying to me since the moment you saw his face in the pavilion. You have been lying to me while you changed my bandages and brought my medicine and performed your little duties like the devoted whore you pretend to be. All this time, you have been dreaming of him. Planning with him. Scheming behind my back. Did you think I would not find out? Did you think I would not have you watched? Did you think I was stupid?"

"No, I never..."

"Be silent." He took a step toward you, and the stick thumped against the stone floor like a death sentence. "I have listened to your lies for years. I have listened to you whisper that you loved me while your eyes were always looking somewhere else. I have listened to you promise that you were mine while your heart belonged to another. I am done listening. Now you will listen to me."

He gestured to one of the guards. The man stepped forward, his face still grim and impassive. You barely had time to register the movement before his gauntleted hand cracked across your face.

The blow sent you sprawling to the floor. Your head hit the stone with a crack that made stars burst across your vision. The taste of blood filled your mouth. Your ears rang with a high, thin whine that drowned out everything else. You tried to push yourself up, but your arms would not hold you, and you collapsed back onto the cold stone, gasping.

"Take her away," Aerion said, and for a moment you thought he meant you. But the guard was already hauling the servant to her feet, dragging her toward the door, her head lolling on her broken neck. The other guard followed, and then the door closed, and you were alone with the dragon.

Aerion stood over you. The stick thumped against the floor as he took another step closer. You could see his boots from where you lay, the fine black leather, the silver buckles shaped like dragon wings.

"Let me tell you what happens now," he said, and his voice was soft, almost gentle, the voice of a man explaining something to a child. "You are going to Lys with me. You are going to share my bed and warm my sheets and perform your duties as you have always done. You are going to smile and praise me and tell me that I am magnificent. You are going to be exactly what you have always been. My whore. My property. My thing."

He lowered himself slowly, painfully, until he was crouching beside you. His hand came down and gripped your chin, forcing your face up toward his. His fingers were cold and hard and utterly without tenderness.

"If you ever see your brother again," he said, "if you ever speak to him, if you ever so much as learn his whereabouts and fail to tell me, I will not kill you. No. Killing you would be a mercy, and I am not feeling merciful. What I will do is make you pray for death. Every single day, you will pray for it, and it will not come. Do you understand?"

You tried to speak. No words came out. Only a thin, animal whimper that you barely recognized as your own.

"And Rhaenyra," he continued, and your blood turned to ice water. "If you betray me again, if you give me even the slightest reason to doubt your loyalty, I will take her from you. Not just for a few days. Not just to the nursery. I will sell her. Do you understand? I will sell her to a brothel the moment she has her first bleeding. She will spend her life on her back with strange men between her legs, just like her mother before her. Just like the whore who whelped her. That is what happens to the daughters of traitors. That is what happens to the children of women who forget who they belong to."

"No." The word tore out of you, a desperate, animal sound. "Aerion, no, please, she's your daughter, she's your blood, you can't..."

"I can do whatever I want." His voice was flat. Final. The voice of a god passing judgment. "She is mine. You are mine. Everything you have, everything you are, exists because I allow it. Your life is a privilege. Your motherhood is a privilege. Your identity as a mother, as a daughter, as anything other than what I tell you to be, is a privilege. And privileges can be revoked."

He rose to his feet with a grimace of pain, leaning heavily on his stick. He looked down at you, crumpled on the floor at his feet, and his expression was utterly without pity.

"Your only duty is to me," he said. "You are not a mother. You are not a sister. You are not a person with a past or a family or a soul. You are my whore. That is all you have ever been. That is all you will ever be. Everything else, every moment you have spent with Rhaenyra, every breath you have taken as a free woman, has been a gift. A gift that I gave you. A gift that I can take away."

He turned to the guard who remained. The man had been standing motionless by the door, his face a mask of professional indifference. He had watched the whole thing without flinching. You wondered, distantly, how many women he had seen broken on the orders of the men who paid him.

"Incapacitate her," Aerion said. "I want her unable to walk. Not permanently. I still need her to be able to perform her duties. But I want her to remember, every time she takes a step, what happens when she forgets who she belongs to."

The guard stepped forward. You saw him coming, saw the purpose in his eyes, and you tried to scramble backward on the floor, your heels slipping against the stone, your hands clawing for purchase. It did not matter. He was on you in three strides, his hands closing around your ankle, and you heard yourself screaming, heard Aerion's voice saying something you could not understand, and then there was a sound like a branch breaking in deep winter, and your leg exploded into white-hot agony.

The world went away for a while. When it came back, you were still on the floor. The guard was gone. Aerion was still standing over you, leaning on his stick, watching you with an expression that was almost curious. As if your pain were an experiment he had conducted and he was evaluating the results.

"The maester will come to set the ankle," he said. "You will tell him you fell down the stairs. You will not mention the guard. You will not mention this conversation. You will not mention your brother or your disobedience. You will smile, and you will thank me for my concern, and you will continue to perform your duties. Is that understood?"

You could not speak. The pain was too much. Your leg was a column of fire, and every heartbeat sent a fresh wave of agony through your body. But you managed to nod, a tiny, jerky motion of your head, and that seemed to satisfy him.

"Good," he said. "I am glad we understand each other."

He limped to the door, his stick thumping against the stone with every step. He did not look back at you as he left. He did not offer you a hand to help you up. He simply opened the door and disappeared into the corridor, and you were alone.

Dunk had promised. Dunk had sworn on your mother's grave, on everything he was. And Dunk had never broken a promise to you. Not once. Not ever.

You held onto that ember as the darkness closed in. You held onto it as the pain in your ankle pulsed and throbbed and dragged you toward unconsciousness. You held onto it as the door opened and the maester's voice exclaimed in shock and you heard yourself saying, over and over, the lie Aerion had given you. Fell down the stairs. Fell down the stairs. Fell down the stairs.

And when the maester's hands began to work on your ankle, when the world went white with pain and then mercifully black with oblivion, you held onto it still.

You could still hear his voice from that afternoon in the library, casual and smooth as ever, leaning over the table with that lazy smile. “Relax, cutie,” he’d said, sliding your textbook toward himself without asking. “If you keep glaring at me with that expression, people are going to think that you fancy me.”

You had snatched the book back, teeth clenched. “The only thing I fancy is the idea of never having to see your face again.”

He’d only laughed, low and infuriating. “Harsh. Guess I’ll just have to make sure you keep seeing it, then.”

You couldn’t begin to fathom what crime you had committed—whether in this life or some unfortunate past one—to deserve being stuck with him every few weeks. Yet here you were, standing on the soft, beer-stained carpet, surrounded by a cloud of cheap perfume, laughter, and the low thrum of bass shaking the floorboards. Alcohol hummed in your veins, warm and distracting, while the partygoers whooped and hollered around the circle.

A chipped glass bottle spun on the floor, wobbling to a stop as if it had been conspiring against you all night. You stared at it like it had just declared war on you, because, of course, the neck was pointing directly at Rafayel.

For a fleeting, wicked moment, you considered grabbing it and cracking it over his annoyingly perfect head. Seven minutes in heaven. With him.

The crowd erupted—half in mock horror, half in the kind of delight that came from watching a train wreck you couldn’t look away from. Simone and Tara exchanged a wide-eyed glance that said they were both surprised and already placing mental bets.

You narrowed your eyes at them, but before you could say a word, movement caught your attention. Rafayel was already walking toward the closet—no hesitation, no acknowledgment of the chaos he left in his wake. He didn’t even look back at you, as if it was a foregone conclusion you’d follow.

That arrogant prick.

You scoffed under your breath and stood, brushing imaginary lint off your jeans, mostly to keep from flipping him off in front of everyone. Simone and Tara nudged each other like middle schoolers about to watch a fight, grinning as though they hadn’t just sold you out to the devil himself.

“Don’t wait up,” you muttered at them, your voice sharp enough to cut.

A guy from somewhere in the back yelled, “My money’s on murder!”

Another chimed in, “Nah, they’re either gonna make out or burn the place down.”

You ignored them all, though your jaw tightened. Seven whole minutes trapped in a cramped, dark space with Rafayel—his cologne, his smug smirk, his constant need to one-up you. And as you reached the door, he glanced over his shoulder at last, that infuriating grin playing on his lips.

“Don’t look so thrilled, cutie,” he drawled, holding the closet door open just wide enough for you to pass. “I promise to make it worth your while.”

You rolled your eyes so hard it was a miracle you could still see. “You wish.”

His smirk deepened, lazy and sure of himself. “I do,” he said lightly, stepping in after you. “But it’s more fun when you do too.”

The door clicked shut, sealing you into seven minutes of hell. You pressed yourself into the farthest corner as the door shut, sealing out the noise of the party. Darkness swallowed the cramped space, save for a sliver of light leaking through the crack between the door and frame. Your breath caught—not from nerves, you told yourself, but from the sudden proximity.

His cologne lingered in the air, warm and heady, with some other undertone—salted, oceanic—that clung stubbornly in your head. The realization annoyed you more than his actual presence. It was unfair, you thought, that someone so irritating could smell that good.

A faint brush against your arm made you flinch. You turned your head sharply, catching the faint outline of his profile in the gloom.

“Keep to your own space, yeah?” you muttered, your voice low but sharp. You tried to shift farther away, but the closet was far too small, and you hated the way every movement brought you back within reach of him.

His laugh came quiet but deep, curling at the edges with smugness. “My bad, princess,” he murmured, leaning just close enough for the warmth of his words to ghost over your cheek. “Didn’t realize I’d already stepped on your toes tonight.”

You shot him a glare, even if you knew he probably couldn’t see much of it in the dark. His arm was still brushing yours, his casual lean making it clear he had no intention of shifting away.

“I will step on yours if you don’t move,” you warned, crossing your arms tight over your chest and turning your body slightly to shield yourself.

Instead of taking the hint, he tilted his head lazily. “So aggressive tonight,” he said softly, mock sweetness dripping from the words. “Acting like this isn’t the highlight of your night.”

You huffed, the sound sharp in the close air. “In what universe would this be my highlight?”

“In mine,” he answered smoothly, without missing a beat.

You scoffed, the sound sharp in the thick air between you. “You’re so full of yourself, Rafayel.” the words left your mouth like you were flicking a match, each syllable meant to cut.

He only hummed in response, low and lazy, and you hated how close the sound came—how it brushed over your ear like the faintest touch. The closet was warm, the air stale, and you could barely make out anything in the dark. But the sliver of light from the doorframe caught just enough of his face to make his expression clear—amused, entertained, like this was his own private game.

You scoffed again, softer this time, if only to keep from saying something that would sound too much like admitting defeat. He chuckled quietly, that smug undercurrent in every note, and then his arm brushed yours again. You stiffened, your jaw tightening on instinct, but he didn’t shift away. Instead, he leaned in just slightly, tilting his head toward you until you could feel the faint stir of his breath. One hand came up to brace himself on the wall behind you, close enough that you could feel the subtle press of his body against yours.

Your pulse ticked up despite yourself. This was absurd. Infuriating. And yet your chest felt tighter than it should.

“Stop touching me,” you hissed, shifting back as far as the wall would allow.

He gave a quiet laugh, as though you’d just said something endearing. “Where exactly do you want me to go, cutie?” he murmured, voice low enough that you almost missed it. “Closet’s only so big.”

The worst part was that he was right. There wasn’t an inch of space left between you. You rolled your eyes, even though you knew he could probably see the movement in the faint light. “Try harder.”

“Oh, I am,” he replied smoothly, the corner of his mouth lifting in a grin you could hear in his voice.

Seven minutes had never felt longer.

He smirked, leaning in just enough to test your patience, his voice dropping to that infuriatingly casual tone he always used when he knew he was getting under your skin.

“Kind of convenient, isn’t it?” he murmured, the words brushing against you like a challenge. “Whole party out there, and somehow you end up locked in here with me. Almost like you rigged it. Guess you really can’t stay away, cutie.” his next words ignited the fire in you even harder, “Especially since you can’t beat me when it actually counts.”

Your teeth clenched, heat prickling at the back of your neck. Before you could think better of it, your hand shot out, gripping the front of his shirt and tugging him just enough to close the already minuscule space between you.

“You’re delusional,” your voice was low and pointed, every word pressed like a blade. “Your ego must be eating what’s left of your brain, because you’re lying to yourself if you think I’d choose this. I’d rather be anywhere else.”

You held his gaze, and now you were close enough to make out the sharp line of his jaw, the faint curve of his mouth, and—annoyingly—just how clear his eyes looked in the thin strip of light. He stared back at you with the same infuriating calm, only a slow tug of a smirk breaking the stillness.

“Funny,” he whispered, leaning in just enough for his breath to mingle with yours. “You’re the one hanging on to my clothes like you’re about to tear them off.”

Your own smile curled, deceptively sweet. “I’d rather tear your head off.”

The space between you tightened, silent except for the shallow drag of your breaths. You hated that the air felt heavier now, that the warmth radiating from him made your skin hum in awareness. Neither of you moved back, both locked in the same unspoken dare you’d been passing between each other since the day you met.

He smirked, and you felt your jaw tighten in sync with the way your fingers curled, bunching the front of his shirt in a hard grip. He was too close, close enough that your breath caught against his, every inhale shared in the warm, cramped dark. Your pulse spiked, not that you’d admit it, not even to yourself.

You hated this. Absolutely hated him.

A sharp scoff escaped you before you planted a hand against his chest, shoving him back just enough to reclaim a sliver of space. But before you could take another step away, his arm moved and slid down from the wall behind you until his hand brushed against your waist, steadying himself.

The light contact made your pulse trip over itself. You grit your teeth, biting back the words that wanted to snarl at him to stop touching you—though you weren’t sure if you meant it entirely.

“You don’t seem in a rush for me to let go,” his voice was carrying that lazy taunt that made every nerve in you itch. His hand stayed exactly where it was, with more purpose now, his fingers settling with a certain confidence at your waist.

Your glare could have cut glass. “What kind of delusional state gives you the nerve to think you can touch me?”

You shoved at his chest again, harder this time, but his grip only tightened, pulling you forward with the movement so that your body collided with his. Your breath left you in a startled grunt, the solid heat of him impossible to ignore.

You looked up at him, startled and seething, yet heat coiled traitorously low in your stomach at the new position. Every sharp exchange, every smug remark he lobbed your way had wound itself into something you refused to name, and you’d sooner die than admit Rafayel could have that kind of effect on you.

His smirk curved lower, slower this time, his voice brushing over you like the edge of a dare. “I like it when you bite back,” he murmured, leaning just enough that the air between you thinned. “Makes me wonder what you’d do if I touched you… on purpose.”

His gaze flicked down briefly, then back to yours, full of quiet challenge. “My guess? Not much. You can’t really one-up me.”

The air felt heavy, your breaths matching his in a quick, uneven rhythm. Tension held you both still, tethered in the narrow space between his chest and yours.

“Cocky bastard,” you whispered, every word sharpened between clenched teeth. “You’ll get more than you bargained for.” you tilted your chin up, closing the space by a fraction, your lips nearly grazing his. “So either move your hand… or I’ll make you.”

His smile didn’t falter. If anything, it deepened infuriatingly slow, like he was savoring the moment.

“Yeah?” his voice dipped just enough to brush against something inside you. “And how exactly would you make me?”

His fingers tightened on your waist, not painfully, but with the kind of deliberate pressure that felt like he was testing how far he could push before you snapped. Heat surged under your skin, your muscles tensing as your breath came shallow, matching his.

You couldn’t even say who moved first—only that suddenly his mouth was on yours, hot and unyielding, all teeth and heat and reckless challenge. He kissed like he expected you to fight him, so you did, matching the push of his lips with your own bite until the taste of him left you dizzy.

Your whole body pressed into him, seeking leverage you didn’t want to admit you needed. His grip on your waist anchored you, pulling you closer until there was no space left to guard. Your teeth caught his lower lip, hard enough to pull a groan from his chest, low and rough.

The cramped heat of the closet wrapped around you both, the world reduced to the tangle of limbs and breath and the sharp scent of him. Your fingers threaded into his hair, tugging as his bent knee slid between yours, shifting your weight until your back met the wall again with a muted thud.

He didn’t stop. Your mouths were a frenzy—hot, rough, and desperate in a way neither of you would ever admit aloud. Your hands clutched at him, fisting the fabric of his shirt, not to pull him closer—though it felt that way—but to keep yourself from stumbling under the force of it all.

The taste of him lingered on your tongue, sharp and consuming, each kiss a challenge neither of you wanted to lose.

You bit at his lower lip, he returned the favor, and your tongues tangled in a battle for dominance that left both of you breathing ragged. Teeth grazed swollen lips and the sensitive skin just beneath, his mouth dragging down to your neck. His lips were warm, his breath hotter, and when he sucked a mark there, his smirk was felt more than seen.

“Someone’s enjoying themselves,” he rasped against your skin, his voice low enough to scrape over your nerves.

“Shut up,” you bit back, shoving at his shoulder, though your body betrayed you, arching into him when his hands—bolder now—slipped beneath the hem of your shirt.

Your mouth found his again, urgent and unrestrained, and you yanked hard on his hair, pulling a groan from deep in his chest. The sound vibrated against your lips, and heat pooled low in your stomach.

You were both panting now, breaths coming fast and shallow, and then you felt his bulge—hard against your hip, impossible to ignore. His thigh pressed between yours, and without thinking, you grinded down against it, the friction dizzying.

He groaned again, but this time it was laced with that infuriating amusement. “Cute,” he drawled, his tone deliberately light, even as his grip on you tightened. “Almost desperate. Must be all that pent-up frustration from wanting to fuck me this whole time.”

Your nails dragged slow beneath his shirt, scratching from his ribs down to his stomach before sliding back up again. The movement earned a low, unrestrained groan from him, his breath hitching just enough to make you smirk—though you didn’t get long to savor the victory.

His hands were already on you, firm and unapologetic as they cupped your ass, pulling you down against the solid line of his thigh. The friction sent a jolt through you both, making your bodies lurch together, grunts and gasps spilling into the heat between your mouths.

Even breathless, neither of you could resist the game.

“Feel that?” he smirked, the words curling against your ear in a delicious rasp as he shifted his leg just right, making you gasp. “You’re soaking through, cutie. Didn’t know you could get this wet just from grinding on me.”

You hissed through your teeth, catching his smirk in your peripheral, and refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing you falter.

“Yeah? Then maybe you should be more worried about yourself,” you shot back, your voice low and edged with heat. Your fingers slipped lower, brushing the waistband of his jeans. “You’re so hard, Rafayel. I bet if I touched you just a little, you’d cum in seconds.”

His grip tightened at that, a subtle, wordless admission he wouldn’t dare voice.

What you don’t expect is his low, rough voice brushing against the shell of your ear like he knows exactly what it does to you.

“Go on,” he murmurs, the words warm and wicked, “be a good girl… touch me. We could help each other out.” The tease is casual, almost lazy, but the weight of it coils heat deep in your stomach.

Before you can throw a retort, his fingers are already at your waistband, dragging the zipper down in a slow, deliberate pull. Then his hand slips inside, the heat of his palm startling against your skin. His breath hitches in something like satisfaction, and a soft grunt escapes him, carrying both a praise and a taunt.

“Slippery already,” he drawls, his tone dipping just enough to make it sound like a secret. “Must’ve been desperate for me, huh? Can’t help yourself… even just being close to me gets you like this.”

You grit your teeth, trying to swallow the sound building in your throat, but it escapes anyway—a low, unsteady moan—as his fingers slide inside you. He doesn’t ease in; his pace starts steady, controlled, and just dizzying enough to steal your breath.

You’re too far gone to argue, too caught between his touch and the heat thrumming through you to remember whatever insult you’d been ready to throw. Instead, you crush your mouth to his, the kiss greedy and unrestrained, tasting of defiance. His fingers work inside you in a steady, deliberate rhythm, just enough to make your knees threaten to give.

You don’t let him have all the satisfaction. Your hand drifts lower, finding the hard outline pressing against his jeans, rubbing in the same measured pace he’s set for you. The sound he makes is low and rough, pulled from somewhere deep, and you drink it in like victory.

Your mouths stay locked, swallowing each other’s shallow pants and quiet moans, the kiss breaking only for sharp gasps before crashing together again. Teeth catch lips, fingers dig into clothes and skin, both of you pushing harder, faster—daring the other to give in first.

The tension snaps for you in a shiver, your body tightening around his fingers as heat floods through you. He swallows your moan like it’s his, kissing you harder, deeper, until you’re dizzy. A moment later, his hips jerk, a muted groan breaking against your mouth as he follows, the heat between you spilling over into something ragged and messy.

Still, neither of you pull away. You kiss until your lips are bruised, until breath comes in broken pulls, until it’s impossible to tell if you’re clinging from want or because neither of you can stand without the other holding you up.

“Pretty sure that was more than seven minutes,” he murmured against your neck, his tone dripping with satisfaction before his teeth sank into your skin in playful retaliation.

A sharp sound slipped from you—half moan, half hiss—your body still humming from the high, even as irritation flickered hot in your chest.

“Who knew all it would take was a couple of my fingers to strip some of that attitude away, cutie?” he added, the bait curling lazily from his lips like he already knew you’d take it.

Your response was wordless at first—a firm grip on the half-hard length straining against his jeans, followed by a hiss against his neck as your other hand tangled in his hair, tugging hard enough to make him suck in a breath.

“How about,” your voice was low and edged with challenge, “you get me out of here and fuck me until it’s all gone, hm?”

His mouth crashed onto yours before you could blink, the kiss bruising and impatient. His hands gripped your ass and hips with a possessive force, pulling you flush against him as his smirk ghosted over your lips.

“Gladly,” he breathed, smug as ever.

“Bastard,” you muttered against his mouth, earning nothing more than a quiet laugh before he hauled you out of the cramped closet.

The hallway erupted in whistles and amused voices from classmates, but Rafayel didn’t so much as glance at them—his only focus fixed entirely, and unapologetically, on you.

 —

Your hands roamed over him in desperate, greedy paths, grabbing at whatever skin you could reach—his back, his shoulders, the flex of his arms—as he drove into you with slow, delicious thrusts that somehow felt both sweet and merciless. His body hovered above yours, holding you caged between his hips and the mattress, each movement pulling ragged moans from your throat.

The air between you was hot, tangled with the sound of panting breaths and the wet heat of messy, biting kisses that kept breaking and reforming like neither of you could stay away for long.

“I can bet,” he moaned between thrusts, his voice rough but edged with that familiar smirk, “you were this wet every time you argued back at me… isn’t that right?”

His flushed face hovered over yours, his gaze locked on you as his palm slid over your breast, kneading and teasing your nipple until it peaked under his touch.

You answered with a scoffing moan, biting back the urge to roll your eyes even as pleasure shot through you when he angled his hips just right, hitting deep enough to make your stomach clench. You lifted your hips to meet his thrusts, still unwilling to give him the full satisfaction of your surrender.

“Why don’t you quit being insufferable,” you grunted, your voice breaking when his teeth grazed your neck, “and fuck me properly instead?”

His fingers found your clit mid-sentence, circling in maddening, precise strokes that made your breath stutter. “Make me cum again, I’m close.”

“Who am I to refuse you, princess?” he mocked in a low, wicked whisper, his tone all heat and challenge.

Your back arched helplessly into him as release tore through you, your body tightening around his cock in pulsing waves. His hips jerked with the rhythm of your climax, your moans mixing with his as you dragged him into a heated kiss, swallowing each other’s sounds. His grip on your hip tightened hard enough to leave faint, perfect marks you’d find later, a wordless claim in the shape of his fingers.

Your palms pressed firmly to his chest, the heat of his skin slick under your fingers as your nails dug in for balance. You rode him in a steady, unrelenting rhythm, each movement pulling a groan from deep in his throat.

Your head tipped back, lips parted, the sound of your panting filling the room as your breasts bounced with every rise and fall. His mouth caught one nipple, sucking greedily before his teeth grazed the sensitive peak just enough to make your muscles tighten around him.

“This must be new to you, right?” he asked, though the lift of his brows and the smug curve of his mouth made it sound more like confirmation than curiosity. His tone was breathless, feigning innocence, which only made it worse.

Too lost in the way his cock filled you, you could only grunt between gasps, “What are you talking about?”

His hands tightened on your waist, guiding you down harder onto him. He murmured against your chest, his lips brushing your skin before closing around your nipple again, biting until a moan escaped you.

“Being on top,” he rasped with a smirk you could hear, his gaze flicking up to meet yours. “Considering you’re never above me in anything.”

The taunt was punctuated by a sharp thrust upward, his hips grinding into you as a low grunt rumbled from his chest. “How do you like it, princess?”

You bent forward, bracing a hand against his jaw, then sliding it to the back of his neck as his eyes locked on yours—amethyst and heat-drunk, his lips wet and kiss-bruised. Through a breathless moan, you rasped out your answer, your nails biting into his skin.

“Would like it better,” you panted, “if you didn’t run your mouth.”

He only smirked, that maddening curve of his lips catching the dim light before he ducked down to suck another mark into your neck—one of many already burning along your skin. His smugness was infuriating, but it was harder to focus on that when you felt him twitch inside you, his cock hitting deep enough to blur your vision.

“Oh, but you do like when I run my mouth, don’t ya?” his voice was low, curling with amusement before he caught your lips in a kiss that was all heat and teeth and unspent tension. You kept moving on him, chasing the high with relentless rhythm, your breath breaking against his. “Seemed to love it a few minutes ago,” he murmured between kisses, “when it was between your legs.”

A sharp moan tore from you when his thumb found your clit, already slick and swollen from the previous orgasm he pulled from you. The touch was almost too much, your body clenching around him in a shiver that drew a low, unrestrained groan from his chest. He chuckled against your skin, his fingers digging into the soft curve of your ass as if he meant to keep you exactly where you were.

“I even recall you moaning my name so nicely when you came around my tongue…” his voice rasped against your ear, warm enough to send a shiver down your spine.

Your head tipped back, eyes squeezing shut as you bounced harder, your mouth falling open on a broken gasp. You were so close you could taste it.

“Never heard my name sound that sweet from your mouth before,” he taunted, his words smug but tangled with his own uneven breaths, knowing it must turn you on.

The sound of his grunts matched the rhythm of your moans, your bodies locked in a pace that was more a challenge than surrender, both of you teetering at the edge.

You blocked out the smug noise spilling from his lips, focusing instead on keeping your rhythm steady despite the burn in your thighs. Your voice came out shaky but biting, laced with challenge. “You better not cum before I do, asshole.”

Your teeth sank into your lower lip hard enough to sting, and his answering thrust made your head tip back. He met your pace with deep, upward drives of his hips, each one threatening to push you over. His fingers dug into the flesh of your ass, guiding you, controlling the motion as if he owned the moment and you.

“Don’t worry that pretty head, cutie,” he chuckled between low, rough grunts, the sound vibrating against your chest when he leaned in. His eyes drank you in—your slack jaw, your unfocused gaze, the way pleasure had stolen the sharp edges of your expression. “I wouldn’t miss the chance to watch you cum around my cock… so freaking beautiful like this…”

His lips brushed your neck in a fleeting kiss just before your body seized around him. Heat and pleasure tore through you, your thighs trembling violently as you came with a broken, shaky moan. You felt the wet rush coat him, spill between you, soak into the sheets beneath.

His groan was deep and rough, the sound dragging low in his chest as his hips faltered. You didn’t need to see his face to know he was seconds away; you could feel it in the iron grip of his hands on your hips, in the heat radiating from his skin, in the breath he caught like he was holding back the inevitable.

Leaning down, you caught the warm line of his neck between your teeth, biting hard enough to draw another groan from him. Your lips found the sweet spot just beneath his ear, sucking until his muscles tensed under you.

That was all it took—he jerked inside you, twitching hard as heat spilled into you in thick, pulsing waves, coating your sensitive walls until you could feel it drip. His head tipped back, breath ragged, and you felt the faintest chuckle rumble in his chest, even through the haze of release.

“Can’t ever say you hate me now,” he rasped, his voice still rough with the edge of release, “not after letting me mark you like this, cutie.”

Before you could snap back, his hand slid to the back of your neck, pulling you down into a kiss that stole the rest of your breath. It was searing and messy, all heat and teeth, his lips moving against yours like he had no intention of letting you go any time soon. Your bodies were still pressed tight, the aftershocks thrumming between you, and every pull of his mouth tasted faintly of victory.

—

Rafayel wasn’t the type to cling to jealousy or waste energy on expectations he never asked for—but watching you slip back into that same dynamic, as if nothing had happened between you, lit something sharp and ugly under his skin. It was one thing to keep up the bickering, the constant push-and-pull you two seemed addicted to, but being so close to anyone else in this place? Laughing, leaning in, letting other people into your space the way you let him, even if just for one night? That ticked him off more than he wanted to admit.

He could lie to everyone else, but not to himself. He was jealous. Or at the very least, bothered—more than before, more than he had any right to be. Especially since you seemed intent on shoving it in his face, as though proving just how easily you could cozy up to other guys on campus might put him in his place.

Seeing you dance with that colleague tonight had made his jaw tighten, a scoff of disbelief escaping before he could bite it back. Because he knew better—he knew what you wanted. He’d felt it in every heated moment you’d given him, in the way your body melted under his hands, pliant no matter how sharp your words were.

You could pretend, you could deny—but he’d already dragged the truth out of you in the dark, in the messy rhythm of tangled sheets and bitten lips. And tonight, all he could think about was how you’d come undone for him, over and over again, chasing release like a spark to a fuse you couldn’t stop lighting—and now you were cozying up with another man.

The dynamic between you hadn’t shifted in the slightest—you still scoffed, still snapped at him, every exchange bristling with the same defiance he had come to expect. Normally, Rafayel thrived on it; it was what made this little game so addictive. But tonight, with the taste of you still burned into his memory, he had hoped for something different—some flicker of change, even if you refused to admit it.

He caught you alone near the drinks table, slipping into your space without hesitation, his shadow falling across you as you tipped the bottle. You turned your head sharply, eyes narrowing, your scoff cutting through the din of music and chatter. “What do you want now, Rafayel?”

The tone—biting, impatient—made his jaw twitch. Normally it thrilled him, but the sharp edge tonight dug deeper. Did you really despise his presence that much? Even now, after everything?

He leaned one elbow against the counter as though he had all the time in the world, his amethyst eyes catching the low light and glinting with that practiced, playful spark. He slipped the mask on as easily as a second skin, the one he always wore with you. “Back to making me work for your attention, I see.”

You rolled your eyes, ignoring the weight of his gaze as you poured yourself a shot. The liquid burned down your throat, leaving your lips wet when you licked the taste away. His eyes tracked the movement without restraint, though you didn’t seem to notice.

“Sometimes I seriously wonder if you don’t have better things to do than pester me all day,” you muttered, as though the idea of his presence alone grated on you.

He nearly laughed, the sound curling up the back of his throat, but the bitterness still lingered like ash. He could hide it well—he always did—but something in his chest coiled tighter, a heaviness he couldn’t smirk his way out of.

He poured himself a shot like it was second nature, tossing it back with the same careless ease he wore like armor. Then he leaned in, closing the space between you with an unbothered smirk tugging at his lips.

“Gonna pretend it never happened, is that it, princess?” his eyes found yours in the low light, sharp against sharp, daring you to flinch first.

You leaned in too, your voice dropping to a hiss that barely carried over the music. “Stop calling me that.”

His laugh was low, warm, almost affectionate in its own infuriating way. “Funny,” he murmured, tilting his glass aside. “Had you in my bed, moaning for me, and the first thing you pick up after is that attitude.”

Your glare could have cut straight through him. You scoffed, turning your head deliberately, your gaze sweeping the room—for him, it wasn’t hard to guess who you were looking for. The guy you’d been dancing with earlier. His jaw tightened before he could stop it, the weight of his stare narrowing back on you.

His voice came out rougher now, laced with the edge of something he usually hid behind a smirk. “So that’s what it is. Maybe I should fuck you slow next time. Sweet, steady—see if that’d finally get you to acknowledge it.” his head tilted slightly, the words a challenge, a taunt, but his eyes searched yours like he wanted the truth more than the fight.

You laughed, the sound sharp as glass. Through your teeth, bitter but smiling just enough to sting, you shot back, “There’s no next time. And I’d rather you dropped the cocky act.” your gaze flicked up, unwavering. “Not everyone wants to end up in your bed, Rafayel.”

The smirk didn’t falter on his lips, but the burn of your words sank under his skin all the same. Oh, how he loved your attitude. The sharpness in your voice, the fire in your glare—it always turned him on, but tonight it scraped against something else too. Annoyance. You dismissed him so easily, brushed everything off as if it hadn’t mattered, as if you’d rather erase it than admit it was real.

But he couldn’t forget. He didn’t want to forget the sound of your moans, the way your nails dug into his skin, the bite of your teeth against his shoulder, your mouth desperate and hot on his. Every mark you’d left on him still burned under his skin.

His smirk came quick, practiced, though his jaw ticked in irritation he couldn’t quite swallow down. “Well, you wanted it,” he drawled, voice low enough to coil between you, “and you seemed pretty determined to show me just how badly.”

The proof lingered—your mark, blooming faint but undeniable on the side of his neck. He saw the flicker in your expression when your eyes caught it, the twitch of your jaw before your glare sharpened even further.

You spit your words back at him, close enough now that he could smell you. Sweet perfume, deliberate and light, clinging to your skin like temptation. The thought of you applying it for someone else—for that guy you’d been pressed against earlier—made his stomach knot in a way he refused to admit. His smirk stayed fixed, masking the flare of heat in his chest, but it didn’t quiet the urge that nearly consumed him—to press his face into your neck, breathe you in, and let himself get drunk on you.

“Seriously, what’s your fucking problem?” you snapped, each word sharp enough to cut. “Yeah, we fucked. So what? You expect me to drop at your feet now and suck you off or something?”

Every syllable was a double-edged knife—turning him on even as it lit a flame of irritation low in his chest. Did you really think that’s what he wanted from you? While he’d never be opposed to the thought, that wasn’t it. Not even close. What he wanted was for you to stop pretending it meant nothing, to stop brushing it off like you hadn’t melted under him, clawed at him, begged for more until your voice broke.

His eyes lingered on yours, refusing to look away, holding the heat of your glare. You looked pissed, but he couldn’t tell if it was your usual game or if he’d really struck a nerve this time, dug under your skin deeper than you wanted him to.

“I wouldn’t be opposed to it,” he said smoothly, smirking like he hadn’t just swallowed down the words he really wanted to say—that you were driving him insane, that you’d taken root under his skin, that it wasn’t just your body he wanted. He tilted his head slightly, voice curling like smoke as he added, “Do you want me begging for it first?”

The faint shift in your expression—hesitation, surprise, something flickering behind your eyes—was gone almost as quickly as it appeared. You scoffed, your laugh short and bitter, already angling your body away like you’d had enough.

“I want you to leave me alone,” you shot back, each word bitten off like you meant to end it right there. Your smile was cutting, the kind meant to dismiss, to wound. “Enjoy the party, Rafayel.”

And before he could stop you, you turned toward the crowd—toward him, the other guy—and something inside him twisted sharp, the smirk still plastered on his face doing nothing to smother the frustration building in his chest.

Watching you dance, flirt, and laugh with that guy for hours ticked Rafayel off in ways he couldn’t keep buried—not with alcohol humming in his veins. His eyes followed the sway of your hips, the way sweat caught the low lights on your skin, turning you into something untouchable and magnetic. The guy had slipped away a few minutes ago, probably for another drink or a bathroom break—Rafayel couldn’t be bothered to care.

His focus was on you, only you. The words you’d thrown at him earlier replayed like a broken record in his mind, cutting sharper every time. He hadn’t expected you to cling to him, hadn’t even expected softness or anything close to it—but acting as if you hadn’t spent a night tangled together, bodies desperate, mouths bruised—it set something raw and restless burning in him.

He hated it. Hated how much it mattered. Hated the circumstances, hated that it made him feel like this—like he wanted to drag you away and make you admit every mark you left on his skin meant something more than just a mistake. And he knew it would probably end badly. But watching another man press into your space, lay hands on you—watching you let him, welcome him—it made his blood run hotter than the whiskey in his glass.

Rafayel wasn’t stupid enough to believe you were doing it on purpose just to rile him up. But still, the thought gnawed at him. The possibility that you knew exactly what effect you had on him—and chose to wield it—made his chest tighten in a way he couldn’t laugh off anymore.

Your hips swayed slow and unbothered to the rhythm, a lazy, carefree roll that pulled him in before he could stop himself. You hadn’t even realized who pressed up behind you—he could see it in the way you welcomed the touch too easily, as if you thought it was that other guy. That thought alone made his jaw clench, the bitter edge of alcohol still coating his tongue.

His hands settled on your waist, fingers splaying possessively over the curve, and you arched in response without hesitation. That simple movement—that you’d done it for someone else—made frustration coil low and sharp in his chest. His grip tightened, pulling you flush as he dipped his face into the slope of your neck. The scent of your perfume laced with heat and sweat filled his head, dizzying, intoxicating, far too easy to get drunk on.

“You smell so good,” he murmured against your skin, his voice low enough to sink right into your bones.

You stiffened instantly, the realization snapping through you. It was him, not the guy you thought. Your body shifted as if to turn, to throw him a glare or maybe shove him away, but his arms circled tighter around your waist, holding you still, pressing you into the steady rise of his chest. His nose brushed just beneath your ear, his mouth dragging close enough that his words threaded warmth into your skin.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” you asked, your voice pitched low, sharp but not steady—caught off guard, unsettled.

His lips ghosted another breath over your neck, dangerous and calm all at once, the lazy drawl of his voice cutting through the bass of the music. “Couldn’t keep watching that guy put his hands all over you.”

You scoffed, refusing to give him the satisfaction of stillness, your body swaying side to side with the beat as though he weren’t pressed so close. He took it for annoyance, maybe even defiance, and you threw your words like sparks over your shoulder. “Then don’t fucking look, Rafayel. It isn’t any of your business.”

His chest brushed against your back, solid and warm, crowding you until there was no space left to claim as your own. You rolled your hips again, half in spite, half because fighting him always ended like this—like gravity itself had shifted around him. His breath trembled against your neck, catching faintly on the perfume he couldn’t seem to stop drinking in.

“Are you drunk?” you muttered, sharp with irritation.

“No,” he rasped, voice rougher than usual, his hips sliding in sync with yours. The deliberate press made it impossible to ignore the unmistakable hardness straining against your ass. His fingers found your hips, not tentative but claiming, tightening when you didn’t shrug him off.

You scoffed under your breath, but your body betrayed you, still moving, still letting him. “Then why the hell are you all over me right now?”

He didn’t answer in words first. His lips ghosted along your neck, deliberate and lazy, before catching against your skin in a kiss that lingered too long to be innocent. He pulled your hips flush against his, making sure you felt exactly what you’d provoked, exactly how hard he was.

“It’s how it should be,” he murmured, his voice a low curl of smoke, the smirk etched against your skin as he leaned into your ear. “So do me a favor, cutie, and tell that guy to back off.”

Your laugh came sharp, edged with a bite. “I thought I told you to back off, Rafayel.” still, your hips betrayed the venom of your words, grinding against him like you couldn’t stop yourself. “I’m leaving home soon, anyway.”

That pushed him too far. His patience snapped into something darker, frustration coiled tight with want. His mouth brushed your ear, tone suddenly rougher, meaner, though still soaked in heat. “The next words out your mouth better not be that you’re leaving with him.”

His grip tightened at your waist, and the pressure sent a shiver down your spine no matter how hard you tried to fight it. You hated that your body still reacted, hated that even when you were frustrated—angry, even—it didn’t stop the rush of heat that pooled beneath your skin.

His breath brushed your ear as he leaned in, the low bass of the music vibrating through the floor and through your bones, but all you could hear was him. The two of you swayed together, not to the rhythm, but to something far more reckless.

“Get your act together, Rafayel.” your voice cut sharp, laced with sarcasm as you turned to face him. The flashing lights caught the tension in your jaw, as tight and unyielding as his own, and for a moment it felt like you weren’t dancing so much as locked in combat.

His lips curved—not into a smile, not really—but into that insufferable smirk he wore whenever he wanted to rile you. “Mm, harsh. Though, to be fair, I’m not the one grinding against strangers for an audience.” his words came low, casual, but there was a rawness underneath, the kind that betrayed too much.

Your eyes narrowed, voice dripping with annoyance. “You’re either drunk out of your mind, or you’re jealous. Whichever it is—you have no right to say that.”

His hold only tightened, and the jealousy he refused to name aloud lingered in every breath he refused to let you take alone. His jaw ticked, a scoff breaking past his lips. It was supposed to sound amused, the way it usually did when he was poking at you, but the laugh carried a sharpness he couldn’t quite disguise. Jealousy bled through no matter how smooth he tried to make it. His eyes locked on yours, unblinking, the crowd and the music dissolving into a blur behind you.

“Don’t go home with him.” the words came out low, bitten off, heavier than he intended.

You scoffed, the sound sharp enough to cut, pushing against his chest to put some space between you. He barely gave, his body rooted in place, but you turned anyway, your voice tossed over your shoulder, drowned by the bass but still slicing through him all the same. “Unbelievable.”

The sway of your hips as you walked away was infuriating, deliberate, as if you knew exactly what you were doing to him. His jaw clenched tighter, watching you head straight toward the direction that bastard had gone. Before the thought could even settle, his hand shot out, catching your wrist.

You barely had time to gasp before he was dragging you through the crush of bodies, threading you through the mess of perfume and sweat and music until the two of you spilled into a darker corner, half-hidden near the bathroom hallway.

“What the fu—” the curse was barely past your lips before his mouth was on you.

It wasn’t careful. It wasn’t measured. It was a smash of lips and teeth and bottled-up want that burned through every ounce of restraint he had left. He couldn’t hear another word of you telling him to back off, couldn’t stand the thought of you storming away toward anyone but him.

And to his reckless satisfaction, you didn’t shove him off. Not right away. Instead your lips parted, your tongue chasing his with a heat that shocked him as much as it thrilled him. The back of your shoulders hit the wall with a thud, and he pinned you there, his hand curling around your jaw like he needed to hold you still, like he couldn’t risk you slipping through his fingers again.

He broke just enough space to breathe, his forehead nearly pressed to yours, breath ragged against your lips. His voice was hoarse, raw in a way you’d never heard. “I’m jealous.”

The confession scraped out of him like it cost something, but his eyes didn’t waver. They bore into you, dark, heated, a storm of frustration and something softer underneath. His cheeks were warm, but his gaze was sharp, almost accusing.

“Didn’t think your little act of indifference would get to me, and it didn’t at first,” he said, his tone clipped, defensive, as if he needed to convince himself more than you. His fingers dug harder into your hips, holding you where you were, his frustration bleeding through every touch.

“Until I saw him all over you. And you—” his jaw tightened again, the words heavier, almost bitten through his teeth. “You couldn’t have welcomed him more sweetly.”

“Is that so?” you scoffed, though the sound came out thinner than you wanted, betraying the heat gathering in your chest. His eyes caught the flicker of yours dropping just once to his mouth before darting back up, a slip you couldn’t take back. You hated that he noticed, hated the way he thrived on it, as if your irritation was his favorite game.

“I don’t remember owing you anything, Rafayel,” you managed through a ragged breath, voice sharp but trembling at the edges.

His grip tightened at your waist, fingers digging into the fabric just enough to make you stumble the slightest step into him. The closeness burned. There were people all around you—laughing, drunk, tangled in the music—but the crowd blurred into nothing, leaving only the thrum of his pulse pressed against yours, the friction of your remarks colliding.

“It’s like you’re trying to piss me off on purpose,” he muttered, low and rough, the words curling warm against your ear before his mouth stole yours.

The kiss was hard, bruising—more a clash than a surrender—but your body betrayed you, answering with the same fever. Your fingers curled into the half-buttoned placket of his shirt, yanking him closer until the last breath of air between you vanished. He groaned against your lips, the sound half frustration, half need, his tongue meeting yours in a reckless tangle. The taste of him was dizzying—bitter with jealousy, sweet with desire—and it made your head spin worse than the alcohol.

When he tore back just enough to speak, his voice was ragged, every word bitten off as though it cost him something.

“I’m jealous and pissed, and so fucking turned on.” his teeth grazed your skin as he caught the line of your jaw, then your throat, nipping at the place where your pulse fluttered out of control.

His breath spilled hot over your perfume, a scent he knew wasn’t chosen for him—and that knowledge set his temper alight.

He inhaled against your neck, lips brushing dangerously close. “Tell me, cutie…” his tone dipped into mockery, sharp and soft all at once, “is that what you were aiming for?”

—

Shutting Rafayel up was easy enough if you played your cards right. And right now, with your thighs draped on each side of his head, his face buried between them, it was the most effective method you’d ever discovered.

He’d pulled you straight out of that party—cocky grin, sharp remarks, his hand at the small of your back like he had every right to lead you wherever he pleased—and somehow, the two of you ended up here again, tangled in the mess of his sheets, tearing at each other’s clothes like you were starving.

He hadn’t wasted a second once the door shut. The moment he shoved you back onto his bed, Rafayel dragged you over his mouth, pinning you there with a kind of desperate arrogance, tongue lapping at your folds like he had something to prove.

Your thighs trembled with every stroke of him, the slick sound of his mouth against you filling the room. He groaned into you, the vibration making you jolt, fingers tightening around the headboard as you rocked against him.

“Fuck—Rafayel,” you gasped, the words breaking into a moan as his hands urged you down harder, forcing you to grind over his mouth like he wanted you to drown him.

You couldn’t help laughing breathlessly, the edge of smugness curling your lips. “Didn’t know you liked shutting up this much,” you panted, voice cracking as he sucked hard on your clit, pulling another shaky cry from you.

He hummed against you in response, and the casual defiance in it made your chest tighten with something more dangerous than lust. Still, you couldn’t resist taunting him, voice pitched with a mix of moan and tease. “Do you wanna make me cum, Rafayel? Hm? So eager to please me for once?”

That had his fingers digging into your thighs, bruising and possessive. He pushed his tongue deeper, fucking you with it, and you cursed, head falling back, vision hazing. But you weren’t done. You leaned into the crueler edge of the game, your smirk curling even as your words hitched mid-breath.

“Maybe the other guy would’ve been just as eager… you know, the one who whispered all kind of things in my ear while grinding behind me—”

Your taunt cut off in a broken scream when he growled low into your pussy and sealed his mouth around your clit, sucking so hard your whole body jerked. The orgasm ripped through you with a violence that made your thighs quake against his grip, soaking his face as you cried out his name like you couldn’t hold it back. And the bastard didn’t even slow down.

“S-shit, ahh…” you gasped, the sound breaking out of you before you could bite it back. His mouth didn’t let up, not until you cried his name, your whole body trembling as your hips moved helplessly against his tongue, too sensitive to bear it yet too desperate to stop. A low growl rumbled in his throat at the sound of your curse, vibrating against you, and then suddenly—his grip clamped around your thighs, dragging a startled cry from your lips as he flipped you onto your back.

Before you could catch your breath, he was already over you, stealing your mouth in a kiss that left you dizzy, his hips grinding down into yours, the hard line of him pressing insistently through the fabric of his pants. His lips broke away only to trail down your throat, and then his teeth found you, sucking rough marks into your skin like he meant to brand you.

“You already got me so worked up…” his voice was rough, almost bitten out, “but then you go and say his name while I’m between your legs?” he sank his teeth lightly into your neck, the sting chased by the drag of his tongue.

Your protest melted into a groan as his fingers slid inside you, stretching you with merciless precision. He moaned low when your release slicked against his touch, making each movement faster, deeper, your body clenching around him in desperate pulses. His other hand spread over your ass, holding you open for him as his mouth closed around your breast, sucking hard, leaving your nipple aching under the wet heat of his tongue.

When his eyes lifted, messy hair falling into his flushed face, the burn in them was enough to make your stomach twist. Jealousy and hunger sharpened the edges of his gaze, the sound of his voice rough and almost mocking. “If you wanted it rough, cutie, you could’ve just asked. No need to piss me off, pulling shit like this on me.”

Your laugh came out broken, shaky, your voice trembling on each gasp. Still, you managed, “Where’s the fun in that?”

He kissed you then like he was trying to win something, all heat and defiance, his mouth clashing against yours in a mess of teeth and breath. You answered with equal force, your hands already curling tighter in his hair, dragging him closer until you broke the kiss just to flip him beneath you.

The motion was sharp, your thighs locking around his hips as you shoved him down onto the mattress, stealing a groan out of him that sounded far too satisfying.

“You’re so easy to trigger, aren’t you?” you taunted, breathless as you pressed your mouth to his throat, nipping at the skin until he tilted his head back with a curse. Your fingers fumbled at his belt, deliberately slow, grazing him in ways that made his jaw clench.

“Maybe it’s time someone puts you in your place. Because clearly…” you scoffed, dragging your nails lightly over his stomach as you marked his neck, “…you don’t know where you stand.”

His hips twitched under the drag of your palm, his breathing uneven now—finally losing that insufferable composure that always drove you mad. His pants and boxers were gone in what felt like seconds, and you perched just above him, teasing, stroking him in slow, deliberate movements that had his eyes darkening, his chest rising sharp with every breath.

When your mouth wrapped around him at last, he swore violently, a hand flying to your hair, gripping hard enough to make your scalp sting. The sound that tore out of him was raw, unguarded, his back arching off the sheets.

“S-shit, fuck…” he hissed, the word breaking, and you almost laughed around him, because the victory was already rushing through your veins, warm and heady. The Rafayel who always had a sharp retort, always stayed a step ahead, was now groaning under your mouth, bucking helplessly into you, fingers threaded tight in your hair as if he’d lose himself without the anchor.

He looked almost beautiful like this—breathless, undone, stripped of every cocky remark he usually wielded like a weapon. You could admit it now, he was dangerous when quiet, his charm sharper in the silence between gasps.

“Cutie shit—just like that,” his voice cracked, raw and heavy as his hand tightened in your hair. “I’m not gonna last.”

The ragged sound of his breathing filled the space, and just when you felt him twitch against your tongue, he pulled you away with a guttural growl. His mouth caught yours in a kiss that was messy, desperate, teeth clashing as if he couldn’t stand the distance for even a second longer.

“Not yet,” he rasped against your lips, his grip bruising your hips as he dragged you up into his lap. “Not until I fuck you so good you forget whatever guy you were entertaining earlier.”

You barely had time to roll your eyes before he flipped you over with startling ease, pressing you down and sliding into you in one rough, unrelenting thrust. The breath tore out of you in a broken moan, nails sinking into his shoulders as your body stretched around him.

“You’re tight, princess,” he groaned into your ear, hips snapping forward, the sound spilling out of him low and guttural. “Fuck, you take me just as good as last time.”

Whatever sharp retort you might’ve had died the moment he set a brutal rhythm, pounding into you with a pace that stole the ground from under your thoughts. Pleasure tore through you too fast, too much—until you were trembling around him, clenching hard as your release crashed over you.

“So sweet when you come for me,” he rasped, voice unraveling as your walls squeezed him tighter. “Squeezing me so goddamn t-tight…”

He pulled out only to drag you forward, manhandling you face-down, ass high, the mattress dipping under his weight as he shoved back inside without warning. The thrust punched a scream out of you, raw and unguarded, and he chuckled darkly at the sound, his fingers digging deep into your hips as if to brand you there.

“You wanted rough, didn’t you?” His tone was half-growl, half-smirk, sharp with the kind of heat that left no space to breathe. He snapped his hips hard against you, deeper, faster, each movement sharp enough to leave you reeling. “Wanted to make me jealous, huh? Then take it.”

Your mouth hung open, words failing as he pushed you past every edge, the drag of his jealousy turning him feral, reckless—eager to ruin you until there was nothing left in your head but him. And in truth, you loved every second of it. Because this version of Rafayel—the one who burned with want, who touched like he was starving, who let his jealousy unravel into raw need—was utterly, devastatingly irresistible.

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You: “You know I love you right?” you start, hesitating for a brief moment. “But I think this isn’t working …maybe we should take a break.”

Hawks

“You know what? You’re absolutely right. We really need a good relaxing break, don’t we?” you’re not expecting Keigo to agree with you, and he laughs at the shock on your face. “How do we feel about Hawaii? You always wanted to go there, right?”

Confusion replaces the shock you felt just brief moments ago. You stare at Keigo, bewildered at the strange turn of the conversation. 

“What are you talking about?” you question. 

“What are you talking about, my adorably confusing girlfriend?” he laughs it off, humorously. “You said we need a break and I totally agree with that. Plus, I think a romantic getaway is just what we need right now, it’s about time we get some vacations.” 

“No, Keigo.” you stop him, “What I mean is that we should take a break from each other. Give it some time, y’know.” 

There’s a moment of quiet silence and Keigo’s smiles, a stiff and hard smile that does a good job covering up the upset clenching of his jaw.  

“Aren’t you being a tad bit dramatic with that? I mean, we’re perfectly totally completely fine, so what’s with that idea?” he questions you. “Why you tryna break something so perfect? Let me guess, attachment issues flaring up?”

“Because it’s not perfect, Keigo.” you answer back, a bit annoyed. “And we’re not fine, despite what you think. If you haven’t noticed, then maybe you’re not very clever, are you?” 

That golden gaze, usually so warm, now burns with an intensity that makes your throat tighten and a wave of regret immediately washes over you. 

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” he agrees, slowly dragging each word. “Maybe I’m not very clever. Cause if I was more clever, then maybe I would have noticed that you have a tendency to be overly dramatic.” 

The turn of the conversation leaves you stunned. What?

“Dramatic?” you echo, forcing your voice to stay steady. “Keigo, we’ve been fighting constantly. You don’t listen, and I feel like I’m—”

“—Like you’re what? Neglected? Trapped?” he cuts you off, before stepping closer, and though his wings didn’t move, you feel their phantom weight pressing down on you. “Babe, everything I do is for you. For us.”

“I work myself to the bone to make sure you have everything you’ve ever dreamed of. Don’t I?” his words pinch your heart. “And this is how you repay me? By wanting space? After everything I’ve done for you?”

“It’s not about what you’ve done, Keigo. It’s about how I feel. I just... need time to think. And maybe so do you.”

“Time to think? What’s there to think about, sweetheart?” he huffs, “Who’s going to protect you, take care of you, if you leave? Hmm?”

His wings extend slightly to frame you both in the narrow hallway.

“Keigo, I—”

“Shh.” He pressed a finger to your lips, his eyes softening into something almost tender. “You’re upset right now, and that’s okay. But leaving isn’t the answer, dove. You belong here. With me.”

Keigo cups your cheek, so tenderly and affectionately that it clenches your heart. His smile returns, warm and reassuring, as if nothing had happened. 

“Tell you what - let’s forget all this nonsense. How about I book that trip to Hawaii after all? A fresh start, just the two of us. You’ll see how perfect we are together.”

You want to protest, to grab your suitcase and leave, but his wings curl around you in a protective cocoon, and the weight of his touch - his words - render you paralyzed.

Somewhere deep down, a small voice screams at you to run. But Keigo’s voice, low and honeyed, drowns it out.

“See? Everything’s going to be fine,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to your forehead. “You don’t need to go anywhere, dove. I’ll make sure of it.”

And you know, with a sinking certainty, that he meant it.

Dabi

The way his ice-blue eyes stare at you is chilling, to say the least. Dabi looks at you intently as if trying to discover something. 

“Do you remember when we started dating?” he asks at last, leaving you surprised at the random question. “That night on the rooftop where you become mine.”

You slowly nod, unsure of what he meant. It’s only been six months since your relation became official, but it feels as if it’s been a lifetime ago.

There’s been so many major changes in it - you changed, Dabi changed, everything about your relationship changed. And not for the better. 

“Good. Then you also remember when I told you - no - when I promised you that you’d never get fully rid of me, if you said yes. That you’d become mine, til your last breath.” his voice deepens at each step he takes towards you, looming and dark.

“That we’d be intertwined for the rest of our lives. That nothing would stop us from being together, no matter what.”

Shivers run down your spine, and you find yourself paralyzed. Frozen. No matter how much you attempt, your limbs won’t move. You’re completely frozen with fear. 

“Then tell me…” Dabi nears you, looking more mutilated and burned than ever. His hand rises, softly brushing against your cheek and it takes everything in you not to flinch away. “... why are you suddenly too good for me?”

“It’s not like that ….”

Your meek attempt of protesting is quickly silenced when his other hand grips you by the elbow, too firm for you to slip away. He cages you with his body and hands and you are too nervous to stop the sweat that builds up in your back. 

“Go on now, don’t be shy. I wanna hear all the pathetic excuses you got.” he dryly chuckles, slightly heating up his hand or maybe it’s just an illusion of your body, at this time you’re not sure anymore. “Tell me all about it. I’m looking forward to hearing you spew out all sorts of miserable apologies and justifications you can find.”

“Or maybe you’re planning to use the good old excuse everyone uses these days. It’s you, not me.” Dabi mocks you, but the lack of humor in his voice is evident. 

“Dabi, please.” your voice is nothing but a weak frightened whisper, “You’re… scaring me.” 

“Good, maybe fear can drill some good sense into that frail mind of yours.” he scoffs. “Cause I believe both of us know where this is headed. You’re not leaving me.” 

He doesn’t wait for an answer before continuing, eyes and voice pouring of determination and assurance. 

“You can never leave me, no matter how hard you try. I’ll always find you, you know that.” he warns, voice dipping low.

“And you should also be aware that your friends and family are meaningless to me. So, next time you think about pulling a stunt like this I highly suggest you think about their lives. Got it?” 

Deku

There are moments when you feel as though luck has abandoned you since you started dating Izuku.

Today is one of them.

It’s partially your fault, had you realized earlier that Izuku came home in a poor pissy mood you wouldn’t have brought the conversation up. 

“So, that’s how it’s going to be, huh?” his tone is serious and firm, borderline resentful. “After everything I’ve done for you and yet you are breaking up with me.” 

The unnerving stare of the emerald eyes is enough to make you duck your eyes, and the way he’s towering over you, a powerful mass of muscle and scars, makes you hesitant to meet his eyes. 

“Izuku, please.” you mutter. “It’s just… It’s for the best.”

“No, it’s not. Why don’t you just say it? That you’re just gonna dump me like I’m a piece of trash that got stuck to your shoe? Like I mean shit to you?” he spits, voice steadily rising and his words are cruel and effective enough to hit you hard and square on where it hurts the most. 

“Izu—”

“Is this a joke to you? Huh? Am I a joke to you?” A yelp gets caught up in your throat when his fingers grab your arm. No amount of wriggling and twisting breaks his powerful grip over your wrist, his digits pressing hard against your bone. 

“N-No! Of course not! Izuku, I don’t- Please!” your lips quiver as you beg for something. Mercy. Freedom. Salvation. Anything. “Please, let’s just talk this through and—”

“Talk about what, exactly?” Izuku presses further, messy tufts of green hair falling onto his eyes. “On second thought, I do wanna talk about this. I wanna talk about how long these ideas have been pestering your mind. So tell me, sweetheart, how long have you been planning to ditch me to the side like garbage?”

“It’s not like that.” you try, but Izuku barely allows you to say a few words before he’s speaking over you.

“Better yet,” he glares at you, his nostrils flare up and hand dangerously narrows around your hand’s bone. “Who put this stupid idea into your head? Answer me, damnit!” 

You shrink at his tone, pathetic and unable to stand up for yourself, as Izuku keeps verbally charging at you.

Something in the back of your mind admonishes you for not sneaking away in the middle of night like a quiet mouse when Izuku would be deep in slumber. 

You desolately wish you had done that. 

life did not become bad, but it simply became scheduled. you learned how to live by calendars now, by meetings and reports and client dinners. your phone buzzed more often from work than from friends these days, and your closet slowly filled with silk blouses, neutral heels, and fitted office dresses instead of oversized hoodies and school event shirts. 

sometimes, you missed how easy everything used to feel. other times, you were grateful it no longer did.

“you’re thinking again.” you blinked and looked up from your untouched drink. across the table, your colleague and closest friend from work, tara, narrowed her eyes at you knowingly beneath the warm restaurant lighting. around the two of you, friday night chatter filled the rooftop bar while city lights glittered far below the building.

you laughed quietly. “i’m literally just sitting here.”

“exactly,” tara replied. “you only get that existential look when you start thinking about life.”

you rolled your eyes and finally took a sip from your drink. it tasted expensive and barely alcoholic, which felt very fitting for the kind of establishment your coworkers liked frequenting after successful presentations.

you leaned back into your chair with a sigh, letting their voices blur together briefly while laughter continued around the table. honestly, they weren’t wrong. the past year had been exhausting. being a corporate manager at your age sounded impressive on paper until people realized it mostly involved sleeping too little and carrying everybody else’s problems on your back, while pretending you had everything under control.

still, you liked the work, the independence, knowing you built this version of your life yourself. your phone buzzed suddenly beside your drink, bringing your eyes to it. 

it’s the family groupchat. 

your younger cousins were apparently spamming blurry photos from their movie night at your aunt’s house. one picture showed three of them wrapped together in blankets while another was just an aggressively close image of pizza. you smiled despite yourself.

tara noticed instantly. “family?”

“yeah.” you shook your head. “my cousins.”

“the little kids?”

“not little anymore,” you murmured.

that part still felt strange too. the youngest cousin who used to cry over scraped knees now posted dance covers online and borrowed makeup from you occasionally. another had recently started driving lessons. they were all growing too fast, stretching taller and louder and more complicated each year while you somehow stayed stuck remembering them as children.

maybe adulthood was just constantly realizing time moved without asking permission first.

—

the invitation arrived on a random tuesday night while you were half-awake in bed, still wearing your work blouse and scrolling mindlessly through your phone after answering one last email. you almost ignored it, thinking it was just another notification buried between work group chats, promotional messages, and missed calls from relatives... but then your eyes caught familiar words.

senior high alumni homecoming.

you blinked once. now you were fully awake.

the invitation opened into an elegant digital poster washed in dark navy and gold, far more sophisticated than anything your old student council could’ve designed years ago. beneath the formal lettering sat the event details neatly arranged across the screen. the venue, the date, the dress code... and then, at the very bottom says—

costumed masquerade theme.

you stared at the word longer than necessary. for some reason, it made your chest feel strangely light. below the poster, old batchmates were already reacting in the comment section. 

it had been years. years since senior high—since crowded hallways and sports festivals and summer evenings that felt endless back then. life after graduation moved too quickly for everyone. college separated people, and careers scattered them further. friendships became birthdays greeted through instagram stories and occasional “we should meet soon” conversations nobody had time to fulfill.

and yet, this invitation felt like somebody opening an old bedroom window after years. all at once, the memories from before drifted back in quietly.

you sat up against your pillows, phone glowing against the dark room while the city outside your condo windows stretched endlessly beneath the midnight sky.

would it really feel the same? you doubted it. 

everyone was older now, real adults. people had careers, licenses, responsibilities, and probably relationships too. the thought made something inside you shift faintly. still, despite yourself, excitement curled somewhere in your chest.

you imagined seeing your old classmates again after all this time, imagined hearing familiar voices you hadn’t heard in years, briefly becoming younger again just by standing in the same room together.

it sounded nice, dangerously nice. which was exactly why you hesitated.

for the next few days, the invitation in your phone stayed unanswered. you kept reopening the poster during work breaks only to lock your phone again afterward. every time someone new confirmed attendance, your curiosity deepened a little more. 

you were grocery shopping with your mother beneath painfully cold supermarket air-conditioning while your mother pushed the cart slowly through the produce aisle, occasionally handing you random items to place inside.

you trailed beside her absentmindedly while checking your phone again, seeing someone had just sent another reminder poster.

“three weeks left before the masquerade reunion!”

your mother glanced at you briefly. “what are you staring at?”

“nothing,” you answered.

she hummed suspiciously before tossing oranges into the cart. “you’ve had that same expression since yesterday.”

“what expression?”

“the one you get when you’re thinking too hard.”

you looked down at the invitation again. you could almost picture it already—old batchmates rediscovering each other beneath adulthood and years apart.

it felt like an invitation back to youth, just for one evening.

before you could overthink yourself out of it again, you accidentally pressed the attendance button.

confirmed.

your mother blinked when you suddenly looked so petrified. “what happened?”

you slipped your phone into your pocket. “…i think i’m going to a party.”

and that’s it. 

the night of the alumni homecoming arrived wrapped in gold lights.

the convention center occupied almost the entire upper floor of the hotel, glowing warmly behind towering glass windows while valet attendants guided cars beneath the entrance canopy downstairs. 

...you didn’t expect for the party to be this well-prepared and budgeted. from outside alone, the event already looked far more elegant than anything your old batch could have afforded years ago. adulthood really did strange things to people—apparently one of those things included having enough money to rent out ballrooms and pretend everybody had always been this sophisticated.

you stood before the large mirrored elevator walls one last time before stepping out onto the event floor.

you decided to dress as catwoman. the costume had started as a joke between you and tara during a late-night online shopping spree. but now, beneath the hallway lights of the hotel, you almost regretted how good it actually looked on you.

music pulsed through the ballroom doors ahead as hotel staff welcomed arriving guests. the moment you stepped inside, warm lighting and noise swallowed you whole.

the venue was enormous! massive chandeliers reflected gold across glossy floors while alumni crowded around cocktail tables beneath dim ambient lights, meanwhile the dance floor already held clusters of people as servers carried trays of drinks through the crowd.

and everywhere, everyone wore masks. beautiful, elaborate, confusing masks. half the challenge of the reunion seemed to be figuring out who anybody actually was. some people wore elegant masquerade masks while others committed entirely to themes and costumes dramatic enough to make identification nearly impossible. every few seconds, somebody somewhere would suddenly shriek after recognizing an old batchmate.

thinking about it, it was kind of genius. years changed people enough already, so hiding everyone’s faces behind masks only made the nostalgia feel stranger.

for a moment, you simply stood there near the entrance taking it all in. years ago, something like this would’ve overwhelmed you almost immediately. it’s too loud, too crowded. too many social expectations pressing against your chest all at once. but adulthood had apparently beaten professionalism into you. now, instead of panicking, you simply adjusted your clutch beneath your arm and moved forward calmly into the crowd.

look at you.

a functioning adult...sort of.

time moved strangely inside the venue, though. 

one moment you were laughing over old classroom stories and forgotten teachers, and the next you were standing beside an open bar while somebody from your old literature class passionately explained why he quit law school to start a café business instead. everywhere you looked, old versions of people kept appearing beneath unfamiliar adulthood. 

it felt a little like opening a time capsule only to discover everything inside had learned how to breathe on its own.

you drifted further into the venue eventually, drink balanced loosely in your hand while conversations came and went around you in fragments. the ballroom had grown warmer now from the amount of people filling it. for once, you allowed yourself to enjoy it. to exist inside this strange overlap between who you used to be and who you became.

“do you think caleb’s actually here?”

huh? 

your steps slowed. it happened so naturally your body reacted before your mind did.

“oh my gosh, wait, is he? did anyone see caleb?”

caleb.

the name landed against your chest with quiet, terrible familiarity. for a second, all the noise around you dulled.

instead of turning around, you stood near one of the ballroom pillars with your fingers tightening subtly around your glass.

“i think he is,” another woman answered excitedly. “someone said the guy wearing the nightwing costume might be him!”

...of course caleb was here. why wouldn’t he be? it would’ve been more strange if he wasn’t here. the realization should not have unsettled you this much after all these years, and yet suddenly your chest felt oddly tight beneath the fitted black fabric of your clothes. because if caleb was here... then, is the other also here? 

your thoughts stopped themselves before fully forming the name.

...zayne.

something you tried your best to bury after all these years... now had been brought up to the surface. it’s pretty naive of you to think that this wouldn't happen one way or another tonight, right? 

you stared blankly toward the moving crowd ahead while your pulse shifted unevenly somewhere beneath your ribs. it had been years since you last saw either of them properly, years since that unbearable summer, years since tangled confessions and emotions too large for any of you to handle correctly at eighteen.

years since you walked away.

would they look different now? what if you ran into them tonight? what exactly were you supposed to say after all this time? the thought alone made heat creep faintly up your neck.

you were no longer teenagers. no longer those messy, emotionally reckless kids orbiting around each other beneath suburban summers and friday night gatherings. 

adulthood had happened already, surely time had done its job. surely they had moved on.

“honestly,” one of the girls behind you continued with a laugh, “i still can’t believe i dated him.”

you blinked.

another voice groaned. “you dated caleb and survived? tell us everything.”

dated.

the word echoed unpleasantly inside your chest.

“oh please,” the girl laughed again. “it wasn’t that dramatic. we broke up because of distance after graduation. he was already flying all over the place for training back then.”

flying?

ah, right.

your parents did let you know a year ago that he had become a DAA pilot. somehow hearing it spoken aloud made the years feel even more real.

“he’s gotten more ridiculously handsome though,” another added. “if he’s really here tonight, maybe this is your chance to get back together.” their laughter then blurred afterward beneath the music.

you stood still for one second too long, before looking over your shoulder to see the face of the girl caleb had apparently dated.

did he really?

pfft, of course he did. why wouldn’t he?

he was caleb. the golden boy turned golden man. the kind of person people naturally loved. and yet, the image still unsettled something quiet and unpleasant inside you. before memory could drag you any further backward, you immediately resumed walking deeper into the ballroom.

enough.

your heels clicked steadily against polished floors while you lifted your chin and forced yourself through the crowd again. you refused to let old emotions creep back into your chest this easily after everything.

you were not eighteen anymore. you were a grown woman now—one who handled negotiations, presentations, and difficult people for a living. for god’s sake, you paid taxes and managed teams and owned matching dinnerware now.

get yourself together.

whatever existed between the three of you belonged to another lifetime already. tonight was only a reunion. nothing more.

you tried to shake the feeling off afterward. really, you did.

deciding you needed something sweet—or maybe simply a distraction—you wandered toward one of the longer dessert tables situated near the center of the venue. unlike the crowded cocktail area, this side of the ballroom felt calmer. at the center of the table, a large chocolate fountain cascaded endlessly downward in glossy ribbons.

okay, maybe adulthood never truly erased simple joys.

the fountain looked ridiculously good. you grabbed one of the small dessert cups from beside the table and leaned slightly forward, carefully positioning fruit skewers beneath the flowing chocolate. the scent of cocoa drifted warmly upward.

for a brief moment, you relaxed again.

and then—that feeling returned. just enough to make the back of your neck grow strangely aware. you straightened slightly, fingers tightening around the dessert cup as you sensed someone standing nearby behind you. not close enough to be inappropriate, but close enough to feel deliberate.

your eyes lifted instinctively...

to a man dressed in a nightwing costume stood only a few meters away, dark domino mask shadowing his face while he casually held a drink in one gloved hand.

tall, broad shoulders, dark hair. even the posture—

oh my god.

your entire body went rigid beneath your clothes.

shit. that had to be caleb, right?

your mind raced embarrassingly fast while the man remained completely unaware—or at least seemingly unaware—of the internal crisis currently unfolding beside the chocolate fountain.

okay, you were an adult. a very functional adult. this was not high school anymore. if that really was caleb, then the correct thing to do would obviously be acting normal. mature and emotionally unaffected. you absolutely refused to look like somebody still hung up on old teenage history years later.

hesitantly, you cleared your throat and turned toward him fully.

the man finally glanced up from his drink.

god, why did he still feel familiar even after all this time?

forcing composure into your expression, you offered him a polite smile. “…hey, caleb, how’ve you been?”

for a few long seconds, the man simply stared at you.... strangely.

his silence stretched enough to make heat slowly creep up your neck beneath the mask. behind the dark lenses of his nightwing costume, his expression looked almost alarmed, like you had approached him with deeply concerning information instead of a simple greeting.

your confidence began deteriorating immediately. why did he look so confused?

a horrible thought then crossed your mind all at once.

did caleb seriously forget about you now?

no, that was ridiculous! surely not to that extent. before you could spiral any further into your own embarrassment, the man finally spoke.

“…i’m not caleb.”

the ballroom lights shifted overhead at the exact same moment, finally illuminating his eyes properly through the mask.

hazel brown, not purple.

oh.

how did you even make that mistake?

“ah,” you muttered beneath a short embarrassed laugh. “i’m sorry, i thought you were somebody else.”

he really looks a lot like caleb...

the man stared at you for another second before chuckling lightly into his drink. “well, now i’m curious. you looking for caleb?”

you frowned. “no,” you answered perhaps a little too quickly. “i just thought you were... him.”

“ah.” the man nodded knowingly in a way that irritated you slightly. then he casually added, “i heard he wasn’t able to attend anyway because of his schedule.”

your fingers loosened around the cup. “is that so,” 

“yep, something work-related, i think.”

that made sense. pilots probably weren’t exactly known for stable schedules.

the strange tightness lingering inside your chest eased just slightly afterward. maybe because uncertainty felt worse than disappointment somehow. at least now there was an explanation, a clean one.

he simply wasn’t here.

you nodded politely. “well, thank you anyway.”

the man raised his glass toward you. “good luck finding whoever you’re actually looking for.”

you gave him one last embarrassed smile before immediately turning away. jesus, what an unbelievably humiliating interaction.

as you walked deeper through the ballroom again, you tried forcing yourself not to think about it too much. honestly, maybe it was better this way. you wouldn’t have to worry about awkward reunions or unresolved history suddenly resurfacing. caleb wasn’t here. and if caleb wasn’t here—then maybe zayne wasn’t either. 

you continued moving through the venue with quieter steps, eventually drifting toward the grand staircase leading upstairs to the hotel’s lounge area. unlike the crowded ballroom below, the upper floor looked dimmer and more intimate.

except, there was a crowd gathered near the lounge entrance.

you slowed, watching the way people stood clustered together around one side of the room, several guests leaned against the railings trying to peek through the gathering, while others whispered to each other with visible amusement.

your brows furrowed. what exactly was happening up there?

curiosity carried you upstairs before caution could stop you. most of the crowd, however, seemed gathered around one particular table near the center of the lounge. you stepped closer carefully, weaving between guests until the scene finally came into view.

a proper poker setup occupied one of the longer tables, cards scattered beneath the amber lighting while chips piled carelessly around half-finished drinks. several masked alumni sat around the table already looking halfway defeated.

and seated among them—was ghostface.

it’s not the ridiculous halloween-store version. this one looked… unfairly good.

instead of the long black robe usually associated with the mask, the man wore fitted black clothing that sharpened the broadness of his shoulders and arms, dark fabric stretching cleanly over muscle before disappearing into grey baggy jeans that somehow made the whole look even more attractive. black gloves covered his hands while the ghostface mask itself showcased its expression permanently frozen into that eerie open-mouthed grin.

you folded your arms while lingering near the edge of the crowd, attention slowly drifting toward the game unfolding before you.

“that’s like his sixth win already.”

“no seriously, this guy’s terrifying.”

soft laughter circled around the table, and the ghostface man only leaned back slightly in his chair, cards resting between gloved fingers with suspicious ease.

you watched another round unfold. and unfortunately, they were right. he was good, very good. 

he played patiently, almost lazily at times, like he already knew how each round would end before the others did. every movement looked deliberate, the way he shuffled chips, the way he held cards. even the way he sat there silently while everyone else talked too much.

you narrowed your eyes beneath your mask. okay, that irritated you.

because for as long as you could remember, you had always been good at card games. most especially poker. annoyingly good, according to several cousins and former classmates who stopped agreeing to play against you years ago. and now this ghostface man was sitting there collecting victories like he owned the table, so your competitiveness stirred before you could stop it.

you remained watching for another minute, then another.

the ghostface player revealed another winning hand.

“oh come on,” someone complained loudly. “this guy’s impossible.”

through the mask, ghostface only tilted his head in amusement.

that did it.

before you could reconsider, you stepped forward through the crowd. “can i play too?”the moment you stepped closer to the table, several heads turned toward you at once.

years ago, that amount of attention probably would have made your stomach fold into itself. you used to hate moments like this in school—the sudden awareness of eyes, the fear of saying something awkward, the feeling of being perceived too closely.

unlike everyone else who only glanced briefly your way, the ghostface guy seated across the poker table looked up at you and… stayed there.

one second, and two, and three.

his mask revealed absolutely nothing, which somehow made it worse. the frozen expression carved into ghostface’s face remained permanently unreadable while he simply stared at you in complete silence.

you resisted the urge to fidget beneath his attention. 

why did that suddenly feel intense? 

“is that okay?” you finally asked, gesturing toward the empty chair. “or am i intruding?”

for a brief moment, ghostface remained motionless. then—as though suddenly realizing he had been staring too long—he leaned back and nodded once.

“it's okay.”

your breath caught.

that voice...

you narrowed your eyes even more beneath your catwoman mask while slowly taking the seat across from him.

his voice is dangerously familiar, not enough for certainty, but just enough to disturb you. you settled into the chair anyway while the others around the table perked up at the possibility of fresh entertainment.

“oh thank god,” somebody groaned dramatically. “please humble him for us.”

“seriously,” another added. “this guy’s been robbing everybody blind.”

ghostface said nothing. he only lowered his gaze back toward the cards in his hands while the dealer reshuffled for the next round.

thankfully, once the game resumed, the mask itself stopped being distracting surprisingly quickly. maybe because ghostface rarely lifted his head fully while playing. most of the time, his attention remained lowered toward the table, gloved fingers handling chips and cards with calm precision.

the first few rounds unfolded carefully. you played cleanly, watching your opponents more than your own cards while the lounge buzzed around you. years of corporate meetings had apparently sharpened your poker face because some of the players folded too early against you. ghostface, however, remained annoyingly difficult to read. his movements were too controlled, too measured. 

you frowned while studying him across the table.

the game had somehow become quieter around the two of you, in the sense that your attention had narrowed toward the man seated across. somewhere along the way, the others around the table stopped mattering. it became a strange tug-of-war existing only between you and ghostface.

and annoyingly—he really was good.

the current round had gone sideways faster than you expected. one by one, the other players folded until only the two of you remained at the table, chips scattered between dim amber light and half-empty glasses.

you leaned back in your chair while mentally rearranging possibilities.

shit.

ghostface had cornered you beautifully.

your fingers tapped once against your cards while you forced yourself to think. if you folded now, you’d lose the round entirely. but if you pushed too aggressively and guessed wrong—ugh. your ego genuinely would not survive losing to this stupid masked man, especially not in front of an audience.

across the table, ghostface remained infuriatingly calm. it made you bite against your lower lip while studying the chips, trying to search for another angle, another bluff, another opening somewhere inside the round.

come on. think!

you glanced upward absentmindedly—then immediately looked back down—before your eyes snapped upward again.

because ghostface was staring at you.

... very openly.

his elbow rested against the arm of the chair while his gloved fist supported the side of his face, posture almost lazy beneath the dark clothing. yet despite how relaxed he looked, the attention directed toward you felt sharp enough to press against your skin.

and unlike before—he did not look away. it's like he knew exactly what position he had cornered you into and wanted to watch you struggle through it.

fine.

you stared back.

the lounge lights shifted overhead while the two of you remained suspended in this strange silent challenge across the poker table. the longer you looked, the more your eyes adjusted to the thin dark material shadowing the eyeholes of the ghostface mask.

and then, you saw them.

purple eyes...

faintly obscured beneath black fabric and low lighting, but unmistakably purple. for one horrifying second, your mind blanked completely.

wait. how common even were purple eyes? no, that wasn’t the correct question. how rare were they?

your pulse stumbled unevenly while you stared at him, but ghostface remained motionless, watching you. those purple eyes continued to pierce into your soul. now, the mask felt less anonymous than before.

your gaze dropped quickly back toward the cards in your hands.

don’t get distracted.

it did not matter who this man was. it did not matter why his voice sounded familiar or why his eyes looked dangerously recognizable beneath that mask. right now, there was only one thing that mattered:

you were winning this round.

you inhaled slowly and forced yourself to think again. and then—like a spark suddenly catching—you saw it. a narrow opening hidden beneath the way ghostface had structured the round. risky but possible.

slowly, you reached forward and pushed your chips inward. the table quieted, and ghostface tilted his head at your bold move.

someone nearby muttered, “oh this is evil.”

you finally lifted your gaze toward him again.“call,” for the first time all night, ghostface hesitated. it was barely noticeable, but very much enough.

the reveal came seconds later.

“no way.”

“finally!”

got you.

after being cornered for nearly the entire round, somehow—somehow—you managed to turn it around against him!

the moment your win settled in, the lounge around the table reacted instantly.

“she actually did it,” one of them laughed.

“our man got humbled,” another added, half incredulous.

you could feel the attention return to you again, lighter this time, less intimidating than before. your shoulders eased beneath the catwoman mask as you offered a small, polite smile. and then, you turned your attention back across the table toward ghostface. “that was a good game,” you smiled a bit wider. “you’re really good.”

that was a fact.

he didn’t respond though. 

ghostface remained perfectly still, head tilted slightly downward as if studying you through the black void of his mask. the silence stretched just long enough to feel intentional, like he was weighing something he had no intention of sharing with anyone else in the room.

you couldn’t read him, not even a little. then, after a beat too long, he lifted his hands and gave a slow, lazy clap.

once... twice... thrice.

“congratulations, miss poker,” he said at last.

you held his gaze for a second longer than necessary, because his mannerisms bothered you. it’s the tilt of his head, the stillness between movements, and even the way he spoke felt like something your memory almost knew but couldn’t fully grasp.

a familiar ghost of familiarity.

you swallowed the thought before it could form properly. instead, you let out a small breath and returned a light smile. “thanks,” you replied casually, as if none of this lingered beneath the surface.

you pushed back your chair and stood, smoothing yourself as the crowd began shifting around you again, some still talking about the game while others moved on to their own conversations. excusing yourself politely, you stepped away from the table, and as you walked past ghostface, you felt his presence remain still behind you. but you didn’t look back.

you weaved through the lounge crowd toward the hallway, heels clicking against the floor. you needed a moment where your thoughts didn’t feel like they were circling something you couldn’t name.

the nearest restroom sign came into view at the end of the corridor. it was blissfully quiet compared to the lounge outside.

the moment the door closed behind you, the noise of the party dulled into distant vibrations through the walls, softened enough for you to finally exhale properly.

you reached up and removed your mask. “ugh,” 

finally.

cool air brushed against your skin almost instantly, easing the slight warmth that had gathered beneath the mask throughout the night. for a moment, you simply stood there staring at your reflection in the mirror, fingers adjusting loose strands of hair that had shifted during the evening.

after using one of the cubicles, you washed your hands slowly beneath warm water, your thoughts inevitably drifting back toward the lounge outside.

toward... the ghostface guy.

your brows furrowed faintly at your own reflection, thinking about how... everything about him felt familiar. not just one specific thing, but everything. and then there were those purple eyes.

could it really be—?

no. the nightwing guy downstairs already said caleb wasn’t here. besides, years had passed already so people changed. maybe you were simply projecting old memories onto strangers because tonight had dragged too much nostalgia out of you all at once.

that had to be it.

you shut the faucet off firmly and shook the thought away before it could root itself any deeper.

it was just a man in a mask. nothing more.

composing yourself again, you slipped your mask back on and headed toward the restroom exit. except the moment you opened the door and stepped back into the hallway, your footsteps stopped completely.

someone stood just outside the women’s restroom.

him.

the one you were thinking about just now.

he leaned lazily against the wall several feet away, hands tucked into the pockets of his grey jeans while one boot rested loosely against the baseboard beneath him. 

you blinked once.

did he follow you here...?

ghostface only turned to you and stared back silently.

you abruptly cleared your throat, forcing politeness back into your expression before the silence became strange. “are you waiting for someone?” you asked with a small smile.

ghostface tilted his head slightly at your question. after a pause that lasted just long enough to make your chest tighten again, he answered quietly, “yeah, i was.” voice muffled enough beneath the mask.

you tilted your head at him, still trying to keep the conversation light despite the strange tension gathering in the hallway. “there’s nobody else in the women’s restroom,” you pointed out gently. “whoever you’re waiting for isn’t there.”

ghostface stayed leaning against the wall for another second as he chuckled, low and dangerously familiar. “really?” 

your breath caught immediately.

there it is. that stupid laugh. warm, teasing, and unfairly boyish beneath all the black fabric and broad shoulders. the sound hit you harder than recognition should have, crashing straight into old summers, friday nights, basketball courts, laundry afternoons, and eighteen-year-old heartbreak all at once.

this is... caleb. 

you knew it now.

the hallway felt even more unbearably narrow around the two of you.

you wanted to run, to run before you lose whatever careful distance you spent years building between yourself and the past. “well,” you said carefully, “your ex isn’t anywhere nearby either. she’s downstairs.”

for the first time since you stepped outside the restroom, ghostface, or rather caleb, looked genuinely confused. “…my ex?” he repeated slowly.

you nodded once, trying to sound casual despite the heat climbing beneath your skin. oh god, you immediately decided this conversation needed to end before your dignity dissolved entirely. clearing your throat again, you stepped forward and gestured politely toward the hallway. “anyway, excuse me—”

you brushed past him. or at least, you tried to.

“y/n.”

you stopped, and the silence afterward felt strangely loud. slowly, you turned back toward him. and for some reason, the fact that he didn’t call you pips or pipsqueak or those silly childish names anymore lingered in your chest.

of course he didn’t. you were adults now, after all. 

grown people with careers and separate lives and years between you. maybe those childish nicknames belonged to another version of him entirely, another version of the three of you. maybe this only proved what you already suspected downstairs—they had moved on now. and maybe you were the only one still haunted by old things.

no, that wasn’t true either.

you weren’t clinging to the past. tonight only dragged it back into your hands unexpectedly. that was all.

your gaze lifted hesitantly toward him again just as he finally moved. slowly, he reached beneath the collar of his black shirt and pulled something free from underneath the fabric, revealing a dog tag necklace with a tiny apple charm attached near the chain.

it’s the one you gave him years ago when you were still taller than him as kids. he had laughed so hard back then. you remembered the exact sound. and now—now it rested against the black fabric of his chest like something treasured too carefully for too long.

so he still had it after all these years. 

“it’s me, dummy,” he says.

yeah, you knew.

maybe not the moment you first saw him near the poker table. but somewhere between the voice, the eyes, the way he stared too intensely, and the unbearable familiarity wrapped around every little mannerism he had—you knew.

your hands curled quietly into fists against your sides, because now that caleb was standing here in front of you after all these years, your body suddenly remembered too many things at once. “i know,” you murmured. “you always make things obvious.” 

deep down, you missed him. you missed caleb. standing this close to him again made something ache inside your chest.

you wanted to hug him, the kind where your face disappears into someone’s shoulder and years melt apart for a moment. and, now that you're thinking about that, you also somewhat hoped to see zayne around here and do just exactly that.

but adulthood had taught you restraint in places where younger versions of yourself used to act freely. so you stayed still.

caleb watched you carefully for a beat before fully turning toward you, one shoulder lifting lazily against the wall. “how’d you know it was me?” 

you let out a small huff through your nose, “i just do.”

that answer silenced him only briefly, but enough for you to notice. something shifted in his posture before he straightened fully, removing the ghostface mask completely with one hand.

and there—there he was.

he wasn’t the boy you remembered anymore, but a grown man.

caleb had always been handsome in that effortless, bright sort of way people naturally felt attracted to, but adulthood sharpened him into something almost unfair. his features had grown more defined over the years, jaw stronger now beneath the dim lighting, cheekbones sharper, even the bruises of exhaustion beneath his eyes somehow added to it instead of taking away.

he knew that too.

you could tell by the way he leaned casually against the wall afterward, completely comfortable inside his own skin. his grin tugged crookedly. “there she is, thought maybe corporate life killed your personality already.”

you only smiled back. “you’re the one dressed like a murderer at a school reunion.”

caleb barked out a laugh, warm and genuine. the sound echoed softly down the hallway.

“there she is,” he repeated quieter this time, almost to himself. you pretended not to notice the way his eyes lingered on you as he slipped his hands back into his pockets. “so how’s your family? your mom still forcing everybody to take leftovers home after gatherings?”

you smiled faintly despite yourself. “yes.”

“and your cousins?” he continued. “they still following you around like ducklings?”

you chortled at that. “they’re teenagers now. they barely acknowledge my existence.”

“that's tragic.”

you shook your head, still smiling. but somewhere in the middle of the conversation, something settled strangely inside your chest. caleb kept asking about everyone else, your family, your cousins, your parents. everything surrounding your life except—

you.

he never asked how you were. that tiny omission lingered heavier than it should have.

if this was how caleb acted now, then maybe he really had moved on already. maybe years were enough to soften whatever existed between the three of you back then, enough to turn obsession into memory and memory into something manageable. adulthood had a way of doing that to people, didn’t it? sanding sharp feelings down into old stories you only revisit every once in a while.

maybe caleb was normal now, maybe he had loved someone else already. maybe he went through heartbreaks and hookups and whole relationships himself while you stayed tucked away in a corner of his past like an old neighborhood photograph.

you swallowed and forced yourself not to linger too long on the thought. “what about you?”

caleb looked up. “what about me?”

“how’ve you been all these years?”

for a second, something flickered across his face. surprise maybe. as if nobody had asked him that sincerely in a long time. he grinned again, slipping back into that familiar warmth he wore so naturally. “good, been very busy you know.”

“wow, incredibly detailed answer.”

he laughed under his breath. “i mean, what d’you want me to say? i fly planes now. half my life’s in airports. i drink too much coffee. sometimes i forget what country i’m in.”

“that sounds mildly concerning.”

“it’s called occupational hazard.” his eyes stayed on you while he spoke, and it made something inside your chest feel unsteady in a way you hated noticing.

caleb still looked at people too directly. 

he continued talking afterward, telling you random pieces of his life in fragments. about long-haul flights, ridiculous passengers, getting stranded once because of weather conditions, and his coworkers apparently thinking he had anger issues because he got into arguments too easily.

“that part’s believable,” you muttered.

“oh, shut up.” his grin remained, but thinner now somehow. “i miss our neighborhood though,” 

the words were simple, but something about the way he said them made your stomach tighten faintly. he didn’t say he missed home, he didn’t say he missed being younger. he just said he missed the neighborhood.

you looked at him carefully, trying to understand what exactly he meant by it. or maybe—what exactly he was trying not to say.

caleb must’ve noticed your stare lingering too long because he straightened and gave you another crooked grin, this one almost sheepish beneath all the confidence he usually carried. “anyway,” he clears his throat, “i should probably stop hiding in hallways before people think i’m actually kidnapping women tonight.” he steps away from the wall afterward, clearly about to leave.

but before he could, you stopped him. 

“how’s zayne doing?”

caleb halted mid-step, and you watched it happen in real time.

the subtle dimming in his eyes, the way the looseness left his shoulders, as his smile slowly weakened at the corners before disappearing entirely. something restrained passed across his expression so quickly you almost missed it, held-back and quiet in the way real emotions usually were.

your brows knitted faintly together. for a second there—he looked like someone trying very hard not to let something show.

but the switch quickly flipped.

his smile returned so naturally that, if you weren’t looking directly at him moments earlier, you probably would’ve missed the crack entirely. “he’s good. a successful doctor now. annoyingly successful, actually.”

that sounded like zayne.

something inside you eased hearing it from caleb himself. you didn't doubt zayne’s success—you already knew what he became years ago through mutual acquaintances and scattered updates from families—but hearing caleb say it aloud made it feel more real.

you nodded. “that’s really good to know.”

caleb only hummed. 

but then, unexpectedly, he steps closer.

the movement was so unexpected that your body nearly reacted on instinct, feet threatening to retreat backward against the hallway floor. except you stopped yourself midway, tilting your head up at him instead with quiet confusion.

he was close enough for you to notice the faint shadows of exhaustion beneath his eyes, close enough to catch the subtle scent of cologne mixed with something colder, cleaner.

your pulse stumbled once when caleb looked down at you before his hand slowly lifted.

and then, he patted your head.

it wasn’t really a pat, though. 

his fingers lingered.

they slid gently into your hair near your temple, brushing softly through the strands beside your ear before trailing lower down your shoulder with unbearable slowness. the touch felt absentminded on the surface, almost affectionate in a casual way, but there was something underneath it that made your body go completely still, something that lingered too long to mean nothing.

his eyes softened almost imperceptibly while his fingers slipped away from your hair. “you really grew up,” his voice had changed again, less teasing. “no longer the little scatterbrain i used to know.”

his hand dropped back to his side afterward. “you don’t have to worry about zayne too much, you’ll see him soon anyway.”

you blinked. “what?”

so he really isn't here, then? 

caleb tilted his head. “granny’s birthday. did they tell you yet?”

your mind stalled for half a second before realization hit.

oh right, granny’s birthday. the same granny who practically raised entire neighborhoods through force-feeding and unsolicited life advice. miraculously, this year, her birthday landed on a friday.

“she wanted everyone together again,” caleb continued. “same setup as before.”

you stared at him. “oh, you and zayne are going?”

caleb looked almost offended by the question. “of course we are,” he said. “it’s granny.”

—

the hotel lights had long disappeared behind you, now swallowed by distance and the slow quietness of the road.

your mind remained back there somehow, back in that hallway with caleb.

you sat behind the steering wheel with one hand loosely resting against it, the other drumming near the gearshift as the city lights blurred past your windows in streaks of gold and white. the catwoman mask had already been tossed carelessly onto the passenger seat beside your purse, abandoned the moment you got into the car, but the rest of the costume remained annoyingly intact against your skin.

you suddenly understood why actresses always complained about tight outfits during interviews. you adjusted uncomfortably in your seat while stopping at a red light, your thoughts drifting back unwillingly toward caleb again.

his smile. that stupid dog-like grin he gave you before disappearing back into the crowd with a “i’ll see you around, y/n,”

no longer pipsqueak, huh.

your grip tightened lightly against the wheel. you should stop thinking about him.

before your thoughts could spiral any further, your car suddenly jerked faintly beneath you, making your brows furrowed. then the engine made a strained clicking sound.

once, twice, before it died.

“…you’ve got to be kidding me.” the steering wheel stiffened beneath your hands as the car slowed awkwardly toward the side of the road. you managed to park safely beneath a dim streetlight, but when you tried restarting the engine again, the car only answered with another pathetic clicking noise.

you stared blankly ahead through the windshield.

for fuck’s sake. out of all nights.

you leaned back against the seat and exhaled harshly through your nose, fingers rubbing against your temple while frustration crawled into your chest. the road around you was unusually quiet this late at night, with only the occasional distant headlights passing every few minutes. after another failed attempt to start the engine, you finally groaned and grabbed your phone from the cupholder to call tara.

you dialed her impatiently while pushing the car door open.

humid night air wrapped around you the second you stepped outside. the heels you regretted wearing clicked sharply against the pavement as you walked around the front of your car, hugging your arms briefly against yourself while the phone rang beside your ear.

“come on, tara…”

the street remained mostly empty around you, lined with sleeping establishments and darkened storefronts that looked strangely eerie this late into the night. somewhere nearby, a dog barked once before silence swallowed the sound again.

and... headlights?

you looked up instinctively, only to see a dark car sat parked several meters behind yours on the opposite side of the road.

you were almost certain it hadn’t been there earlier. 

the vehicle remained completely still beneath the weak glow of a streetlamp, windows tinted dark enough that you couldn’t make out whoever sat inside. 

maybe it was nothing. maybe another driver had simply pulled over too? but something about it made your stomach tighten. your phone continued ringing unanswered against your ear while your eyes remained fixed on the unfamiliar car.

suddenly, standing out here alone in your stupid tight costume didn’t feel very smart anymore.

without thinking twice, you lowered the phone and quickly walked back toward your car. the moment you slipped inside the driver’s seat again, you locked the doors immediately.

you looked through the rearview mirror.

and the dark car remained there, watching.

or maybe you were only paranoid. you hoped you were only paranoid.

the sight unsettled you more the longer it stayed there. so you tried calling again, straight to ringing. but your frustration only tangled itself together with nervousness until your shoulders felt stiff beneath the tight leather of your costume. you then sighed heavily and lowered your phone. 

maybe you should just call roadside assistance instead. or maybe—

knock knock.

you physically jolted so hard your shoulder hit the seat. your head snapped violently toward the driver-side window, pulse instantly spiking into your throat.

and there—leaning slightly down beside your car beneath the dim streetlight—was a familiar face.

older, sharper.

the softness youth once gave him had long disappeared, carved away into cleaner lines and composed restraint. even through the shadows, there was no mistaking him. not the calmness in his expression, not the piercing emerald eyes staring directly at you through the glass.

zayne.

for a second, you could only stare at him blankly.

what was he doing here? and more importantly—why did this somehow feel exactly like something zayne would do? appearing at the exact moment your life tilted sideways without warning.

when your eyes met, you watch him straighten up and step aside.

was he really back in town now? 

your fingers tightened around your phone before you slowly unlocked the car door, the cool night air hitting your skin again the moment you stepped outside.

up close, the sight of him almost startled you a second time. you swallowed once and forced yourself to compose properly despite the strange tightness gathering beneath your ribs. 

there was no time to be overwhelmed. not here, not now.

you smiled politely in that careful adult way people did after years apart. the kind of smile exchanged between relatives reconnecting after too much time passed. “zayne,” you greeted softly. “it’s been a while. how’ve you—”

“what’s wrong with your car?” the interruption was immediate, clean and direct.

your words stopped midair, as the smile on your face faded before you could even help it.

huh.

for some reason, the bluntness stung more than it should have. you looked at him for a second, suddenly unsure where to place your hands or your voice or yourself beneath his attention. maybe adulthood really had made him colder, or maybe he was simply always like this and you only forgot.

“i—” you started awkwardly. “sorry, i just—”

“don’t be.” his voice wasn’t harsh. if anything, it was too calm. 

you blinked once before pressing your lips together tightly.

the silence stretched briefly between you while distant cars occasionally passed somewhere farther down the road. beneath the streetlight, zayne’s gaze flicked toward your vehicle again before returning to your face.

you finally cleared your throat. “uh, my engine suddenly stopped working, i don’t even know why.”

zayne nodded once. then, without another word, he stepped past you toward the front of the car.

you turned instinctively to watch him. and suddenly, embarrassingly, your chest tightened again. because it hit you all at once then—this was the first time you had been alone with zayne in years.

really alone.

without any family gatherings, crowded parties, and without caleb between the space separating the two of you. there’s just the quiet road and the warm night air. and zayne standing beside your broken car with rolled sleeves and tired eyes.

he leaned slightly over the hood of the car, brows furrowing in concentration as he examined something beneath the front light. his forearms flexed when he rested one hand against the edge of the hood, and the sight made your stomach twist in a way that felt deeply inconvenient.

seriously, what the hell was wrong with you tonight?

as if sensing your stare lingering too long, zayne looked back at you directly. the eye contact hit harder now that you were adults, less innocent.

quietly, with the same unreadable composure he always carried, he asked. “why are you out here alone this late?”

“there was an alumni homecoming,” you explained, hugging your arms a little closer against yourself while standing beside the car. “for senior high.”

zayne remained crouched near the front of the vehicle, one hand braced against the hood while the other adjusted something beneath it. he only glanced up briefly before returning his attention back to the engine.

“i attended the party,” you added after a second, suddenly hyperaware of what you were wearing. “which is why i look like… this.”

the corner of zayne’s mouth twitched faintly, enough to make your stomach betray you a little.

“i noticed,” he says.

you cleared your throat and stepped closer to the car, heels crunching lightly against stray gravel near the roadside. up close, you could smell faint detergent and something sterile clinging subtly to him beneath the night air, like hospital corridors and clean laundry somehow followed him everywhere.

it felt unfairly familiar.

you looked down at him. “you didn’t hear about the homecoming?”

silence.

“that means no, then.”

zayne hummed, entirely unbothered by your accusation. honestly, that tracked. he was always strangely detached from things happening around him unless someone physically dragged the information to his face. back then, people used to joke that zayne could probably miss the apocalypse if nobody updated him personally.

you opened your mouth to tease him again when suddenly—

“fuck.” grease smeared darkly against the cuff of his rolled sleeve and streaked lightly across his forearm.

instinctively, you moved toward the passenger side door. “wait, i have wipes inside—”

“it’s okay.” zayne said it so quickly that you paused mid-motion. he barely even looked at the stain. you stood there awkwardly for a second before slowly nodding and stepping back again.

silence settled afterward, the kind of silence that carried too many things beneath it.

you watched zayne work quietly for another moment. he really had changed... or maybe matured was the better word. oh — his phone is ringing.

buzzzzz!

zayne stopped immediately. with his clean hand, he pulled the phone out and glanced briefly at the screen before answering.

“baby?”

your body stilled, completely.

zayne turned slightly away while speaking into the phone, voice lower and calmer in a way that sounded unintentionally intimate beneath the quiet road. “yes, i’m still outside.” he paused. “no, don’t wait up.”

your throat tightened before you could stop it.

oh.

he had a girlfriend now. 

you stared blankly at the road instead, suddenly unable to figure out where to look. how? when? where did he even meet her? and more importantly—why did you care so much? the realization embarrassed you instantly. because what exactly were you expecting after all these years apart? that both of them would remain frozen in time waiting for you forever?

you swallowed and looked down at your hands. this entire situation felt strange and wrong somehow.

zayne was here late at night helping you alone on the side of the road while his girlfriend waited for him somewhere else. and you stood beside him in a skin-tight costume looking at him too much and thinking about things you absolutely should not be thinking anymore.

it made guilt creep slowly beneath your skin.

zayne ended the call not long after and slipped his phone back into his pocket. before he could return to fixing the engine, you stepped forward quickly and lowered the hood shut with a dull metallic thud.

the sound cut through the quiet road sharply, making zayne blink up at you.

then one of his brows lifted.

the expression was so familiar it almost threw you off balance. that look he had on his face looked exactly like his younger self again—the same boy who used to silently judge everybody with one unimpressed glance.

you pressed your lips together awkwardly. “you don’t have to fix it. i’ll just call for assistance or something.”

zayne remained leaning slightly against the car, grease staining his sleeve while he looked at you like you’d just said something ridiculous. “i can fix it.”

“yeah, but you don’t need to.”

“it's fine.”

you exhaled through your nose. “zayne, seriously, i don’t want to take too much of your time.”

his gaze stayed on you for a moment, and then he straightened fully, brushing his stained hand against his slacks without much concern. “the radiator hose is damaged. your engine overheated. it’s not something you should drive home tonight.”

you stared at him silently while he spoke, watching the way the streetlight caught faintly against the sharp bridge of his nose and the loose strands of dark hair falling near his forehead.

“It’s better if i drive you home,” he added calmly. “i’ll call assistance for your car afterward.”

your body stilled faintly at the offer. 

drive you home...?

the intimacy of it settled strangely beneath your ribs, because this wasn’t high school anymore. you weren’t teenagers stumbling through friday nights.

you were adults now. and being alone in a car with zayne at this age felt infinitely more dangerous than it would’ve back then. you swallowed once before the thought escaped your mouth. “…don’t you have a girlfriend?”

zayne paused, actually paused. his brows furrowed slightly as he looked at you with genuine confusion. “what?”

you immediately regretted asking.

ugh, you sounded insane now that you realized it. you cleared your throat and gestured vaguely. “the... call earlier.”

realization dawned across his face slowly. and then—to your complete disbelief—zayne almost looked amused. “my assistant? her name is baby.”

“…what?”

“baby jane,” zayne repeated calmly. “one of the assistants in the hospital.”

you continued staring at him.

that was the dumbest thing you had ever heard.

if this explanation came from literally anybody else, you would’ve laughed directly in their face and called them a liar. but zayne looked entirely sincere standing there. because zayne couldn’t lie to save his life. back then, he used to get caught hiding things within five seconds simply because guilt physically manifested on his face.

awkwardly, you nodded. “…oh.”

a tiny silence followed, then you noticed the look on zayne’s face. subtle but definitely there—mild amusement lingered quietly in his eyes while he watched you process everything.

your cheeks instantly felt warmer as you looked away. “well, that’s a ridiculous name.”

“everyone says the same thing.”

after zayne finished calling assistance for your car, the two of you stood awkwardly beside the road for a moment while waiting for the details to settle. it turns out that the dark tinted car from earlier belonged to none other than zayne. 

several minutes later, you found yourself slipping into the passenger seat. the interior smelled faintly like coffee and something distinctly him—subtle enough that you probably wouldn’t notice it if you weren’t sitting this close. zayne also settled into the driver’s seat beside you, adjusting the wheel before glancing toward you.

“are you cold?” he asked, fingers already reaching toward the air conditioning controls.

you shook your head. “i’m fine.”

he paused briefly before pulling his hand away again without argument.

you stared out the passenger window while absently rubbing your thumb against your phone screen. you still felt worried about your car despite everything. what if the repair became expensive? what if the engine problem turned out worse than expected? and on top of that—sitting in zayne’s car after all these years felt so odd in a way you couldn’t properly explain.

the silence between you wasn’t awkward exactly. it was worse. it was familiar.

you cleared your throat to distract yourself. “do you still remember the way to my house?”

instead of answering verbally, zayne simply opened his maps application. you stared at the glowing screen for a second before letting out a tiny huff of disbelief.

“wow,” 

“i remember the address,” he said calmly while typing it in. “not the route.”

that reminds you... back then, zayne used to remember everything about you—which snacks you hated, which route you preferred walking home, which pencil brand you always lost within two days.

he used to notice little things without even trying. but now he needed maps.

you looked down at your lap quietly.

this was good. this was normal. people grow up and move on. you were expecting too much from ghosts of adolescence that no longer existed the same way they once did. and, weren’t you relieved? if both caleb and zayne had truly moved on from whatever complicated mess existed between the three of you back then, then you could finally breathe properly too. you no longer have to carry that strange lingering guilt that followed you through adulthood like an unfinished sentence.

now, all of you could finally leave everything behind.

when the car stopped outside your house, relief and disappointment tangled together unpleasantly inside your chest. you unbuckled your seatbelt slowly and turned toward him with a polite smile. “thank you for driving me home. i really appreciate it.”

zayne nodded. “mm.”

you stepped out of the car carefully, heels crunching lightly against the pavement again. you were already halfway toward your gate when—

“wait.” your name left zayne’s mouth behind you.

you turned around and stilled at the sight of zayne stepping out of the car too. in his hands was a small cake box decorated with your favorite flowers tucked neatly around the ribbon.

where did that suddenly come from? and... is that for you? 

something about his composure became almost painfully awkward beneath the porch lights. “i heard about the reunion,” he admitted quietly. “but my schedule didn’t allow me to attend.” his tone remained flat in that very zayne way, but you caught it immediately—the subtle stiffness beneath his voice whenever he was embarrassed about sincerity.

it almost made you smile.

“so, i brought something instead.” he sounded like someone reluctantly explaining why he accidentally cared too much.

slowly, you stepped closer and looked down at the lettering written carefully across the cake.

“congratulations for getting promoted.”

you remember caleb texted you about your promotion months ago while zayne never did, but this felt exactly like the sort of thing zayne would do instead of sending a message. quietly remember just to quietly show up. quietly carry around a cake for god knows how long because he didn’t know how else to express congratulations properly.

you looked back up at him. “thank you for still remembering, zayne.”

—

after a few months of postponed plans, missed friday dinners, and relatives constantly saying “we'll be finally complete next time”, granny’s birthday finally came by.

your family arrived earlier than everyone else, mostly because your mother believed being late to family occasions was some kind of moral failure. by eight in the morning, you were already outside in granny’s front yard wearing house slippers and comfortable clothes, sitting on a small plastic stool beneath the shade while blowing balloons until your cheeks hurt.

from the open kitchen windows came the scent of garlic fried in oil, sweet spaghetti sauce simmering in giant pots, and the faint buttery smell of cake that somebody had already sliced prematurely despite strict instructions not to touch it yet. inside the house, the older aunts moved around carrying trays and arguing over whether the pasta needed more sauce while old love songs played from a speaker.

it felt so comforting, like childhood preserved in a glass jar.

your younger cousins ran circles around the yard while chasing each other with uninflated balloons, their slippers slapping against the fake grass. every few minutes one of them would come bother you for help.

at one point, one of the smaller cousins climbed directly onto your lap while you were tying ribbons around balloons, nearly making you inhale the entire thing from surprise. “oh my god,” you laughed breathlessly, pushing his forehead away. “you’re trying to kill me before granny’s birthday even starts!”

the child only grinned mischievously before stealing one of the candies from the nearby table and sprinting away before his mother could catch him. you watched him disappear around the gate with a smile still lingering on your face.

every now and then, the familiar metal gate creaked open again and another relative stepped inside carrying containers of food or grocery bags or wrapped gifts while greeting everyone.

and every single time, granny would brighten like sunlight itself. she sat proudly near the terrace in her favorite floral duster while greeting every newcomer as though they had returned home from war instead of merely driving fifteen minutes away. sometimes she forgot stories halfway through telling them. sometimes she repeated the same joke twice. and nobody minded.

somehow, granny had always been the center thread tying everybody together. without her, everyone drifted.

you noticed that more clearly now as an adult. how people got jobs, moved cities, entered relationships, built schedules too crowded for friday gatherings and random visits. the neighborhood no longer felt permanently alive the way it once had when you were younger. but today felt different—today felt like somebody, in this case, granny, had reached into the past and carefully stitched it back together for a few hours.

you finished tying another cluster of balloons near the gate before standing up to stretch your sore shoulders. immediately, one of your aunts shoved a tray of barbecue sticks into your hands on her way past.

“bring this inside please.”

“why am i suddenly unpaid labor?” you complained.

“because you’re unmarried and still useful,” your mother replied from somewhere behind you without even looking up. almost the entire yard burst into laughter at that, so you groaned while carrying the tray toward the tables, though the smile on your face stayed anyway.

and maybe that was the strange thing about coming back here. for the first time in a long while, adulthood felt far away. here, you were still just you. still someone’s granddaughter. still someone’s cousin. still the girl who grew up inside these walls.

the moment you stepped inside the house carrying the tray of barbecue sticks, you immediately regretted it.

“come here,” one of the older women called instantly, patting the empty seat beside her. another older relative leaned forward with dangerous curiosity already sparkling in her eyes. “so, when are yougetting married?”

oh no.

you forced out a polite smile as you carefully balanced the tray in your hands. “good morning to you too.”

that only made them laugh louder. within seconds, you found yourself trapped near the dining area while several elderly women interrogated you about your love life. somebody asked whether you were secretly dating, another asked if your standards were too high now because you were a corporate manager, then one uncle declared that women became “too intimidating” once they earned too much money.

you stared at him blankly while chewing your barbecue in silence. honestly, you would rather reorganize all the monoblock chairs outside one by one than survive this conversation.

thankfully, salvation arrived in the form of chaos. one of the younger cousins suddenly darted past you like a tiny criminal and snatched another barbecue stick straight from the tray.

“hey!” you yelped. 

the little girl burst into delighted laughter before sprinting outside barefoot while the adults erupted into noisy scolding.

“go catch her!”

“that child keeps stealing food!”

you did not even pretend to hesitate. “i’ll go,” you announced, already escaping toward the doorway before another marriage question could be launched at your forehead.

outside, you spotted the little girl racing across the front yard triumphantly with the stolen barbecue held high in the air.

“come back here!” you laughed, chasing after her across the grass. “you little thief!” the child shrieked happily and nearly reached the gate before—someone suddenly caught her mid-run.

two large hands lifted her clean off the ground like she weighed absolutely nothing, and the little girl gasped before bursting into giggles.

you stopped in your tracks.

even before your mind fully processed the uniform, the broad frame, or the sunglasses glinting beneath the sunlight—you already knew it was none other than your childhood friend.

they’ve arrived.

he stood there casually in his brown DAA uniform, one arm holding the laughing child against his side while the other stole the barbecue stick directly from her hand. “crime doesn’t pay,” he informed her seriously before taking a bite himself.

the little girl gasped in betrayal. “caleb!”

caleb only grinned around the barbecue. even after all these years, he still carried that same careless brightness around him. the uniform hugged his frame, sleeves rolled just enough to reveal toned forearms lightly browned from the sun, while the dark sunglasses somehow made his grin look even more radiant.

caleb finally turned toward you and smiled, crooked and familiar and terribly easy. “wow,” he drawled while lowering the child back onto the ground. “they got you working like hired staff already?”

you let out an embarrassed laugh despite yourself. “somebody has to do the labor around here.”

“yeah?” caleb tilted his head while looking you over openly. “you even look the part.”

your eyes widened. “what does that even mean?”

he laughed beneath his breath, clearly entertained by how fast you reacted. “relax, you look adorable.”

the word hit you stupidly harder than it should have. before you could recover, caleb already brushed past you casually toward the relatives gathering near the entrance. and just as instantly, loud greetings exploded from the yard.

“caleb!”

“you got thinner!”

“no, he got bigger!”

relatives crowded around him fussing over his arrival while younger cousins clung to his arms asking endless questions about airplanes and flying. and somehow, quite unlike you, he handled all of it effortlessly.

then, a quieter presence approached behind him. unlike caleb’s easy warmth, zayne arrived like winter air drifting through an open doorway. with a dark trench coat resting against his arm despite the sun, he wore an all-black clothing with a composed posture that remained untouched by the noisy chaos surrounding him.

he looked absurdly polished compared to the rest of the family bustling around in slippers and casual clothes. that only made him more familiar too.

his gaze found you almost immediately, quietly taking in the sight of you standing there breathless beneath the sunlight with messy hair, barbecue smoke clinging faintly to your clothes, and ribbons still tied around your wrist from decorating earlier.

your throat suddenly felt dry.

zayne gave you the smallest nod before moving past you as well, greeting the older relatives respectfully while they began fussing over him too.

and until lunchtime, you barely sat down. 

every time you thought you finally had a moment to rest, another relative suddenly needed help carrying something, reheating food, arranging chairs, or finding missing utensils. at some point, you became the unofficial runner of the entire gathering.

still, you didn’t really mind. there was something oddly comforting about the exhaustion. meanwhile, both caleb and zayne had become trapped in their own corners of socialization. every few minutes, you’d catch glimpses of them between rooms.

you saw caleb sitting comfortably among a noisy cluster of uncles and neighbors outside near the terrace, laughing easily while answering endless questions about work abroad. zayne, on the other hand, remained inside most of the time, seated neatly beside the older relatives who adored him for entirely different reasons. every auntie in the room seemed eager to brag about him to somebody else. zayne endured all of it with quiet patience, occasionally adjusting his sleeves while listening attentively whenever elders spoke to him.

by the time lunch was nearly ready, the heat inside the house had become unbearable enough that your head started hurting slightly. after setting down another tray of food onto the dining table, you exhaled and leaned toward your nearby aunt. “is there still cold water left?” 

your aunt nodded while fixing plates. “there should be some in the fridge—” before she could even finish speaking, you hear two chairs scraping against the floor at the exact same time.

you froze at the loud sound, only to see that caleb and zayne had both stood up simultaneously.

“i’ll get it,” caleb said.

“i can get it for her,” zayne spoke at almost the same time.

silence...

your fingers tightened around the empty glass in your hand. and there you go.

you felt eighteen again. 

caleb blinked first before glancing sideways at zayne with a crooked look of disbelief. zayne slowly sat back down first, though the faint tightening in his jaw betrayed him. then caleb followed a second later, leaning back into his chair while exhaling through his nose in amusement.

the younger cousins were very quick to catch on. of course they did. children always noticed first.

“they’re doing it again!” one of the young teenagers quickly blurted out from the couch.

another cousin burst into laughter. “oh my god, just like before!”

“right? they used to fight over helping her all the time!”

several older relatives started chuckling too, while others exchanged those suspiciously observant looks older people had whenever they sensed gossip material forming in real time.

you felt your entire face grow warm. “okay,” you interrupted, forcing out an awkward laugh. “i can just get water myself.” you escaped toward the kitchen before the conversation could worsen further, clutching your empty glass like it could protect you from humiliation.

behind you, the teasing unfortunately continued anyway. you opened the fridge and grabbed the cold pitcher of water with slightly unsteady hands. the cool air spilling from the refrigerator against your overheated skin felt heavenly as you poured yourself a full glass, trying to ignore the muffled conversations continuing from the dining area.

except certain words drifted into hearing range anyway.

“so, do either of you finally have girlfriends now?”

you paused unconsciously while lifting the glass toward your lips. outside, someone laughed, another relative joining in. “there’s no way handsome men like these stayed single this long.”

“what about exes?”

“secret children?” one uncle joked. the room then bursts into noisy reactions. you stared down quietly at your glass of water. and then—

“none,” zayne answered.

one of the aunties sounded genuinely shocked. “none at all?”

“i’ve been busy,” 

it sounded believable, painfully believable. of course zayne would sacrifice romance for career progression with terrifying efficiency—but then the attention shifted toward caleb.

“what about you?”

you waited absentmindedly for the obvious answer, because surely someone like caleb—

“don’t want one.”

“what do you mean you don’t want one?” somebody laughed.

caleb’s voice came easier this time. “just never wanted anybody enough.”

huh?

you hated that your mind immediately tried to interpret it. you forced yourself to drink your water while keeping your back turned toward the dining room.

they had both moved on obviously. people didn’t stay stuck on childhood feelings forever.

you had barely finished your glass of water when granny suddenly shuffled into the kitchen, drawn in by the noise and laughter echoing through the dining room. “why is everybody so loud in here?” she asked suspiciously, though the smile already tugging at her mouth betrayed her amusement.

“we were asking them why they’re both still single!”

“apparently nobody wants to date these two.”

the room erupted again into laughter. you closed your eyes briefly in secondhand embarrassment while setting your empty glass down on the counter. unfortunately, when you turned around—you accidentally made eye-contact with both caleb and zayne at the same time.

shit.

you immediately focused very hard on literally anything else.

before the room could spiral into even more teasing, granny suddenly clapped her hands together as though remembering something important. “oh! since you’re all just sitting there talking anyway, do me a favor, will ya.”

and just like that, every younger adult in the room developed selective hearing.

granny ignored them expertly. “haiya, the speaker outside stopped working again,” she said with a sigh. “the extra one should still be in the attic somewhere.”

before you could quietly escape the kitchen, granny’s eyes landed directly on you. “you,” you stopped yourself from reaching for the plates. “you were in the attic this morning, right? guide them.”

you turned. “…them?”

granny pointed directly toward caleb and zayne.

fuck?

being alone upstairs with the both of them is significantly more dangerous than it logically should! but refusing would only make everyone tease you harder.

you forced out a smile. “sure.”

eventually, the three of you walked upstairs together while the noise slowly faded behind you into muffled laughter. the old staircase creaked beneath your steps exactly the same way it always had growing up, and the familiar sound alone made something in you stir.

you tried to fill the silence before it became unbearable. “the attic’s probably messier now, granny keeps throwing random things there.”

“some things never change,” caleb replied easily from behind you. “including this house.”

you glanced back briefly, remembering once upon a time, this exact staircase had carried the three of you toward childhood conspiracies instead of polite adult conversations.

the attic door creaked loudly when you pushed it open, and warm dusty air greeted you immediately. the room smelled faintly like cardboard, old books, wood polish, and trapped summer heat. sunlight slipped through the tiny circular window near the ceiling, illuminating floating dust particles drifting through the air like tiny fireflies.

you could see boxes stacked everywhere of old christmas decorations, broken electric fans, bags of clothes nobody wanted to throw away, photo albums, and your forgotten toys.

all three of you simply stood there quietly.

you remembered rainy afternoons hiding here together to avoid chores downstairs, remembered flashlight games, remembered lying on flattened cardboard boxes while listening to rain hammer against the roof above you. the attic still carried traces of those years somehow, small ghosts preserved inside warm dust and old sunlight. except now, the air between the three of you felt... different.

heavier.

caleb wandered toward one side of the attic where several labeled storage boxes rested against the wall. he crouched near one marked with messy handwriting that literally read CALEB and laughed quietly beneath his breath. “wow, granny really archived my entire existence up here.”

zayne had already started scanning the room practically. “where is the speaker supposed to be?” he asked while looking around.

you shrugged. “i honestly have no idea. i was only here for extra chairs earlier.”

“how helpful,” caleb commented.

you shot him a look. “then you find it.”

he grinned without looking up from the box he had opened.

you exhaled before stepping farther into the attic yourself, carefully weaving between old storage containers while searching as the attic slowly filled with the sound of things being moved around.

caleb sat crouching on the floor near his old storage box while sorting through random junk he apparently used to own—old basketball magazines, tangled earphones, a broken handheld game console... “damn,” he muttered, holding up an ancient toy car. “i remember crying over this.”

you laughed while brushing dust off yourself. “you used to cry over everything.”

“excuse me,” caleb replied with fake offense. “i was just emotionally expressive.”

“you cried because i beat you at mario kart once,” zayne deadpanned from across the attic without looking up from the boxes he was checking.

caleb pointed at you as he looked at zayne. “because she cheated.”

“i didn’t cheat,” you defended.

“you absolutely cheated, you manipulative girl.”

you snorted before you could stop yourself, bending slightly to look through another box near the far wall, unaware that both men had unconsciously looked toward you at the same time until caleb suddenly spoke again. “heh, you still do that.”

you glanced back. “do what?”

“that thing when you bite the inside of your cheek.”

your lips parted, and without realizing it, you immediately stopped doing it. caleb smiled faintly when he noticed.

“you still remember that?” you asked carefully.

“yea, i remember a lot of things about you, miss poker.”

you quickly looked away and crouched beside another stack of boxes, pretending to search harder for the speaker. across the room, zayne finally straightened from where he’d been kneeling near an old shelf.

“so you cut your hair,” he suddenly said.

your hands paused before looking at him. his tone had remained completely neutral and observational, almost clinical. but somehow, hearing it from him affected you differently. you touched your hair absentmindedly near your shoulder. “a few months ago, yeah.”

zayne nodded once. “it used to reach your waist.”

caleb leaned back against the wall nearby, one knee propped upward while watching the two of you. “he noticed that immediately when we walked in earlier,” 

zayne’s gaze shifted toward him. “caleb.”

“what?” caleb shrugged innocently. “i’m just saying.”

you forced yourself to keep searching. “you two are still so dramatic.”

“we’re not dramatic,” caleb replied.

zayne adjusted his sleeves, turning to caleb. “you are.”

“says the guy who used to get jealous over card games.” caleb grinned wider. “remember that?” he continued casually, though his eyes remained fixed on zayne instead of you. “she used to sit beside me during poker nights and you’d stare holes through the back of my head the entire time.”

“because you always cheated.”

“again with the cheating accusations,” you muttered.

“you liked it when i let you win,” caleb now looked at you.

your heartbeat stumbled, because the way he said it didn’t sound playful anymore. it sounded personal. for some reason, your mind replayed the night of the alumni event, when you unknowingly played poker against him.  slowly, you stood upright again while clutching one of the dusty boxes against your chest. “i never needed you to let me win.”

caleb looked at you then, fully. the sunlight slipping through the attic window caught faintly against the gold-brown tones of his skin while dust drifted through the space between all of you. “i know,” 

nobody spoke for several seconds.

downstairs, you could hear someone screaming and laughing over karaoke lyrics.

and then caleb exhaled suddenly through his nose before speaking again, “you know what’s funny?” he rested his forearm over his raised knee, gaze lingering on you beneath lowered lashes. “i thought seeing you again after all these years would make things easier.”

your throat tightened. you should not ask, you absolutely should not. “did it?”

caleb stared at you for a long moment, then smiled. “not even a little.”

you stilled at caleb’s answer.

the words lingered strangely inside the attic, hanging somewhere between the dust-filled air and the slow heat pressing beneath your skin. for a second, you became painfully aware of the sunlight touching the side of your face, of the old floorboards beneath your feet, of the way your heartbeat had suddenly become embarrassingly noticeable to yourself.

and then you noticed zayne looking at caleb, but it wasn’t an annoyed look, wasn’t surprised either. it was quieter than that, like there was an entire conversation happening inside one glance alone.

something restrained passed between them before zayne’s eyes eventually shifted toward you instead.

you immediately laughed and shook your head, forcing lightness back into the room before the atmosphere swallowed you whole. god, they still had the same effect on you somehow. that alone irritated you a little. so instead of shrinking away from it, you turned toward caleb with a deliberately playful expression. “what? does that mean you still haven’t moved on yet?” it was meant to be teasing, something to defuse the tension. except the moment the words left your mouth, you watched caleb’s face slowly change.

there it was again.

that same crooked, dangerous little smirk he used to wear years ago whenever you accidentally walked yourself into his traps. he leaned further back against the wall behind him, eyes dragging slowly over your face before answering. “depends,” 

your stomach tightened instantly. before he could continue—and before zayne could speak either—you quickly cut in. “okay, i’m just gonna ask granny where the speaker actually is before we die up here.”

you turned around and headed toward the attic door before either of them could say anything else that would make your entire nervous system malfunction. the wooden floor creaked beneath your steps when you grabbed the doorknob quickly, twisting it while already half distracted by your own embarrassment.

but the knob didn’t move.

you frowned, trying again harder.

“huh?” you jiggled the handle again, now using both hands, but the old wood only rattled loudly beneath the force.

your brows furrowed deeper. “wait.” you pulled harder this time, but the door refused to budge completely. confusion now immediately shifted into disbelief. “are you serious?” you shoved your shoulder lightly against it before trying the lock again, only for the handle to stubbornly remain stuck in place.

behind you, you heard movement.

“what happened?” zayne asked.

“the door won’t open.”

caleb laughed at first like he thought you were joking, but the sound faded when you hit the door again with genuine frustration.

“i’m serious.” you knocked loudly this time, “hello?!” your voice disappeared beneath the thunder of karaoke downstairs. somebody was aggressively singing an old love song now, complete with cheering relatives and clapping somewhere below.

of course. of fucking course nobody could hear you.

you tried again anyway, knocking harder until your palm stung against the wood. “granny?!”you abruptly turned around. “do either of you have your phones?”

for one tiny second, caleb and zayne exchanged a look. and something about it immediately made suspicion flicker inside you.

zayne checked his pockets first before speaking calmly. “i left mine downstairs.”

your eyes moved toward caleb, watching the way he patted his jeans before exhaling through his nose. “mine too.” caleb had the audacity to look mildly entertained already. “guess we’re stuck,” 

“what do you mean ‘guess we’re stuck’?”

“relax, someone’ll notice eventually.”

“eventually?” you repeated incredulously.

the attic suddenly felt significantly smaller than before. way too small. especially now that you were hyperaware of everything again.

you swallowed.

absolutely not. there was no universe in which getting trapped inside an attic alone with these two men counted as a survivable situation. especially not when the tension between all three of you already felt thick enough to physically breathe in.

you crossed your arms tightly. “there’s no way.”

caleb tilted his head. “no way what?”

“no way i’m getting stuck up here with both of you.”

zayne looked away for a brief second, though not fast enough to hide the faint amusement threatening at the corner of his expression.

“wow,” caleb muttered. “that sounded personal.”

“because it is personal,”

“geez, pipsqueak, we’re not gonna eat you alive.”

your heartbeat stumbled traitorously at the nickname. so he still does call you that, huh? 

eventually, pacing around the attic stopped accomplishing anything except making you hotter. so with an exhausted sigh, you finally sat down onto the wooden floorboards near one of the storage boxes, crossing your legs beneath you while leaning your back against the wall. the longer the three of you stayed trapped up there, the warmer the space became.

there was barely any airflow at all.

the tiny circular window near the ceiling let in sunlight but absolutely no breeze, and the trapped heat had started settling heavily against your skin until even breathing felt sticky. 

you fanned yourself weakly using the corner of an old magazine you found nearby. “it’s actually so hot,” you groaned. “how is this room legally allowed to exist?”

caleb snickered from where he sat a few feet away against another stack of boxes. “who's dramatic now?”

“you’re sweating too.”

“well, i sweat beautifully.”

fair. he actually was sweating though.

caleb had always been the type to run warm easily, and now that the heat had thoroughly caught up to him, the strands of his dark hair had started sticking damply against his forehead and temples, the slight sheen of sweat along his neck catching under the attic sunlight whenever he moved. with a quiet exhale, he dragged one hand through his hair and pushed it back, exposing more of his forehead before unzipping his brown DAA jacket halfway down just to loosen it.

the movement pulled your attention before you could stop it, but you instantly averted your gaze—to where zayne is quietly settled.

zayne sat near the shelves, though the heat had clearly begun getting to him too. he rarely looked disheveled, so the subtle signs became painfully noticeable once you started paying attention; his sleeves had been rolled upward twice already, dark hair sat slightly messier now near his forehead. every few minutes, he adjusted the collar of his black shirt like the fabric had become unbearable against his skin. a bead of sweat also slowly slid down the side of his neck before disappearing beneath the collarbone of his shirt.

you glanced away while continuing to fan yourself. “summer’s getting really evil,” 

caleb tipped his head back against the wall. “if i pass out up here, tell people i died handsome.”

“nobody would say that.” you tugged lightly at the fabric of your shirt where it clung uncomfortably against your skin from the heat. honestly, at this point modesty felt significantly less important than survival. so before you could overthink it, you grabbed the hem of your shirt and pulled it off over your head, leaving yourself in only your thin undershirt.

immediate silence.

you looked up instinctively and caught both men staring. not even subtly.

caleb’s eyes had visibly paused on you before he looked away first with a low exhale through his nose. zayne reacted faster, immediately turning his gaze aside and adjusting his shirt again.

“geez,” you muttered defensively. “don’t make it weird.”

“we’re not making it weird,” caleb replied too quickly.

you gestured vaguely toward them. “then take yours off too instead of suffering. we literally all grew up together anyway.”

caleb looked at you for a second before grinning slowly. “nah, you might die seeing my biceps.”

“you’re insufferable.”

to your surprise, zayne suddenly spoke from beside the two of you. “she’s right about one thing.” you blinked toward him, only to see that he had reached for the hem of his black shirt, pulling it off completely—completely shirtless!

your brain short-circuited. 

because unlike caleb, who at least still had clothes on, zayne had apparently decided modesty was optional now as well. the attic air suddenly vanished from your lungs, your eyes betraying you before you could stop them.

sweaty broad shoulders, defined arms, sharp collarbones damp from heat, and the... abs.

you instantly busied yourself with absolutely anything else—the dusty floorboards, the ceiling, the old christmas decorations nearby. anywhere except directly at zayne’s now shirtless body.

ah, spiritual enlightenment.

across from you, caleb immediately noticed. he leaned forward with visible amusement sparkling in his eyes. “why’re you looking away? thought we all grew up together.”

your face burned hotter. “shut up.”

“what?” caleb chuckled. “suddenly shy now?” while speaking, he shrugged off his DAA jacket completely too, leaving only the fitted white tank top stretched across his chest and shoulders, all sweaty. the heat had dampened the thin fabric slightly near his collarbone, and the sight of his forearms flexing as he tossed the jacket aside did absolutely nothing good for you. 

zayne peacefully folded his discarded top ontop of a storage box while watching the interaction unfold beside him.

“leave her alone,” he said to caleb.

caleb raised a brow. “why?”

zayne’s eyes shifted toward you briefly, calm and knowing. “she’s always been a scaredy kitten like that.” the familiarity of the remark hit you directly in the chest. years ago, he used to say things like that all the time too.

you frowned at zayne’s comment. “i am not a scaredy kitten.”

caleb laughed under his breath instantly. “yeah? tell that to your eighteen year old self, i bet my life she'd also just space out and stammer around.”

“fuck you.”

“it was funny.”

“you’re evil.”

caleb grinned. “and yet you still followed us everywhere back then.”

you opened your mouth to rebutt that immediately, only for the memory itself to betray you first. because annoyingly enough—you had followed them everywhere. the three of you used to move around the neighborhood like a tiny dysfunctional unit impossible to separate—summer afternoons spent biking aimlessly around streets, convenience store runs at midnight, and then hiding in this exact attic whenever adults downstairs assigned chores nobody wanted to do.

you smiled while shaking your head. “we were actually unbearable teenagers.”

“you were unbearable,” caleb corrected.

“says the one who somehow always ended up in neighborhood clashes.” you looked up to remember. “it was always at the... where was it again? oh right, the street four blocks away here.”

“and yet i survived.”

zayne spoke without looking up. “barely.”

caleb whistled. “and the one who always used to snitch spoke just now, finally.”

“who wouldn't snitch on a cheater.”

“where did that even come from? and why do you always say i'm a cheater?”

“because you are a cheater,” you and zayne answered simultaneously.

the three of you paused, before unexpectedly bursting into laughter together. real laughter this time, the kind that slipped out before anybody could control it. laughter made it easier to forget how much time had passed, made it easier to fall back into old rhythms.

you hugged your knees loosely against your chest while smiling. “i thought both of you would completely forget about me after college.”

the moment the words left your mouth, caleb glanced toward zayne briefly. “that was unlikely,” zayne said.

you tilted your head, now rummaging again through the photoalbums inside a nearby box. “why?”

“you were hard to miss,” caleb replied, walking toward you to crouch closer and look at the same albums.

your brows furrowed. “we barely even talked after.”

“didn’t mean we didn’t hear about you.”

you looked up. “…what?”

caleb looked up as well, meeting your eyes. “your... promotion.”

“ah.”

“congratulations, by the way,” zayne added calmly. “for also successfully advertising that one campaign your company did.”

your eyes snapped toward him. “…how do you know about that?”

zayne looked almost confused by the question. “you posted it.”

so they've been updated of you from afar, huh.

at some point during the conversation, both men had gradually moved closer without you noticing. caleb now sat near enough that his knee almost brushed yours, while zayne leaned against the wall beside you instead of across the attic, close enough for you to catch the clean scent of his cologne beneath the heat and dust.

suddenly, you remembered the lack of clothing again. you glanced at your own thin undershirt, and to zayne completely shirtless beside you, then to caleb in only a tank top with damp hair falling over his forehead. you cleared your throat quickly. “anyway, what about you two? you seriously never dated anybody?”

“why?” caleb asked lazily. “you curious?”

“normal people ask questions during conversations.”

“you first,” he replied.

zayne glanced toward you too, quieter but no less attentive. somehow, having both of them looking at you at once made the space inside your chest tighten. you tried to stay unaffected. “i already answered downstairs, i think. i have never been in a serious relationship in my life.”

“no serious relationships,” caleb corrected carefully. “that’s different.”

you looked down at your hands, shrugging. “i don’t know, i guess work just became easier to focus on.” that wasn’t the full truth. the fuller truth sat heavier beneath your ribs—that intimacy had always felt strangely incomplete after them.

after whatever the three of you had become all those years ago.

you let out a forced chuckle to lighten the mood again. “which sounds depressing now that i say it out loud.”

“it doesn’t,” zayne says, glancing down your chest, and back up your eyes. maybe it was the trapped closeness of the attic, but something about the way he looked at you right then made warmth slowly spread beneath your skin, a kind of longing stretched too thin over too many years.

caleb rests his chin against his fist. “so really no boyfriends, no exes?”

your face warmed beneath the attention. “why are you interrogating me?”

“because... it’s weird imagining nobody trying.”

you opened your mouth to deflect the conversation somewhere safer. “did either of you even find the speaker yet?” 

caleb groaned. “look at her running away.”

you ignored him entirely after that, standing up too quickly from the floorboards and dusted your hands against your shorts as if you were suddenly very determined to continue searching for the missing speaker—anything to keep yourself occupied. “if we actually find this thing, maybe granny will finally stop making me carry trays around.” the old wooden floor creaked beneath your steps as you moved toward another pile of boxes near the shelves. 

it almost grounded you. almost.

the moment you bent to check behind one of the boxes, you feel a hand suddenly wrapped around your wrist, urging you to stop and look back.

you found zayne standing closer than you realized, close enough for you to notice the faint sheen of sweat still lingering along his collarbones and chest, catching the subtle rise and fall of his breathing. his grip around your wrist wasn’t painful, but it stopped you completely. “look at me,”

what’s gotten into him all of the sudden?

your gaze flickered everywhere except directly at him because he was still shirtless and because something about the expression on his face right now made your chest feel strangely full. “zayne—”

“look at me.”

so you did, and his eyes looked nothing like they did downstairs around the family.

this wasn’t the polite zayne. not the distant adult zayne carefully controlling every word. this looked much closer to the boy you used to know years ago.

his fingers tightened around your wrist, enough to slightly hurt. “you always do this,”

“...do what?”

“run away.” 

the words landed harder than they should have. you immediately tried pulling your wrist back a little, but zayne didn’t let go. behind him, caleb had gone unusually quiet. you could feel his presence somewhere behind zayne without directly looking, still crouched, still listening.

your throat tightened slightly. “there is... nothing to run away from.”

so they really haven't moved on yet, huh.

zayne gave you a look, one that felt almost cruel in how accurately it saw through you. “you are right now.”

“i was-... literally just looking for the speaker. doing what we’re actually here for.”

“you can do that while talking to us, can’t you?”

“well, whatever you both were talking about is weird.”

“weird?” he repeated quietly. his grip loosened slightly afterward, but he still didn’t fully let go. “y/n, you never changed. like before, and until now, all you’ve ever done is run away.”

your chest further tightened at his words, brows furrowing as you still tried to look somewhere else.

“after what happened, you just disappeared on us.”

you swallowed hard.

“and you stopped showing up.”

hearing it said out loud like this made it sound uglier than the version you’d told yourself all these years—that everyone simply grew apart naturally, that time passed, and that adulthood happened. but deep down, you knew. you knew you had distanced yourself on purpose after what happened between the three of you.

after that summer.

your voice came out smaller now. “things got complicated. you know that.”

zayne raised a brow. “so you left?”

the sunlight filtering through the attic window suddenly seemed painfully bright against the dust floating lazily in the air. “what was i supposed to do?” you asked exasperatedly. for the first time since grabbing your wrist, zayne hesitated. that tiny hesitation somehow hurt even more, because it meant he didn’t have an answer either.

behind him, caleb finally moved. 

you glanced toward him instinctively.

he still sat low against the floorboards, elbows resting loosely over his knees now while he stared somewhere toward the old shelves instead of directly at either of you. his expression looked incredibly unreadable, but his jaw had tightened faintly.

“you left us behind,” zayne breaks the silence again.

your eyes stung unexpectedly, whispering, “that’s not fair,”

zayne’s gaze softened for only a second before hardening again beneath restraint. “isn’t it?”

you hated this, you hated how small you suddenly felt beneath the weight of his stare, beneath the years sitting unsaid between all three of you. you instinctively shrank slightly backward, only for your wrist still trapped in his hand to stop you halfway.

caleb finally exhaled from behind zayne before speaking for the first time in several minutes. “zayne, don’t corner her.”

zayne looked toward him briefly. “i’m not.”

“you are.”

the attic remained painfully quiet after that. not truly silent—because downstairs, somebody was still butchering an old love song through the karaoke microphone while relatives laughed loudly between clinking plates and glasses—but up here, inside the heat and dust and years sitting between the three of you, everything felt suspended.

your wrist still tingled faintly where zayne had held it, but neither him nor caleb looked away from each other. somehow, being caught between their silence felt worse than shouting.

and then, zayne spoke, still calm. “do you ever think about that summer?” caleb’s gaze flickered toward him slowly. and zayne continued before either of you could interrupt. “we were kids, scared kids.”

your heartbeat quickened, you already knew what summer he meant. of course you did. there had only ever been one summer capable of following all three of you into adulthood like this.

“did you wonder once, caleb,” zayne’s eyes remained on him, steady and honest in a way that almost hurt to witness. “if we were brave back then, would something have happened?”

the question settled heavily into the attic air.

caleb didn’t answer. for once, he actually looked speechless. his brows slowly straightened while his lips parted faintly, like he almost had words but couldn’t quite force them out. and then, eventually, his eyes shifted away from zayne—and landed on you instead.

when your eyes met, you looked away immediately.

somewhere throughout the years apart from them, hidden beneath careers and distance and adulthood, you had slowly realized something terrifying. you never actually stopped wanting them, not one more than the other, not one instead of the other.

just them. just caleb and zayne—the boys who ruined every normal definition of love for you before you were even old enough to understand what love properly was. and maybe you could have buried that forever, maybe you almost did.

until today. 

zayne took another step closer. this time, he was looking directly at you. “can we have the answer now?” 

christ, you could hear your own heartbeat. it’s fast, loud, humiliatingly obvious. you were always afraid to admit it, but perhaps—a part of you wanted to cross that line now, to stop pretending none of this existed and to finally say something honest after years of repression.

your eyes flickered helplessly between them. and then—your wandering gaze accidentally caught something sitting atop one of the higher shelves across the attic.

you blinked out of yourself. 

wait. isn’t that the speaker? the stupid missing speaker? 

your restraint grabbed onto it instantly like a lifeline. before your courage could betray you completely, you took the first opportunity to escape. the moment zayne’s hand loosened from your wrist, you slipped around him quickly and pointed toward the shelf. 

“there!” you said too fast. “the speaker’s there.”

both men turned instinctively toward where you pointed, and you waste no time crossing the attic toward it before either of them could stop you again. your heart still hammered wildly inside your chest as you reached the shelf and looked upward. the speaker rested frustratingly high near the top, partially hidden behind old storage bins and random decorations.

“…seriously?” you stretched upward, but it’s absolutely nowhere near close enough. the shelf was too tall. you frowned while standing on your toes, fingers barely reaching for it. you glanced around desperately for something to stand on, but there weren’t any proper chairs nearby. before you could stubbornly insist on climbing higher onto the unstable boxes, caleb suddenly walked up behind you. 

“need help?” he asks.

you blinked toward him over your shoulder. for some reason, your brain completely failed to produce a normal response. you watch how caleb’s hair remained damp from the attic heat, dark strands falling messily over his forehead while his white tank top clung slightly against his chest and stomach. 

“i…” 

caleb’s mouth twitched like he noticed your sudden inability to function. without another word, he crouched down in front of you with one knee against the wooden floorboards and a broad back facing you. “c’mon,” he said while motioning over his shoulder. “get on.”

your eyes widened. “…wh-what?”

“you need height, pips, unless you wanna risk your life or sumthin.”

you hesitated. behind you, zayne stepped closer too, setting a box he’d moved earlier more securely against the shelf before looking toward you. “if you’re getting it, pass the speaker to me immediately after. it’s heavy.”

you nodded weakly.

okay. fine.

you swallowed once before carefully stepping toward caleb’s crouched form. “don’t drop me,” 

caleb laughed. “you wound me.” still, his hands steadied against your calves as you awkwardly climbed onto his back. the moment your thighs wrapped around either side of his neck, heat rushed violently into your face.

this was humiliating.

caleb stood up carefully afterward, and the sudden loss of ground beneath your feet made you instinctively tighten your hold around him. his hands then immediately gripped more firmly on your thighs to stabilize you.

large hands...warm palms... strong fingers pressing securely against the bare skin just below your shorts... 

you stared determinedly at the shelf instead.

focus! focus on the speaker, not on the fact that caleb’s shoulders flexed beneath your hold every time he adjusted his grip on you.“comfortable up there?” he asked, rubbing a thumb along your skin.

fuck.

“stop talking.”

“yes, ma’am.”

behind you, zayne cleared his throat once. “can you reach it?” 

you forced yourself to focus again and stretched upward toward the speaker stacked near the top shelf. this time you could finally reach it properly, fingers brushing against the dusty handle. “almost—” but then, something suddenly moved near your hand, making you freeze. the ticklish sensation of what might be something alive made you look closer, and see...

“A COCKROACH!” your scream ripped through the attic instantly, jolting violently backward on instinct. “SHIT—” 

caleb startled hard beneath you from the sudden movement. “what—?!”

“THERE’S A BUG—” you wiggled frantically trying to get away from it while caleb lost balance underneath your panicked thrashing. then, the speaker tipped dangerously over the edge of the shelf. thankfully, zayne reacted fast enough to catch the heavy speaker against his chest before it crashed onto the floor.

the problem was everything else, though. you were still screaming, while caleb was still trying not to drop you. and the next few seconds happened far too fast—caleb’s balance finally gave up.

CRASH!

you landed very hard against caleb’s chest as both of you crashed onto the floorboards together, the air knocking from your lungs. caleb grunted sharply beneath you from the fall, one arm instinctively wrapping around your waist to keep you from hitting the floor harder.

“are you okay?” he coughed.

“the roach—!” your heart still hammered wildly while you tried pushing yourself upright—until sudden sharp pain tore across your palm. “ah—!”

a splintered piece of wood had been sticking upright between the uneven floorboards where your palm landed during the fall. a thin but deep cut now stretched across the center of your hand, bright red blood immediately welling against your skin.

“shit,” caleb muttered, staring at you.

you winced hard, clutching your injured hand against yourself while still half sprawled against caleb’s chest.

he pushes himself upright quickly despite clearly getting hurt from the impact too. you only noticed now the way he’d scraped part of his arm against the floorboards during the fall, redness already forming along his elbow. he didn’t even look at it as his attention stayed entirely on you. “let me see,” 

you shook your head weakly out of reflex while pressing your wounded palm closer against yourself. “it’s fine—”

“you’re bleeding.” his voice came lower, more serious. the teasing undertone went gone instantly. before you could protest again, caleb carefully grabbed your wrist to examine the cut more closely.

his brows furrowed hard. up close, you could see the same shift in his face whenever he got worried about you, the slight narrowing of his eyes and the way his touch became gentler without him seeming to realize it.

meanwhile beside both of you, zayne had already set the speaker down safely. you heard quick footsteps approaching, then suddenly zayne crouched near you too, immediately reaching for your injured hand with frightening calmness.

“move,” he told caleb.

“i’m helping her.”

“and i’m a doctor.”

caleb clicked his tongue but loosened his hold enough for zayne to inspect your palm instead. now you sat there trapped awkwardly between them on the attic floor, breathing unevenly while both men focused on your injured hand. despite the pain, your face still burned hotter from the way caleb’s arm remained securely attached around your waist the entire time.

instead of dwelling on that, you observed the way zayne’s entire demeanor shifted the moment he properly saw the wound. it happened so naturally that it almost startled you more than the injury itself.

one second he had been the same restrained, unreadable man from earlier, standing in the attic shirtless with sweat dampening the edges of his dark hair. and then suddenly, the doctor in him surfaced so seamlessly that it felt like watching somebody step into their true skin.

you watch his posture straightening, expression sharpened. his fingers wrapped around your wrist with control as he tilted your palm toward the sunlight. fresh blood continued slipping slowly from the cut, bright against your skin before trailing down the inside of your wrist and arm in thin warm lines.

the wound pulsed really painfully, every heartbeat making it throb even harder, enough to make you wince again.

immediately, zayne’s eyes flicked upward. “does it sting or ache?” 

you blinked at him for a second. “both.”

zayne hummed under his breath before looking around the attic quickly, scanning the cluttered shelves and old boxes. his brows drew together—of course there was nothing useful here. no bandages, tissues, nothing clean enough. “we shouldn’t wrap it with anything dirty,” zayne murmured more to himself than to you.

you shifted against caleb’s chest, still painfully aware of the way his arm remained firm around your waist from behind. his body felt warm beneath yours, solid, breathing against your back despite the awkward position the two of you were still trapped in on the floor.

“it’s okay, i can just use my shirt for now and wash it downstairs later when someone notices we’re missing—” you stopped yourself when zayne suddenly moved, your breath caught when he leaned downward toward your injured arm. “…zayne?”

he didn’t answer, his gaze stayed lowered instead, almost avoiding yours. and then you felt it—the warmth of his tongue dragging slowly along the thin trail of blood that had begun slipping down your wrist. 

“z-zayne!” it made you flinch hard in shock, but his hand tightened carefully around your wrist to steady you before the blood could drip further. he still wouldn’t look at you, expression remained frighteningly focused despite the intimacy of what he was doing, dark lashes lowered while his tongue traced upward once more against your skin.

the sensation made your stomach twist painfully because it hurt and because it didn’t. because his mouth was warm and the attic was hot and your pulse was beating too hard beneath his touch. “you’re insane,” you whispered weakly.

that finally made the corner of his mouth twitch, but he still didn’t stop. slowly, carefully, zayne lifted your wounded palm closer toward his mouth. you could see the brief hesitation in his face this time, almost like he knew crossing this line would change things. 

but even then, his lips pressed softly against the center of your palm.

“hng—!” pain flared immediately when he applied pressure to the cut, sucking the blood from the wound to keep it temporarily clean. but the sting made your entire body tense. your free hand immediately grabbed onto the closest thing near you—

caleb.

you pressed backward against his chest hard enough that he physically stiffened beneath you. “it hurts,” you shakily breathed.

behind you, caleb let out the faintest grunt, low and strained. his arm around your waist tightened before he could stop himself. but you failed to notice completely—too distracted by zayne, by the overwhelming feeling of his mouth against your skin.

zayne’s eyes finally lifted toward yours then, emerald green, but darker now somehow. you had never realized before how intimate being cared for could feel until this exact moment. his lips remained close against your palm while his fingers held your wrist steady.

meanwhile behind you, caleb’s ears had gone bright red. but you still failed to catch on the visible effort it took for him not to move beneath the repeated pressure of your body pressing against him every time the pain made you squirm. you were sitting directly between his legs, half against his chest, and every small movement from you dragged against him in ways that were making his breathing increasingly uneven.

“nghh...” caleb’s grip flexed once against your waist. but before you could process that, zayne pulled back slowly from your injured hand.

your skin burned so badly it almost felt feverish, heat spreading up your throat and cheeks while your injured palm still throbbed beneath zayne’s careful hold. you stared at the faint sheen of blood left near his lower lip before he calmly wiped it away with the back of his hand. he inspected your swollen palm again with doctor-like focus despite the fact that he had literally just licked you off to suck your blood.

your breathing became uneven all over again, because you suddenly felt eighteen. painfully eighteen. back in that summer version of yourselves where standing between zayne and caleb had always felt like standing too close to a storm.

zayne tilted your wrist once more, checking the wound carefully. “the bleeding stopped,” he murmured, in which you nodded weakly to. but he stayed crouched close in front of you though, way too close. his eyes lifted toward yours. “can you still run away now?”

fuck’s sake, how are they this persistent?

you almost wanted to scream. why were they still like this? why were they still capable of unraveling you so easily after all these years? you swallowed hard and forced yourself to push back before you completely lost whatever remained of your sanity. “what if i don’t?” you retorted. the words slipped out before you could stop them. 

and the second they did—something behind you suddenly twitched hard against your rear. your entire body went still, feeling the solid and warm thing press against your bum, twitching ever so slightly.

is that... caleb? 

behind you, caleb sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth, like he was physically struggling, and then he made a strained sound under his breath. you felt the arm around your waist flex harder for half a second before he abruptly loosened it like he’d finally remembered himself. “okay,” caleb muttered roughly from behind you. “get off me.”

you turned your head slightly in confusion, only to find caleb looking away toward the opposite wall with a deeply tense expression, jaw tight enough to visibly flex. the tips of his ears were brightly red, damp hair sticking messily to his forehead while sweat slid slowly down the side of his neck into the collar of his tank top. he looked both irritated and embarrassed at the exact same time, which somehow made him even worse to look at.

“you get—”

“seriously,” he muttered with a grunt, finally glancing at you briefly before immediately looking away again. “it’s hard.”

“i-i mean, it’s hard to breathe.” caleb quickly corrected himself.

zayne exhaled quietly through his nose beside you like he was holding back amusement. you stared at caleb in absolute disbelief while your brain scrambled uselessly trying to process what he’d just admitted out loud. 

so what you’re sitting on is his...

zayne leaned toward you again before you could recover properly from caleb’s admission. instinctively, you leaned backward to create distance—but all that did was press your body more firmly against caleb behind you.

that caused a strangled grunt escaping low from his throat, his hands instantly tightening around your hips hard enough to make you inhale sharply. “that hurts—” 

you tried shifting away again, but there was nowhere to go. there was zayne in front of you, and caleb beneath and behind you. zayne’s eyes flickered downward briefly at the way caleb’s grip dug into your waist before returning to your face. strangely, he didn’t look annoyed. if anything, he looked calmer now. certain.

the faintest flush had spread across the bridge of his nose from the heat, but his gaze remained painfully steady on you. “earlier, you asked what happens if you stop running.”zayne leaned closer still, one hand braced beside your knee against the floorboards. “prove it.”

you stared at him helplessly. “what? what do you—”

“prove you’re not running anymore. and if you can do that,” he murmured, “then we’ll leave you alone.”

you swallowed hard. after all these years, after all the distance and silence and pretending nothing happened between the three of you—they were still here, looking at you like this, wanting you like this. but deep down, you already knew something terrifying. you certainly didn’t want them to leave you alone. 

your teeth pressed lightly against your lower lip. “deal.”

it was now or never. if they wanted you so bad to prove them otherwise, then let them take it.

before you could stop yourself, your hand lifted toward zayne’s face, fingers curled against his jaw. for the first time since reuniting with them, you stopped thinking—pulling him toward you to kiss him.

it didn't feel rushed nor hesitant, it just felt like years and years of restrained tension finally colliding all at once.

zayne froze for barely half a second, then immediately kissed you back. harder. “fuck,”

his hand came up almost desperately to cradle your face, fingers spreading gently along your cheek and jaw like he’d imagined touching you this way too many times before. he kissed like a man who had spent years holding himself back. careful at first, then increasingly less careful every second after.

despite everything, there was still something achingly romantic about zayne. even now. even like this. his thumb brushed softly beneath your cheek while his mouth moved against yours, and the tenderness of it nearly undid you completely.

behind you, caleb exhaled shakily. “it’s so... painful,”

you had forgotten you were still sitting against him, pressing against him every time the kiss made you move unconsciously. this time, though, you didn’t pull away. if anything, your body pressed more firmly backward on instinct as zayne kissed you deeper. 

caleb physically tensed beneath you. his fingers dug harder into your hips. “fuck,” he breathed hoarsely, the sound barely registering through the haze that clouded your thoughts.

zayne tilted his head, kissing you slower now but somehow deeper, his grip on your face tightening when you instinctively kissed him back harder. your injured hand trembled weakly against his shoulder while the other remained curled near his jaw.

you could feel his breathing becoming uneven too, could feel the way even zayne—always composed, always restrained—was starting to lose control of himself.

behind you, again, caleb let out another rough exhale. his forehead dropped briefly against the back of your shoulder like he was trying to survive this somehow. 

you stopped trying to hold yourself back. maybe that was the most dangerous part of all this—not them, not the attic, not the years of tension finally collapsing into something tangible. but it was you finally letting yourself want them back.

zayne’s mouth left yours only briefly before he leaned closer again, “quite too much for someone who only wants to prove something, no?” breath warm against your jaw as he buried his face near your neck. the scrape of his breathing against your skin alone nearly made your thoughts dissolve. instinctively, your eyes fluttered shut and your head tilted slightly to the side, exposing more of your neck to him without even realizing it. and zayne’s lips brushed there once, slowly. a quiet breath escaped him against your skin, and the sound alone nearly weakened your spine.

but then reality crashed back in all at once. these weren’t boys anymore. they were men who had spent years wanting you, years imagining this.

before zayne could kiss your neck again, your hand came up against his jaw and pushed him backward firmly.

the movement startled him, his brows furrowed faintly as he looked at you, lips flushed from kissing. zayne genuinely looked caught off guard, and you stared back at him for one second.

if you were losing control tonight, you were at least going to make it fair.

“let me,” you leaned downward instead, toward him. but at the same time, your hips deliberately moved backward against caleb beneath you. you started to grind your ass against his crotch in a slow, circular motion, like you were drawing his name with your hips and his growing bulge as the material. 

instantly, a rough moan caught in his throat as his hands clamped harder around your hips, fingers flexing almost desperately against your skin. “more... a little more...,” caleb muttered under his breath, but you ignored him on purpose. which only made him grip you tighter.

you bent toward zayne and let your lips brush teasingly along the side of his neck, just enough contact to make him inhale sharply.

this time, you were the one watching him carefully, watching the way his composure cracked apart in tiny fractures beneath your touch.

zayne’s eyes lowered, lips parted slightly as you kissed just beneath his jaw once—soft and slow—and you physically saw the tension leave his shoulders, a quiet sigh escaping him, relieved.

beneath you, caleb gave up entirely. “you’re really g-getting bold, huh,” his head tipped backward while his grip on your hips grew bolder, guiding your movements against him with less restraint—every small drag of your ass against his bulge made his breathing rougher, hotter.

zayne stared down at you with slightly wide eyes, his breath hitching in his throat as you leaned forward to press your lips against the sensitive column of his neck. he couldn't believe the sheer boldness of you—the girl who had once fled from them was now claiming them like this. as your lips trailed a searing path down his bobbing adam's apple and over the sharp line of his clavicle, his eyes fluttered shut, and his hands, trembling with a mix of reverence and lust, slid into your hair.

with a low, commanding hum, you pushed against zayne’s chest, forcing him to lean back just enough to create a sliver of space. “lean back.” you say. 

as you moved, your lifted your bum from caleb's crotch, momentarily breaking the contact. instead, you descended upon zayne, your mouth finding the expanse of his chest. you began to leave a trail of blooming hickies across his skin, teeth grazing his pectoral muscles as you worked your way down the hard, defined ridges of his abdomen.

“you’re quite eager to prove it, aren’t you?” zayne murmured, watching the way you kissed him lower. 

and while you did that, your lower body continued its job on caleb. you were dry humping him through his pants with a rhythmic pace, driven by a hunger that had been denied for far too long. it made caleb into a moaning mess beneath you, his strength failing him as he braced one hand against the floorboards to keep from collapsing entirely. his other hand was white knuckled, gripping the hem of your tanktop so tightly the fabric strained.

fuck it, you were far past the point of teasing; the ache between your thighs became a sharp, demanding pulse that demanded satisfaction. driven by instinct, you slid your hand lower, trailing past the ridges of zayne’s toned abs until your fingers hooked into the leather of his belt. you were ready to tear it open, to strip him bare, but a firm, warm hand clamped over yours.

“what exactly are you doing?” zayne rasped.

you paused, fingers still curled in his belt, and you looked up at him with a defiant glint in your eyes. you intentionally stopped grinding your hips against caleb, leaving him momentarily unanchored. “funny,” you retorted, your voice a breathless purr. “for someone who kept on calling me a runaway, you're the one running away now.”

at that, a slow, amused smirk spread across zayne’s face, an expression that made your heart hammer against your ribs. “running?” he murmured, his gaze dropping to your lips before returning to your eyes. “you've finally caught me.” without breaking eye contact, he unbuckled his own belt with a decisive clink, tossing the leather aside to clatter against the floorboards.

you were already breathless, a thin thread of saliva glistening on your lip as you watched him. he unbuttoned his pants and shoved his underwear down in one fluid motion. and the moment his manhood sprang free, it nearly slapped against your cheek, a heavy, throbbing weight that made your eyes widen. 

he was... massive. 

“can you actually take this, y/n?” zayne whispered as he began to stroke himself, the rhythmic schlickof his hand against his skin echoing in the small space. he brings the head of his cock dangerously close to your eyes, teasing you with the scent of his musk.

an instinctive, heavy throb pulsed between your legs, and you felt a sudden, overwhelming rush of moisture. you were fucking incredibly wet, your panties clinging to you as you swallowed hard. but before you could find your voice, you felt a shift behind you. the floorboards suddenly creaked under a new weight.

you turned your head slightly, your breath catching in your throat. caleb was moving, his eyes glazed with a raw hunger as he knelt behind you. he was already unbuckling his belt, his movements frantic and desperate. “don’t think you're getting off that easy,” as he released his own huge cock, he leaned in. “how much can you even take from us, huh, pipsqueak?”

he didn't wait for an answer. his hands were suddenly on your hips, pulling your shorts down. when the fabric fell, it revealed your white panties, darkened and translucent from how much you were soaking. the sight of your drenched lace made caleb’s dick twitch violently. he didn't wait to strip you completely; instead, he pressed the hot, blunt head of his length against your entrance, rubbing the damp fabric of your panties against your swollen clit.

“still runnin’ away from this?” he grunted, a low, needy sound. “bet you can’t. you’re too wet.” a high, broken whimper escaped your throat, and your strength gave out, your body collapsing forward until you slumped heavily against zayne’s muscular thighs.

zayne reached down though, his fingers firm and warm as they hooked under your chin to tilt your head back. you were met once again by the intimidating sight of his throbbing manhood. you were too far gone, too lost in the heavy, wet heat of caleb’s dick pressing on you to offer any resistance. when zayne leaned forward, guiding his thick, pulsing head toward your lips, you opened for him instinctively. “open for me.” he pushes into your mouth with a slow force that filled you to the brim.

a soft, helpless moan escaped you around him, and a thin trail of drool escaped the corner of your mouth, glistening in the sunlight. you looked up at him through hazy, hooded eyelids, eyes wide and glazed with unadulterated lust. zayne let out a groan at the sight of you—his beautiful girl now wrapped around his dick. your hands reached up, clutching at the fabric of his pants as he wrapped his fingers around your head, guiding your movements to ensure you felt every vein of his length.

“that’s it... just like that. take it all, y/n. show me how much you want it.” his words came to you like a caress, but below, caleb let out a frustrated, needy grunt, his pace increasing as he felt you getting even wetter, the damp fabric of your panties sliding slickly against your clit with every heavy thrust of his hips.

zayne’s head fell back, his eyes squeezing shut as you began to suck him with a slow, rhythmic pace. he was fighting for control, muscles corded and straining as he fought the irresistible urge to simply slam himself into your throat. instead, he gently pushes his hips upward to meet your mouth. and when you finally took him deep enough that the tip of your nose brushed against the base of his shaft, an uncharacteristic, broken groan tore from his throat, his fingers tightening convulsively in your hair. 

“ahh, fuck,”

caleb watched it happen, and a sting of jealousy immediately came through him. he decided to silently reach down, his slender fingers hooking into the side of your soaked panty to shove the damp fabric aside, exposing your dripping, swollen entrance to the cool air. without a moment's hesitation, he positioned his pulsing cock at your opening and began to push.

you instantly gasped into zayne’s dick. 

“shhh, it’s okay,” he coaxed you.

but caleb hit a wall of resistance nonetheless. you were incredibly tight, your body still reeling from the shock of the sudden attention, and the sheer girth of him was overwhelming. he let out a strained grunt, muscles bunching as he struggled to force his way past your narrow walls. “you're...too small, too tight—” he hissed through gritted teeth, working hard to breach you, while above you, zayne remained a patient man, his hands steadying your head as he waited for your mouth to finally adjust to the weight of him.

to soothe the tension, you reached up to wrap your hand around the base of zayne’s shaft while your mouth continued to worship his tip. you began to bob your head in a frantic, fast motion, your tongue swirling around him with a desperate hunger. the sudden change in pace caught zayne off guard; he let out a choked, startled sound, nearly swallowing his own saliva as he gasped, “slow... slow down, y/n...”

you didn't listen. instead, you treated his massive length like a sweet lollipop, swirling and sucking with a playful fervor. and zayne could do nothing but revel in the sensation, his head tilting back as he shut his eyes tight, a thin string of saliva escaping his parted lips.

he tasted so fucking good in your mouth.

the sight of you so focused on zayne was the final straw for caleb. a low grunt erupted from his chest, before reaching down, his large hands clamping onto your hips with a bruising, painful grip that forced a small gasp from your lips. then, with a sudden surge of strength, he slammed himself forward, driving his entire length into you in one singular thrust.

shit.

“angghh!” you screamed, the sound muffled by the weight of zayne’s dick still filling your mouth. you were finally, blissfully full, but the sensation was immediately followed by a staggering shock. 

the moment caleb buried himself within you, he stiffened violently. a ragged, breathless gasp tore from his lungs as he felt his climax hit him with the force of a tidal wave. he was inside you, fully, and he was already coming.

“shit, shit, shit—” caleb choked out, his voice a  broken mess. trembling, his hips continued to thrust in a desperate, involuntary rhythm, but he couldn't stop. even as he pounded into you, he felt the hot, thick jets of his semen pulsing deep inside your womb, a continuous, unending stream that seemed impossible. 

how could this happen? he had masturbated to you a thousand times, always maintaining a disciplined control, but now, the mere feeling of your heat was undoing him. he couldn't even stop coming; it was as if your body was a vacuum, pulling every drop of his cum from him in one long, continuous release.

thwack! thwack! thwack!

seeing the way his thick cock disappeared into you with every frantic thrust, caleb let out a loud moan. “so tight f’me, you’re going to... kill me,” he hooked a powerful arm beneath your thigh, hoisting your leg high up onto his shoulder to tilt your pelvis back, allowing him to drive into you even deeper. “can you take this, huh? do you still wanna leave us behind after this, hm?” each time his tip slammed against your cervix, your eyes rolled back in your head, your vision blurring as you struggled to keep your grip on zayne’s dick.

but zayne was not about to let you find your footing. seeing caleb’s dominance, he instantly felt competitive. he wasn't just a spectator anymore. he reached down, his fingers tangling firmly in your hair to tilt your head back at a punishing angle, and began to pound his dick into your mouth with a relentless pace. “unghhh...” he groaned, matching caleb’s rhythm. “proving it well, aren’t you?”

at this point, you could do nothing but cry out, your voice breaking into a series of high, desperate moans and whimpers as the two men relentlessly pounded into you, claiming every inch of you as their own.

—

downstairs, life went on completely unaware.

the previous broken speaker suddenly crackled back to life, making the older relatives cheer in relief while somebody loudly complained that they were in the middle of a sad song before the speaker died. immediately, music flooded granny’s front yard again, echoing beneath the afternoon sunlight while barbecue smoke drifted lazily through the air.

children ran around the plastic tables with juice boxes in hand, somebody’s uncle was already tipsy enough to start singing off-key, one of your aunts kept scolding people for stealing food because apparently there were still some late visitors.

granny herself sat proudly near the karaoke television with the microphone in hand, it was only after a few minutes that she suddenly looked around the crowded yard and frowned slightly. “where are those three?” she asked.

one of the younger teenagers nearby nearly choked trying not to laugh. another one immediately elbowed him hard. “they’re probably still playing upstairs,” the girl answered innocently. except the snickering afterward completely ruined the lie.

granny narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “what did you children do?”

“nothing!” which obviously meant something.

eventually, after enough threatening looks from the adults, the truth slipped out in pieces.

they had planned on pulling a prank on the three of you by locking the attic. the plan to leave the three of you stuck there “for only a few minutes.” apparently, the younger cousins thought it would be funny after overhearing all the teasing downstairs earlier.

granny sighed so deeply it nearly sounded spiritual. “those poor children,” she muttered while shaking her head.

except she still didn’t go upstairs immediately, because one of the older uncles suddenly begged her to sing another song first. and like always, granny gave in.

and completely unbeknownst to everyone downstairs—something irreversible had already bloomed upstairs in the attic.

not a fight, not an accident, not even just old feelings returning. it was worse than that, warmer than that. something that had spent years quietly burning beneath distance and growing up.

something that had long been marking you under seasons of summer.

a sunburn.

—

Kiera came two days later.

Not with ladies.

Not with guards.

Alone.

You were in the nursery chamber, if such a word could be used for a room guarded like a treasury. Aemon slept in his cradle. You sat beside him sewing a torn sleeve. You had become very good at pretending domestic peace could exist behind locked doors.

The queen entered without being announced.

You rose so quickly the needle pricked your finger.

“Your Grace.”

Kiera looked at the blood on your fingertip.

“How fitting.”

You folded your hand into your sleeve.

“You should not be here.”

“No,” she said. “I should be anywhere else.”

Her gaze moved to the cradle.

Something happened to her face then.

All her rehearsed bitterness faltered.

She crossed the room slowly.

You wanted to stop her.

You did not.

Aemon slept with one fist beside his cheek, silver lashes resting against flushed skin. He was beautiful in the unfair way Targaryen children often were, as if the gods had given them loveliness first and waited to see whether they deserved souls later.

Kiera stared down at him.

“He looks like him,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Not like you?”

“Some.”

“No.” Her voice thinned. “Enough like you to hurt. Enough like him to matter.”

You said nothing.

She reached toward the cradle, then stopped before touching him.

“Does he love him?”

The question surprised you.

“Yes.”

Kiera laughed softly.

“Of course.”

“He would love any child of his.”

“Would he?”

You had no answer.

Kiera turned to you.

“I bled last night.”

The words landed between you like a body.

“I am sorry.”

Her smile was dreadful.

“Everyone is sorry. The maester is sorry. My ladies are sorry. The gods are sorry, perhaps, though they show it poorly.”

She looked back at Aemon.

“I thought this time…” She stopped. Swallowed. “It does not matter.”

“It matters.”

“Do not be kind to me.”

“I am not trying to wound you.”

“That is the trouble with you.” Her eyes flashed. “You wound me while trying not to. Do you know how exhausting that is? To hate a woman and find her gentle? To want her gone and know she would go if leaving did not break him?”

Your throat tightened.

“I have thought of it.”

“Leaving?”

“Yes.”

Kiera’s gaze sharpened.

“And?”

“He would follow.”

“Yes,” she said bitterly. “He would.”

You looked at the cradle.

“Or burn the road behind me.”

“That too.”

For a while, neither of you spoke.

Then Kiera said, quietly, “The Tyroshi envoy has written home.”

You looked at her.

“He says the king dishonors Tyrosh. That I am mocked. That Westeros laughs at painted daughters and barren wombs. That the Blackfyre boys would make better friends to those who respect their wives.”

Fear moved through you.

“Does Valarr know?”

“Valarr knows everything except when to stop.”

A bitter truth.

Kiera stepped closer.

“You think the court wants to be rid of you because you are a scandal. You are wrong. Scandal can be endured. Scandal is wine for bored people. They want to be rid of you because you are becoming policy.”

“I am not—”

“You are. Every choice he makes bends toward you. Every insult to you becomes treason. Every whisper against the child becomes a threat to the throne. Men who would have tolerated a mistress cannot tolerate a mother. Especially not the mother of his only son.”

Only son.

The words made the room colder.

“He is a bastard.”

Kiera’s expression twisted.

“So was Daemon Blackfyre.”

You flinched.

“Yes,” she said. “There. You understand.”

Aemon stirred in his sleep.

Both of you looked at him.

Kiera’s voice softened, unwillingly.

“He is innocent.”

“Yes.”

“That will not save him.”

“No.”

She closed her eyes briefly.

When she opened them again, the queen had returned.

“Send him away,” she said.

Your hand tightened around the torn sleeve.

“No.”

“To Dragonstone. To the Vale. To some holdfast loyal enough to keep him and distant enough to quiet tongues.”

“No.”

“For his sake.”

You stood very still.

For his sake.

Those were the words people always used when they meant to take a child from his mother.

Kiera saw the change in you and gave a humorless smile.

“So you are a mother after all.”

“I never claimed not to be.”

“You claimed to be a septa.”

The blow landed.

You looked down.

Kiera sighed.

“Forgive me.”

That startled you more than the cruelty.

She seemed startled by it too.

Then the door opened. Valarr stood there.

The room tightened.

His gaze moved from Kiera to you, then to Aemon.

“What is this?” he asked.

Kiera lifted her chin.

“I wished to see the child everyone is pretending not to see.”

Valarr entered slowly.

“You might have asked.”

“I did, husband. You refused.”

“I had reason, wife.”

“You always have reason. That does not make you reasonable.”

A dangerous silence followed.

Then Valarr laughed softly.

Once, he might have liked her for that.

Perhaps he still did, in some distant chamber of himself unruined by wanting.

“You should go,” he said.

Kiera’s face hardened.

“I am the queen.”

“And yet.”

You stepped forward.

“Valarr.”

He did not look at you.

Kiera smiled.

“There it is.”

His eyes flicked to her.

“What?”

“The leash.”

You went pale.

Valarr did not move.

Kiera’s voice was quiet now, but cruel with truth.

“They think she is your weakness. They are wrong. You are hers.”

For a moment, you thought he might strike her.

Not with his hand. Valarr would never do something so simple. But with power. With ruin. With all the invisible weapons kings kept tucked beneath their tongues.

Instead, he said, “Leave us, Kiera.”

No title.

No courtesy.

The queen’s face changed.

You saw the wound.

So did he.

For one heartbeat, shame crossed his face.

Too late.

Kiera swept toward the door.

As she passed you, she murmured, so low only you could hear, “He will make us all pay for loving you.”

Then she was gone.

Valarr looked at you.

“What did she say?”

You met his eyes.

“The truth.”

//

After that, everything worsened.

The High Septon requested a private audience.

Valarr denied it.

The High Septon requested again, publicly enough that refusal would look like insult.

Valarr granted it, then made the poor old man wait three hours outside the council chamber while he discussed harbor taxes with Lord Velaryon.

When the High Septon finally entered, he did so with three Most Devout, all in cloth-of-silver and righteous discomfort.

You were not there.

Valarr told you later, because he had the strange habit of bringing you the ugliest pieces of his day as if laying trophies at your feet.

“He asked whether I meant to make a mockery of the Faith,” Valarr said.

You were feeding Aemon by the fire.

“And what did you say?”

“I said the Faith had survived worse than me.”

You closed your eyes. “Valarr.”

“He then spoke of discipline.”

“Of me.”

“Yes.”

You looked down at your son.

“What discipline?”

His silence answered.

You lifted your gaze.

“What discipline?”

Valarr stood by the window, black against the red dusk.

“Penance. Removal from court. The child fostered elsewhere. Your vows formally examined.”

“Examined,” you repeated.

“They would unmake you to punish you.”

“No, I unmade myself.”

He turned.

“No.”

“It is true.”

“No.”

“Valarr—”

“You are not some tavern girl to be dragged barefoot before pious old men.”

“No,” you said softly. “A tavern girl would be less useful to them.”

His eyes burned.

“I will not allow it.”

The words again.

You were beginning to hate them.

“You cannot refuse the Faith forever.”

“I can refuse this High Septon.”

“And when the next says the same?”

“Then I will refuse him too.”

“And when the city rises because the king keeps a septa in his bed and a bastard in his holdfast?”

“Then the city will learn the cost of rising.”

Aemon fussed at your breast, startled by your tension. You soothed him automatically, though your eyes stayed on Valarr.

“You speak of your own people.”

“I speak of men who would tear you from me in the name of gods.”

“Do you hear yourself? You speak like a tyrant.”

He crossed the room in three strides.

Aemon whimpered. Valarr stopped at once.

That, more than anything, showed you the shape of your cage.

Even in fury, he could gentle himself for the child.

For you, he only burned.

“A tyrant?” he said quietly.

You adjusted your robe and settled Aemon against your shoulder.

“Yes.”

Pain flashed across his face.

Good, you thought.

Then hated yourself.

“Do you think me as Maegor?” he asked.

“I think you are a man who believes love excuses whatever it destroys.”

His mouth tightened.

“What would you have me do? Hand you to them? Let them shave your head and parade you through the city? Let them take him?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“I do not know!”

The confession broke from you.

Aemon began to cry.

You rose, rocking him, your own tears hot with rage.

“I do not know, Valarr. That is the point. There may be no clean way out. There may be no happy ending waiting if only you frighten enough men. We did wrong. We did wrong, and he is innocent, and Kiera is humiliated, and the realm is watching its king choose one woman over peace.”

“I choose you over everything.”

“You say that as if it is beautiful and righteous.”

“It is.”

“It is monstrous.”

His expression changed.

“Do you want me to stop?”

There it was.

The question beneath every prayer, every kiss, every locked door.

You looked at him.

Aemon cried between you.

“No,” you whispered.

Valarr’s face softened with terrible understanding.

He came closer slowly this time and touched Aemon’s back.

Then your cheek.

“You see?” he said. “We are both monstrous.”

You closed your eyes and leaned, just for a moment, into his hand.

That was the tragedy of it.

You could name the cage.

You could see the lock.

You still loved the warmth of the hand that held the key.

//

The court tried subtler weapons next.

A song appeared in Flea Bottom about a holy maid whose dragon laid an egg in the Mother’s lap. Valarr banned it. By the next morning, every stableboy in the Red Keep knew three verses.

A septon from Oldtown preached that even kings knelt before the Seven. Valarr sent him home with a purse of gold and a warning so polite it frightened him more than chains.

A lady of House Rowan asked, in your hearing, whether bastards born of vows were doubly cursed or only doubly common. Her husband lost a lucrative royal contract three days later.

Every punishment proved the accusation.

Every silence deepened it.

Valarr could not see that.

Or would not.

He began bringing Aemon to council in the mornings.

Only once at first. Then again. A babe in a carved cradle beside the Iron Throne while lords discussed grain, tolls, ships, and war.

You begged him not to.

“He is not a banner.”

“No,” Valarr said. “He is my son.”

“You are making men choose how to look at him.”

“They will look at him with respect.”

“They will look at him with fear.”

“Good.”

“Valarr, he is a babe.”

“He is of dragon's blood.”

“He is a bastard.”

Valarr’s eyes went cold.

“Careful.”

It was the first time he had ever used that voice on you.

You went still.

He realized it at once.

Regret struck his face.

But regret did not unmake the moment.

You stepped back.

“Forgive me,” he said.

You shook your head.

“Do not command me to be careful when I am the only person in this castle still willing to tell you the truth.”

“I said forgive me.”

“Yes, and all I heard was the king.”

He flinched.

You left him standing there.

That night, he came to your rooms and found the door barred.

Not locked. You did not have that power. Barred with a chair beneath the handle like some frightened maid in a song.

For a long time, he said nothing.

Then, from the other side, “Open the door.”

“No.”

A pause.

“Please.”

That hurt worse.

You sat on the floor beside Aemon’s cradle, knees drawn to your chest, and pressed your hand over your mouth.

“Go to your wife,” you whispered.

Silence.

Then his voice, lower.

“Open the door and be cruel to my face.”

A laugh escaped you, broken and wet.

“No.”

“Are you afraid of me?”

You looked at the chair beneath the handle.

“No,” you said.

It was almost true.

“Then why bar the door?”

“Because if you come in, I will forgive you.”

The quiet afterward was unbearable.

At last, Valarr said, “And that would be so terrible?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because one day you will do something I cannot forgive, and I will have taught you there is no such day.”

You heard him breathe.

When he spoke again, his voice was stripped bare.

“I would rather you hate me in the room than love me through a door.”

You wept then, silently.

But you did not move the chair.

In the morning, it was gone.

Not the chair.

Valarr.

For three days, he did not come.

On the fourth, he summoned you to the godswood.

You almost laughed when the message arrived. The Red Keep’s godswood had always been a poor thing, a southern imitation of northern faith, but it held the memory of childhood better than the sept did.

You found him beneath the heart tree.

Aemon was in his arms.

The sight undid all your careful anger.

Valarr looked tired. Not king-tired. Man-tired.

“I frightened you,” he said.

“No, Valarr. You angered me.”

“That was not what I said.”

No.

It was not.

You looked at Aemon instead of him.

“He should be inside. The air is cool.”

“He likes the leaves.”

“He is too young to like anything but milk and being held.”

“He likes what I tell him to like.”

Despite yourself, you smiled.

Valarr saw and took one step closer.

“I am sorry,” he said.

“You say that like a king.”

“How should I say it?”

“Like a man who may be wrong again.”

He absorbed that.

Then he nodded.

“I am sorry,” he said again, slower. “I will be wrong again.”

Your throat tightened.

“That is better.”

“I will try not to frighten you.”

“Try harder not to become someone I should fear.”

His eyes held yours.

Then he handed Aemon to you.

A peace offering.

A surrender.

A chain.

You took your son and felt all three.

//

The attempt to remove you came in the seventh moon of Aemon’s life.

It was dressed, as all court cruelties are, in reason.

The small council gathered in full. The queen was present. So was the High Septon. So were two Tyroshi envoys in bright robes, their dyed beards oiled and curled. You were not invited, which told you the matter concerned you before anyone said so.

Valarr had you brought halfway through.

That told you he was angry.

He liked his enemies to see what they had failed to take.

You entered in pale grey, not white. Never white now. Aemon was with Helicent, under guard. The council table seemed too large, the faces around it too careful.

Kiera did not look at you.

The High Septon did.

There was sorrow in his gaze.

That frightened you more than contempt would have.

Valarr sat at the head of the table. The crown rested before him rather than on his head. He did that sometimes, as if reminding men the thing was a tool, not an ornament.

“Speak,” he said.

Lord Lannister cleared his throat. “Your Grace, the matter is delicate.”

“Then touch it carefully.”

A few men shifted.

The older Tyroshi envoy smiled with too many teeth.

“In Tyrosh, we say a wound covered by silk still rots.”

Valarr’s gaze moved to him.

“In Westeros, we say guests who insult their host may leave without supper.”

The envoy’s smile faded.

Kiera finally spoke.

“Let them speak, Your Grace.”

Valarr looked at her.

The room noticed the title.

So did you.

The younger envoy bowed slightly.

“His Grace must understand Tyrosh has borne much for friendship. Our princess crossed the sea in good faith. She remains queen in name, yet all courts hear of another woman who holds the king’s heart, and a child who may one day be raised above lawful blood.”

Valarr’s fingers rested lightly on the table.

“Be careful of your next wods,” he said.

The envoy paled but continued.

“Tyrosh asks for reassurance.”

“Tyrosh asks much.”

“The lady must be removed from court.”

No one breathed.

You felt the words before you understood them. Removed. Such a clean word. A cloth laid over a knife.

Valarr’s face did not change.

“Must she?”

The High Septon spoke gently. “Your Grace, the sister has broken vows. The Faith has been patient because the realm has suffered much. But patience cannot become approval. There are houses where she may repent quietly.”

“Houses,” Valarr repeated.

“Motherhouses of strict observance.”

“Prisons with hymns.”

“Places of correction.”

The room chilled.

Valarr leaned back.

“And the child?”

Lord Lannister answered this time.

“The boy should be fostered by a loyal house, with honors befitting royal blood but without implication of succession.”

“Royal blood,” Valarr said.

“Your Grace—”

“My blood.”

A silence.

Kiera’s hands were folded so tightly her knuckles whitened.

You looked at her, and at last she looked back.

There was no triumph in her face.

Only dread.

She had wanted you gone.

Perhaps she had not wanted to see what Valarr would become when someone tried to make it happen.

The older Tyroshi envoy said, “No insult is intended.”

Valarr smiled.

Every man in the room wished he had not.

“No? Then you are clumsy as well as bold.”

“Your Grace—”

Valarr stood.

The room stood with him because it had to.

All but you.

You remained still.

“Let me reassure Tyrosh,” Valarr said. “Let me reassure the Faith. Let me reassure my loyal council, who have spent months mistaking my restraint for uncertainty.”

His hand settled on the crown.

“She will not be removed.”

The High Septon closed his eyes.

“The child will not be fostered.”

Lord Lannister looked away.

“And any man who speaks again of sending either from my sight will learn how little patience survived my fever.”

The Tyroshi envoy stiffened.

“Then Tyrosh must reconsider—”

Valarr moved so quickly no one stopped him.

He seized the envoy by the front of his bright robe and drove him back against the table hard enough to scatter cups. Men shouted. Kiera rose. The Kingsguard stepped forward, then froze at a glance from their king.

Valarr leaned close to the envoy’s face.

“Tyrosh,” he said softly, “was purchased with my marriage, not my soul. If your archon wishes to sell his friendship to Blackfyre boys because I have loved a woman not chosen by his ledgers, tell him this: I have more ships than Daemon’s sons, more dragons on my banners than they have in their blood, and far less mercy than my grandsire.”

The envoy trembled.

Valarr released him with disgust.

Then he turned to the council.

“This audience is ended.”

No one moved.

“I said,” Valarr whispered, “ended.”

They fled gracefully, because courtiers are trained to make cowardice look like manners.

Only Kiera remained.

And you.

Valarr was still breathing hard.

Kiera looked at him with something almost like pity.

“You have done it now,” she said.

He laughed.

“What have I done?”

“Chosen.”

His gaze flicked to you.

“No,” Kiera said. “Not her. You chose war over shame.”

Valarr’s face hardened.

“Leave.”

The queen gave a small bow.

Then she turned to you.

“I told you,” she said.

You did not answer.

After she was gone, Valarr came to you.

He reached for your hand.

You stepped back.

His expression changed.

“You are angry.”

“No, Valarr. I am afraid.”

“Of Tyrosh?”

“Of you.”

The words landed like a slap.

He stared at you.

You hated yourself for saying them.

You hated more that they were true.

“I protected you,” he said.

“You made me the match to set the realm alight.”

“They would have taken you.”

“And now they may take more.”

“I will stop them.”

“You cannot stop everything.”

His eyes blazed.

“Watch me.”

//

That was the last peaceful night you had with him.

You did not know it then.

Mercy, perhaps.

He came to you late, after the castle had gone quiet.

Aemon slept in the cradle near the bed. Valarr stood over him for a long while, still dressed in black, crownless, his face unreadable.

“Do you regret him?” he asked.

You were unpinning your hair.

The question struck so deep you could not answer at first.

“No.”

“Me?”

You looked at him through the mirror.

“Yes.”

His reflection went still.

Then you turned.

“And no.”

A faint, humorless smile touched his mouth.

“That sounds like a septa’s answer.”

“It is a woman’s answer.”

He came to you.

“Then answer me as a woman.”

You should have refused him.

You had refused him in your mind a thousand times. You had imagined sending him away and keeping your soul. You had imagined taking Aemon and disappearing into some quiet place where the name Targaryen could not find you. You had imagined becoming truly holy, truly repentant, truly free.

But Valarr touched your hair, and every imagined future turned to smoke.

“I love you,” you said.

His eyes closed.

There was the boy in him still. Buried, bleeding, alive.

“I love you,” you repeated, cruelly, kindly. “That is the root of all of it. Not your crown. Not your power. Not the child. You. I loved you when you were only a boy sulking in gardens. I loved you when they married you to another. I loved you when I took vows to survive loving you. I love you now, and it has not made me good.”

His hand cupped your face.

“No.”

“No?”

“It has made you mine.”

A tear slipped down your cheek.

“You hear love and translate it into ownership.”

“I hear love and know what the world will do to it if I do not hold tightly.”

“You hold too tightly.”

“I know.”

The admission broke you a little.

He rested his forehead against yours.

“I know,” he whispered. “But if I loosen my hand, they will take you.”

“And if you do not, you will crush me yourself.”

He had no answer.

Neither did you.

So you kissed him.

That was the shame of it. Not that you sinned in ignorance. You sinned with your eyes open, with dread in your mouth and love in your hands, with your son sleeping nearby and gods carved in silence on the wall.

Valarr held you afterward as if the bed were a battlefield and he had found you alive among the dead.

Near dawn, Aemon woke crying.

Valarr rose before you could.

You watched him lift the child, watched your son settle against his father’s chest, watched the king sway in the dim light with a tenderness no history would ever know how to record.

“He will hate me,” Valarr said quietly.

You pulled the sheet around yourself.

“Why?”

“For what I made his mother.”

You swallowed.

“And what did you make me?”

He looked at you.

“Loved,” he said.

It was such a beautiful lie that you let yourself believe it until morning.

//

The poison came in a cup of spiced milk.

Not wine. Wine would have been too obvious with Tyroshi envoys in the castle and whispers of Lyseni poisons in every corridor. Not sweetmeats, because Valarr had tasters for those. Milk was harmless. Milk was domestic. Milk was what women drank when they were tired and nursing and too heartsick to eat.

It came on a tray from the queen’s kitchens.

That was the cruelty of it.

Kiera had sent no such tray.

You learned that too late.

The girl who brought it was new. Young, freckled, shaking. You noticed the shaking. Of course you did. But half the servants shook near you now, terrified of the king’s wrath, the court’s judgment, the gods’ displeasure, or all three.

“For my lady,” she whispered.

“I am no lady.”

The girl’s eyes filled with sudden tears.

“No, Septa.”

The title made you ache.

You almost sent it away.

Then Aemon cried.

You had slept little the night before. Valarr had been in council until dawn, dealing with the Tyroshi delegation’s departure and a raven from the Stepstones. The court felt like a held breath. Even Helicent had told you to rest, which meant you looked half-dead.

So you drank.

It tasted of cinnamon, honey, and warmth.

For a while, nothing happened.

Then the cramps began.

At first, you thought it was exhaustion. Then bad milk. Then fear.

By the time you understood, your hands were cold.

You sent for Valarr.

Not the maester.

Valarr.

Helicent realized before the guards did. You saw it in her face when you doubled over beside the cradle.

“Seven save us,” she breathed.

“No,” you whispered. “Not them.”

You were tired of gods.

Valarr came running.

Kings should not run.

He did.

You were on the floor by then, Helicent’s arms around you, Aemon screaming in his cradle because he knew something was wrong in the animal way babes know. The maester had arrived and was shouting for hot water, charcoal, vinegar, things that would not matter.

Valarr saw you and stopped as if struck.

Then the world moved again.

“Who?” he said.

No one answered.

His voice became terrible.

“Who?”

The guard at the door went white.

“The tray, Your Grace—”

“What tray?”

“From the queen’s—”

Valarr turned.

“No,” you forced out.

It cost you more than you expected.

He was at your side instantly, dropping to his knees.

“Do not speak.”

“Kiera did not.”

His face was white. Not pale. White.

“You do not know that.”

“I know.”

“How?”

“Because she would have looked me in the face.”

Something moved in his eyes. Rage, grief, disbelief, love. All the beasts of him fighting in one cage.

The maester tried to reach for you.

Valarr shoved him aside so violently the old man nearly fell.

“Save her.”

“Your Grace, I—”

“Save her.”

The maester’s mouth opened.

Valarr drew his dagger.

The room froze.

“Save her,” he said again, softly, “or explain to the Stranger why you could not.”

You touched his wrist.

“Stop.”

He looked down at you.

The dagger lowered.

That was the last power you had over him.

You knew it.

So did he.

“Bring Aemon,” you whispered.

“No.”

“Valarr.”

“No.”

“I want to hold my son.”

His face broke.

He looked suddenly young again. The boy in the garden. The prince at your door. The man beneath your hands in fever.

He rose and lifted Aemon from the cradle.

The babe cried harder until Valarr brought him to you. Then, as if confused by your stillness, he quieted into hiccupping sobs.

You touched his cheek.

So soft.

So alive.

“My sweet boy,” you whispered.

Aemon blinked at you with Valarr’s eyes.

The cruelty of that nearly made you laugh.

You looked at Valarr.

“Do not make him a war.”

His jaw trembled.

“Do not ask me for mercy.”

“I am asking for him.”

“They killed you.”

“I am not dead yet.”

“You are leaving.”

There was accusation in it.

As if death were another vow you had taken without his permission.

You smiled faintly.

“I tried leaving you once. You were very dramatic.”

A sound broke from him.

Not laughter.

Not sobbing.

Something worse.

He pressed his forehead to your hand.

“I will find them.”

“Yes.”

“I will burn them.”

“No.”

His head lifted.

“No?”

“Justice,” you whispered. “Not rage.”

“I do not know the difference without you.”

“You must learn.”

“I refuse.”

You closed your eyes.

Pain moved through you in dark waves now. The room blurred. Helicent was praying. The maester was weeping. Aemon made small sounds against Valarr’s chest.

You forced your eyes open one last time.

“Do not kill her,” you said.

Valarr knew whom you meant.

His face hardened.

“If she—”

“She did not.”

“If she knew—”

“Valarr.”

He stopped.

You gathered what strength remained.

“Let Kiera live.”

His mouth twisted with hatred.

“For you?”

“For me. For him. For whatever is left of the man I loved before the crown taught him fear.”

That struck.

Good.

You wanted it to.

He bent over you, shaking now, and kissed your mouth.

It tasted of salt and poison.

“I will not let you go,” he whispered.

You would have laughed if you could.

Always that.

Always his refusal, beautiful and useless before gods, death, and consequence.

“You never learned,” you breathed, “that love is not keeping.”

His eyes filled.

At last.

Tears.

Real ones.

One fell onto your cheek.

You thought, foolishly, that it felt like rain.

Then the room went quiet.

The official record stated that the king’s cousin, formerly a septa of the Faith, died of a sudden wasting sickness in the first year of Valarr’s reign.

The official record lied.

Everyone knew.

No one said it.

That had always been the court’s truest language.

The girl who brought the tray was found dead before questioning. Her tongue had been cut out. The cook hanged herself, though some said she had help. A Tyroshi servant vanished. A sellsword with a purple beard was taken at the harbor and confessed after two days in the black cells. He named the elder envoy. The elder envoy had already sailed. His ship never reached Tyrosh.

Storm, some said.

Pirates, said others.

Valarr said nothing.

That was how they knew.

Kiera was confined to her apartments for twenty-one days while the investigation unfolded around her like a noose. On the twenty-second, Valarr went to her.

No one knew what passed between them.

Years later, a maid claimed she had heard the queen screaming. Another swore Kiera never raised her voice at all. A guard said the king emerged with blood on his hand. A septon said that was a lie.

Kiera lived.

Because you had asked.

But she never again wore pink in her hair.

Three moons after your death, the Tyroshi alliance shattered.

By year’s end, Tyroshi coin found its way to Blackfyre hands.

So all of it had been for nothing.

The marriage.

The vows.

The restraint.

The lies.

Nothing.

Except Aemon.

Valarr legitimized him on the first anniversary of your death.

The council begged him not to.

The High Septon refused to bless it.

Kiera did not attend.

Valarr stood before the Iron Throne with your son in his arms and named him Aemon Targaryen, prince of Dragonstone, blood of the dragon, his firstborn and heir until such time as the gods saw fit to give him another lawful son.

The court heard the challenge beneath the words.

The gods had seen fit to give him none.

Aemon was too young to understand. He only reached for the crown, fascinated by the rubies.

Valarr let him touch it.

Later, in the quiet, he took the boy to your old cell.

He had preserved it.

The narrow bed. The shelf of prayer books. The little table. The carved faces of the Seven. Your veil, folded where you had left it the night you first removed it for him.

Dust never settled there.

Servants saw to that.

Or Valarr did himself.

No one asked.

Aemon toddled uncertainly across the stone floor while Valarr watched from the doorway.

“This is where your mother lived,” he said.

The child touched the bedpost.

Valarr’s face tightened.

“She was stubborn,” he continued. “And too honest. And kinder than I deserved.”

Aemon looked up at him, solemn-eyed.

“Mama?”

The word passed through Valarr like a blade.

“Yes,” he said.

He knelt and drew the boy close.

For a moment, he could not speak.

Then, softly, “Your mama.”

Aemon patted his cheek with one small hand.

Valarr closed his eyes.

Outside, bells rang for evening prayer.

The sound filled the Red Keep, rolling over towers and courtyards, over the queen’s apartments where Kiera sat alone, over the council chamber where men whispered of Blackfyres, over the city that had sung songs of septas and dragons and sin.

Valarr stayed in your cell until the bells stopped.

Then longer.

When he rose, he lifted Aemon into his arms and looked once more at the bed, the books, the veil.

“I kept you,” he whispered.

But the room did not answer.

It was only a room.

That was the final cruelty.

Not that you had died.

Not that the realm had turned your love into scandal, policy, treason, and song.

Not even that Valarr, who had defied septons and envoys and councils, could not defy poison once it entered your blood.

The final cruelty was this:

He had kept everything.

A ribbon.

White, faded with age.

You had tied it around his wrist when you were fourteen after he lost a tourney bout and pretended not to care. For luck, you had said, though you both knew luck was only an excuse for touching.

He kept it in a small wooden box beside his bed. On the anniversary of your death, he took it out.

He did not pray. Prayer had become a language he refused to speak.

He only sat in the dark with the ribbon wrapped around his fingers and remembered the rain, the library, your hand in his, and the first vow no gods had heard.

And yet he kept your prayers.

Your child.

Your memory.

Your empty room.

They said afterward that the gods had loved King Valarr too much to take him.

That was the pretty version.

The septons liked that version best. It gave the singers something soft to put their mouths around, something sweet to sell to grieving girls in candlelit septs. The Stranger had walked through the Red Keep in the spring, they said, with his hand outstretched and his face hidden beneath his hood. He had brushed his fingers over princes and squires, over washerwomen and queens, over babes still soft with milk, over old men who had thought themselves too stubborn to die.

And when he came to Valarr Targaryen’s bed, he had paused.

Perhaps the king-to-be had been too beautiful. Perhaps the Stranger had mistaken him for one of his own pale angels. Perhaps Baelor Breakspear, dead at Ashford years before, had stood at the foot of his son’s bed in whatever kingdom the dead inhabited and said, Not him. Not yet.

That was the pretty version.

You knew the uglier truth.

Valarr had lived because you had begged every god until your throat bled.

You had knelt in the royal sept for three days while the Great Spring Sickness clawed its way through the city. You had lit candles until your fingers blistered. You had promised the Mother every kindness, the Father every obedience, the Maiden every remaining piece of innocence the world had not yet stolen from you. You had promised the Smith your hands, the Crone your mind, the Warrior your courage, and when those promises did not seem enough, you had turned at last to the Stranger.

“Take anything else,” you had whispered into the darkness beneath his carved face. “Take anyone else.”

A terrible prayer.

A selfish one.

A prayer no septa should ever have made.

But you had made it.

And Valarr had lived.

The fever left him thinner, sharper, with shadows beneath his eyes and a new stillness in him that had not been there before. His silver-gold hair had been cut short when the sweat and sickness matted it to his neck. His mouth, once quick to smile, grew careful. Men called it kingly. Women called it sorrow. You called it what it was.

He had died in part.

Only the worst of him had survived with the best.

The spring buried King Daeron. It buried princes and cousins and friends. It buried half the court in white shrouds and left the other half counting who stood nearest to the Iron Throne.

And when the bells finally stopped tolling, Valarr Targaryen rose from his sickbed and became king.

He was twenty and some years old, widowed of his youth, husband to a Tyroshi princess, and in love with a woman who had given herself to the Seven.

You.

His cousin.

His childhood companion.

His septa.

His sin.

//

You had loved Valarr before you knew love could become a crime.

As children, there had been nothing wicked in it.

He had been all dark hair and laughing eyes then, the son of Prince Baelor, the darling of the court. The servants adored him because he remembered their names. The knights and lords adored him because he was everything they wished a prince to be: handsome, courteous, brave enough to please them, gentle enough not to frighten them.

You had known better.

Valarr had been gentle, yes, but not soft. Even as a boy, there was a possessive streak in him that showed itself in small, strange ways. If another child took your ribbon, he did not cry for justice. He took the ribbon back and smiled as if he had done nothing at all.

If a lord’s son mocked your reading, Valarr waited three days, then humiliated him in the yard before half the Red Keep. If you bruised your knee, he brought you sweet cakes. If you thanked another boy for helping you stand, Valarr went quiet for the rest of the afternoon.

“Are you are sulking, my prince?” You asked him once, when you were ten and he twelve.

“I do not sulk.”

“You are doing it now.”

“I am thinking.”

“With your mouth pushed out?”

He had stared at you a long moment, offended in the manner of princes who had rarely been told no and almost never been told the truth.

Then he laughed.

That was how you loved him first: as laughter.

Later, you loved him as a secret.

You were older when the glances changed. Old enough to understand why ladies lowered their lashes when Valarr passed. Old enough to understand why your aunt watched the two of you too closely when you sat beside each other at feasts. Old enough to feel heat where innocence had once been.

He would stand too near. You would let him.

You would steal his cup and drink from it. He would watch the rim touch your mouth as if it were a holy thing.

In the gardens, beneath the blood-red leaves of the heart tree the Targaryens kept more for fashion than faith, he once caught your wrist and held it.

“You are promised to no one,” he said.

It was not a question.

You looked down at his hand. His fingers were long and warm, the nails clean, the knuckles faintly scarred from yard work. A prince’s hand trying to become a knight’s.

“Neither are you.”

“I will be.”

There was bitterness in that. Strange bitterness, for a boy who had always known he would be given the finest bride the realm could offer.

You swallowed. “Then why say it?”

His grip tightened.

“Because I wanted there to be one moment,” he said, “when you knew I would have chosen you.”

It was the first time your heart broke for him.

Not the last.

//

The council did not ask either of you what you wanted.

Councils never did.

By then, Daemon Blackfyre had already become more than a dead traitor’s name. His sons lived across the narrow sea, gathering sellswords, sympathizers, and hungry men who preferred a handsome lie to an ugly peace. Tyrosh was a jeweled door that could open either way. If Tyrosh favored the Blackfyres, gold and ships and swords might follow. If Tyrosh favored the Iron Throne, then Daemon’s brood would find one more harbor closed to them.

So the crown looked to Tyrosh.

Tyrosh looked to Valarr.

And Valarr was given Kiera.

“She is beautiful,” your mother said carefully, as if beauty were mercy.

“Yes, she is beautiful.”

You were offered matches too.

A Hightower cousin. A Lannister widower. A Velaryon lord with soft hands and three dead wives. Men came with compliments and jewels. They praised your Valyrian looks, your courtly manners, your piety, your quietness. They mistook grief for virtue. That was the first lesson you learned as a woman: if you were silent enough, men would call it goodness.

You refused them all.

At first gently.

Then firmly.

Then with such coldness that your uncle told you that you were beginning to make a spectacle of yourself.

“A spectacle?” you asked. “Forgive me. I thought I was only refusing to be sold.”

“You are a princess of the blood.”

“I am a girl no one asked.”

“You will do your duty.”

“I have seen what duty does to those who do it well.”

Your uncle’s mouth tightened.

There were arguments. Tears. Threats. Pleas. Your family assumed, as families often did, that stubbornness was a fever that would break if one waited long enough.

It did not break.

When Valarr’s betrothal to Kiera of Tyrosh was announced, you went to the High Septon and asked to take vows.

He studied you for a long while. He was an old man then, with skin like folded parchment and eyes too tired to be deceived.

“Many girls come to the Seven when their hearts are wounded,” he said.

“Then the Seven must have a great many girls.”

“And few remain when the wound begins to heal.”

“It will not heal.”

“You are very young to make such a vow.”

“Yet, I was old enough to be offered to old men.”

His mouth twitched, though whether in amusement or sorrow, you could not tell.

“My child,” he said softly, “the gods are not a cloak to hide beneath.”

“No,” you said. “They are a wall.”

“And what is it you wish to keep out?”

You thought of Valarr’s hand around your wrist.

You thought of the way he had said, I would have chosen you.

“Myself,” you whispered.

The High Septon looked at you then as if he knew everything.

Perhaps he did.

That was the trouble with holy men. Now and then, one of them was truly holy.

//

Valarr came to you the night before your vows.

You had expected him.

The chamber given to you before your formal removal to the motherhouse was small and narrow, with whitewashed walls and a single window overlooking the city. King’s Landing smelled of smoke, salt, and rot. Even high above the streets, the stench crept in. You stood by the window in a plain white shift, your silver hair unbound for the last time.

When the door opened, you did not turn.

“My prince, why are you here? No guard announced you.”

“No guard would dare stop me.”

“That is does not give you permission.”

“No,” Valarr said. “It does not.”

His voice was low. Not angry. Not yet.

You heard the door close.

For a moment there was only silence and the distant noise of the city below. A cart wheel. A dog barking. Men laughing somewhere they had no right to be happy.

Then he said, “Take it off.”

Your hands curled around the windowsill.

“I have not put it on yet.”

“The vow, then. The idea of it. Take it off.”

You closed your eyes.

“Valarr.”

“No.” His voice cracked like a whip. “Do not say my name with such warmth when you wish to leave me.”

At that, you turned.

He was still dressed from supper, though he had removed his cloak. Black velvet. Red silk. A dragon worked in rubies over his heart. He was beautiful in a way that made people foolish. You had seen hardened knights soften when he smiled at them. You had seen ladies forget their own names.

But he was not smiling now.

His face was pale with fury.

“They told me today,” he said.

You said nothing.

“They told me as if it were some amusing court gossip. As if my cousin’s decision to bury herself alive should entertain me over wine.”

“I am not burying myself.”

“You are taking vows to gods you are using as gaolers.”

That struck because it was true.

You lifted your chin. “And you are marrying a woman for ships.”

His jaw clenched.

“Aye,” he said. “I am.”

The honesty hurt worse than denial would have.

He crossed the room quickly, too quickly, and stopped before touching you. That restraint was more intimate than any touch. Valarr had always wanted things with his whole body. Horses. Victory. Your laughter. Your attention. You had watched him grow and had learned the language of his wanting. He stood before you now like a man holding himself by the throat.

“Do not do this,” he said.

“I have already done it.”

“You have not said the words.”

“Words are not the beginning of a vow.”

“They are the part that matters.”

“To men, perhaps.”

“To kings. To septons. To fools.” His eyes searched yours. “To me.”

You looked away.

He caught your chin.

Not harshly. Never harshly. That was the worst of Valarr. His cruelty rarely looked like cruelty at first. It looked like tenderness with its hands closed too tight.

“Look at me,” he whispered.

You did.

He swallowed. “If you ask me, I will stop it.”

The world seemed to tilt beneath you.

You laughed once, softly, without humor. “You cannot stop your marriage.”

“I can stop yours to the gods.”

“And then what? I remain at court while you wed Kiera? I sit beside her and embroider little dragons onto cloth for the sons she gives you?”

“She may never—”

“Do not.” Your voice sharpened. “Do not make an enemy of a girl who has done nothing but be chosen in my place.”

Pain moved across his face.

“I did not choose her.”

“No,” you said. “That is what makes it unbearable.”

His hand slid from your chin to your cheek.

“I love you.”

You had dreamed of those words. Feared them. Buried them a hundred times.

Now that he had said them, they did not free you.

They ruined you.

“Valarr,” you said, and hated how weak you sounded.

“I love you,” he repeated, more fiercely. “I loved you when we were children. I loved you before I knew what it meant. I loved you when they brought me her portrait. I loved you when my father told me the realm needed Tyrosh. I loved you when I said yes.”

Your eyes burned.

“Then why did you say yes?”

His hand fell.

For a moment he looked younger than he was.

“Because my father asked me,” he said.

There it was. The cruel little heart of duty.

Baelor Breakspear had been the best of them. Everyone said so. Noble, just, beloved. The son every king wanted, the prince every realm prayed for. And because he had been good, because he had carried duty like a holy sword, he had taught his son to kneel beneath it.

You could not even hate him.

That would have been easier.

Valarr stepped closer. “I will find a way.”

“There is no way.”

“There is always a way.”

“No, Valarr.”

His mouth twisted.

“You would rather belong to the Seven than to me?”

“I would rather belong to something that will not ask me to watch it love another woman.”

He flinched.

Then he kissed you.

You should have stopped him.

You did not.

For one stolen moment, there was no Tyrosh, no Blackfyre, no crown, no gods. Only his mouth on yours, desperate and familiar and new, his hands in your hair, your fingers clutching the velvet at his chest. He kissed you as if he could force time backward with his lips. As if he could return you both to the gardens, to childhood, to a world where wanting did not yet have consequences.

When you broke away, you were crying.

“So that is what you give me?” you whispered. “The thing I must repent before I have even vowed?”

His forehead rested against yours.

“I would give you everything.”

“You do not have everything.”

“I will.”

“You will have a wife.”

His eyes darkened.

“I will have a queen.”

The distinction chilled you.

You stepped back.

“Go.”

“No.”

“Go, Valarr.”

He looked at you for a long moment, and in his eyes you saw something that frightened you more than anger. Calculation. Possession. A promise not spoken because even he knew it would damn him.

At last, he bowed.

Not as a lover.

As a prince.

“As my lady commands.”

The next morning, you put on white.

And when the High Septon asked whether you gave your body and soul to the service of the Seven, you said yes with Valarr’s kiss still burning on your mouth.

Kiera of Tyrosh arrived in a storm of color.

Her hair was pink.

Not the soft pink of a summer blush, but a rich Tyroshi pink, deep as painted glass. Her gowns were bright enough to shame flowers. Her jewels chimed when she walked. She laughed too loudly for Westerosi ladies and spoke too sharply for Westerosi lords and looked at the Red Keep as if she meant to conquer it by surviving it.

You tried not to hate her.

At first, it was easy.

She was not cruel then.

Proud, yes. Vain, certainly. Lonely, though she hid it well. She had been shipped across the narrow sea to marry a man who looked through her politely. You understood too well what it meant to be used for peace. The only difference was that Kiera had been painted and perfumed for her sacrifice, while you had been dressed in white and praised for making yours holy.

The wedding was magnificent.

Of course it was.

The crown needed the realm to see its alliance. Tyroshi merchants filled the galleries. Westerosi lords smiled with their teeth. The High Septon spoke of unity beneath the Seven. Valarr stood before the altar in black and red, his face perfect, his eyes empty.

You stood among the septas.

You told yourself he would not look at you.

He did.

Not when Kiera entered, though every head turned toward her. Not when the vows were spoken. Not when the cloak bearing the three-headed dragon was wrapped around her shoulders.

He looked at you when he said, “With this kiss, I pledge my love.”

The court saw.

Not all of them.

Enough.

Kiera saw too.

You knew because her smile did not falter.

Only her eyes changed.

//

Years passed in the strange way unhappy years do.

Slowly while they happen.

Swiftly when you look back.

Valarr became more controlled. Marriage made him courteous. Grief made him charming. Duty made him false. He danced with Kiera at feasts, escorted her to tourneys, sat beside her in public, gave her jewels appropriate to her station and respect appropriate to her name. He never humiliated her openly.

That was a kind of mercy.

It was also a kind of insult.

A woman can be starved on courtesy. You learned that watching Kiera. She had his arm but never his warmth, his name but never his hunger. The court pitied her and envied her and mocked her in the same breath.

As for you, you became Septa quietly.

Not a septa.

Septa Quietly.

That was what the novices called you when they thought you could not hear. You tended candles, taught highborn girls their letters, sewed altar cloths, carried broth to the sick, listened to old women confess the same sins with different names. Your life narrowed until it could fit inside a prayer book.

Then the Great Spring Sickness came and tore the book apart.

You saw men die with their eyes open. Women turned black beneath the skin. Children went still between one breath and the next. The city became a mouth full of bells. Every hour, another tolling. Every tolling, another body.

Valarr fell ill three days after King Daeron.

Kiera was kept from him after her own ladies began to cough. The maesters came and went with bowls of vinegar and bloodied cloths. Lords whispered in corners. The line of succession became a dagger passed from hand to hand.

You broke your enclosure to go to him.

No one stopped you.

Perhaps they thought a septa had a right to deathbeds.

Perhaps they knew better than to stand between you and Valarr.

His chamber stank of sweat, smoke, and sickness. A brazier burned too hot. The sheets were soaked. Valarr thrashed beneath them, his hair damp against his brow, his lips cracked.

He did not know you at first.

Then, near dawn, his eyes opened.

“Do not take vows,” he rasped.

Your heart split.

“I already did.”

“No.” His fingers moved weakly against the sheet. “I came too late.”

You took his hand.

“I am here now.”

He stared at you through fever, lost in some past that had never stopped happening inside him.

“If I ask,” he whispered, “will you stop it?”

You pressed his hand to your mouth.

The maester later told people that the fever broke because the poultices finally drew the heat from him. The septons said your prayers moved the Mother. The court said dragon’s blood ran too hot for common sickness to consume.

You knew none of them were right.

Valarr survived because he refused to leave you.

That was romantic only to fools.

To you, it was terrifying.

//

His coronation came before the city had finished digging graves.

The crown placed upon his head had belonged to dead men. Heavy red gold, black iron, rubies dark as clotted blood. Valarr knelt a prince and rose a king, pale from illness, beautiful as a carved saint, and colder than anyone that young had a right to be.

“Kneel,” the heralds cried.

The realm knelt.

So did you.

Valarr’s gaze found you over the bowed heads of lords and ladies.

For a heartbeat, neither of you moved.

Then he looked away.

That night, he came to your cell.

Not your chamber. Septas did not have chambers. Chambers were for ladies, wives, mistresses, queens. Septas had cells. A narrow bed. A chest. A basin. A shelf for prayer books. A small window too high for much view. A life arranged to discourage wanting.

You were folding linen when the knock came.

Three soft taps.

You knew them.

You opened the door and found the king.

No crown. No cloak. Only a dark tunic, loose at the throat, and the exhaustion of a man who had been made into a symbol before he had finished being a son.

For a moment you only looked at each other.

Then you said, “Your Grace.”

His mouth tightened.

“Do not.”

You stepped aside.

He entered.

The room became smaller around him. Valarr had always had that effect. Not because he was large, though he had grown tall, but because his presence gathered every loose thing to him. Light. Air. Attention. You.

He looked around your cell.

“This place is beneath you."

You closed the door.

It was madness. You did it anyway.

“You should not be here.”

“No.”

“You are king now.”

“Yes.”

“You have a queen.”

“I know.”

You looked at him then, truly looked. The fever had hollowed him. Grief had sharpened what sickness left behind. He wore survival badly. Some men survived and became grateful. Valarr had survived and become owed.

“Why did you come?” you asked.

His answer was quiet.

“Because everyone I love is dead.”

A cruel answer. A true one.

You sat on the edge of the narrow bed because your knees had weakened. Valarr remained standing a moment longer, as if some last remnant of propriety held him upright.

Then he crossed the room and knelt before you.

The king of the Seven Kingdoms knelt on the bare stone floor of a septa’s cell and laid his head in your lap.

You should have told him to rise.

You should have called the guards, the High Septon, the queen herself.

Instead, your hand moved into his hair.

It was shorter than it had been before the fever. Soft still. Dark still with the streak of silver. You stroked it as you had once done when you were children and he had fallen asleep beneath a tree after too much training.

He shuddered once.

Only once.

Valarr hated weakness. Even in grief, he rationed it.

“I dreamed of you,” he said against your skirts.

“You were fevered.”

“I have been fevered for years.”

“You should not say such things.”

“Then command me silent, Septa.”

The title from his mouth should have been mockery.

It sounded like prayer.

You closed your eyes.

“Be silent, Valarr.”

He obeyed.

For a while, that was all it was.

A king kneeling.

A septa touching his hair.

A grief so vast that even sin seemed small beside it.

After that, he came often.

Not every night. That would have been too easy for the court to mark and too difficult for either of you to deny. Valarr was careful when care suited his desires. He came after council meetings that left him cold-eyed and quiet. He came after letters from the Stepstones. He came when rumors of Blackfyre movements reached the city. He came on his father’s nameday and said nothing at all.

Sometimes he spoke.

Of rule. Of loneliness. Of the absurdity of men twice his age telling him what must be done while fearing he might actually do it. Of Kiera, though rarely. Of Tyrosh, never kindly. Of the dead, only when darkness had softened him enough to bleed.

Sometimes you spoke.

Of the girls you taught. Of the small cruelties of court ladies. Of a washerwoman’s son who had survived the fever and now left flowers before the Mother every dawn. Of prayers you could no longer say without feeling dishonest.

Sometimes you argued.

“You cannot have Lord Costayne whipped because he bored you.”

“He did not bore me. He contradicted me.”

“A dreadful crime.”

“In council, yes.”

“Perhaps if you wished never to be contradicted, you should have become a septon. Men only pretend to listen to them.”

That made him laugh, briefly.

You lived for those laughs.

You hated yourself for it.

Other nights, he only sat on the floor with his back against your bed, and you read aloud from books he did not care about. The Seven-Pointed Star. Histories of dead kings. A dull treatise on Dornish inheritance law that made him groan so pitifully you nearly smiled.

“Are you trying to send me to the Stranger?” he asked.

“I thought you had escaped him.”

“I may surrender if you continue.”

“The law is important.”

“The law is what men call desire once they have written it down.”

You paused.

He glanced back at you, eyes half-lidded.

“What?” he asked.

“You are too clever when you are tired.”

“I am too honest when I am tired.”

“That is worse.”

“Yes,” he said softly. “It is.”

The air changed then, as it sometimes did.

Nothing had happened, and yet everything had. His shoulder against your knee. Your hand resting too near his throat. The faint scent of him, smoke and clean linen and something warmer beneath. You would become aware of your own body as if it were a stranger’s. The vows you had taken would rise up around you like white walls.

And Valarr would look at you as if walls were only things men built so dragons might have something to break.

“You should go,” you would whisper.

He would stand.

He would go.

Until one night, he did not.

It rained that night.

Hard rain, black against the window, drumming on the roof of the Red Keep like fingers on a coffin lid. Valarr came late, soaked through, his hair darkened with water, his face set in an expression you knew too well.

“What happened?” you asked.

He did not answer.

“Valarr.”

He turned away and braced both hands on your little table.

You noticed then the blood on his sleeve.

Not much.

Enough.

You crossed to him quickly. “Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Please do not lie to me.”

“It is not mine.”

That should not have comforted you.

It did.

You hated that too.

“Whose?”

He laughed once. “You ask that as if names matter.”

“They do to the dead.”

“He is not dead.”

“Valarr.”

He looked at you then.

The rain traced his face like tears he would never shed.

“Lord Penrose suggested the realm would sleep easier if my marriage produced a child.”

You went still.

“He further suggested,” Valarr continued, too calmly, “that if the queen remained barren, the council might consider whether the fault lay with foreign blood.”

Your stomach turned.

“What did you do?”

“I reminded him that my wife is queen.”

That surprised you.

Then Valarr smiled without warmth.

“And then I broke his nose.”

You exhaled.

“You cannot break the nose of every man who insults Kiera.”

“I can try.”

“She will hear of it.”

“Good.”

The word was sharp.

Understanding came slowly, then all at once.

You stared at him. “You defended her because they insulted what belongs to you.”

His eyes darkened.

“She is my queen.”

“She is your wife.”

“She is a piece of the peace they purchased with me.”

“And I?” you asked before you could stop yourself. “What am I?”

The rain filled the silence.

Valarr turned fully toward you.

“You know.”

“I want to hear you say it.”

A dangerous request.

His face changed.

Not softened. Never only that. It opened, and what looked out was hunger wrapped in grief.

“You are the part of me they did not manage to sell.”

Your breath caught.

He came closer.

You should have stepped back.

You did not.

“Valarr.”

“You asked.”

“And you answered like a man trying to ruin me.”

“No.” His hand rose to your cheek. “I answered like a man already ruined.”

His thumb brushed the edge of your veil.

You caught his wrist.

“No. Do not.”