River

where to find me — tiktok. ao3. wattpad.

warnings: mention/implied incest (targcest, cousins.) mdni. first person pov (lucera rivers.) not proofread.

cousin daeron says it without saying it plainly, circling it like men circle something foul in the road, that aerion's cruelty has a root, and that root is me. i do not argue against it; there is no argument to be made. the thought had come to me long before daeron ever gave it voice, settling crookedly in the hollows of my mind. i have seen the way aerion moves, the cruelty that lives behind his eyes, the heat that rises too quickly and burns for far too long. it would be easier, perhaps, to call it his alone, to name it his failing and be done with it, but i know that fire. i have carried it longeer than he has. i have fed it, even when i told myself i was only warming my hands.

uncle brynden had given it sharper words than cousin daeron's half-kind evasions. bastards spoil what they touch, he had said, not unkindly; a truth worn smooth from use. it is our nature. a passed down rot that does not show at once, but spreads all the same. he spoke of father and of what he had done to aunt shiera, to uncle daemon, to me— of all the ways a man might stain what he claimed to love. he speaks of me in the same breath, not cruelly, but without pause, as if there were no difference worth marking. i listened, and i remember the way the words sat in my head, as if they had always been there and i had only now noticed them.

it seemed only a matter of time before i proved him right. cousin aerion had simply been there when it began to show.

yet the blame does not sit still on my shoulders, no matter how often i try to bear it that way. it slips and resists. there is something in him that answers me, something that rises to meet what i carry. rot does not bloom in barren ground. it needs something willing, something that takes it in and feeds it.

he was not always as he is now, daeron knew that better than most. there was a time when his laughter came easier, when he had not yet learned to bite. i remember that, though memory has a way of softening what it cannot bear to hold in full. i remember, too, the moment that ease began to thin, the way it slipped into something narrower, more dangerous. it did not happen all at once, but rather in small shifts that went unnoticed until it was no longer what it once had been.

i was there for those shifts, just as he was there for mine, and i did not turn him away.

it would be better, i think, if the fault lay wholly with me. if i could say that i brought something into him that was not there before, that i planted it and watched it grow. there is a kind of order in that, a cause and effect that makes the thing easier to name, but that is not the trth of it. what lives in cousin aerion answers to what lives in me, but it was not made by it. it was waiting, and it would have found its way to the surface, with or without my hand to guide it. and i know that does not absolve me.

at times i tell myself it is not corruption, not truly. that it is something older, something that has always been there, given a different name by those who wish to pretend they are untouched by it. blood recognizes blood; that is what we are taught, in one form or another— that what runs through us binds and shapes us, calls to itself across the distance between bodies.

we are told there are lines that must not be crossed. that there are boundaries set not only by law but by something deeper, something that marks what is permitted and what is not. i have heard septons speak of it, have watched them draw neat divisions between what is right and what is condemned. it has always seemed a fragile thing, that neatness; a surface that cracks the moment it is pressed too hard.

but what we are does not fit within those lines. it would be easier, perhaps, if i could call it wrong and feel the certainty of that word settle in me. to name it sin and be done with it. but the feeling does not come. there is no clean break, no moment where desired turns into something wholly rejected. it burns the same, whether named or unnamed. it consumes just as fully. if it is worng, it is a wrongness that has been carried in our blood for generations, tended and passed down as carefully as any crown or name.

i cannot pretend it began with me. i cannot. it did not begin with aerion, either.

our parents knew it. their parents before them knew it as well. it threads back through them, through every union that bent where it should not, through every choice that ignored the boundaries set by others and answered only to the pull within. it reaches back further still, to those who first took what they wanted and named it theirs, who built a dynasty on the certainty that their blood set them apart, that it answered to a different law.

we are told that we descend from gods. that the fire in us is the same fire that forged our kingdoms, that bent the world to their will. it is a thing spoken with pride, most often; a legacy to be upheld, not questioned. but fire does not choose what it burns. it does not care whether the thing it consumes is enemy or kin, stranger or self. it only hungers.

sometimes i think that is all this is. hunger, given permission, not an aberration, not a flaw introduced by some failing in me or in him, in us, but a continuation. a pattern repeated because it has always been repeated, because no one with the power to stop it ever chose to.

that does not make it gentler, if anything, it makes it harder to escape. a thing learned can be unlearned, in time. a thing that lives in the blood is another matter. it waits. it speaks in quiet moments, in looks held a fraction too long, in thoughts that return no matter how often they are pushed aside. it does not need to be taught, but more so allowed, and that we were.

there are times when i try to imagine a different fate for us. one where the line was held, where the wanting was turned aside before it could take root. it is difficult to see clearly. the image refuses to settle. it feels thin, insubstantial, as if it belongs to someone else entirely. not to us. never us.

we are what we have been made by generations of the same choices, the same indulgences, the same refusals to turn away. it has gathered in us, layer upon layer, until it is no longer something separate from who we are.

it is in me. it is in him. it is in all of us.

call it rot, if that makes it easier to bear. a corruption passed down, a flaw that spreads and deepens with each generation that refuses to cut it out. the name does not change the thing itself. it does not make it weaker, or easier to deny.

that is the truth i return to, however much i might wish it otherwise. an explanation further away from absolution.

first of all, there's something utterly bizarre about lady drumm collecting and wearing bones for jewelry. just the fact that she never takes off her teeth necklace absolutely pisses him off. (where the fuck did she find enough bear teeth to make a whole necklace?!)

then, of course, the way she carries her deceased mother's skull around and talks to "her"— asking for advice, complaining about the southern heat at summerhall, or about her new dysfunctional family, or simply having a conversation, as if by a miracle, her "mother" would reply back. (maekar had vowed to himself, that the day the skull made even a sound as a response, he would join the night's watch and let the wildings eat him alive.)

her name, too, he didn't like. ravyn. ravyn. ravyn. ravyn. it sounds like raven. it sounds like lord bloodraven. maekar did not like that one bit. (maybe they were conspiring against him and his.)

and obviously, he didn't like the control she had over daeron. she could ask him to jump into the sea, and he would do so gladly just to please her; maekar considered it dangerous, for his heir to be so willing to die by the hand of his wife if it brought her some happiness. (sometimes, maekar thought it a blessing, that at least someone could pull daeron's leash and keep him grounded, and mostly sober, like a well behaved puppy.)

HI DILLY i say in happiness

maekar had pressed his lips tight and bit his tongue hard, so as to not mutter his son's vows under his breath on their wedding day. the same vows he had said to his late wife, the same vows he had begrudgingly taught his eldest son.

lady drumm, in turn, had looked past daeron to where maekar stood, before saying her own vows, almost as if needing permission, or approval, to marry his son. and maybe she did. even from the small distance between them, maekar did notice she held the same disdain for him that he did for her.

there had been a bedding ceremony. there had to be. it was needed when the wedding had been rushed to cover the fact that prince daeron had deflowered the holy lady of old wyk, as if there weren't a thousand whores and more for him to choose and sully as he pleased.

maekar had watched them. there had been no need for him to do so, but he had watched. he had stood at the footboard, and he had heard, perhaps too cleanly, how soft her moans were, and he had thought, in quiet hope and louder rage, that lady drumm was feigning to enjoy his eldest son lazily rutting against her body.

he had felt embarrassed of his son, of course, what father wouldn't? though not a brute nor a monster, daeron lacked what a man needed to be a proper husband. and maybe that was maekar's own fault, for not teaching him better. for allowing him to drink and whore and run away from time to time with no real consequences.

maekar, who think she's weird and off-putting.

maekar, who still tries to get her to at least tolerate summerhall.

maekar, who sees lady drumm sulking, and daeron nowhere to be found, so he approaches her.

maekar, who learns that she hasn't been able to pray since the wedding, almost three months ago.

maekar, who after that first real conversation, starts meeting her in the gardens for a daily stroll.

maekar, who makes the maidservants pamper lady drumm, so she would be more comfortable because "she is carrying my grandchild."

maekar, who tries to arrange for her brother and sister to come visit her, to no avail.

maekar, who decides to take her to the sea of dorne, the closest sea to summerhall, so she can pray to her Drowned God. (if she can find him so far south.)

maekar, who doesn't dislike his eldest son's wife that much.

with aerion is pretty plain; hes a spoiled prince, he's bound to be that way.

but nerea is different. like how come shes from the woke land (dorne) from the noble house that mocks the ROYAL HOUSE and still has time to be critical about the commonfolk's "lack of manners". she's literally posing as one of them and still has the audacity to be judgy about their lifestyle (as if it wasnt backed up by the rich).