a jade, a rose, and a sapphire iris

In your arms, nestled against your chest, were two small bundles.

You sat in the rocking chair by the window—the same chair your own mother had rocked you in, shipped all the way from your childhood home at Valarr's insistence—with your head tipped back against the cushion and your eyes closed. The afternoon sun fell across your face in warm stripes, and for the first time in weeks, you felt something close to peace.

Your daughter, Valaerya, lay on your left side, wrapped in cream-colored silk embroidered with tiny golden dragons. At three days old, she had the temperament of a little queen, demanding and particular and utterly uncompromising. Her tiny fist was curled around a lock of your hair, holding on with surprising strength, and even in sleep, her brow was furrowed in concentration, as though she were dreaming of important matters.

Your son, Vaelor, lay on your right, wrapped in pale gold silk patterned with silver thread. He was the quieter of the two, content to observe and contemplate before making his opinions known. His hair was already showing the famous Targaryen silver gold, with a dark streak at the front that mirrored his father's reverse marking. His rosebud mouth was slightly open, his breathing soft and even, and every so often he would make a tiny snuffling sound that made your heart clench with an emotion too large for words.

Seven gods, you loved them. You loved them so much it sometimes felt like drowning.

The door to the nursery opened with a soft click, and you heard footsteps, familiar footsteps, unhurried but not quiet, the footsteps of someone who was trying very hard not to wake sleeping babies but was not particularly skilled at it.

You didn't open your eyes. You didn't need to.

"Are you staring at them again?"

Valarr's voice came from the doorway, soft and amused. He was already dressed, he looked beautiful.

"I'm watching them breathe," you whispered. "I know they're breathing. I can see them breathing. But if I stop watching, they might stop."

"That's not how breathing works, my love."

"You don't know that."

You felt him kneel beside the rocking chair, felt the warmth of his presence close to you. A moment later, his fingertip brushed over Vaelor's downy head with a gentleness that seemed almost impossible for hands that had wielded swords and held dragon reins.

"They're perfect," he said quietly.

"They have your stubbornness." You finally opened your eyes, turning your head to look at him. "Valaerya screamed for an hour last night because her swaddle wasn't exactly to her liking."

Valarr's lips twitched. "Ah. That's your stubbornness, actually."

"My swaddles are works of art."

"They're prisons, according to our daughter." He leaned down and pressed a kiss to Valaerya's forehead, then Vaelor's, then yours. His lips lingered on your skin for a moment longer than necessary. "She gets her sense of injustice from you as well."

"I am perfectly reasonable."

"You once argued with Matarys for twenty minutes because he was using the wrong fork."

"There are different forks for different courses! It's not my fault he didn't know the difference between a salad fork and a dinner fork!"

Valarr laughed, quietly, so as not to wake the babies, but his shoulders shook with it. The sound was bright and warm, and you found yourself smiling despite your indignation.

"The point," you continued, lowering your voice, "is that I am not stubborn. I am principled."

"My love." He took your hand, raising it to his lips. "You are the most stubborn person I have ever met. And I have met my father. And my grandfather. And several dragons."

"I am not more stubborn than a dragon."

"Debatable."

You swatted at him, but he caught your hand and held it, his thumb tracing circles on your palm. The babies stirred slightly at the movement, and both of you froze, holding your breath. But Vaelor only snuffled and settled deeper against your chest, and Valaerya's grip on your hair tightened briefly before relaxing.

The moment passed. You exhaled.

Valarr watched the twins for a long moment, his expression soft and wondering. He'd been like this since they were born, constantly in awe of them, unable to look away for more than a few minutes at a time. He'd held them for hours yesterday, one in each arm, simply staring at their faces as though he were trying to memorize every detail.

It was beautiful. It was also, you suspected, leading up to something.

You'd been married long enough now—nearly a year and a half—to recognize the signs. The slightly too-casual tone. The careful way he was avoiding your eyes. The way his thumb had started moving faster against your palm, a nervous habit he'd had since childhood.

"No," you said immediately.

Valarr blinked. "I haven't—"

"No. Whatever it is, no."

"You don't even know what I was going to say."

"I know that look." You shifted the babies slightly, adjusting their weight against your chest. "You have a question. A question you suspect I won't like. And you're trying to figure out how to ask it in a way that makes me say yes."

Valarr had the decency to look sheepish. "That's… not inaccurate."

"Tell me."

He was quiet for a moment, his gaze dropping to the twins, then rising to meet yours. When he spoke, his voice was softer than before. Tentative, almost. "I want to show them to her."

You didn't need to ask who her was.

"Valarr." You said his name carefully, evenly. "You want to take our three day old twins to see your dragon."

"Not take them. Not really. I just want her to see them. To meet them." He shifted closer, his knee brushing against the rocker of the chair. "She protected them for months, remember? She knew before we did. She kept you safe. She kept them safe." His mismatched eyes were earnest, pleading. "She deserves to meet them."

You thought about Aerrix. About the massive black and white dragon with her golden eyes and her rumbling purr. About the way she'd nudged your belly so gently during those months of your pregnancy, cooing at the life growing inside you like a mother bird tending her nest. About how she'd refused to let you mount her, not out of malice or capriciousness, but out of an instinct so deep and primal that it had overridden even her rider's commands.

A dragon had protected your children before they were born. A dragon had known they existed before any of you did.

You looked down at Vaelor and Valaerya, at their peaceful sleeping faces, and felt something shift in your chest.

"Fine," you sighed. "But we're bringing the wet nurses. And we're not staying long. And if either baby starts crying, we leave immediately. No arguments."

Valarr's face lit up like sunrise over the Narrow Sea, that boyish grin that had convinced you to do approximately a thousand things you never would have done otherwise. He leaned forward and kissed you, soft and quick, mindful of the babies between you.

"Thank you," he said against your lips. "Thank you. I promise you won't regret it."

"I already regret it," you said, but you were smiling.

--

The walk to the dragonpit was longer than you remembered, or perhaps it only felt longer because you were moving slower than usual. Your body was still healing, and the wet nurses walked at a careful pace behind you, each carrying one of the twins. Valarr stayed close to your side, one hand resting at the small of your back, ready to steady you if you stumbled.

The massive iron doors stood open, guarded by two Dragonkeepers, they bowed as you and Valarr approached, and one of them said something in High Valyrian that you didn't catch.

Valarr responded in kind, his voice calm and commanding, and the Keepers stepped aside.

You could hear the dragons before you could see them. Low rumbles echoed through the tunnels, punctuated by the occasional shriek or hiss. The sounds came from everywhere and nowhere, bouncing off the stone walls until you couldn't tell which direction they were coming from. Your heart, which had been steady until now, began to beat faster.

Valarr's hand tightened on your back. "Breathe," he murmured.

"I'm breathing."

"You're holding your breath. I can tell."

You forced yourself to exhale. Then inhale. The air was warm and strange, but it was air, and you could breathe it, and you were fine.

Valarr led you past several dens, each one containing a dragon of varying size and color. You caught glimpses of them as you passed, a flash of green scales here, a cloud of steam from a red dragon's nostrils there. Most of them ignored you, lost in their own reptilian contemplations, but a few watched you pass with those unblinking golden eyes, and you pressed closer to your husband.

Finally, you reached the deepest part of the pit, where the largest den was carved into the living rock.

Aerrix's den. You paused at the entrance, your feet refusing to carry you forward. The den was massive, easily three times the size of the others you'd passed, with a ceiling that rose into darkness and walls that glistened with mineral deposits from centuries of dragon breath. And there, sprawled across the rocky ground like a mountain made of scales, was Aerrix.

She was sleeping. Even at rest, she was magnificent. Her black and white scales gleamed in the torchlight, shifting between colors as the flames flickered, pure white in one moment, deep black in the next, and sometimes a swirling pattern of both that seemed to move across her hide like clouds across the sky. Her horns curved back from her head in elegant spirals, the tips sharp as swords. Her wings were folded against her sides, the membranes stretched taut between bone, and you could see the veins running through them like rivers on a map.

Her sides rose and fell with a rhythm that shook the ground beneath your feet. Every breath she took sent vibrations through the stone, and you could feel them in your chest, your teeth, your bones.

Seven save you, she was terrifying.

Valarr squeezed your hand. "Stay here," he said quietly. "Let me approach her first. Let her wake slowly."

He walked forward, his footsteps echoing in the cavern, and you watched as Aerrix stirred. Her massive head lifted from the ground, those golden eyes opening and fixing on her rider with unmistakable affection. She made a sound and Valarr laughed, a soft, happy sound that echoed off the walls.

"Good afternoon to you too," he said, pressing his forehead against her snout. "I've brought someone to see you. Someone very important to me."

He glanced back at you, gesturing you forward. The wet nurses hesitated behind you, clearly nervous, but you forced your feet to move. Aerrix's head swung toward you, those golden eyes fixing on your small figure with an intensity that made your blood run cold. You could feel her breath now, warm and smelling faintly of smoke and something metallic, ruffling your hair and your skirts. The purring sound grew louder as you approached, and you realized with a start that she was pleased to see you.

Then Aerrix made a sound you had never heard before.

It was soft. High pitched. Almost questioning. A tiny chirp, like a hatchling, except it came from a creature the size of a small keep. The incongruity was so startling that you felt a laugh bubble up in your throat.

Valarr's jaw dropped. "She's never—I've never heard her make that sound. Ever."

Aerrix lowered her head slowly, carefully, bringing her massive snout down to the level of the babies. Her nostrils flared again, wider this time, as she drew in their scent. Her golden eyes went impossibly soft. The scales around her eyes seemed to relax, the tension draining from her massive face.

Valaerya chose that moment to open her eyes.

She gazed up at the dragon looming over her, at the gleaming black and white scales, the spiraling horns, the clouds of warm, smoky breath that drifted across her face, and let out a happy gurgle. Her tiny arms waved in the air, reaching for the massive creature above her.

Aerrix purred.

It was deeper than before, richer, a sound that seemed to come from somewhere ancient and primal. It vibrated through the stone floor and up through your bones, settling somewhere in your chest like a second heartbeat. The dragon leaned closer—so close that her snout was barely an inch from Valaerya's face—and nudged the baby's blanket ever so gently. So gently. With a delicacy that seemed impossible for a creature so vast.

Valaerya laughed.

Actually laughed, a tiny, bubbly, impossibly sweet sound that echoed off the stone walls. Her whole face crinkled with joy, and she kicked her legs beneath the blanket, and Aerrix made that chirping sound again, over and over, like a mother bird greeting her chicks.

"She likes her," you whispered, stunned.

"She adores her." Valarr's voice was thick, almost hoarse. When you looked at him, his eyes were bright, glittering with unshed tears. "Look at her. She's never looked at anyone like that. Not even me."

Vaelor, apparently deciding he was missing out on something important, began to stir in the other nurse's arms. His mismatched eyes fluttered open, and he stared up at the massive creature before him with an expression of solemn contemplation.

Then, very deliberately, he reached up with one tiny, uncoordinated fist.

Aerrix turned her attention to him, her golden eyes soft. She made that chirping sound again, and then, with exquisite care, she extended the very tip of her tongue. It was barely the size of a dinner plate—which for her was extraordinarily delicate—and she licked the baby's hand, ever so gently.

Vaelor's serious expression dissolved into a gummy smile. He let out a happy coo and immediately shoved his licked hand into his mouth, apparently delighted by the taste of dragon.

"Oh, wonderful," you said, watching your son slobber on his own fingers. "Now he's going to develop a taste for dragon. That's not going to be difficult to manage at all."

Valarr laughed, the sound bright and free. "He's a Targaryen. It's in his blood."

Aerrix continued to interact with the twins for several more minutes, her massive head moving back and forth between them as though she couldn't decide which one to focus on. She purred constantly, that deep rumbling sound that seemed to calm the babies, Valaerya's fussiness melted away, and even Vaelor's contemplative frown relaxed into peaceful contentment.

The wet nurses stood frozen, clearly terrified but also clearly fascinated. You couldn't blame them. There was something mesmerizing about watching a dragon—a creature that could burn cities to ash and devour horses whole—gently nuzzle two infants as though they were her own.

"She's going to spoil them," you said, leaning into Valarr's side. "I can already tell."

"She's going to protect them." His arm came around your waist, pulling you close. "With her life, if it comes to that. They're hers now. As much as they're ours."

You looked up at him, at this man who had married you against all odds, who had waited patiently for you to overcome your fear, who had given you two perfect children and a love that still made your heart flutter after all this time.

"I love you," you said.

He kissed your temple. "I love you too. More than words can say."

The peace lasted approximately four more minutes.

Valaerya, who had been content and happy and cooing at the dragon, suddenly screwed up her tiny face. Her lips began to tremble. Her cheeks flushed pink. And then she opened her mouth and let out a wail, not a fussy cry, not a protest, but a full-lunged, indignant scream of the sort that could only mean one thing.

She was hungry.

Vaelor, never one to be outdone by his sister, joined in a heartbeat later. His cry was different—lower pitched, more insistent—but no less urgent. The two of them together created a symphony of infant displeasure that echoed off the stone walls and bounced around the cavern, magnified by the acoustics into something truly impressive.

Aerrix's head snapped back, her golden eyes wide. She looked almost panicked, a dragon the size of a small mountain, panicking because two tiny humans were crying.

"What did we do?" the sound seemed to say. "How do we fix it?"

"They're hungry," you said, already moving toward the wet nurses. "It's nothing to worry about. They just need to eat."

"Then we should take them back," Valarr said, immediately shifting into problem-solving mode. He was already gesturing to the nurses, already walking toward the exit. "The nursery has everything they need. We can—"

"Go."

He stopped. Turned. Looked at you.

"What?"

"Go." You nodded toward the dragon behind you. "Stay with Aerrix. I'll take the twins back to the nursery with the nurses. You can come find us after you've had some time with her."

Valarr hesitated. You could see the conflict playing out across his face, the desire to stay with his dragon warring against the desire to be with his family.

"I'll be fine," you said gently. "The nursery is five minutes away. The nurses are with me. And Aerrix has been waiting all day to see you." You shifted Valaerya to one arm and reached up to cup his face with your free hand. "Go. Spend time with her. We'll be there when you're done."

He kissed you—quick and fierce, mindful of the crying babies between you—and then stepped back. "I won't be long."

"Take your time."

He watched as you and the nurses made your way toward the entrance, the twins' cries fading as you moved through the tunnels. When you glanced back, he was standing beside Aerrix, one hand resting on her scales, his expression soft and grateful.

You smiled and kept walking.

The nursery was quiet again by the time Valarr returned.

The twins had been fed and burped and changed and swaddled and rocked and soothed, and they were finally, mercifully, asleep in their matching cribs. Valaerya had her fist pressed against her cheek like a tiny thinker contemplating the universe. Vaelor had one foot poking out from beneath his blanket, his toes curled in a way that made you want to weep with tenderness.

You were sitting in the rocking chair again, not rocking, just sitting, too tired to move but too keyed up to sleep. The afternoon light had shifted to the gold of early evening, and the room was filled with long shadows and the soft sounds of sleeping infants.

Valarr appeared in the doorway, and you saw at once that he was still buzzing with energy. His eyes were bright, his cheeks flushed, his hair even more disheveled than before. He'd clearly been flying.

"How is she?" you asked.

"Good. Happy." He crossed the room and knelt in front of the rocking chair, taking your hands in his. His palms were warm, calloused, smelling faintly of dragon. "She misses you. She wanted you to stay."

"I know. I could feel her watching me leave."

"She's still watching the door. Expecting you to come back."

You smiled, sad and warm at the same time. "Tell her I'll visit tomorrow. Without the babies, maybe. Just the two of us."

Valarr was quiet for a moment. His thumbs traced circles on the backs of your hands, and you could feel the tension in his fingers, the barely contained energy running through him like a current.

"What is it?" you asked.

He looked up at you, his mismatched eyes searching your face. "I want to fly."

"Now? The babies are asleep. If we leave—"

"Not the babies. You." He squeezed your hands. "I want to fly with you. Tonight. Just us."

Your heart stuttered. "Valarr—"

"Listen to me." He shifted closer, his knees pressing against the rocker of the chair. "You're not pregnant anymore. The maester checked you yesterday—he said you're healing well, that there's no reason you can't resume normal activities. You're not carrying extra weight or balancing two lives or worrying about falling. You're just… you." He lifted one hand to cup your face, his thumb stroking your cheekbone. "I've waited so long to share this with you. To show you what it feels like—the wind, the clouds, the whole world spread out beneath you. I want you to see it. I want to see you see it."

"Aerrix won't let me mount her. Remember? She spent months refusing to let me on her back."

Valarr's lips curved into a smile. "She'll let you now. You're not protecting anyone anymore. The babies are here. They're safe. She knows that." He paused, his smile widening. "She told me."

"Your dragon told you that she'll let me ride her now."

"In so many words."

"Dragon words."

"Dragon feelings. I can feel what she feels. It's part of the bond." He pressed his forehead against yours. "She wants you to fly with us. She's been waiting for this. We both have."

You closed your eyes, letting yourself feel the warmth of his presence, the steadiness of his hands, the love that radiated from him like heat from a fire. Part of you—a large part—wanted to say no. You were tired. You were still sore. The babies might wake up at any moment and need you.

But another part of you, a part that had been growing since the moment you first placed your hand on Aerrix's scales, wanted to say yes.

"What if I fall?" you whispered.

Valarr pulled back just enough to look at you. His expression was serious now, stripped of its teasing edge. "You won't. I won't let you. Aerrix won't let you." He took your hands again, holding them tightly. "But if you're scared—if you're truly scared, not just nervous—we won't go. We can wait. Another day, another week, another month. I'll wait as long as you need."

"Do you trust me?" he addedsoftly.

The same question he'd asked you outside this very dragonpit over a year ago. The same question he'd asked before you'd first touched Aerrix, before you'd let the dragon into your heart.

"Yes," you said. "I trust you."

He kissed you then, deep and sweet, and when he pulled back, he was grinning. "Then let's go flying."

The dragonpit at night was different.

The torches were still lit, but their light seemed dimmer somehow, swallowed by the greater darkness of the cavernous space. The shadows were deeper, the sounds more mysterious. You could hear the dragons shifting in their dens, their movements echoing off the stone walls like distant thunder.

Aerrix's den glowed with an inner warmth, dragon fire, you realized, emanating from the beast herself. She was awake when you arrived, her golden eyes gleaming in the darkness, and she made a soft rumbling sound when she saw you.

"She's happy," Valarr said, leading you forward. "She's been waiting."

"I can tell."

Aerrix lowered herself to the ground as you approached, making it easier to climb onto her back. Valarr went first, swinging up onto her wing and into the saddle with practiced ease. Then he reached down for you.

"Come on," he said. "Up you go."

You placed your foot in the stirrup and let him pull you up. The scales beneath your hands were warm and rough, and you could feel Aerrix's muscles shifting beneath them, the immense power held in check just for you.

But instead of guiding you to the spot behind the saddle, Valarr pulled you in front of him.

"What are you doing?" you asked, bewildered. "Shouldn't I be behind you?"

"No." He settled himself in the saddle behind you, his chest pressing against your back. His arms came around you to grip the handles fixed to the front of the saddle, the same handles he would have used if he were riding alone, but now they were positioned on either side of your body, creating a cage of safety around you. "You're sitting here."

"Why?"

He was quiet for a moment. You could feel his breath against your hair, warm and steady. When he spoke, his voice was softer than before, more vulnerable.

"Because if you're behind me, I can't see you. I can't know if you're terrified or exhilarated or about to be sick. I can't see your face when we go through the clouds for the first time, or when the sun hits the sea, or when Aerrix dives and the world spins around us." He paused, his arms tightening slightly. "And I'm afraid you'll lose your grip. That you'll slip, and I won't catch you in time. This way, you're right here. I can feel you. I can hold you."

He reached around you to secure the chains, the thick steel links that would keep you both in the saddle, wrapped in dragon scale and metal. His hands were deft, practiced, but every so often his fingers would brush your waist or your hip as he worked, and each touch sent a small shiver through you.

"These keep us attached to the saddle," he explained, his voice low in your ear. "Even if Aerrix rolls upside down—"

"She can roll upside down?"

"She can do many things. But she won't. Not tonight. Tonight is just a gentle flight. Easy and slow." He tugged on one chain, testing its strength. "You're not going anywhere."

The last chain clicked into place, and suddenly you were secure—bound to the saddle, to Valarr, to the dragon beneath you. There was no getting off now, no changing your mind, no turning back.

He called out a command in High Valyrian, the words rolling off his tongue like music "Sōvēs, Aerrix!" Fly.

And then the world fell away.

The first few seconds were pure, absolute terror.

The ground dropped. The wind roared. Your stomach lurched into your throat, actually lurched, in a way you'd only ever read about in books—and you gripped the handles so hard your knuckles went white. Aerrix's wings beat once, twice, three times, each stroke sending you higher, the dragonpit shrinking beneath you, the torches becoming pinpricks of light, the stone walls blurring past.

Then you were out.

The open sky swallowed you whole, vast and dark and filled with stars. The wind hit your face like a living thing, cold and fierce and exhilarating. Aerrix's wings beat again, and again, and suddenly you were soaring, climbing, rising into the darkness like a bird freed from a cage.

"Breathe!" Valarr shouted in your ear, laughing. The sound was bright and wild, carried away by the wind. "You have to breathe!"

You sucked in a breath, and immediately regretted it as the cold air hit your lungs. But you kept breathing, kept inhaling and exhaling, and eventually your heart stopped trying to beat its way out of your chest and settled into something almost manageable.

The dragonpit was gone now, lost in the darkness behind you. King's Landing spread out beneath you like a carpet of gold and silver, the streets lit by torches and lanterns, the Red Keep rising red and proud against the black of the bay. You could see the Great Sept of Baelor, its crystal towers catching the moonlight. You could see the harbor, ships anchored for the night, their masts like a forest of bare trees. You could see the sea, dark and endless, stretching toward the horizon.

"Oh," you breathed. "Oh, Valarr."

"I know." His voice was reverent, almost prayer-like. "I know."

Aerrix climbed higher, and the wind grew colder, whipping your hair back from your face. You leaned into Valarr's chest, and his arms tightened around you, keeping you close, keeping you safe. The chains held you both in place, but you didn't need them—not really. Not with him holding you like this.

"Look up," he said.

You did.

The sky stretched above you, infinite and vast, scattered with more stars than you had ever imagined. They were everywhere—not just above, but below too, reflected in the dark waters of the bay, so that you seemed to be flying through a universe of light. The moon was a sliver of silver, barely there, and the stars burned bright in its absence.

"It's like flying through a dream," you said.

"It's better than a dream." Valarr's lips brushed your ear, warm against the cold wind. "Dreams end. This doesn't have to."

Aerrix banked left, and you gasped as the world tilted, the city and the sea and the sky all swapping places for one dizzying moment before she leveled out. Below, you could see the Dragon Gate, the Street of Steel, the hill of Rhaenys with the ruins of the Dragonpit—no, wait, you'd just come from there, and your bearings were all wrong, and none of it mattered because you were flying.

You were flying.

The realization hit you like a wave, and you felt something crack open in your chest. You were flying on the back of a dragon, with your husband's arms around you, and it was the most beautiful thing you had ever experienced.

"She's happy," Valarr said, and you could hear the smile in his voice. "Look at her wings. She's showing off for you."

Aerrix was indeed showing off. Her wings stretched wide, catching the wind, and she performed a series of gentle spirals that made the world spin around you in a dizzying dance of light and shadow. The purring sound was back, rumbling through her body and into yours, a vibration that seemed to sync with your heartbeat.

"She likes having you here," Valarr continued. "She always wanted to share this with you. So did I."

You turned your head slightly, just enough to see his profile in the starlight, the strong line of his jaw, the silver streak in his hair, the absolute joy on his face. He looked younger like this, lighter, as though the sky had lifted some weight from his shoulders. His eyes were fixed on the horizon, but you could see the way they crinkled at the corners, the smile that wouldn't fade.

"Thank you," you said.

Valarr's answer was a kiss, soft and sweet, pressed to the corner of your mouth. His lips lingered there for a moment, warm against your cold-flushed skin. "I would have waited forever. You know that."

You did know. You'd always known.

Aerrix chose that moment to execute a particularly dramatic dive, not steep, not scary, just a gentle downward spiral that made your stomach flutter and your hair stream out behind you like a banner. A scream bubbled up in your throat, but it came out as a laugh, bright and free and nothing like the sound you usually made.

Valarr's laughter rang out behind you, joining with yours, the two of you laughing together in the dark above a sleeping city. Aerrix rumbled beneath you, pleased with herself, and you could have sworn you heard a dragon's version of a chuckle.

"This is incredible," you said, breathless. "I can't believe I almost said no."

"I can't believe you almost said no either." Valarr's arms tightened around you.

At some point, the fear faded entirely, replaced by something else. Joy. Wonder. A sense of freedom so profound it brought tears to your eyes. Valarr noticed. Of course he noticed. He noticed everything.

"Are you crying?" he asked, his voice soft.

"No," you lied.

"You're crying."

"The wind is making my eyes water."

"The wind doesn't make your nose turn pink."

You laughed and sniffled at the same time, which was not a dignified combination. "Fine. I'm crying. Happy tears. Don't make it weird."

He kissed your cheek, tasting the salt on your skin. "I'm not making it weird. I'm making it perfect."

"Debatable."

"Indisputable."

Aerrix rumbled her agreement, and you rolled your eyes at both of them.

All too soon, the flight came to an end.

Aerrix began her descent, circling lower and lower over the dragonpit, her massive shadow passing over the stone walls like a cloud. The torches grew brighter as you approached, and you could see the Dragonkeepers waiting below, their hooded faces tilted up to watch your arrival.

The landing was gentler than you'd expected, a soft jar, a settling of massive claws on stone, a final beat of wings that stirred up dust and sent the torches flickering. The chains were undone by Valarr's practiced hands, and he slid off the saddle first, then reached up to help you down.

His hands were firm on your waist as he lifted you from Aerrix's back, and your legs wobbled when you hit the ground.

"That's normal," Valarr said, steadying you with an arm around your waist. "It happens to everyone their first time. And their second. And their third. The ground feels like it's moving for a while after a long flight."

"I feel like the ground is moving," you admitted, leaning into him.

"It will for a bit." He guided you to a nearby rock—a flat boulder that had been worn smooth by generations of dragon riders using it as a bench. "Sit. I'll get you some water."

You sank onto the rock, your heart still racing, your cheeks flushed from wind and cold and exhilaration. Your hair was a tangled mess, blown into knots that would take an hour to brush out. Your dress was rumpled and dusty. Your hands were still shaking slightly from the adrenaline.

You had never been happier.

Aerrix lowered her massive head to your level, her golden eyes soft and warm in the torchlight. She nudged your hand—gently, so gently—and you reached up to scratch behind her horn, right where the scales met the base of the horn in a spot that you'd discovered on your very first visit made her purr.

She purred now, that deep rumbling sound vibrating through the air and into your bones.

"She did good," you said.

"She did." Valarr returned with a waterskin, kneeling in front of you. He uncorked it and handed it over, watching as you took a long drink. "You did good. You were terrified, and you did it anyway." He cupped your face in his hands, his thumbs brushing away the lingering dampness on your cheeks. His eyes were bright, full of love and pride and something deeper, something that looked like wonder. "I'm so proud of you."

"You're proud of me for sitting on a dragon while you did all the work?"

"I'm proud of you for trusting me. For trying something that scared you. For being brave when you didn't have to be." He leaned forward and kissed you, soft and slow, and you could taste the sky on his lips—cold and clean and endless. "I love you."

"I love you too." You pulled back just enough to look at him, at this wonderful, impossible man who had somehow chosen you. "Can we do it again? Tomorrow?"

His grin was brilliant, lighting up his whole face. "Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow morning," you said. "Before the babies wake up. We'll watch the sunrise together. All three of us."

Aerrix rumbled her approval.

Valarr pulled you to your feet and into his arms, holding you close against his chest. You could feel his heart beating, steady and strong, and you matched your breathing to his. The dragonpit was warm and dark around you, the torches crackling softly, the distant sounds of other dragons shifting in their dens.

a breitling navitimer. uniquely designed with red and black dials and hands just for valarr targaryen.

it had been a gift. from his father and mother, for his eighteenth nameday. you overheard him once say to a classmate in casual conversation, he had been wanting it for a very long time.

that was the kind of school you somehow managed to get a scholarship to. barely scraping by.

the kind where kids discussed world politics and what vintage designer they were going to buy.

you had almost scoffed out loud when you first heard it, because what could a person who already had everything possibly want more?

everything, apparently.

if you had learnt one thing since stepping foot into these prestigious halls, it was that the greed of the rich was endless.

they accumulated desires the way old attics accumulated dust— effortlessly, constantly. taking up space just because they could.

and that was precisely why you weren’t going to let valarr targaryen win this chess match.

your eyes could just barely make out the custom v. t. engraving on the back of the watch as his wrist shifted, and another surge of annoyance spiked in you. of course his daddy and mommy would have it custom engraved for him.

everything in his life came with an explicit stamp of ownership, a reminder that the world belonged to him by right of birth.

you lean forward, settling your chin onto your palms as you analyze the board.

the library around you is dead silent, swallowed by the late-night shadows and the heavy scent of old leather. your eyes scan the wooden pieces standing like little soldiers between you two.

you’re playing white. he’s black.

because he insisted on ladies first, offering it with that smooth, aristocratic chivalry that always felt more like a concession than a courtesy.

you had profusely said you were more than willing to play black, to fight from the back foot as you always did. but he had just smiled, sliding the white pawns toward you with a lazy flick of his fingers.

your brain is moving forward now, silencing the background noise of your own irritation.

the grid of the board expands in your mind, lines of force and diagonal pathways burning behind your eyelids. you’re mapping out all the possible scenarios and endgames, calculating three, five, eight moves ahead until the wooden figures aren't just shapes anymore. they are numbers, vectors, inevitabilities.

you inhale sharply, not hesitating for a second when you pick up your bishop and place it to g5.

valarr’s eyes snap up to you immediately. the dark of his gaze sharpens, the lazy posture stiffening just a fraction.

he had clearly been expecting a different move. your development was too fast, too uncalculated... seemingly amateurish at a first glance.

it looked like a blunder, a reckless push from a player losing their patience.

but if he knew anything about you by now, it was that you weren’t just going to let him win.

not in the classroom where your grades hovered within decimals of each other, not in the formal debates where you tore his arguments apart with cold precision, and certainly not in this bloody chess match.

you weren’t just going to hand him the win on a silver platter like the ones his family used for dinner.

he had only one reasonable response to defend his kingside, but before he made the move, he opened his mouth to speak.

“those pieces look like they’re tying up.” his voice was annoyingly calm, a low baritone that didn't hold a hint of sarcasm. though the glint in his eye gave him away. it always did.

it was the same predatory glint that appeared every time he outscored you on a mid-term exam or got a fraction of a better grade on an essay, turning the academic hierarchy into his personal playground. he lived to tease you, to watch the small, tight line form between your brows.

your eyes lock onto him coldly, and you’re almost offended by how relaxed he is, how comfortably he takes up space.

“you’ve always been too sure of yourself, targaryen.” you reply evenly, your voice dropping into that flat, unbothered cadence you used whenever you needed to shield your nerves.

“i’m afraid you are mistaking me for my cousin, darling.”

your eyes almost roll at the mention of aerion—deciding to ignore the pet name entirely. he used those little words like cheap gambits, meant to throw you off balance, to make you conscious of the fact that you were a girl in a room alone with him after hours.

“pretty sure i’m not.” you retort, eyeing his pieces as he chuckles.

the sound is low, vibrating against the polished wood of the table.

he leans forward, those long, lean fingers reaching out. they are hands that have never known hard labor, yet they move with a strange, heavy deliberate grace.

he picks up his king and moves it.

his king retreated to d6, an unusual, suffocating square, and he pursed his lips just as he hit the tiny silver lever of the chess clock measuring the time.

he had insisted on playing with time. a mechanical ticking that sounded like a miniature heartbeat between you, counting down the seconds of your survival.

“as kind as ever, harmon.” he smiled, straightening his posture again, watching you with an intensity that felt entirely unrelated to the game.

you don’t let him breathe. you move your queen to f8, the smooth wood sliding across the square with a sharp, definitive clack, capturing the black rook standing there.

putting the king into check. once again.

“feisty today, are we?” he tuts, a clicking sound against his teeth, although there is still not a hint of fear in his voice.

he is not considering losing. the concept doesn't exist in his vocabulary; it hasn't been bred into his bloodline.

he isn't afraid of the pressure; he thrives on it. you can see the visible shift in his eyes— the way his pupils dilate as he works every cell in his brain, finding the narrow pathways and complex situations where he can outdo you, turn your aggression against you, and trap you in your own net.

his fingers drum a slow, rhythmic beat against his cheek as he watches the board, the red hands of his breitling ticking down on his side of the clock.

when will he realize?

the thought is a cold, beautiful spark in your chest. you stifle the small smile threatening to spread over your face, keeping your expression entirely wooden, a perfect mask of academic indifference.

you have already seen the end. it’s three moves away, an invisible string wrapping around his throat, and he’s pulling it tighter with every second he hesitates.

black moves to c6, trying to create an escape hatch through the center.

you don’t even hesitate. your hand is already there, cold and steady. you take your queen and slide her diagonally across the entire board, capturing the rook on a8.

the piece leaves the board with a heavy thud.

valarr watches the square for a moment. his fingers stop drumming against his cheek. his eyes track the lines— from the queen to the bishop, back to his crowded center, realizing that the space around his king has completely vanished.

the geometry has collapsed on him. the seemingly amateurish opening wasn't a mistake; it was a beautifully tailored shroud.

the disbelief settles into his features slowly, a slight parting of his lips, a subtle tightening of his jawline as the logic of the board finally forces its way through his confidence.

you cannot hold the quiet, little victorious smile breaking out across your face as you’re the one leaning back in her chair now, mimicking his exact posture from twenty minutes ago.

you cross your legs, your eyes dropping to your own hands, waiting.

valarr sighs, a long, rough exhale that breaks the quiet of the room.

he brushes a hand through his dark hair, disrupting the neat style he always kept, leaving it messy and raked through as he desperately tries to find an out. a loophole. a single square. a variation he might have missed in the calculation.

but there is nothing. you have thrusted him into an inescapable chokehold. it’s humiliating really, because he had treated the beginning of the match like a joke, and now he is staring at an absolute execution.

a good game... turning into you crushing him...

and you hadn’t even intended to make it look this brutal. it was just the math of it. the cold, perfect math.

“good game.” his voice is lower now, rougher around the edges.

all he does is lean forward across the narrow table, his warm, calloused palm extending toward yours. when your skin touches his, you can practically hear the electricity—a sharp, static spark that zips up your forearm and makes the small hairs on your wrist stand up. his grip is firm, lingering for a fraction of a second too long before he lets go.

you hum in response, already reaching out to clear the pieces, separating the black from the white, preparing the board for a new layout. the high of victory is still humming in your veins, turning everything sharp and bright.

“another game?” you suggest politely, your voice holding that slight, competitive edge you can never fully suppress around him.

you’re already placing the white figures back onto their starting blocks, your fingers nimble, when valarr suddenly coughs.

your eyes snap up from the pawns to find his face.

your gaze scans over his body, taking in the sudden rigidness of his shoulders. the moment your eyes drop lower, he immediately crosses his leg with an abrupt, awkward jerk, leaning forward in his seat so his elbows rest heavily on the polished wooden desk, effectively shielding his lap from view.

the silence between you changes instantly, losing its academic sharpness and turning thick, heavy.

“valarr...” you say his name so carefully, the syllables dropping into the space between you like small stones into deep water.

his cheeks flush a sudden, dark red, the color creeping up from the collar of his expensive shirt and staining the sharp line of his jaw.

“yes?” he replies evenly, though you can hear the distinct, strained tightness in his throat, the way his fingers grip the edge of the mahogany table until his knuckles turn white.

you look from his flushed face down to the awkward tilt of his crossed legs. the sudden defensive posture of a man trying to hide an undeniable betrayal by his own body.

“did you just get a boner from me beating you at chess?”

your words would have been irritating, crude and simple at best if he hadn't been so utterly, intensely entranced by you in that moment.

his dark eyes lock onto yours, the aristocratic composure completely shattered, leaving something raw and scorching in its place as he stares at you across the ruined board.

luck won’t save you, love — that is what he had said to you at the beginning of the match. oh how the tables have turned.

you repeat the same words to him and cock your head to the side in amusement.

“you take far too much pleasure in tormenting me.”

“you were bragging.” you reason.

“maybe.” he inhales before turning the board sharply, the heavy wood twisting on the mahogany table.

the black figures are sitting in front of you now.

you cannot stifle the smile spreading across your face.

“i won’t make the same mistake twice.” he promises, voice slightly hoarse.

“oh we’ll see about that targaryen…” you speak as you move the first pawn forward, restarting the game.

The gardens in late morning had that particular quality of light that made everything look slightly more significant than it was.

Baelor had always appreciated this in the abstract way of someone who noticed beautiful things and filed them appropriately. The spring sun at this hour caught the stone paths and the new leaves and turned the whole space into something unhurried and golden and easy to breathe in.

He was finding breathing moderately straightforward today.

This was not always the case when he walked with you.

You moved beside him with the ease of someone who had decided simply to enjoy the morning, which he found — as he found most things about you — both uncomplicated in its surface and entirely undoing in its effect. You had been pale recently. His mother had noticed and said so. He had noticed considerably before his mother said so and had said nothing, because saying I notice everything about you with a specificity that has become somewhat consuming was not a thing he had found an appropriate moment to say.

He was still looking for the moment, though.

"Your lady mother was right," you said, tilting your face briefly toward the warmth with an unselfconsciousness that he appreciated and tried not to look at too directly. "It is a very fine morning."

"It is," he agreed.

You glanced at him. That look — the one that found his composure slightly amusing without being unkind about it. He had catalogued this look. He had not found a way to be unaffected by it.

"You did not have to escort me," you said. "I am quite capable of a garden unaccompanied."

"I am aware," he said. "I am here because I wished to be."

You held his gaze a moment longer than necessary. Then you smiled warmly and returned your attention to the path.

He kept his breathing even and said nothing and walked beside you in the comfortable silence that had developed between you across months of proximity, the kind that did not require filling, the kind he had come to think of privately as one of the better things his life currently contained.

Then you stopped. He stopped beside you. And he followed your gaze to the dog.

A perfectly ordinary dog — medium sized, brown and white, the amiable expression of an animal constitutionally incapable of suspicion. It sat on the path ahead regarding you both with the mild optimism of something whose tail had already decided how this encounter was going to go.

You made a sound. Baelor looked at you.

Your face had changed completely. Not performed delight — nothing so managed. Something simpler and more total than that, like a part of you had recognised the dog and responded before the rest of you had been consulted. An immediate and unconditional softening that arrived in your expression and stayed there, warm and unguarded and entirely itself.

He had seen you in many registers across many months. He had not seen this one before.

You crouched.

"Oh hello," you said. In a voice he had also not heard before.

Soft. Warm. Unconscious of itself in a way that most things about you were not — you were an observant person, a careful person, someone who knew what they were doing in most situations. This was you not knowing and not caring and it was—

The dog came to you immediately.

"Hello, you," you said, holding out your hand for the animal to sniff. "Where did you come from then?"

The dog offered its answer through the medium of attempting to climb into your lap.

You laughed.

Baelor felt the laugh somewhere in the region of his sternum, which was not new — your laugh had been doing things to him for several months — but the combination of the laugh and the voice and the expression on your face and the spring morning and the general accumulated weight of having feelings about you that he had been managing carefully for a very long time—

"You are very friendly," you told the dog, with great seriousness, catching it with both hands. "Yes you are. Aren't you."

Baelor stood very still. He was good at standing still. It was one of the things he did well — composure under pressure, stillness in difficult circumstances, the management of his own responses in situations that called for management.

"Who's a good boy?" you innocently said.

It turned out that his composure was not immune to this specific kind of pressure.

He could not have described what happened to it precisely. A structural event, somewhere beneath the surface — the careful architecture of five months of management developing, not a crack, but a quality of strain that had not been there before.

"You are," you told the dog warmly. "Yes you are. You are such a good boy."

Such a good boy.

Said in that voice. That specific soft certain warm voice that he was aware, with sudden and total clarity, he had never heard directed at anything before and that his entire nervous system had apparently been waiting for without his knowledge or consent.

Something happened. Not managed at all. Not the careful noting of a detail to be examined later in the appropriate privacy of his own solar. Something immediate and specific and entirely beyond the reach of the system he had constructed for exactly these kinds of situations.

He felt it in his hands first — the sudden awareness of them, the desire to do something with them that was not standing correctly at his sides. Then in his chest, which had developed a quality of tightness that breathing did not entirely resolve. Then lower, which was—

He looked at the middle distance.

"Such a good, good boy," you said. Warmly. Certainly. Like you had no idea — and you did not, you could not, you were talking to a dog — what those words in that voice were doing to a man standing three feet behind you who had been quietly in love with you for the better part of a year.

The middle distance was not helping. He looked at the line of trees to his left. Those were not helping either.

He was a prince of the realm. He had sat in war councils. He had ridden into battle. He had managed himself under pressures that would have unmade lesser men and he had done it with the composure that was perhaps his most reliable quality.

"Who's the best boy?" you said. "You are. You are the best boy." The dog let out an entirely too pleased bark, lolling its tongue at your words.

He closed his eyes briefly. Opened them. Stared at the trunk of one particular tree. The trunk remained entirely uninstructive on the subject of how a grown man was supposed to conduct himself when the woman he loved used a particular voice and a particular phrase to talk to a dog and his body responded as though the words had been meant for him, which they had not, which was the entire problem, which was—

The kennel master arrived, and Baelor had never been so grateful to see a kennel master in his life.

The man appeared at the far end of the path with the apologetic efficiency of someone who had been looking for an animal for some time, attached a lead, offered pardons, and departed, taking the dog with him.

You stood, brushed your skirts and turned to him with the easy manner of someone who had simply enjoyed a pleasant interlude and was entirely unaware of having caused a significant structural event in the composure of the man standing behind her.

You looked at his face. Something in your expression shifted.

"Is something amiss, my prince?" you asked.

"No," he said.

The word came out — not as it usually did. Usually, his words came out with the considered evenness of someone who knew what they were saying before they said it. This one came out slightly — unsteady. Not enough for most people to notice.

You were not most people.

"You look—" You tilted your head. Reading him the way you always did, with that observational patience that had been one of the first things he had catalogued about you and one of the things he had since found both most compelling and most dangerous about being in your company. "Strange."

"I am perfectly well," he offered a smile.

He added nothing more. Baelor was generally good at saying nothing in a way that communicated composure. He was not entirely certain he was managing this currently.

You looked at him for a long moment.

He watched the thought arrive in your expression — assembling itself from available evidence with that precise intelligence — and felt the specific sensation of a man observing an inevitable thing and having no means of stopping it.

"Has this," you said, very carefully, "got something to do with being called a good boy?"

The tree trunk to his left.

"I don't know what you mean," he said. His voice did the thing again and you looked at him with a slight frown on your brow.

You looked at his face, which was — not composed. Not in the way it usually was. Something had happened to the composure, somewhere between who's a good boy and this moment, and he could feel its absence the way you felt the absence of something load-bearing and could not immediately identify what was holding things up in its place.

"I am quite sure," you said softly, and the softness of it was — not helping, the softness was the precise problem, the softness was the voice, adjacent to the voice, close enough that his hands were doing something at his sides that he was choosing not to examine — "that you are a good boy too, my prince."

Something in his expression did something he was not in control of. He was aware of this. He could not, for the life of him, stop it.

Your eyes widened very slightly — not with surprise exactly, more with the quality of someone who had made an educated guess and found it confirmed beyond what they had quite anticipated — and then something warm and wondering moved across your face and you pressed your lips together against what was clearly a smile you were choosing not to deploy immediately.

"Oh," you said quietly. Simply. The full comprehension of it in one syllable.

He said nothing. There was nothing available to say.

You held his gaze for one long suspended moment in which he stood in a garden in the middle of a fine spring morning and felt five months of careful management simply — absent. Not destroyed. Not abandoned. Just temporarily unavailable, which amounted to the same thing.

Then you smiled.

Not the court smile. Not even the real one he had catalogued. Something new — warm and slightly wondering and threaded through with a tenderness that arrived in his chest and stayed there.

"Are you coming, my prince?" you said softly as you turned and walked along the path.

Baelor stood where he was. The morning continued around him. Somewhere distant a bird. The spring light doing what it did.

He looked at the path ahead of him, where you were walking with that ease that had been undoing him since autumn, and he thought — with the honesty he tried to bring to most things, including the inconvenient ones — that his emotional integrity had not survived the morning intact.

He was not certain he minded.

He walked after you and said nothing, and felt, underneath the considerable wreckage of his composure, something that was warm and slightly terrifying and — when he looked at it honestly — not entirely unwelcome.

The good boy thing was going to be a problem.

He was fairly certain it was going to be a very specific and recurring problem.

He found too, to his own surprise, that he was not entirely opposed to this.

The gardens had been his mother's idea.

Maekar had not needed the explanation — Myriah had simply said she has been indoors too long, take her for some air with the serene authority of a woman who considered her suggestions equivalent to directives and had been proven correct often enough to have earned this — but he had received it with the standard combination of mild irritation and complete compliance that characterised most of his interactions with his mother's instructions.

He was not irritated now.

This was the thing he was choosing not to examine.

You walked beside him with the ease of someone comfortable in silence, which he appreciated more than he would say, which was consistent with how he appreciated most things about you — thoroughly, privately, without any apparent intention of doing anything about it. The morning was fine. The gardens were doing whatever gardens did in spring. You had your face tilted slightly toward the warmth with an unselfconsciousness that he was filing alongside everything else he filed and not looking at directly.

"Your lady mother worries," you said.

"My lady mother manages," he said.

"Is there a difference?"

He considered this with more genuine attention than the question probably warranted. "Not in practice." You made a sound that was almost a laugh. He filed that too.

You had been walking for perhaps twenty minutes when he heard it.

Not you — something ahead of you on the path. A sound he placed immediately and without enthusiasm: large animal, heavy movement, the particular quality of something that had not been trained to be quiet about existing.

He looked up.

The dog was enormous.

Not dangerous — he assessed this in the first two seconds with the automatic threat evaluation of someone who had spent considerable time in situations where assessment speed mattered. Large, yes. Powerfully built, yes. The kind of animal that had clearly been bred for something serious rather than companionship. But its ears were soft and its tail was doing something that could generously be described as wagging and its overall bearing was that of a creature that had simply not yet encountered a situation it found concerning.

Maekar had encountered concerning situations. He recognised the absence of one.

He was going to say something about continuing along the other path, yet he did not say it. Because you had made a sound.

He turned and your entire face had — changed. Not subtly. Not in the careful managed way of someone controlling their reaction. Completely and immediately, like every professional composure you carried had simply stepped aside for something more fundamental.

"Oh," you breathed. "Oh, look at you."

You were already moving toward the dog.

Maekar watched this happen with the focused attention of a man observing something he had not anticipated and was rapidly recalibrating around.

The dog, for its part, had identified you as a person of interest and was giving the matter its full enormous attention.

You crouched.

The dog came to you immediately, with the confidence of an animal that had never been given reason to doubt its welcome, and you received it with both hands and an expression that he was going to need to stop looking at if he intended to maintain any of his current functioning.

"Hello," you said, in a voice he had not heard from you before. Soft. Warm. Entirely unconscious of itself. "Hello, you enormous thing. Aren't you magnificent."

The dog agreed with this assessment enthusiastically.

"You are," you confirmed, with great seriousness, apparently conducting a conversation that satisfied you both. "You are very magnificent. And very large. And very good, aren't you?"

He should look somewhere else. He could not.

"Who is a good boy?" you said, in that voice — that voice — warm and certain and soft in a way that arrived somewhere in the centre of him and did something he was not going to examine in a garden in the middle of the morning. "You are. You are such a good boy."

Maekar went completely still.

This was not a conscious decision. His body simply — stopped. Everything stopped. The reasonable function of a man going about a morning in a garden ceased operating at the specific combination of that tone and those words directed at a creature that was not him but that his entire nervous system had apparently decided was close enough for the distinction to become briefly irrelevant.

He was aware this was not rational. He was aware of very little else, in all honesty.

"Such a good, good boy," you told the dog warmly, and Maekar looked at the wall to his left with the focus of a man who has identified an architectural feature as his primary means of survival and is committing to it fully.

The wall was unhelpful.

The dog made a sound of profound contentment. He envied the dog with an immediacy that was deeply undignified.

The kennel master arrived — thank gods, thank every god that had ever been worshipped in any corner of the known world — with the apologetic efficiency of someone who had been looking for an animal for some time and had found it in the company of people whose patience he hoped he had not exhausted.

"Begging your pardons," he said, managing the lead. "He's a wanderer, this one. I hope he wasn't any trouble."

"None at all," you said warmly. You gave the dog a final thorough pat — small hands, large dog, the dog was enormous and you were — you were not enormous and the contrast was — he was looking at the wall again — and then you stood and brushed your skirts and turned to him with the easy manner of someone who had simply enjoyed a pleasant interlude.

You looked at his face. Something shifted in your expression.

"Are you well?" you asked.

"Yes," he said.

You looked at him with that specific quality of attention that he found, on the best days, compelling and, on days like today, genuinely dangerous.

"You look strange," you said.

"I am perfectly—"

"You did not strike me as someone afraid of dogs, my prince,” you tried for that explanation.

He said nothing and you looked at him for a long moment.

He watched a thought arrive in your expression — assembling itself from available evidence with that observational intelligence that had been causing him problems for months — and felt the specific sensation of a man watching an inevitable thing approach and having no means of diverting it.

"Has this," you said carefully, treading an uncharted path, "got something to do with being a good boy?"

The wall to his left remained structurally unchanged.

"No," he said.

You looked at him.

"My prince," you said, with a lightness that was doing nothing to conceal the precision underneath it. "I am quite sure that you are a good boy too."

His jaw tightened.

Something in his expression did something he was not in control of.

You held his gaze for one more moment — something moving through yours that was amusement and warmth and the specific satisfaction of someone who had understood something they perhaps should not have understood and found it delightful — and then you laughed, genuine and unguarded, and turned and walked along the path as though you had not just fundamentally destabilised an entire person.

"Are you coming, my prince?" you called, several steps ahead, without looking back. The ease of it. The complete unbothered ease of it.

Maekar stood on the garden path.

The kennel master had gone. The dog had gone. The morning continued around him with complete indifference. He looked at the horizon and conducted a rapid and unflinching assessment of the preceding five minutes and found the results both clear and deeply inconvenient.

You did not look back at him, but he could see, from where he finally walked behind you, the quality of your shoulders — the faint remnant of suppressed amusement still present in them — and he looked at that for a moment and felt, underneath the considerable weight of his current situation, something that was almost fond.

He was going to need to think about the good boy thing later. In private. At length.

He was fairly certain it was going to be a problem.

A.N.: something in these two makes me just raaaaaa i can't help it i need to watch them come apart with just the smallest details. This was a shorter, lighter work. I practically wrote it this morning at the gym whoops

Taglist: @qardasngan @nerdyinfluencertastemaker @princessphilly @shyravenns

Matarys gives him the address. Valarr hangs up. He gives the driver the new destination in a voice he doesn't fully recognise. Then he sits in the back seat with his hands rigid on his thighs and watches the streets slide past, his heart doing something it hasn't done in a long time.

It panics.

He doesn't panic. Valarr Targaryen does not panic. He plans, he adjusts, he recalibrates. He's a man built for controlled responses, a man whose entire demeanour is designed to absorb shocks and redistribute them as composed, proportionate action.

He panics now. For the first time since his father's passing. There's an ugly, sickly, arrhythmic drumming in the centre of his chest that Valarr can't will into submission, and his hands—his careful, elegant, camera-ready hands—are shaking faintly against the wool of his trousers.

She collapsed.

The two words sit in the middle of his skull like a stone dropped through glass.

In a meeting.

The image assembles itself without his permission. You, mid-sentence, your mouth shaping some point and then the way your face must have tightened. Your eyes going unfocused. Your knees folding.

The sound your body would have made when it hit the floor of a conference room full of people who don't know you. who don't love you, and would not have caught you the way he would have caught you. Knowing, instinctively, to put their hand behind your head.

Valarr presses the heel of his palm against his sternum and tries to breathe.

—

By the time he gets you home, you're half-conscious and radiating heat.

Your assistant had called your doctor. Your doctor had been clear and blunt: fever, viral, fluids, rest, keep an eye on the temperature. Your assistant had looked at Valarr with barely concealed relief when he'd stalked through the door of your office and said, I've got her, as though she'd been waiting for someone to say exactly that.

He got you to the car. And you'd let him, which had alarmed him more than the fever. Because you don't let anyone steer you. You don't go limp. Don't put your head on anyone's shoulder and close your eyes and trust them to navigate the world on your behalf.

And in the car, you had put your face against his throat and gone heavy.

Now he's lowering you onto the bed in the penthouse. The sheets are cool. The late afternoon grey through the long windows.

Valarr has already kicked off his shoes, shrugged off his jacket, rolled his sleeves. He'd called Matarys back from the car—she's all right, she's running hot, I'm taking her home—and Matarys had said, do you need me to come? and Valarr had said, no, and meant: I need to do this myself, I need to be the one, please don't take this from me.

He eases you down against the pillows. The back of his hand finds your forehead, and the heat that comes off you makes his stomach clench. You're burning. Not warm. Burning. Your skin has gone damp at the hairline, the fine strands at your temple sticking to the sheen of sweat there. Your eyes are glassy when they crack open to find him.

"Val."

His name in your mouth; rough, low and scraped. You say it the way you say it when you're half-asleep. When the composure of you goes soft enough that there's only the raw thing underneath, the thing that knows his name before it knows anything else.

"I'm here, my love."

Valarr gets the thermometer from the bathroom, gets a glass of water while he's there too. He gets the ibuprofen from the cabinet with his other hand. He finds the soft flannel. The grey one you keep folded on the bottom shelf. The one he's seen you press to your face on bad headache days when you think he's not watching. Valarr runs it under cold water, wrings it, folds it.

He sets it on your forehead, and you make a sound.

A small, raw, involuntary sound. Not a word. Your eyes shut, and your face turns into the cool of the cloth, and you sigh. The sigh goes all the way through you, loosening something in the line of your shoulders that Valarr has been watching hold for three years.

"There," he says quietly. "There, my love."

He sits on the edge of the bed. He takes your temperature. 39.4. Too high, not dangerous, but the number lodges in him like a splinter. He makes a note of the time. He'll check again in forty minutes. He'll check every forty minutes until it breaks, and if it doesn't break by midnight, he'll call Dr. Essani at home and he doesn't care what time it is.

Your hand finds him.

Valarr doesn't expect it.

You're lying on your back with the flannel over your brow, eyes closed, face shiny with sweat, and your hand comes up—unsteady, half-asleep—and finds the front of his shirt. Your fingers close on the fine cotton, not gripping, not pulling. Just holding. The way a child holds the edge of a blanket.

Something in Valarr's chest fissures.

"My love?" he rasps. "What is it?"

"Stay," you mumble.

He blinks. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Stay close."

Your hand tightens on his shirt. A fraction. The pull of the cotton against his chest is so slight it's barely a force. It's nothing. It's everything. It's you, sick and stripped and burning, asking him to be near you without any of the steel you'd usually wrap around the asking.

Valarr lies down.

He lies down beside you on the bed, still in his work clothes, still in his watch and his cufflinks.

He shifts close enough that the line of his body is against yours, and you make another sound. A low, agonised little moan that isn't pain, exactly, but discomfort. The unguarded animal protest of a body that's too hot, too heavy and wants something it can't articulate... and then you turn into him.

You turn into him.

The full weight of you. Your face pressing into the hollow under his jaw. Your hand releasing his shirt and sliding instead around his side, your arm hooking at his waist, pulling yourself in. Your body finds his body the way water finds a depression in the ground, without thought, all instinct.

You burrow, pressing your hot forehead into the curve of his throat. Your knees come up, tucking against his thighs, and you make another sound—God, the sounds, the sounds—a thin, miserable, needing sound, muffled against his skin, and Valarr—

Valarr wraps his arms around you and holds on and doesn't breathe for approximately four seconds.

Because you don't do this.

In three years and four months of loving you, you've never once done this. You've let him hold you often, yes. Even seek it out yourself sometimes. You've slept against his chest most nights. You've nuzzled into his throat in the aftermath, when the sex has cracked you open enough that the soft thing underneath gets loose for an hour.

But you've never, while conscious, while in the middle of an ordinary day, crawled into his arms and pressed yourself against him and held on as if the only thing keeping you moored to the earth was the weight of his body.

You're the one who holds. You're the wolf, the steel, the steady one. The gravitational centre. Valarr orbits you. That's how it works. That's how it's always worked, and he's more than happy with it. He's never before you been happier.

He chose you because you're the strongest woman he's ever encountered and because your strength makes him feel safe and seen in a way no one else in his life has managed.

But this.

Oh, this.

You burrow deeper. Your nose drags along the line of his throat, finding the pulse point, and you settle there. Your breath comes in short, hot, damp puffs against his skin. Another sound bubbles up, and your arm at his waist tightens with a small, desperate squeeze. As though you're checking he's still solid. Your fingers curl into the back of his shirt.

"Val," you mumble again, like the last word a person says before they stop fighting consciousness, and Valarr presses his mouth to the crown of your head and holds you tighter and thinks, with a ferocity that frightens him: I would burn this city to the ground for you. I would take apart every institution I've ever built. I would ruin myself. I would ruin everything to make this go away.

The fever climbs.

At 5:00 p.m. it's 39.7. He changes the flannel. He coaxes water into you, a few sips at a time, tilting the glass to your mouth and wiping the small trickle at the corner of your lip with his thumb.

You take the ibuprofen without protest, which is another wrong thing, because you always protest. Always tell him you're fine, you don't need it, stop fussing, Val. Today you open your mouth and swallow and close your eyes and turn your face back into his throat.

At 6:00 p.m. he calls Matarys.

"How is she?" he asks worriedly.

"Fever's still climbing," he replies. "She's sleeping, mostly."

A pause. "How are you?"

Valarr laughs, once, without humour. "Outstanding."

"Val."

"I'm fine."

"You don't sound fine. You sound like you're about to do something stupid."

"I'm managing."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Matarys says, and Valarr can hear the gentle, knowing concern in his brother's voice. The concern that says: I know what you're like when the thing you love is threatened. I know you don't have a gear between composed and catastrophic. "Call me if you need anything. I mean it. You know I love her, too."

At 7:00 p.m., you start mumbling.

Not words. Sounds. Low, restless, unhappy sounds.

The fever has put you somewhere between sleep and waking, a fitful grey country where your body can't settle. You shift against him, kicking the sheet off. You pull it back, press closer. You make a thin, grinding sound of discomfort at the back of your throat that makes Valarr's chest physically hurt.

A sound so unguarded, so stripped of your usual composure, that hearing it feels like watching a lock come undone on a door he's never been allowed behind.

"Shh," he says, stroking your hair. "I'm here, my love. I'm here."

You settle for a minute at the sound of his voice. Then the restless shifting starts again. Your leg hooks over his, hand fists in his shirt at the chest, knuckles pressed against his sternum. Your face turns, pressing harder into his throat, and you mumble something.

"Val."

His hand stills in your hair.

"Val."

You're asleep. You're entirely asleep, and you're saying his name.

Valarr stares at the ceiling. He stares at the grey evening light on the plaster and he feels the shape of his name in your sleeping mouth against his throat. Something inside him rearranges itself so fundamentally that he knows, in the way you know certain things, that he'll never recover from this.

He'll carry this. Carry the weight of his name mumbled in your fever-sleep for the rest of his life, and he'll take it out in quiet moments. Hold it the way he holds every scrap of you he's ever been given: carefully, greedily, with the hoarding of a man who's always known that the soft parts of you are the rarest currency in the world.

"I'm here," he whispers to your sleeping face, and his voice cracks, and Valarr doesn't care. "I'm right here, sweet girl. I'm not going anywhere."

At 8:00 p.m. you wake up enough to be miserable.

The lucid kind of miserable. The kind where you're aware that you feel wretched and you're too tired and too hot to perform the version of yourself that doesn't admit to feeling wretched. You open your eyes. They're fever-bright, the pupils too wide, a glassy sheen over them. You find Valarr's face immediately, as though it's the first thing your visual cortex bothered to render.

"Hi," you croak. Your voice is ruined.

He exhales through his nose, trying to keep his expression straight, thumb gentle on your damp brow. "Hello, sweet girl."

"I feel awful, Val."

He almost laughs. Not because it's funny. Because you've never said that to him. In three years, you've never once told Valarr that you feel awful, Val. You've told him you're fine, that it's nothing.

You've told him, memorably, once, to stop looking at you like that when you had a 38-degree fever and a head cold and were clearly, visibly suffering. You'd gotten up and made your own tea and come back to bed and read for an hour as though spite alone could metabolise a virus.

Tonight you look up at him from the pillow and you say I feel awful, Val with the defeated honesty of a woman who can't, at this moment, be bothered to pretend.

"I know you do." He brushes the hair from your damp forehead. "You're going to be all right."

"Everything hurts."

"I know."

"My head."

"I know, my love."

Your face crumples in a grimace. The small, compressed grimace of someone in physical discomfort who wants it to stop and can't make it stop and is, for the first time in Valarr's memory, not pretending.

"Come here," he urges.

He draws you in. He arranges you against his chest, your head in the hollow under his jaw, your body against the long line of his. He pulls the thin sheet over you both. He keeps the flannel at your forehead, pressing it gently against the heat.

You groan into him. A low, guttural, agonised sound that vibrates through his chest.

"I know," he murmurs. "I've got you, sweet girl."

"Don't go, Val," you whisper.

"I'm not going. Not ever, love. Do you hear me? Not ever."

"Val."

His name again, dragged out of you on a moan, and the sound of it nearly kills him. The way you say it. The way you have, tonight, turned his name into the only word that matters. As though his name is the perimeter of something, and inside it is safety, and outside it is the fever and the ache of being sick.

He presses his mouth to your hair. "I'm here."

You cling to him. There's no other word for it. Your arm locks around his waist, your fist twisting tighter in his shirt. Your leg pushes between his, tangling, seeking more surface area, more of him. You press your burning face into the base of his throat and breathe, and each exhale is a small, hot wave against his skin.

Valarr absorbs every single one of them.

He changes the flannel three more times. He takes your temperature again: 39.8.

He talks to you, low and steady, a stream of nothing, a current for you to hold onto. He tells you about his day. About the contract he was reading when Matarys called. About the weather, the light on the buildings at four o'clock, and the peonies he'd been thinking of buying you on the way home before his phone rang and the afternoon cracked in half.

He tells you nonsense. He tells you things he'll never remember saying and things you'll never remember hearing, and it doesn't matter, because the telling is the point. The telling is the anchor. The low, steady, golden thread of his voice in the fever-dark, giving you something to follow home.

You mumble his name a fourth time. A fifth. Each time, fainter. Each time, more asleep.

He counts them.

The fever breaks at 11:23 p.m.

He knows because he's been checking every twenty minutes for the last two hours, the thermometer warm from his grip. 39.6 at 10:00. 39.2 at 10:40. 38.7 at 11:00. At 11:23: 38.1, and dropping, and the sweat that breaks across your skin is the good kind, the kind that means the body has won its war and is standing down.

Valarr sets the thermometer on the nightstand. He closes his eyes. He presses his face into the crown of your hair and breathes for what feels like the first time in nine hours.

You stir.

Not fully. A small, boneless shift. The fever has left you wrung out, the way a storm leaves a landscape: quieter, flatter, scrubbed clean.

Your grip on his shirt loosens, your fist opening into a palm pressed flat against his chest. Your breathing goes even and slow, the deep rhythm of a body that's stopped fighting.

But you don't pull away.

That's the thing Valarr registers and catalogues and presses into the permanent record of himself like a flower between the pages of a book he'll never lend.

The fever's broken. You're cooling. The crisis is over. The lucid you, the steel you, the you that would normally surface about now and say I'm fine, stop fussing, move over, I need water—that you would, on any other night, repack herself, reset the architecture, rebuild the walls that the fever had dissolved.

You don't.

You stay.

You stay pressed against him. Your palm stays flat on his chest, right over his heart. Your face stays turned into his throat, breaths still coming in those deep, warm, even pulls against his skin. The leg stays tangled between his. Your body is heavy and open, the whole of you poured against him without guard, without performance, without the wolf.

Just you.

Just the girl under the wolf. Just the soft, warm, exhausted creature who mumbles his name in her sleep and holds his shirt like a lifeline and says don't go like you mean it. One who stays close even after the reason for staying close has passed.

Valarr holds you.

He holds you the way he's always wanted to hold you: completely, with every part of himself, his arms locked around you, his chin at the crown of your head, his heartbeat against your palm. He holds you with the full, greedy, starving gratitude of a man who's been given the one thing he didn't know how to ask for. The one thing he'd assumed was simply not available.

Not because you didn't love him—he knows you love him, he's known it since year one—but because you love him in steel, in strength, in the particular fierce, predatory devotion that doesn't bend. You love him by being unbreakable. By being the one who holds. By being the centre, the gravity, the thing he orbits.

And tonight you loved him by being soft.

By being breakable. Being sick and miserable and needy and too exhausted to pretend otherwise.

By saying stay close instead of I'm fine, saying his name in your sleep not once but five times. Each one quieter and more surrendered than the last, as though even your unconscious mind knows where safety lives.

Valarr lies in the dark with you breathing against his throat and thinks: this is the happiest I've ever been because she feels safe with me.

Not the sex. Not the dark nights. Not the filthy, electric, extraordinary things you've done to each other in three years. Not the first time you told him you loved him, or the morning in Pentos when you woke up in hotel sheets and stretched in the morning light and he'd thought, delirious with it, I get to keep this.

This. A Thursday night. A fever. You, in an old t-shirt, sweaty and sick and clinging to him because you needed him and didn't pretend you didn't.

You shift in your sleep. A small nuzzle. The drag of your nose along the tendon of his throat. The way you do in the aftermath. The way you've done exactly thrice before in three years and each time he'd memorised it, filed it, kept it.

He tightens his arms around you.

"My love," he whispers, barely audible, to the crown of your head. "My beautiful love."

You don't answer. You're asleep. You're deeply, solidly, peacefully asleep in his arms, and your hand is still on his heart.

Valarr closes his eyes, sighing.

He thinks about the first time you looked at him.

About the way you'd looked, then: assessing, frank, unimpressed by the gold of him, the way no one had been unimpressed before you.

He thinks about the first time you'd touched him, your hand on his wrist, and the small, permanent rearrangement that had occurred in his chest at the contact. He thinks about the first time you'd fallen asleep in his arms, year one, and how rigidly you'd held yourself even in sleep.

How controlled the shape of your body had been against his, how even unconscious you hadn't fully let go.

And he thinks about tonight. About the way you'd folded into him like there was nowhere else in the world you'd rather be. About the grip on his shirt. The leg tangled with his. About the small, helpless, needy sounds he'll never tell you about, because you'd be mortified, and because they belong to him now.

Valarr presses one last kiss to the crown of your head, lingering.

He sleeps with you breathing against his throat, and his arms locked around you, and his hand flat against the warm curve of your back.

The blue light of your laptop was a cold, unforgiving sun in the dimness of your studio apartment. You were sprawled across the floor, the plush fibers of the taupe carpet pressing against your cheek, providing a strange grounding sort of friction against the drift of your thoughts.

Around you, the world felt static— a tableau of half finished coffee cups and a mountain of open tabs that hummed with a quiet, persistent buzz.

The emails sat in a neat, daunting row. A digital wall of obligations you weren't quite ready to climb yet.

“And then— Y/N! Are you even listening to me?” Aegon’s voice, tiny and sharp through the phone speakers, sliced through your temporary trance.

You blinked, your eyes burning from the screen glare as you shifted your weight, propping your chin up with your palm.

In the small, glowing rectangle of the FaceTime window Aegon—Egg— looked borderline offended. His shaved head an evidence of rebellion in a family that prized their silver-gold manes like religious relics. His face catching the light of his bedside lamp.

“Huh!” You shook your head, the motion making the room tilt for a fraction of a second. “I’m here, Egg. I’m listening, I swear.”

Egg sighed. A dramatic, heavy sound that seemed too weary for a boy his age. He rolled his eyes, the motion exaggerated by the camera angle. “Right. Sure you are. So, what did I just say? About Daeron promising to take me to that amusement park?”

You stared at him, your brain a chaotic, filing cabinet of unfinished assignments and to-be-attended seminars. “Uhm… well… I know it involved something about… the dornish puppeteers? Did they have a pop-up show near the ferris wheel?”

“See! I knew it!” He pointed a traitorous finger at the camera, his expression a mix of triumph and genuine annoyance. “You weren't listening. You were doing that thing which you do when my dad is talking and you’re pretending like you’re listening.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, okay!” You groaned, finally surrendering to the fatigue and letting your head thud back against the base of the velvet sofa behind you. Choosing to ignore his side remark for your own sanity.

You reached out, fumbling to perch the phone against a discarded thrown pillow so you could look at him without holding the device. “I’m just… I’m swamped Egg. College is kicking my ass. It’s a relentless cycle of deadlines, and your family… your beautiful, brooding, weirdly passive-aggressive family… they’re a lot to handle sometimes.”

You knew, logically, that you shouldn't be venting the intricacies of Targaryen interpersonal drama to the youngest member of the dynasty, but Egg was anything but a normal kid.

He was the sixth son of a fourth son. He was free to do as he pleased, yet he still carried the weight and prejudice that came with the Targaryen name.

“Tell me about it,” Aegon deadpanned.

He flopped onto his back, his camera swinging wildly to show a ceiling painted with a mural of the night sky— it was expensive, meticulous, and cold.

“They’re exhausting. Especially when Daeron starts drinking those ‘medicinal’ herbal teas that smell like a brewery.”

You didn’t even want to know.

“The point is,” you sighed, closing your eyes and letting the hum of your laptop anchor you, “I’m trying to keep my head above water, and I’m sorry if I can’t remember every minuscule detail of the amusement park itinerary. I’m trying to be a person, Egg. It’s harder than it looks.”

Aegon went quiet suddenly. Through the screen, his expression softened, his eyes losing that sharp, precocious edge.

He looked, for a moment, like a little boy who just missed his friend.

“I know,” he muttered, his voice dropping an octave. “I didn’t mean to be difficult. Much.”

“It’s fine,” you whispered, biting the corner of your lip, suddenly feeling guilty for dumping everything onto him.

You felt the familiar ache of your own position. The permanent babysitter, the girl who came over every friday, the honorary older sister who still had to submit invoices to a business manager at the end of every month.

You loved them, you truly did.

You loved the chaos of Kiara’s friendship and the way she navigated the social stratosphere with a grace you could only envy.

You loved Daella and Rhae, even when they were being impossible.

But you were an orbit away from their sun.

“Plus,” you added, the bitterness leaking out before you could stop it, “your asshole brother has made it his personal mission in life to make sure I don't have a single moment of peace on campus.”

You didn’t bother to censor the word.

‘Asshole’ was perhaps the kindest descriptor you had for Aerion Targaryen.

“Aerion?” Egg’s voice sharpened with genuine confusion and a flicker of something that looked quite like dread. “What’s he doing now? Is he being… weird again?”

You remembered when Egg had told you— about how apparently Aerion had drowned his cat in the well once. Looking at the dying creature with cold, detached eyes. A shudder ran through you, a cold finger tracing the length of your spine.

“Nothing direct,” you lied, though the lie felt thin, even from your own lips.

“Just comments. He’s always there Egg. In the student union, in the courtyard… leaning against that ridiculous car of his. He always makes these… remarks. About my clothes. About how I look like I’m constantly lost. About how I don’t ‘belong’ there.”

“Y/N…” Aegon sounded worried now.

“It’s stupid. He’s just a nepo baby with too much time and a god complex,” you said, trying to regain your footing. “He’s an asshole, and that’s just the natural order of things.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you have to take his offenses just because you’re working for—babysitting me,” Egg quickly corrected himself, his loyalty flaring up.

You bit your lip harder. That was the crux of it, wasn't it? You were the help, even if you were the help that got invited to Christmas dinner.

You were terrified of the day you might snap, of the day you might finally tell Aerion Targaryen exactly what you thought of his entire ‘brightflame’ persona, and subsequently find yourself without a job and a roof over your head.

Maekar, his father, was a fair man—hard, but fair, but you knew that blood was thicker than any employee contract.

“I know. I can handle it. Really,” you assured him, though your voice lacked the steel you wanted. You were tired of constantly being the resilient one, the punching bag.

Aegon huffed, clearly unconvinced, but he knew better than to push you when you were in this mood.

He rolled over in his bed, the rustle of his cotton sheets audible through the phone. “Well… anyway, I need to go. Maester Mellon is taking us for a ‘nature walk’ tomorrow. Which is just code for looking at dirt and pretending it’s interesting.”

“Ah. How academic. How very thousand eyes and one of him,” you snickered, referencing the old campus joke about the faculty’s surveillance.

“Shut up,” Egg grumbled, but there was a smile in his voice. “Goodnight, Y/N.”

“Goodnight, Egg. And don’t stay up late playing Minecraft. I can see your status on Discord, you know.”

“Love youuu! Bye!”

He didn’t even wait for a response before the screen went black, the call cutting off with a soft bloop.

The silence came abruptly after. The ‘I love you’ lingering in the air. A warm, soft thing that made the cold blue light of the laptop feel a little less clinical. You hated how natural it sounded.

He was the reason you stayed. This little boy and his ridiculous shaved head were the only thing currently keeping you motivated.

But tomorrow was Monday. Tomorrow meant the university campus. It meant navigating the labyrinth of ivory towers and the even more treacherous social hierarchy of the ‘great houses’ students.

“Oh, fuck me,” you muttered, pressing your fingers against your temples. A headache was already beginning to bloom behind your eyes. The humming of the fridge audiable in the background.

You thought of Aerion— the way he wore his arrogance like a tailored suit, and the way his eyes always seemed to find you in a crowd, tracking you with the predatory focus of someone who had never been told ‘no.’

You considered, just for a moment, the blissful possibility of staying in bed. Of letting the emails rot and the classes pass you by.

But then you thought of Egg’s laugh and Kiera’s frantic texts about the next big event, and you sighed.

You wouldn't give Aerion the satisfaction of your absence.

You’d show up, you’d take his insults, and you’d survive.

Because that’s what you did. You were the permanent babysitter, the girl who kept the dragons from burning down the house, even if it meant you got a few singe marks along the way.

Transitioning from the claustrophobic, blue light drenched sanctuary of your apartment to the sprawling, high-gothic grandeur of King’s Landing University always felt like a leap between two different centuries.

The previous night’s two hour digital marathon with Egg, his face a pixelated mess of adolescent indignity, felt like a fever dream by the time the morning sun hit the red brick facade of the Law building.

You were walking arm in arm with Kiera, your boots clicking rhythmically against the cobblestones that had been smoothed by centuries of entitled footsteps.

Kiera was a walking riot of color, as usual. A middle finger to the beige and navy minimalist aesthetic of the university’s elite. Her curls were a defiant, ethereal bubblegum pink, a nod to her Tyroshi heritage that she wore like a proud, neon sign.

She was draped in an oversized, custom hand painted silk coat that billowed behind her, looking effortlessly chic in a way that made the old money students in their barbour jackets look like they were wearing uniforms. All of them dulled in comparison to her.

"I’m telling yo Y/N, the look on Valarr’s face was priceless," Kiera giggled, the sound like wind chimes in the crisp morning air. She was recounting the latest scandal from the Breakspeare household.

"We were at this tiny, artisanal bistro very low-key, very ‘we’re not that famous'— and then Matarys calls. He sounds like he’s trying to describe the color of his own soul. Apparently, he thought those brownies in the fridge were just… well regular brownies."

You snorted, a stray lock of hair whipping across your face. "Matarys?” Your voice is filled with disbelief, imagining the straight edged, Dondarrion freckled, golden boy who apparently took an edible? By accident? How does that even happen?

"Accidentally, my ass. On purpose, maybe," Kiera deadpanned. "He told Valarr he was 'too scared of the ceiling' to call Baelor. Can you imagine? Calling the deputy of Targaryen corp who also happens to be your terrifyingly perfect father— to tell him the room is spinning? Valarr had to leave our dessert to go rescue him from a very intense conversation with a floor lamp."

"I think it's sweet that they trust each other like that," you noted, though a pang of envy flickered in your chest.

The Targaryens were a mess. A beautiful, sprawling, high functioning disaster, but they were a unit. Even when they were spiraling, they had someone to call. "I don’t think I’d have the courage to call anyone in that state. I’d just accept my fate and become one with the carpet."

"Oh, please," Kiera nudged you, her elbow sharp but affectionate. "You would’ve called me. Mostly because I’d probably be the one who gave you the brownie in the first place."

"True," you admitted, the tension in your shoulders finally starting to dissipate.

The campus was nothing short of electric today. Between the towering library and the ivy choked faculty buildings, a sea of white tents had been erected.

The KLU Student Body was hosting a massive charity drive for the urban renewal of Flea Bottom. The low income district that sat in the shadow of the university’s pristine hill. It was the kind of performative altruism the university adored; students in five hundred dollar sneakers selling cupcakes to 'end poverty.'

Still, it meant the atmosphere was festive rather than academic. No three hour seminars on ancient tournaments and conquests. No grueling geography tests on the tourist economies of the Summer Isles.

For a moment, you felt invincible. You were young, you were wearing your favorite thrifted leather jacket, and you were flanked by a woman who looked like a walking sunset.

"Looks like we have a penchant for trouble—" you started to say, the words light on your tongue. But as soon as the words escaped your lips, you wished they never had.

The scent is what gave him away. The sandalwood and expensive tobacco, and a sharp, metallic note of something like ozone. It was a fragrance that cost more than your monthly rent.

And the very air in the crowd seemed to shift, as if out of reverence.

Standing near the fountain, leaning against a stone gargoyle with a level of practiced arrogance that bordered on the divine, was Aerion Targaryen. A vision of monochromatic cruelty.

His hair, that signature Targaryen silver-white, was messily styled but perfectly maintained, catching the morning light like spun glass. He was wearing black dress pants that looked custom tailored to his lean frame and a crisp, white shirt with the top three buttons undone, exposing the pale line of his throat. His shoes were polished to a mirror shine, reflecting the dirt of the path he clearly felt superior to.

"Seven hells," you whispered, the invincibility of the morning shattering like dropped porcelain. "Just the thing I needed. My daily dose of arsenic."

Kiera’s upbeat expression flattened instantly. Her pastel brows furrowed as her eyes landed on her boyfriend’s cousin. "Oh. Him."

You tried to pivot, to blend into a group of passing freshmen, but it was too late.

Aerion’s gaze—a pale, violet-grey that felt like being stared at by a glacier— already snapped to yours. He straightened up. A slow, predatory smirk spreading across his face. He practically descended upon you.

"Not babysitting the impudent little rat today, are you?"

His voice was a smooth, melodic drawl, the kind of voice that belonged to a venomous serpent draped in silk, and was currently being used as a weapon. He didn't even bother with a greeting. To Aerion, you were a fixed point in the universe— a target.

"Aerion," Kiera said, her voice dropping into the clipped, diplomatic tone she used when dealing with the more volatile members of the family tree.

He offered her a shallow, mocking nod, his eyes never leaving yours. He was sizing you up, his gaze raking over your outfit, the slightly worn boots, the frayed hem of your jeans—with a visible, shimmering disdain. It was as if he were looking at a smudge on an otherwise perfect canvas.

"And you," he turned his focus to Kiera, his presence suddenly suffocating. "Not hanging off my dear cousin’s arm today, Kiera? Or has Valarr finally realized that your color palette is… shall we say, a bit too much for a future diplomat?"

Kiera visibly tensed beside you, her hand tightening on your arm. "Valarr is busy with the faculty. They’re organizing the fundraiser. You know, for people who actually need help?"

Aerion let out a short, sharp bark of a laugh. He looked at the charity tents with an expression of profound boredom.

"How lovely. Charity being organized by… charity cases." He leveled a pointed, malicious look at you. The implication hung in the air like a foul mist: You are the help. You are the Flea Bottom they are pretending to care about.

"If you have nothing nice to say, Aerion, you might as well take your expensive cologne and your bad attitude back to the economics wing," you managed through gritted teeth, your pulse hammering in your ears. "Some of us are actually trying to have a good day."

He stepped closer, invading your personal space until you could see the fine, silver lashes framing his eyes. "Careful," he hissed, his voice dropping to a poisonous whisper that only you could hear. "Remember, sweetheart, you still work for my father. One word about your… 'unprofessional' outbursts, and you’ll be back to working at the puppeteer shows without a paycheck to catch you."

"You have some nerve—" Kiera started, stepping forward to defend you, but you caught her hand.

Aerion chuckled, a sound of pure amusement. "Careful Tyrosh. Calm your little friend. We wouldn't want those wedding bells with Valarr to stop tolling before they even start, would we? Uncle Baelor is so very particular about the company his heir keeps."

The threat was veiled, but heavy. He was reminding both of you of the precariousness of your positions. Kiera was a girlfriend; and you were an employee. He was something neither of you would ever be. He was blood.

"Have a fun time, ladies," he added casually, slinging his hands into his pockets and stepping back.

He swept his gaze over you one last time, his eyes lingering on your lips for a fraction of a second too long before turning cold again. "Taking care of… blind children and narcomaniacs. It suits you. Very 'salt of the earth.'"

And with that he vanished into the crowd, his silver hair a beacon of light amidst the sea of brown and blonde. The scent of his cologne lingering like a physical weight, a reminder of the encounter that made you feel suddenly, violently small.

"What the hell is actually wrong with him?" Kiera muttered, practically dragging you away from the fountain and toward the arts and humanities building. "He’s getting worse. It’s like he’s bored of being a Targaryen, so he’s decided to try his hand at being a demon."

"Nothing’s wrong with him, Kie," you said, your voice shaking slightly despite your best efforts. "Some people are just inherently evil. It’s a biological trait. He was born with silver hair and a missing conscience."

"You really believe that?"

"Don't you?"

Kiera didn't answer. She just hummed a low, thoughtful note as you reached the sanctuary of the arts building.

Inside (to your relief) the atmosphere changed instantly. The clinical, cold air of the campus was replaced by the scent of turpentine, linseed oil, and stale coffee.

Tanselle was positioned in the center of the atrium, perched on a wooden stool that looked like it was held together by prayer and old paint.

She was a muralist by trade, but today she was doing 'quick fire' portraits for the charity drive. Her dark hair was pulled back in a messy braid, and a smudge of cerulean blue decorated her cheekbone. She was focused, her brush moving with a grace that made the chaos around her seem like background noise.

"Oh! Hey!" she greeted once she had noticed your presence, not looking up until she’d finished a delicate line on the canvas. "What’s up? I’m just finishing this one… it’s a portrait of a 'lost soul’ or something… I think the student just had a bad hangover."

"We ran into the devil on the way here," you deadpanned, leaning against a nearby table cluttered with jars of brushes.

From the shadows of a nearby pillar, a girl with fiery red hair and a look of permanent skepticism emerged. Rowan— she was holding a thermos that you knew for a fact contained more vodka than tea.

"You mean prince brightflame?" Rowan mocked, her eyebrow arching. "Did he set anyone on fire today, or was he just being his usual, sparkling self?"

"The one and only," Kiera sighed, leaning down to give Tanselle a quick, paint avoidant squeeze.

"Okay, enough about Targaryens. Especially the ones who think they’re God’s gift to the student union," you groaned, rubbing your temples. "I need to forget his face exists for at least four hours."

"What’s got your panties in a twist?" Rowan giggled, taking a long swig from her thermos. "Is it the insults? Or is it the fact that he looked particularly edible in that white shirt today?"

You stared at her, your expression flat. "Do not even finish that thought, Rowan. I don't care what the university policy is on student on student violence."

"Alright, alright, Seven Hells… no need to go all Maegor on me," Rowan grumbled, though she was still grinning.

She had an ongoing bet that your mutual hatred with Aerion was just a very long, very exhausting preamble to something else.

You hated that she even thought it. You hated even more that, for a split second by the fountain, you’d noticed the way the wind caught his hair.

"Anyway… on a lighter and happier note…" Kiera spoke up, leaning against another table of art supplies. "One of Valarr's faculty friends, some guy named Raymun, is hosting a party tonight at his off campus loft. It should be cool. Not too many nepo babies, good music, and an appropriate amount of booze. Valarr said it’s a 'no ego' zone."

“I'm in," Rowan said instantly, gleaming with newfound enthusiasm. “I have a constitutional right to be at every party within a five mile radius.”

“Um… yeah, sure,” Tanselle said, her voice a bit more hesitant as she cleaned a brush. “If I finish the mural for the atrium…”

"Don't worry, Tans. Duncan will be there," Kiera winked.

Everyone knew Duncan— the towering, incredibly earnest rugby captain who followed Tanselle around like a particularly large, loyal hound.

Tanselle flushed a deep, violent crimson, muming something about “not caring about rugby players” that everyone gracefully ignored.

“What about you, Y/N? You in?” Kiera turned her gaze to you, her eyes hopeful. "You need this. You’ve been buried in schoolwork and Egg’s drama for weeks. One night. No babies, no Targaryens, no responsibilities."

You mulled it over. You had a Yi-Ti translation due on Wednesday. You had three chapters of The Citadel Chronicles to summarize. And, you had a lingering headache from Aerion’s venom.

In the back of your mind, a small, cynical voice whispered that a party hosted by Valarr’s friends was a dangerous place for someone trying to avoid the ‘inner circles.’

But you pushed it down. You were with your friends. You were in the Arts Building and the sun was out.

“Sure,” you said, the word feeling like a victory. “To hell with the emails. I’m in.”

You didn't realize that in the world of the Targaryens, the 'no ego zone' didn't exist. And Aerion Targaryen was never the one to miss a performance.

The first thing that catches you by surprise is not the overwhelming, sweet haze of top-shelf Dornish cannabis or the sharp, botanical sting of expensive gin.

In a place that was supposed to be a temporary Friday night sanctuary— a casual, off-campus loft in the old industrial district, supposedly void of any high-end drama or old-money politics, and the insufferable nepo babies of the Red Keep quad— you expected paper cups and vinyl records.

Instead, you stepped into a room filled with exactly the kind of royalty you had spent the entire week trying to escape.

A party hosted by a close friend of Valarr Targaryen. You closed your eyes for a fraction of a second, cursing your own naivety.

How fortunate.

What had you honestly been expecting? A gathering of normal people? Students who actually worried about tuition and supermarket receipts like you did?

But the true shock wasn't the sheer, architectural immensity of the living room, with its polished concrete floors, exposed steel beams, and massive glass panels showcasing a panoramic view of the twinkling King's Landing skyline.

It was that sharp, jagged bolt of white light across the room. A head of messily perfect, silver-white hair that you had been praying to the Seven you wouldn’t see tonight.

And much worse, draped elegantly over his arm was Alicia Florent.

Alicia was widely considered the campus’s reigning deity of effortless glamour— excluding Kiera, of course, who occupied a stratosphere entirely of her own.

A finely manicured, diamond-ringed hand was splayed possessively across Aerion’s forearm, the dark wool of his designer jacket a stark contrast to her sunkissed skin. Her perfectly lined, glossy lips were curved open in a rich, musical laugh at whatever witty, venomous thing he was currently whispering into her ear.

She looked entirely, infuriatingly perfect.

Her makeup was a masterclass in high-end minimalism; a subtle, glittering shimmer danced across her eyelids and collarbones, looking so natural it defied the hours it must have taken to apply. Her clothes, a silk, emerald-green slip dress fitted her like a second skin.

It was obviously expensive, the kind of fabric that didn't wrinkle or catch, and you were suddenly, violently overwhelmed by a suffocating wave of inferiority.

She was a natural. A creature born to inhabit rooms like these, to drink from crystal flutes and look down on the rest of the world with a lazy, secure smile.

You desperately tried to tuck that jealous sense of inadequacy away, but it was hard when your own outfit suddenly felt like a joke.

The structured black crop top and matching silk skirt (which Kiera had practically forced you into, insisting you needed to show a little skin and live a little) now felt entirely too revealing. Under the invisible, judgmental gazes of the KLU elite, the fabric seemed to suffocate you. Making you feel exposed and clownish instead of gorgeous.

You felt like an imposter who had snuck in through the servant's entrance.

You forced yourself to shake off the feeling, taking a deep breath as you stepped further into the warm, bass-heavy atmosphere of the loft, hand in hand with Rowan.

Rowan, bless her, was a necessary shield against the room's collective snobbery.

She was sporting a vintage leather jacket slung effortlessly over a fiery, scarlet jumpsuit that perfectly matched her untamed nature. Her thick, red curls were propped into a flawless, artfully messy topknot on her head, and she moved through the crowd like a queen inspecting her subjects.

“Hi! Hello! Oh my god, babe, you look so stunning!” Rowan called out, waving to a group of arts students by the balcony. She was so painfully, beautifully natural at this— at being kind, funny, charismatic, and universally liked.

While she floated through the social waters with ease, you just stood there awkwardly, anchoring yourself to her hand and pinning a tight, plastic smile to your face, hoping no one would look close enough to see the panic in your eyes.

Tanselle and Kiera were a few paces behind you, following closely on your heels, looking equally shimmering and joyful.

The heavy, rhythmic thumping of the bass from the speakers couldn't drown out the sudden shift in the air behind you. You caught the faint, warm sound of Valarr’s deep voice as he approached their group.

Turning your head slightly, you watched as the heir apparent to the Breakspeare fortune greeted Kiera, his chocolate brown hair catching the amber pendant lights as he leaned down to press a tender, familiar kiss to her temple.

Right beside them, Duncan— the towering rugby captain who looked slightly terrifying but possessed the heart of a golden retriever— was already hovering over Tanselle.

He muttered a shy, earnest greeting, and even in the dim lighting of the loft, you could see Tanselle flush a furious, violent crimson.

You turned around fully just to shoot her an encouraging, all-knowing smile. She caught your eye, her blush deepening as she biting her lip, a silent plea for you to stop teasing her.

Before you could offer any more silent solidarity, Rowan was suddenly pulled to the side. The host of the party himself—Raymun Fossoway— had caught sight of her.

He intercepted your path with a wide, bright grin, and the immediate body language between them suggested they were much more familiar than you had previously realized.

“Hey,” Raymun greeted you, extending a hand to shake yours.

His grip was polite, but it was entirely clear that his brain had ceased to function the moment he looked past your shoulder. His eyes literally could not leave Rowan’s stunning, scarlet-clad figure.

You couldn't even find it in yourself to be annoyed. You got it. Everyone looked at Rowan when she entered a room.

You offered him a quick, polite greeting, gently squeezing Rowan's hand before letting it go. "I'll be totally fine on my own," you assured her in a quiet whisper, giving her a reassuring nod as Raymun already began pulling her into a conversation about some indie band.

“Okay, scream if you need anything!” She managed to let out before Raymun dragged her away towards some friends.

Turning away from the couples and the social butterflies, you looked toward the far side of the room.

You needed a barrier between yourself and the silver haired specter by the window.

Deciding to put some distance between yourself and the crowd, you began to weave through the sea of silk and linen, heading straight toward the crowded kitchen counter to grab a drink.

The kitchen was nothing short of breathtaking, a cathedral of high end consumption, dominated by a vast marble island that looked like it had been carved from a single cloud.

It was cluttered with an array of spirits that felt more like museum artifacts than party supplies— bottles of triple-distilled vodka and vintage Dornish reds with labels so ornate and script so archaic you could barely pronounce the names, let alone guess the price point.

You were in the middle of decanting a suspiciously shimmering liquid into what felt like a genuine crystal tumbler (half-convinced the glassware alone cost more than your monthly rent) when a sudden clearing of a throat vibrated through the air beside you.

Before you even turned, the scent hit you like a sensory ambush.

It was a suffocatingly sweet cloud of Ashai vanilla and sun-ripened strawberries— a fragrance so curated and polished it felt like walking into a high-end boutique in the middle of a summer heatwave.

It was the smell of someone who had never known the scent of a crowded subway or a cheap laundromat. It was the scent of a walking candy cane.

You turned, the heavy bottle still poised awkwardly in your hand. “Hm?” Your gaze collided with Alicia Florent.

“Hey.” Her voice was like honey dripped over velvet— painfully sweet and effortlessly melodic.

She flashed a smile that belonged in a Vogue editorial, her teeth so perfectly white and aligned they looked like a row of polished pearls. “Sorry,” she murmured, her voice dropping as a group of boisterous students pushed past, forcing her to press into your personal space.

Up close, the perfection was devastating.

Her blonde hair didn't just curl; it spiraled in a way that suggested a personal stylist had spent hours meticulously crafting a 'natural' look. Her eyes were two pools of shimmering, ocean-like blue crystals, framed by lashes so long they seemed to cast shadows against her high, sculpted cheekbones.

You felt a sudden, sharp pang of grounding reality; you totally understood why Aerion had her anchored to his side.

She was a goddess crafted from old money privilege and premium skincare.

You stood there, feeling like a low resolution glitch in a high definition movie, holding the glass bottle with a grip that was far too tight. You were painfully aware of the contrast— her glittering, effortless grace against your own sense of being an intruder in a world built for people like her.

“Oh, I just came over to grab us a drink,” she said, her smile widening as she registered your wide eyed, deer in headlights expression.

The ‘us’ hung in the air like a territorial flag.

It was a subtle, sharp reminder that while you were here as a guest of a friend, she was here as a part of the dynasty. People like Alicia Florent and people who spent their weekends parsing complex Yi-ti sentences and babysitting the youngest Targaryen did not inhabit the same social stratosphere.

It was just a biological fact of campus life.

She let out a soft, airy giggle— a sound that was probably practiced to perfection— and reached for a gold-labeled bottle of Arbor Gold. “Do you mind?” she asked, her gaze flicking down to your hand, noting that you were essentially guarding the bar.

“Right… um, sorry,” you stammered, your face heating up as the ice in your glass rattled.

You cleared your throat, the unknown liquid in your cup sloshing dangerously as you stepped back, yielding the marble altar to its rightful priestess.

You didn't wait for her to say anything else. You pivoted, ducking your head and weaving your way through the press of bodies, heading toward a shadowed, secluded corner of the loft near the floor to ceiling windows.

You decided then and there to leave the expensive drink-mixing to the expensive nepo babies; you needed the darkness of the corner to hide the fact that you suddenly felt very, very visible.

You bumped into people muttering quiet little ‘sorry’s’ and ‘excuse me’s’ until you finally found the heavy glass sliding doors that led out to the expansive terrace.

You needed air. You needed to escape the suffocating sweetness of Alicia’s strawberry scented perfection and the low, heavy hum of bass that was beginning to rattle the inside of your skull.

As you stepped outside, the climate shifted instantly.

The cool, midnight breeze of King’s Landing clipped at your bare shoulders, a welcome shock to your system. Below the loft, the sprawling, chaotic expanse of the metropolis hummed with nocturnal life.

You could hear the faint, distorted sounds of the city filtering up to the penthouse level— distant shouts from the entertainment district, the aggressive honk of car horns, and the low, rhythmic wail of a siren echoing somewhere down in the valleys of the concrete jungle.

Above it all, the towering skyscrapers of the financial sector gleamed like sharp, metallic monoliths, their glass windows reflecting millions of tiny, artificial lights against the dark canopy of the sky.

It was the quintessential Westerosi dream: a glittering, cutthroat paradise built on old money and modern ambition.

You leaned your weight against the sleek, black iron railing, closing your eyes as you took a deep, centering breath. You let the crisp night air fill your lungs, hoping it would cleanse the dizzying haze of the Dornish wine and the residual contact smoke from the living room.

Out here, the party was beautifully muted. The thumping bass became a dull, rhythmic heartbeat against the glass, and the loud, overlapping conversations of the KLU elite drifted away into the wind.

For a few fleeting seconds, suspended high above the streets, you felt entirely untouched by the hierarchy inside.

A movement in the far corner of the terrace caught your eye. A couple was deeply entrenched in the shadows, draped over one another on a low outdoor sectional. They were clearly drunk, murmuring slurred, lovey-dovey obscenities into each other’s ears, entirely oblivious to the world.

You squinted at them for a fraction of a second, rolled your eyes with a quiet shrug, and walked purposefully toward the furthest, most isolated edge of the balcony, seeking whatever true peace you could salvage.

Then, the heavy glass door hissed open behind you.

You didn't turn around. You assumed the amorous couple had finally taken their business indoors, or perhaps another drunk freshman had come out to throw up over the side. You remained still, staring out at the golden grid of the highway below, until the air around you changed.

The wind shifted, carrying that familiar, dangerous fragrance— sandalwood, rich tobacco. Your breath hitched in your throat.

Before you could even process the sensory warning, a lean, broad-shouldered frame leaned onto the railing right beside you.

Up close, the first things that caught the ambient light were his hands. His long, aristocratic fingers were loosely gripping the cold metal of the railing, adorned with an array of heavy, intricate rings.

They were beautifully crafted jewels, shaped into coiled dragons and sharp, jagged scales that caught the neon glow of the city lights. They were forged from dark, smoky Valyrian steel— the ultimate heirloom status symbol, modernized for a prince who wore his legacy like brass knuckles.

The irritation began to simmer in your chest, a biological knee-jerk reaction to his very existence. Your spine instantly straightened into a rigid, defensive line.

"Come out here to make my life a living hell again?" The words slipped past your lips before you could stop them, laced with a bitter, cynical venom.

Perhaps it was the cheap courage of the alcohol flowing through your veins, or maybe you were just entirely exhausted by his games, but you didn't care that you were speaking to your employer's volatile son with complete disrespect.

But to your absolute shock, the sharp, cutting retort never came.

There was no dry remark about your attitude, no poisonous reminder that he could have your contract terminated before sunrise. Aerion remained perfectly still.

He just stared straight ahead into the sprawling labyrinth of the city lights, his expression unreadable, as if entranced. With a slow, deliberate movement, he reached into the inner pocket of his tailored jacket and pulled out a classic, crumpled pack of Marlboro Reds.

You stood there silently, utterly dumbstruck by this newfound, quiet iteration of him.

Your gaze involuntarily drifted to his side profile. In the dim, ambient wash of the terrace lights, his features looked sharp enough to draw blood— the perfect curve of his nose, the slight clench of his jawline, and that notoriously messy, silver-white hair that somehow always managed to look effortlessly styled.

A sudden, sharp click broke the silence as he flicked open a matte-black lighter. The small, orange flame illuminated his face for a second, casting long shadows across his high cheekbones.

He inhaled deeply, taking a slow, heavy drag before letting the gray smoke curl lazily from his lips, wrapping around the space between you like a shroud.

You watched the way he held the cigarette between his fingers— so delicately, almost gently, as if he were tracing the fragile skin of a lover. It was a vulnerable, quiet posture that felt entirely out of character for the brutal, arrogant boy you encountered on campus.

You cocked your head to the side, your eyebrows furrowing as you silently questioned what kind of psychological game was unfolding.

"If you keep staring at me like that, I'll have to assume you like what you see." His voice was a low, gravelly rasp, rough from the smoke but dripping with his signature, lazy arrogance.

The tip of his cigarette glowed a fierce, angry orange as he took another slow drag. His violet-grey eyes never shifted from the concrete jungle below, but a slow, maddening smirk was beginning to tug at the corner of his mouth.

You let out a sharp, breathless scoff, though to your own horror, a strange sense of comfort washed over you at the sarcastic remark. It was predictably, entirely Aerion.

"You are so incredibly full of yourself," you muttered. And for the first time since you had met him, your words felt less like a defensive shield and more like a tease.

You blamed the wine. You blamed the heavy midnight air, the glittering skyline, and the infuriatingly perfect way the neon lights reflected in his pale irises. There was absolutely no logical way you were enjoying Aerion Targaryen’s company.

"You'd be profoundly bored without it," he bit back smoothly, finally turning his head to look at you.

When his gaze locked onto yours, it felt like a physical shock. His eyes were sharp, electric, and possessed a dark, hungry intensity that made the air in your lungs feel dangerously thin.

"You know, Aerion," you sighed, leaning back against the railing and trying to maintain your grounded, deadpan demeanor despite the sudden hammering of your pulse, "you are, without a doubt, the most irritating person I have ever encountered in my entire life."

"Say that again," he whispered. The shift in his tone was instantaneous. Something dark and predatory flashed in the depths of his eyes.

And you would have rather labeled yourself entirely delusional than admit that his lean frame had just gravitated toward yours, his shoulder brushing against your leather jacket as he leaned in close.

"What? That you're the most irritating person I’ve ever—"

"No," he snapped softly, his jaw clenching with a sudden, rigid intensity. "My name." He clarified.

You froze, your mouth hanging slightly agape as you stared at him. The sheer, magnetic weight of his presence was overwhelming. You swallowed hard, your mind racing as you finally relented to the gravity of the moment.

"Aerion," you spoke, the syllables falling from your lips more deliberately this time.

You tasted the weight of his name on your tongue, weighing the vowels as if testing a dangerous secret. It felt dizzyingly, terrifyingly intimate. No, you hate him. You absolutely despise his entire existence.

Suddenly, Rowan’s laughing voice flashed through your mind from earlier in the afternoon—You two just have too much mutual attraction. It’s chaotic chemistry, simmering until it bursts.

You forced yourself to clear your throat, aggressively pushing those chaotic thoughts into the darkest corners of your brain.

"So…" you began, desperate to fracture the suffocating tension that had built up between your bodies. "Where exactly is Alicia? I’m surprised she let you out of her sight for more than thirty seconds."

You wondered how the campus goddess had managed to lose her prize. Aerion's arm candy usually followed him everywhere at events like this, not necessarily because he possessed a genuine shred of affection for them, but because they served as a pristine status symbol.

"Inside," he said flatly, as if the answer were entirely inconsequential.

At the mention of the blonde girl, his silver brows furrowed with a brief, visible flicker of annoyance.

"I thought you liked her?" You shrugged, nervously fiddling with the rings on your own fingers, desperately trying to quell the strange, fluttering sensation that was beginning to bloom in the pit of your stomach.

Aerion watched your hands, tracking the nervous movement of your fingers before he straightened his posture.

He cleared his throat, the flashing silver face of his luxury watch catching the moonlight. "She’s…"

He cocked his head to the side, letting out a quiet, self-deprecating laugh that sounded entirely uncharacteristic. He nervously racked a hand through his white hair, his fingers disrupting the perfect mess of his strands as if he were genuinely struggling to find the right vocabulary.

"She's just…"

"Alicia," you finished for him, your tone flat.

"Yeah," he murmured, his voice dropping into a register that sent a shiver down your spine.

He turned his head fully now, his violet eyes locking onto your face with a dangerous, undisguised hunger.

"Don't look at me like that," you whispered, the words small, a desperate attempt to swallow the rising anxiety in your throat.

"Like what?" he chuckled, the sound rich and low against the background hum of the city.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about. I hate you, Aerion. Remember?" you reasoned, trying to remind both him and yourself of the boundaries.

"You say that like you're trying to convince yourself," he murmured. He shifted his weight, turning his torso fully toward you now, completely invading your personal space.

Before your brain could formulate a cohesive, defensive response, his hand rose.

His long fingers reached out, the cold, heavy metal of his Valyrian steel rings brushing against the hypersensitive skin of your jawline as he gently tucked a loose strand of hair behind your ear.

His touch was agonizingly slow, a gentle contrast to the volatile persona he usually was.

"Let's just say…" he whispered, leaning down until his lips were mere inches from your ear, his breath a warm mix of heavy tobacco and expensive alcohol against your skin. "I vastly prefer you when you're not playing house for my little brother."

He was so incredibly close you could feel the heat radiating from his chest. Your mind snapped under the proximity, an embarrassing, violent heat crawling up your neck.

What kind of twisted game was he playing? He had to be mocking you. This was undoubtedly another one of his cruel, depraved psychological experiments to see how easily he could break you—

The electric moment was violently shattered by the sharp hiss of the sliding glass door opening once again.

"There you are!"

Alicia’s glittering, emerald-clad frame stepped out onto the concrete terrace, her voice bellowing over the quiet hum of the night.

She was looking directly at Aerion, her glossy lips pouted in exaggerated annoyance. "I've been looking for you literally everywhere, everyone is in the lounge."

Aerion made a low, frustrated noise in the back of his throat— a guttural, irritated sound as if pulling his weight away from your body physically pained him.

He straightened up, his demeanor instantly freezing back into its familiar, icy mask.

"Is everything… okay out here?" Alicia asked innocently, her ocean-blue eyes flicking curiously from Aerion's rigid posture to your flushed face.

She seemed entirely devoid of jealousy. In fact, the absolute absurdity of person like Aerion Targaryen harboring a genuine, consuming interest in a girl like you was clearly a concept so laughable she didn't even possess the capacity to entertain it.

To her, you were just the girl who watched Aegon. You were part of the background scenery.

You quickly cleared your throat, desperately trying to construct a normal sentence before the silence became incriminating. "Yeah. Um, we were just chatting about—"

You didn't even get to finish your lie. Alicia reached out, her manicured hand wrapping tightly around Aerion's forearm, physically dragging him toward the glowing warmth of the interior.

"Oh, perfect! Well, you can finish your little chat another time. Valarr is looking for you in the kitchen, they’re opening the good bottles."

With that, she began pulling him back toward the glass doors. Aerion aggressively shood her hand off his arm with a sharp flick of his wrist, but he was already trailing reluctantly on her heels, his compliance a necessity of the crowd inside.

Just before he crossed the threshold back into the roaring noise of the party, he stopped.

He looked back over his shoulder once, his pale, violet-grey irises catching the harsh glare of the neon signs.

"You're trouble," he murmured, his voice carrying a strange, low weight that felt dangerously pleasant.

You swallowed the remaining panic in your throat, anchoring your heels into the concrete. "You'd be bored without it," you managed to fire back, throwing his own line right back at his chest.

Aerion shook his head, a genuine, quiet huff of a laugh escaping his lips before he turned and vanished into the sea of silk and gold.

The glass door hissed shut behind him.

You let out a long, shuddering breath you hadn't realized you were holding, your fingers tightly gripping the iron railing as your knees felt suddenly, dangerously weak.

You stared blindly out at the twinkling lights of the King's Landing skyscrapers, the scent of sandalwood and tobacco still heavy in the midnight air.

What the hell had just happened?

The heavy glass door slid shut behind you, cutting off the crisp midnight breeze and plunging you back into the sensory overload of the penthouse.

The sudden spike in temperature, the thick scent of luxury perfumes competing with expensive cannabis overwhelmed you once again, and the sheer volume of the bass rattling through the hardwood floors.

You needed to drown out the memory of the balcony. You needed to dance, to drink, to find Kiera or Tanselle— literally anyone who could act as an anchor to reality before your thoughts completely spiraled into dangerous territory.

Like a neon beacon of hope in a sea of unknown faces, Kiera’s familiar head of bubblegum pink curls caught the light near the edge of the sunken living room. She was leaning against a sleek minimalist pillar, gesturing animatedly with a tiny martini glass as she talked to Valarr and a guy you didn’t recognize.

"Hey," you said, stepping into their orbit. A sudden, nervous energy carried you forward, your heart still beating a little too fast from your encounter outside.

The trio turned toward you. Kiera’s face lit up instantly, her eyes bright and slightly glassy— a telltale sign that she had been indulging a little too heavily in the free-flowing liquor.

She held her martini glass at a dangerously loose angle, the clear liquid sloshing near the brim. You didn't worry, though. Valarr was right beside her, his hand already resting protectively at the small of her back. He always looked out for her.

"Y/N!" Kiera beamed, throwing her free arm around your neck in a sudden, bone-crushing hug. She was definitely more intoxicated than she’d let on via text earlier. "You made it! I thought you died on the balcony!"

"Whoa, whoa, careful, love…" Valarr’s deep voice intervened smoothly.

With the practiced reflexes of a seasoned athlete, he leaned across, his long fingers gently but firmly catching the stem of the martini glass just as it slipped from Kiera’s grip. He wasn't fast enough to stop the liquid entirely though, as a splash of the gin sloshed straight onto the front of her silk top.

"Oh, shit," Kiera grumbled, staring down at the damp fabric and sighing in deep frustration at her own clumsiness.

"I'm going to go get this cleaned up," she mumbled, pouting as she gestured vaguely toward the corridor where the guest bathrooms were located, her legs a little wobbly beneath her.

"Yeah, and you’re not going anywhere alone in this crowd," Valarr pointed out, a tender, amused smile breaking across his handsome features. He looped an arm around her hips, effortlessly guiding her through the dense press of people. Before they disappeared, he offered a polite, apologetic nod to you and the remaining guy. "Excuse us for a minute."

You shook your head, a fond smile playing on your lips as you watched them go. Valarr really was the golden boy of the Breakspeare line— so effortlessly smooth, attentive, and diplomatic. He would make an incredible politician one day, exactly as his father Baelor intended.

Your eyes broke away from the retreating couple when a quiet throat-clearing sounded across from you.

You snapped your attention back to the stranger left standing in Valarr's wake. He was someone you had genuinely never seen before—not in the crowded lecture halls of the law building, not in the quiet, dusty corners of the study halls, and certainly not hanging around the high-end sports cars parked in the Red Keep quad.

He was blonde, but not the striking, otherworldly silver-blonde of the Targaryen dynasty. His hair was a softer, warmer shade of honeyed gold, messily strewn about his head in a way that suggested he had spent the day outdoors rather than in front of a mirror.

He possessed a wide, incredibly friendly grin that immediately crinkled the corners of his eyes. He was like a golden puppy. Lean and approachable, he wore a simple, well-fitted white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms and a pair of crisp, dark trousers. He looked entirely… safe.

"Hey… sorry for the chaos," he said, holding out a hand toward you. "Didn't even get a chance to introduce myself properly amidst the martini crisis. I'm Art."

You reached out and took his hand. When your fingers gripped his, you were caught off guard by the sheer warmth of his skin. There were no heavy, cold Valyrian steel rings biting into your palm this time. Just a normal, human touch.

"Me and Valarr are in the same political science major," he clarified, his smile widening as you exchanged names.

"Ah, right. You're Kiera's best friend," Art said, a look of recognition dawning on his face as he gestured toward a slightly quieter corner of the loft where a low leather bench sat empty. "Shit, Valarr mentions the two of you all the time when we're studying."

"He does?" You giggled, letting him guide you away from the main traffic of the walkway.

"Yeah… I mean, mostly he talks about Kiera. The man is completely, painfully down bad for her," Art laughed, scratching the back of his neck.

“Sound about right.” You bit back, sitting down beside him, you couldn't help but notice how entirely different his presence felt compared to the one on the balcony.

Aerion’s presence was a suffocating, atmospheric weight that demanded your entire cognitive capacity; it was all sharp edges, dangerous tension, and dark gravity. Art, on the other hand, felt like a sunny afternoon.

He was entirely down-to-earth. As you fell into easy, comfortable small talk, you learned he didn't come from a millionaire tech empire or an ancient political dynasty. He played tennis on a scholarship, had two younger siblings, and his parents actually owned a commercial dairy farm in the Reach district outside the city.

"Though, I have to say," Art added, leaning back against the bench and throwing you a playfully roguish look, "Valarr definitely left out the detail that Kiera had such a stunning best friend."

It was a textbook, slightly cheesy pickup line, and you couldn't help but swat his shoulder teasingly. "Oh, shut up," you grumbled, though a genuine laugh escaped you.

"What? I'm just stating facts!" he defended, his eyes twinkling with amusement.

"So, you're a literal farmer?" you asked, leaning in, trying to make sure your voice didn't sound judgmental. It was just so rare to find someone at a KLU party who knew what manual labor felt like.

"What's so funny about that?" he laughed, throwing his hands up in mock surrender. "I mean, I help out around the property when I go home for the holidays. I get the milk from the cows, mend the fences… why are you laughing so hard?"

"Nothing, nothing…" You shook your head, pressing a hand over your mouth as a breathless wheeze escaped you. "It's just… it's so incredibly Tom Sawyer of you. I didn't think guys like you actually existed at this university."

"Hey, it builds character," he grinned, his face completely open and relaxed.

You had to admit, you were having a surprisingly wonderful time. Art was easy to talk to, kind, and genuinely funny.

Yet, despite the effortless flow of the conversation, a traitorous, intrusive little voice in the very back of your head refused to go quiet.

No matter how much Art made you laugh, a part of your mind was still lingering on the balcony. Your skin still felt hyper-sensitive where Aerion’s smoky Valyrian steel rings had brushed against your jawline. You could still taste the phantom scent of Marlboro Reds and sandalwood in the back of your throat.

More than once, a prickling sensation washed over the back of your neck—that heavy, unmistakable feeling of a pair of eyes drilling into your spine.

But every time you casually glanced around the crowded room, hoping or fearing to catch a glimpse of silver hair, you found nothing but strangers. You're being delusional, you told yourself severely. He's with Alicia. He doesn't care about you.

At one point, Rowan walked past the lounge area, her hand securely laced with Raymun’s. When she caught sight of you chatting and laughing with the handsome, honey-blonde boy, she stopped dead in her tracks and shot you a massive, exaggeratedly knowing wink. You aggressively shook your head at her in return, your cheeks heating up as she giggled and let her host boyfriend pull her toward the bar.

"Anyway," Art said, drawing your attention back to the bench as he shifted the topic. "We were supposed to be discussing our interpretation of the Citadel Chronicles for Ashford's seminar. Did you actually manage to parse through the third volume's syntax? Because I'm convinced the author was having a stroke there.”

"Oh, the syntax is a nightmare," you agreed, glad for the academic distraction. "I had to stay up until three in the morning just trying to translate the regional economic data from the old port city—"

Before you could finish your sentence, a sharp, violent sound tore through the thick atmosphere of the loft. The sound of something crashing.

It was the unmistakable, explosive shattering of glass, heavy and resonant enough to cut right through the booming bass of the speakers. The music didn't stop, but the collective volume of the party’s laughter and chatter dropped instantly, replaced by a sudden, tense silence.

"What the hell…" Art muttered, his friendly expression instantly flattening as he stood up from the leather couch.

You rose immediately to follow his lead, your heart doing a strange, protective drop in your chest. Across the vast penthouse, a frantic murmur was breaking out. A large, dense crowd of students was already shifting, turning their heads and eagerly gathering near the wide archway of the kitchen entrance, voices rising in a sudden flurry of excitement and dread.

The easy, golden warmth of your conversation with Art dissolved like mist. You didn't even think; your boots were already moving, stepping off the leather bench and driving you toward the kitchen archway.

Art’s hand shot out, his warm fingers brushing against your wrist in a frantic attempt to anchor you, to keep you from running straight into the blast radius.

"Y/N, wait—don't get close to that," he warned, his voice low and tight with a regular guy's instinct for self-preservation.

You shooed him off with a sharp jerk of your arm, your eyes locked on the shifting geometry of the crowd ahead. "I’m fine, Art," you muttered, your focus completely consumed by the sudden shift in the room’s temperature.

"I'm not your fucking mate!" another voice roared, high-pitched and vibrating with pure, unadulterated adrenaline.

Around the kitchen perimeter, the KLU elite were already adopting their positions. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, holding their gold-rimmed glasses and designer clutches, their faces schooled into expressions of practiced, aristocratic judgment.

They acted horrified, wrinkling their noses as if violence were an urban disease beneath their tax bracket, but their eyes were wide, glittering with a sick, parasitic entertainment. Hypocrites, you thought. Every single one of them.

"What's happening?" you demanded, nudging the shoulder of a girl in a sequined top whose view wasn't blocked by the wall of tall rugby players currently forming a human barricade.

You didn't need her to answer. As if responding to the sheer force of your arrival, the crowd parted just enough to afford you a clear, unobstructed line of sight.

The pristine, grey-veined marble of the kitchen counter was no longer an altar for expensive wine. Aerion Targaryen had a guy pinned by the throat against the high-gloss white subway tile of the wall. His lean, tailored frame looked entirely predatory, his shoulders squared as he leveraged his weight to lift the other student an inch off the floor.

Before your brain could even process the visual, a sickening, wet crack echoed through the space, a sound so brutal it seemed to stop the music altogether. Aerion’s knuckle, adorned with those heavy, coiled Valyrian steel rings, had collided squarely with the guy's nose.

An ugly, violent crimson bloomed instantly across the boy's face, cascading like a ruptured river down the front of his pristine white linen shirt.

You gasped, the sound catching in your throat along with a collective, horrified ripple that shuddered through the entire throng of spectators.

It was a stark, grounding reminder: all the nepotism in Westeros, all the multi-million-dollar trusts, the high-end private nannies, and the legacy admissions didn't make the children of world leaders and corporate dynasties any less savage than regular street thugs when the veneer cracked. Underneath the tailored silk, they were still beasts. "Oh, you're fucking dead, Targaryen!" the guy barked, his voice choked on his own blood.

With a desperate, adrenaline-fueled surge, he managed to writhe his neck free from Aerion’s bruising grip. He didn't retreat; he lunged forward, sending a wild, heavy punch flying straight toward Aerion's jaw.

Some of the girls near the front shrank back in genuine horror, while a few of the more intoxicated frat guys from the sports faculty were outright beaming, too boozed up on top-shelf liquor to realize they were witnessing a potential lawsuit in real-time.

Through the shifting shoulders of the crowd, you finally spotted Raymun Fossoway trying to force his way to the front of his own kitchen, his face pale with the realization that his security deposit was currently being smeared across the walls. Rowan was trailing tightly behind him, her fiery red topknot slightly disheveled, her eyes wide and worried as she looked for you.

"Aye! What the fuck is happening here?" Raymun yelled, throwing his arms out as he finally breached the inner circle.

He shoved himself physically between the two crashing bodies, his hands pressing against their chests to stop them from completely tearing each other apart. "What the hell has gotten into the two of you? Knuckleheads! This isn't a fucking boxing ring! You've got a problem with each other, take it outside to the gravel!"

The injured student spat a massive, dark dollop of blood straight onto the polished concrete floor, the fluid landing right between Aerion’s polished shoes and Raymun’s sneakers. "Tell this prissy, silver-headed fuck—" the guy choked out, but he never got to finish the insult.

Aerion was already lunging again, his eyes entirely void of reason, his silver-white hair flying wildly around his face like a localized storm.

"Aerion!"

Alicia’s shrill, high-society shriek cut through the chaos like broken glass. She was hovering near the pantry, her perfect makeup ruined by lines of frantic tears, her emerald-green dress looking suddenly crumpled and tragic.

You couldn't tell how long the exchange lasted. You didn't know how many blows had been traded before the room went dark or how much structural damage had been inflicted on the loft.

All you knew was that you stood entirely paralyzed, your boots glued to the floor as the crowd shifted around you like a turbulent sea.

Finally, the sheer mass of Duncan the Tall moved into the frame. The rugby captain utilized his massive, broad frame to physically lock his arms around the bleeding student, pulling him backward with a strength that brooked no argument.

Simultaneously, Valarr materialized from the corridor, his jaw tight and his expression dark with a profound, weary frustration. He grabbed Aerion by the shoulders, using his own formidable leverage to drag his cousin back into the center of the room.

"Don't fucking touch me!" Aerion snarled, his voice a guttural, animalistic hiss as he violently wrenched his shoulders out of Valarr's diplomatic grip.

"Hey—" Valarr stepped into his line of sight, his tone remarkably level, his hands raised in a calming gesture. He didn't look shocked. He looked tired.

This was clearly a regular occurrence in the private annals of the Targaryen family tree— a realization that both baffled and horrified you. "Calm the hell down, yeah? Look at me. Breathe."

Valarr tried to talk some sense into him, but Aerion just let out a cold, mocking scoff, his chest heaving as he turned his back on his cousin. He swept his glacier-like gaze across the circle of onlookers, his eyes burning with a terrifying, unhinged malice.

"What are the lot of you staring at?" he barked, his voice slicing through the residual murmurs until the room went completely dead silent.

Alicia stepped forward, her manicured hand reaching out to touch his arm, her voice trembling as she begged him to stay, to let her clean him up. Aerion didn't even look at her. With a brutal, dismissive jerk of his shoulder, he shrugged her off as if she were nothing more than a nuisance, leaving her standing under the harsh kitchen LEDs.

As he turned toward the main exit, the light caught his face fully for the first time.

A nasty, jagged cut was bleeding freely on his upper lip, and an ugly, dark purple bruise was already beginning to bloom across his aristocratic cheekbone. He stormed out of the kitchen, his heavy boots echoing like thunder against the concrete as he headed straight for the apartment door, leaving a vacuum of stunned silence in his wake. "What the actual fuck…" you heard Art mutter under his breath from beside you.

You hadn't even realized he had followed you to the front until his shadow fell over your shoulder. He shook his head, staring at the blood splatters on the subway tile with a deep, visceral disgust.

"That guy is a literal lunatic. A straight-up textbook psychotic. Who even does that at a house party?"

Valarr ignored Art entirely. His brunette hair was slightly mussed as he rubbed a heavy hand across his forehead, his eyes locked onto the heavy oak door at the end of the foyer that was still vibrating from being slammed shut.

"Shit," Valarr muttered, his diplomatic composure finally cracking as he looked at Raymun. "He shouldn't be driving like this. He’s furious, he’s bleeding, and he’s probably got half a bottle of gin in his system."

You knew exactly what Valarr was thinking. Aerion was headed straight for the parking garage below the building. He was headed for that ridiculous, midnight black Porsche— the one he drove around campus like an extension of his own volatile ego.

Valarr let out a heavy, stressed sigh, his fingers palming his forehead as he calculated his options. "Shit… I can't leave Kiera, though. She's completely wasted in the bathroom, I can't just drop her—"

"It's fine," you said.The words cut through the air before you could even formulate the conscious thought to speak them.

You surprised yourself, the sudden steel in your voice catching Valarr’s attention immediately.

Your brain, the logical, self-preserving part of you, was screaming at you to stop. What are you doing? You should stay here. You should be in the bathroom with Kiera, holding her hair back while Tanselle or Rowan helped. You should let Valarr handle his own dysfunctional family. They were blood; they shared the same ancient, volatile lineage. It wasn't your job. It wasn't your burden.

But your feet were already shifting.

"I'll go after him," you let out, the declaration sounding final, leaving no room for argument as you turned your back on the kitchen and began walking purposefully toward the front door.

"Y/N, wait!" Valarr barked behind you, his long stride breaking into a forward movement to catch your hand, but you were already too fast.

You slipped past the threshold of the lounge, dodging a group of stunned freshmen who were already slipping back into their idle chatter and high-society gossip, moving as if the violence had been nothing more than a mid-party performance.

"Is this chic fucking insane or what?" Art’s voice drifted over the crowd, his tone laced with absolute bewilderment as he watched your retreating back. "Does she have a literal death wish…"

You didn't look back to see his expression. You had no idea what had just taken control of your body.

You had no idea what kind of silent, stupid, magnetic force was pulling you out of that safe, warm apartment and driving you toward the elevator. All you knew was that the image of the blood on Aerion’s lip and the unhinged, self-destructive look in his violet eyes had burned themselves into your eyelids, and you couldn't stop walking until you hit the cold concrete of the hallway.

On the way down in the elevator, the silence of the steel box was deafening, a stark contrast to the roaring chaos you had just left behind. You were biting your inner lip so hard that the sharp, coppery tang of blood began to bloom on your tongue.

Your breathing was erratic, coming and going in shallow, jagged bursts that rattled your chest.

What the hell were you thinking?

You had seen the way he treated Alicia— a girl who actually belonged in his gilded world—and he had all but discarded her like an afterthought when the adrenaline hit. What could you possibly say to him that she couldn’t have?

You were the babysitter. You were the help. You were probably the absolute last person on this earth Aerion Targaryen wanted to see right now. Why had you stormed off like that? Was it some sick, deeply buried savior complex deciding to kick in, or were you just a massive, incomparable idiot? Probably the latter.

You repeated it like a mantra against the steady descent of the elevator floor: You're an idiot. A big, fucking idiot. Did you have some pathological need to fix every single broken, tragic Targaryen that crossed your path? You weren't hired to heal their generational trauma. You weren't supposed to care.

But all the logic in the world evaporated the moment the elevator doors chimed, sliding open to reveal the subterranean chill of the lower parking level. Your feet moved of their own volition, carrying you forward like a heavy weight on a mechanical track, utterly out of your control.

The moment you stepped out into the open air of the perimeter lot, a violent gust of wind hit you like a physical wall, whipping your hair across your face.

The night was dark, illuminated only by the sickly amber glow of a single, flickering sodium-vapor streetlamp. Your boots clicked a frantic, echoing rhythm against the damp asphalt as you rounded the concrete pillar.

And there he was.

Aerion’s lean frame was practically shaking with a terrifying, kinetic fury, his silhouette dark against the polished, obsidian paint of his Porsche.

"Aerion!" you shouted into the wind, your voice cracking slightly but carrying across the empty lot, rendering your presence entirely unavoidable.

"What the hell..." he muttered under his breath, pausing with his hand resting on the driver's side door. He spun around to glare at you, his features twisted into something feral.

"Leave me the fuck alone, Y/N. Get away from here." He barked the order, already pulling the heavy key fob from his pocket, his knuckles raw and scraped, his split lip still oozing a dark line of red.

"No!" you interjected, closing the distance between you, defiance anchoring your heels against the pavement as he cursed under his breath, fumbling with the car door.

"Are you completely deaf or just plain stupid?" he bared his teeth at you, his violet eyes flashing in the dark like a rabid dog backed into a corner. "I don't want you here. Get out of my sight."

"No," you cut him off, your voice rising to match his, your own frame shaking with a sudden, matching fury. "I am not letting you get into that car with fucking alcohol instead of blood in your system. You're going to wrap that expensive piece of metal around a tree, or worse—"

He let out a harsh, mocking snarl, stepping away from the car to face you fully. "And why the fuck would you care, huh? Don't stand there and act like you give a single, flying shit about what happens to me. You said it yourself tonight—I'm the most irritating, insufferable—"

"Shut up for once in your miserable life, Aerion!" you thundered, the sheer volume of your voice surprising even the wind.

"Just shut the hell up, will you? You treat me like absolute garbage for months. You make my life a living hell on campus, you spew your poisonous, elitist shit at me every time I breathe the same air as you—and then all of a sudden, you’re touching my face on a balcony and acting like..."

You swallowed hard, the word catching in your throat. "Acting like a complete lunatic! And then you get yourself into a bloody brawl in a kitchen. You have no right—you have absolutely zero right to do this!"

Aerion seemed violently taken aback by the outburst. The vicious retort died on his tongue, and if you hadn't been so entirely consumed by the white-hot rage vibrating through your veins, you might have noticed the way his pale irises instantly hazed over, darkening with a sudden, predatory intensity that looked like he wanted to devour you alive right there on the concrete.

"Not every single thing on this planet is a game revolving around your ego, okay?" you continued, your chest heaving as you stepped closer, entirely disregarding the danger. "Because if you get in that Porsche and you fucking die tonight, you're not the only one who has to suffer the fallout. It's about your family. It's about Valarr, and your father, and Aegon—"

"Oh, so this is about Egg now?" he mocked, his voice dropping into a bitter, venomous drawl as the alcohol loosened his filter. "What, do you get some sick cosmic thrill out of playing house? Acting like a fucking mother? Let me remind you of something, sweetheart—you will never be his mother. You can never replace her. We had a mother. She's dead. She’s ashes." He spat the words, the raw, unhealed trauma of Dyanna’s passing oozing out of him like poison.

"Are you even hearing yourself, you fucking hypocrite?" You let out an incredulous, bitter laugh, shaking your head. "This has nothing to do with me trying to be a mother or trying to replace Dyanna—"

Aerion physically winced at the sound of her name, his jaw tightening into iron as he raised a warning finger to your face. "Don't you dare say her name—"

"No! This is about you!" you shouted over him, refusing to back down. "This is about the kind of men that poor little boy has to grow up watching! Take this with every single bit of bitter salt that you can, Aerion Targaryen, but your family is a magnificent, catastrophic mess. Your father, Daeron, you—all of you! And instead of protecting Aegon, instead of helping him and loving him like a normal, decent older brother should, you torture him! He is terrified of you, Aerion! He looks at you and sees a monster!"

Aerion shook his head slowly from side to side, a manic, disbelief coloring his features as he tried to block out the truth of your words. "That's a bunch of absolute bullshit... and we both know it..."

"No," you thundered, stepping directly into his space until the scent of his metallic blood, stale gin, and Marlboro Reds completely enveloped you. "No, it is the absolute, undeniable truth, Aerion. It's the truth and you know it. You're just too much of a pathetic coward to look in the mirror and admit it to yourself."

"A coward, huh?" He let out a low, dangerous sound, his head tilting as the blood from his split lip smeared across his chin. "Is that what you're calling your employer's son now? You have some serious fucking nerve."

When you finally managed to catch your breath, your heart stopped. A slightly crooked, dark grin was playing on his bleeding lips. He wasn't furious anymore. He was fascinated. He was thoroughly, intensely enjoying the sight of you screaming at him, loving the fact that you were tearing him down to his very bones.

He leaned his hand forward, his fingers twitching.

“Don't you dare touch me,” you breathed, practically jumping back a step as if his very skin were made of burning coal.

“You'd absolutely hate how much you'd like it… and you know it,” he muttered, his voice dropping into a smooth, resonant register that possessed not a single shred of doubt.

And the worst part—the absolutely terrifying, sickening part—was that unwelcome, coiling heat instantly spreading through the pit of your belly again, betraying every logical thought in your head.

"If you're waiting for me to apologize for what I said, don't hold your breath," you snapped, trying to steel yourself.

"Good. I'd hate for you to pass out from lack of oxygen before I win this argument," he countered smoothly. He was unfuckingbelievable.

"Aerion..." you warned, your voice trembling slightly as you realized the distance between your bodies had vanished again. "You're standing too close."

"Say the word, and I'll stop... but don't lie to me," he whispered, leaning in dangerously, agonizingly close.

You could see the dark, drying blood coating the edges of his Valyrian steel rings. "We're completely alone out here. No one from the Red Keep has to know. No one from the campus. Just this once..."

He dared to raise both hands, his long fingers structuring themselves on either side of your face. His grip was firm, entirely unyielding, but possessed a strange, controlled gentleness that ensured it wouldn't leave a mark. It was an utterly, undeniably possessive hold.

"What is wrong with you?" you spat, a volatile cocktail of frustration, tears, anger, and deep-seated want bubbling to the surface as your hands came up, closing tightly over his wrists to pull him away. "Is this just another one of your sick, depraved games? A bet with your friends?"

He shook his head, the accusation seemingly inflicting a flash of physical pain across his features. He licked his dry, bleeding lips, his eyes locked onto yours.

"Why, Aerion? Why do this?" you demanded, desperate for a shield, refusing to let him win this easily. You needed a reason. You needed to understand how a guy who had made your life a living purgatory suddenly looked at you like this. "You spend months threatening to ruin my fucking life, and then you—"

"Because I don't know how the fuck to get you to pay attention to me, okay, Y/N?" he suddenly growled through gritted teeth, the raw, unfiltered truth ripping out of him with a force that clearly cost his pride everything.

"You are always focusing on someone else. You're always hovering over Aegon, or Daella, or Rhae, or fucking Daeron. You look at my father, you look at Valarr, you look at every single person in that house—except me. You look right through me."

"So you justify bullying me because you were fucking attention-seeking?" You almost barked an ironic, disbelieving laugh against his chest.

"No," he stepped in even closer, his torso pressing against yours. "'M not justifying a single thing." His thumbs began to slowly, deliberately caress the sensitive skin of your cheekbones, the contrast of his cold steel rings against your burning skin making your mind go completely blank.

"You're blushing," he pointed out, a wicked, triumphant grin cutting through the blood on his face. You didn't even think he could see it under the dim, orange wash of the streetlamp, but you felt it—the violent, coiling warmth spreading across your face.

"Shut up," you muttered weakly. "If you wanted me to kiss you," you breathed, refusing to break eye contact, your fingers tightening on his wrists, "you could have just said so from the beginning."

A dark, raw sound escaped the back of his throat at your words, every single ounce of his practiced aristocratic self-restraint shattering into nothingness. "You know exactly what you do to me, don't you? You always have," he accused.

"Careful Targaryen," you bit back, one last desperate defense. "Someone might actually think you want me. We are absolutely not supposed to do this."

He threw his head back, letting out a sharp, mocking laugh as if the concept of rules were an utter joke to his bloodline. "Since when has that ever stopped a dragon?"

And with that, the tension snapped.

He lunged forward, his hands sliding from your face to grip the back of your neck, pulling your body flush against his own as he dragged you into a searing, cataclysmic kiss.

Aerion didn't just kiss you—he devoured you. It was a feral, consuming force, as if he wanted to eat you alive and pull your very soul into his lungs.

A heavy, desperate groan broke against your mouth as your hands finally released his wrists, your fingers threading wildly through his silver-white locks, pulling him impossibly, painfully close. The kiss was all sharp teeth and bruising tongue—a violent, chaotic battle of wills that you had no intention of letting him win easily.

You bit down hard on his lower lip, wanting him to feel at least a fraction of the agonizing mental torment he had inflicted on you for months.

Instead of pulling away, his grip on your waist only tightened, his fingers digging into your hips as he let out a dark, breathless sound, clearly thriving on the depraved, aggressive nature of the embrace.

It was a kiss fueled by alcohol, adrenaline, months of toxic friction, and pure, unadulterated lust. It tasted like gin, Marlboro Reds, and the coppery tang of shared blood—it was filthily disgusting, entirely wrong, and undeniably the greatest kiss of your entire life.

Your entire universe narrowed down to the heat of his skin. Your body was completely intoxicated by his scent, your brain entirely incapable of forming a single coherent thought. The world outside this parking lot didn't exist. Rowan, Kiera, Valarr, Aegon—they were all casualties of a fire that was currently burning you alive.

"Aerion..." you panted against his lips when the sheer lack of oxygen finally forced the two of you to pull back an inch, your foreheads resting together as you gasped for air.

"I can feel your heartbeat..." Aerion muttered, his voice a low, ragged purr. He leaned down, pressing his lips directly against the frantic, hammering pulse point on your neck, tracing the skin with a terrifying reverence. "Is that for me, love?"

"I've wanted this... since the very first moment I met you," he admitted against your skin, his hands never ceasing their frantic caress.

"Could have fooled me," you bit back, though the words lacked any real venom. You looked up at him with a newfound, consuming obsession, every shred of your logic and self-respect scattered on the pavement.

You couldn't bring yourself to care about how messy, dangerous, or ruinous the morning would be. The morning.

"You can go back to hating me in the morning..." Aerion whispered, his violet eyes locking onto yours with a desperate, heavy gravity. "Just let me have you. Just give me tonight."

"Is this really all you wanted from me?" you questioned, your fingers gripping his shoulders.

"No," he shook his head, a dark, dangerous sincerity settling over his features. "I wanted more."

Of course he did. Aerion Targaryen wanted everything. He wanted all of you, his greed an insatiable, genetic trait that was engraved into his very marrow. It was apparent in the way he carried himself, in the way he fought, and in the way his lips moved against yours.

"I always knew there was a fire in you," he murmured, his gaze tracing your features with an obsessive, terrifying devotion.

He leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of your ear as he muttered something in low, rolling High Valyrian that you couldn't fully translate, though the cadence made your skin prickle. "Ñuhon," he whispered against your skin. Mine.

You swallowed hard, the taste of his tobacco and liquor still heavy on your tongue. "Don't stop," you muttered fiercely into his cheek as his heavy hands slid down to grip your hips, pulling you back into the dark shadow of the Porsche. "Don't you dare stop."

You had no idea what the hell was happening anymore. You had no idea what this would do to your job, to your life, or to the fragile peace you had built.

Because when the sun came up, everything would be undeniably, irreversibly altered.

Or perhaps, that was the thought that terrified you the most. Monsters like Aerion Brightflame didn't change their nature over the course of a single night.

And even if he spent the next few hours worshipping you in the dark, it didn't mean he wouldn't be ready to tear you to pieces when the morning light rose.

©padmespetal 2026: I DO NOT APPROVE OF MY WORKS TO BE TRANSLATED OR COPIED ANYWHERE WITHOUT PERMISSION

Your jaw clenches around a bite of apple tart, the sharp sweetness caught stubbornly between your molars. Your knuckles whiten around your fork as your father discusses the upcoming event. Your sister is ecstatic to hear that the prince was now beginning to look for a wife, her eyes sparkling. Unlike your sister, the thought of wifely duties held no allure—at least not in the customary sense.

While your sister chirped excitedly about how she would be happy to perform her womanly duty and bring pride to House Velaryon, you longed for something deeper that being just a wife. It was foolish of you to wish for love, knowing your status, knowing that daughters are the most prized good in Westeros. And to his credit, your father had been patient, understanding your wish for a love match and mostly abided by those wishes. But as you grew older, the possibility of such a match slipped further from your reach.

And you knew that just as well as he did.

When you finally swallowed, the tart felt heavy and bitter in your throat.

After years of avoiding marriage proposals and declining suitors, you had landed squarely at the feet of your undoing.

A direct push from your father towards marriage. And it wasn’t an option this time. You knew it would come for you sooner or later and yet, the pit in your stomach only deepened.

King’s Landing is gloomy this early in the morning, sunlight a rare visitor today as you wandered the shadowed halls. Around you, the Red Keep buzzed with restless energy, preparing for the noble houses arriving this week—each hoping their daughters would catch Prince Valarr’s favor. Workers hurried past, and the heavenly scent of fresh fruit and sweet tarts curled in the air as you descended a spiral of pale stone steps. Silks the color of sea foam fluttered around your ankles, smooth against your skin as you moved throughout the keep in search of your sister. You huff to yourself as you wander the halls, growing frustrated as you pass the same tapestry for the fourth time.

“Oh fuck me,” you mutter under your breath, clenching your jaw and scanning for anyone who may be able to guide you to the library. For once, the corridors are eerily barren, despite being packed not long ago.

Your scattered thoughts halt abruptly when you spot a door you must have missed on your previous rounds. A faint, warm glow of candlelight spills from beneath it, flickering across the ancient stone floor. Curious and exasperated, you push the door open, expecting a servant or worker who could help you navigate this maze of a castle.

Instead, your blood ran cold as your limbs froze.

Before you sat Baelor ‘Breakspear’ Targaryen—Hand of the King, Heir to the Iron Throne, and Prince of Dragonstone—with his chin resting in the palm of his hand. Your father had spoken of him often, with a mixture of respect and admiration—likely another reason he wished for you to wed the prince’s son. You had yet to meet the Hand, as you had not been present when your family was received their first day at the keep.

Baelor is seated at a heavy oak desk, surrounded by towering piles of parchment and books—cluttered, yet somehow meticulously organized. He wears the colors of his house—a black doublet woven from fabric that shimmers like dragon scales, edged with deep red stitching, layered over a matching dark tunic. His hair is dark, unlike most Targaryens, flecked with grey, and a beard frames his strong jaw, peppered with the same silver. You notice a small crook in his nose, likely from a poorly healed break. Broad shouldered and imposing, his mismatched eyes hold no hardness when they rise from his papers to land on you—at least, not in the way you may expect from such a man.

“Your Grace,” you say, tearing your gaze away and dropping into a deep curtsy, “my deepest apologies. I did not mean to intrude, I simply—”

“No harm done. Rise,” Baelor interrupts. His voice is smooth, steady, and surprisingly gentle. You blink, caught off guard by the lack of reprimand for your intrusion, and straighten your back.

“You are Lord Velaryon’s daughter,” he says, not as a question, but as a calm observation.

“One of them, yes,” you respond. The corner of his mouth twitches into a faint smile and he lets out a soft, amused huff. An awkward silence stretches between you, broken only by the occasional crackle from the hearth. It took everything in you to not turn on your heel and run as far away as you could to avoid further embarrassment.

“How are you enjoying King’s Landing?”

You fiddle with your fingers, rifling through your mind to come up with an answer. “I quite enjoy the lemon cakes,” you finally answer, cringing inwardly as the words leave your lips. You glance over your shoulder, officially searching for a way to escape.

“Do you?” Baelor asks, head tilting slightly.

“I do,” you reply, your heart pounding so fiercely you fear it may burst through your ribs. Baelor leans back in his chair, hands folded in his lap as he watches you with quiet attentiveness.

“Again, I’m truly sorry for disturbing you, Your Grace. I was searching for my sister and got…” you purse your lips, “turned around.”

“Easy to do,” he hums, his gentle gaze unwavering, “even I take a wrong turn from time to time.”

You bite back the grin that tries to sneak its way onto your face at the foolish notion that a prince who grew up amongst these walls wouldn’t know every hall like the back of his hand. “I’m sure you do, my prince,” you reply, deciding not to test the waters with a man you hardly knew, and to instead, remain perfectly agreeable.

Baelor begins to lean forward, elbows just brushing his desk, when the door behind you swings open. You whirl around to see a Kingsguard stepping inside, his white cloak swishing silently behind him. Beyond a half hearted glance, he doesn't acknowledge you, to which you are grateful.

“Your brother and his family have arrived, Your Grace,” the man announces, his voice steady and professional.

Baelor nods in acknowledgment and rises from his chair. As he passes by you, the air seems to thicken, your lungs tightening as you realize you’d forgotten to breathe. He leans down slightly, his voice dropping to a soft, measured tone.

“Try not to get lost again, Lady Velaryon.”

With a soft click, the door closes behind him, leaving the room quiet and empty besides the sound of your shallow breaths.

The feast buzzes incessantly around you, a constant hum of voices and laughter bombarding your ears. Your sister chatters excitedly with a Lady from House Tully beside you, her bright enthusiasm a sharp contrast to your silent bubble. Your father is off in a corner, whispering with other members of the small council, leaving you surrounded by ladies far more optimistic than yourself.

You’d worn one of your finest dresses—a pale blue gown with puffy slit sleeves, embroidered with delicate cream patterns throughout. Pearls were braided through your hair, clinking softly with every tilt of your head. And yet, the prince had shown you little more than polite indifference. Hardly a second glance after your curtsy. Though he remained respectful and kind, you did not allow such a kindness to delude your mind.

With a sigh, you slump back in your chair, head resting against the plush headrest. You had no real interest in Valarr, handsome as he was. As much as you had hoped he would charm you during your meeting today, he hadn't. Valarr was everything a prince should be and yet, you found yourself unable to imagine yourself wed to him. Still, you understood what this arrangement could mean for you—one last chance to have a word of say in who you wed.

Your gaze drifts to Valarr, seated amongst his family at the royal table, one piled high with succulent fruits and glazed meats that make your mouth water. You force yourself not to stare at, presumably, one of Maekar’s sons, who was face down drunk in a bowl of what appears to be stew. Baelor sits beside his son, leaning in to speak quietly with the young prince. You watch as his nimble fingers pop a grape into his mouth, heat rising at the base of your neck as you quickly turn your face away.

Your earlier encounter with the heir apparent has your eyes wandering since the coincidental meeting. You had tried to contain it, truly you did, but every time he entered a room a shiver ran up your spine. There was something about how he carried himself—confident, composed—that demanded your attention. It was truly very distracting, considering you were trying to focus on his son. Completely unwarranted, your mind flooded with images of him; lithe fingers tapping against his desk, those same fingers smoothing over a worried brow, those same fingers grazing along the line of your jaw—

You blink the ridiculous fantasies away, dispersing them as quickly as they had come. The room feels stifling now, the air thick with heat and the rising noise of laughter as guests rose to dance and wine flowed freely. All at once, the lights seem too bright, the atmosphere too heavy, the music too loud—you rose from your seat abruptly, murmuring to your sister that you were in need of fresh air. You don’t glance back at the feast, but you swear you can feel Baelor’s striking eyes follow your frame as you slip out onto a parapet.

Cool night air drifts over your balmy skin, the salty breeze carrying the scent of Blackwater Bay throughout the streets of King’s Landing. You find it much quieter out here, only the distant sound of laughter and the soft strains of fiddles mingled with the far off sound of the waves. Your fingers trail along the cool stone of the castle’s half wall as you pace slowly, eyes fluttering closed as another gust of tangy sea air pickles the nape of your neck.

A sudden shuffle of footsteps behind you causes you to peer over your shoulder, only catching a fleeting glimpse of white-blonde hair. You blink and squint into the darkness before turning back to continue your stroll. Not even a minute later, you hear the sound again and you can't help but grin quietly to yourself.

“Am I being followed?” you muse aloud, pretending not to notice the small, blonde child trailing you like a shadow. As the boy freezes in your peripheral, you spin around and raise a brow at him. He is unmistakably a Targaryen—one of Prince Maekar’s youngest, most likely, no more than nine years old. It took only a moment for you to deduce that he was likely Prince Aegon, the youngest son. Against the dark contrast of his clothing, his bright violet eyes practically glow in the torchlight as he scrunches his face up.

“No,” the young boy says quickly, voice defensive.

“You just fancied a walk then?” you ask, brushing your loose hair away from your face.

“...Yes,” Aegon says, falling into step beside you, “and a lady should not walk alone, unattended.” You want to press him as to why a young prince was even out here and not instead amongst his family, but you keep your mouth shut instead.

"Well that is very kind of you..?"

"Aegon, but you may call me Egg," he chirps. You suppress a giggle and introduce yourself in return.

“Well, I suppose I could allow a prince of the realm to accompany me for just a little while,” you say softly, smiling and motioning for him to follow. You hadn’t even walked more than a minute before the boy was staring up at you with a curious look in his eyes.

“Why are you not at the feast?”

“Why are you not, little prince?” you counter.

Aegon narrows his eyes, clearly not liking how you'd turned his question back on him, “I asked you first.”

You ponder your answer with a soft sigh, clasping your hands behind your back as you walk.

“I needed air,” you said, “It was far too stuffy in there.”

Aegon gives you a skeptical look, his brow cocked just slightly.

With a reluctant sigh, you relent, “my father wishes for me to marry your cousin, but I suspect he has little interest in me. So, I am going for a walk.”

“That’s foolish of him,” Aegon says, his young voice firm, “you seem more than lovely to me.”

You muffle a small laugh with your hand, “that’s very kind, my prince.”

“'Tis the truth,” Aegon says, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his trousers, “Baelor himself said you would be an excellent choice.”

You pause, staring down at the young prince, “your uncle said such things?”

Aegon nods, “he was talking to father about it. Said you were a very agreeable choice and would make an excellent wife.”

Your heartbeat pounds in your ears, drowning out the crashing waves, the music, and everything else threatening to pull you from this moment. It means nothing—Baelor is simply evaluating you as a candidate for his son—but you can't help the way your mind wanders at the thought of being seen that way, being seen by him. A deep, dark part of you whispers how much you might like to be Baelor’s lady wife, how you could be happy with such a union, how you could care less that he is about to celebrate his thirty-eighth name day. You dismissed the foolish idea as quickly as it came. While it has been some time since Lady Jena Dondarrion had passed, you cannot fathom the thought of Baelor marrying again; honorable, devoted—even in death. An he surely would not forsake that oath of you of all people.

“I am hardly agreeable,” you murmur, dipping your head, “if I was, perhaps I would be laughing and dancing right now. Not sulking.”

“You do not need Valarr to dance,” Aegon says, tugging at your sleeve, “I will dance with you, if you wish.”

“I am not much of a dancer,” you admit wearily.

“Father says I have two left feet,” Aegon says with a grin, “but the maesters say I’m much better than Daeron. If that counts for anything.”

You pause, allowing your shoulders to relax as another gust of wind sweeps through the night air. “I owe you a dance then, my prince,” you say, flashing him the best smile you can muster.

The words have barely left your mouth when a voice calls out, “Aegon.”

You look up to see Baelor Breakspear’s tall frame approaching, his eyes flickering between the two of you with a smile so faint you wonder if you are imagining it.

“Uncle,” Aegon greets.

“Your Grace,” you said, the skin of your hands growing clammy again as you straighten your back. Baelor’s expression looks more amused than upset, a glint of controlled mischief dancing in his eyes.

“Your father is quite concerned about your whereabouts, Aegon,” Baelor says, walking closer with measured grace.

“I could not let a lady walk alone at night, uncle,” Aegon mumbles.

Baelor stands before the two of you, a faint smile playing at the corners of his mouth, “quite chivalrous of you, Aegon. Though next time, you should consider involving your father in your plans before running off."

Aegon mutters a quiet, "yes, uncle." Baelor rests a gentle hand on Aegon's shoulder, squeezing it in a comforting gesture. You press your lips together, watching the exchange—the way Baelor balances gentleness with quiet command, clearly more understanding as to why Aegon had slipped away in the first place.

"Back inside you go, before your father loses his head," Baelor says, his voice that same silken tone as before. Aegon nods, his eyes flicking upward to look at you.

"You still owe me a dance, don't forget," you remind him, smiling warmly.

"I won't," Aegon answers, before running off through a flutter of silken red curtains to rejoin the feast. You grin quietly to yourself as you watch him go. When your eyes find Baelor again, he is already watching you.

"My nephew can be quite the handful," he remarks.

"He was more than pleasant, Your Grace," you reply with a shake of your head and a quiet laugh that mingles with the distant crash of waves. "The prince simply needed a break, as did I. No harm done."

Baelor hums softly to himself as a blustery draft tickles your skin, ruffling your hair. A stray strand is caught on your lips, still sticky from the caramelized plum tart you’d eaten at dinner. You pull it free and swear that Baelor’s hand twitches at his side, his eyes flickering between your mouth and your eyes.

"Has the feast been satisfactory?" Baelor asks, tilting his head and gesturing toward the Great Hall as he begins a slow walk back. You follow him quietly, weighing on what to reveal of your evening.

"It has been lovely, Your Grace," you breathe out, holding your head high. You are far too nervous to meet his eyes, for fear that his handsome smile and intense gaze would have you spilling your guts.

"If that were true, why are you not inside?" he inquired lightly.

You can't tell him the truth— the truth that grows in you like an all corrupting mold the more time you linger in his presence and bask in the attention he gives you; that you want nothing more than for him to be the one you lay beside each night, and that no one else would do. The feeling spreads far too fast, but you can't escape it. He is everywhere—in the cool night air, in the burning of a raging fire, in the heat that rushes through your blood. Perhaps this is what people meant when they say desire and passion could consume you quicker than any flame ever could. Your hand clenches the skirts of your dress in tight fists as you bravely raise your eyes to meet his.

"Just needed to take a walk," you say with a strained grin, "I must have eaten too many sweets is all, made me restless."

Baelor studies you for a long moment and you feel yourself begin to shrink under his gaze, "you are not being truthful."

The muscles in your shoulders tighten with a pinch and a chill runs down your spine—you fear punishment for lying to the second most powerful man in the realm.

"But, I will concede my questioning… so long as you return to the Great Hall. You do owe my nephew a dance after all," Baelor's voice is light, almost playful. Relief floods through your stiff muscles, and a soft laugh escapes your lips.

"Very well. Promise you will not watch, Your Grace," you say, meeting his eyes directly this time, "I am quite a dreadful dancer."

There is a flicker of something—amusement, perhaps—in Baelor’s mismatched eyes, holding you captive once again. You notice the flush of his skin from the chilled air, the crinkle at the corners of his eyes, the way his mouth is twisted into a subtle smile.

"I find that hard to believe, my lady," he replies, "perhaps, I shall have to observe, if only to put your allegations to rest."

"If you wish," you murmur, quiet enough that it could have been swept up by the breeze. Whether he heard you or not is uncertain, but he flashes you one last look—composed yet soft, a smile pulling his lips tight—as he steps back into the hall.

Silks flutter around you, red and black woven curtains masking your face from the distracted attendees inside. You swallow thickly, placing a hand over your heart, feeling it beat feverishly beneath your ribs—incessant and striking, much like the thundering hooves of a horse.

You have never felt like this before.

And you fear you might never feel it again.

Silently, you slip back into the Great Hall, unnoticed amongst the giddy crowd dancing gleefully in the center of the room. Somehow, Aegon manages to sneak up behind you, grabbing your hand to claim his promised dance. The young prince was not nearly as terrible at dancing as he had made himself out to be earlier that night. Though, you did feel a little silly twirling around with a boy much your junior, but you could not find it in yourself to care. You simply can't contain the little giggles bubbling up as you dance amidst the swirling bodies.

You twirl and twist, gasping for air, cheeks flushed and rosy. Several times your eyes had found Baelor's, returned to his place between his brother and son. Your stomach flutters as you realized his gaze remains fixed on you, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips as he toys with the rings on his fingers.

That night, you lay awake, staring at your ceiling.

You cannot shake the tremor from your hands or uncoil the tension in your belly.

Your only thoughts are of Baelor.

You find yourself unable to sleep for nights on end.

The week had been a whirlwind—feasts, hunts, and every spectacle the crown could conjure up to honor their prince. Yet, as the days past, it became painfully clear to you that Valarr's interest in you was fleeting at best. Though he spoke idly with you far more than many of the other ladies, his eyes betrayed him, always drifting away in search of a head of pink hair. Kiera of Tyrosh was breathtaking—more beautiful than you ever imagined someone could be—and you saw the way Valarr's gaze would soften whenever she was near, despite the strong, neutral front he tried to put forth. You blamed neither Kiera nor Valarr; neither deserved your ire for being caught in the snare of love. Between the political advantages and Valarr’s obvious captivation, you braced yourself for a marriage proposal any day now.

But that was only one thread in the unraveling knot in your belly that kept you restless.

Baelor's presence haunted you around every corner, entirely unavoidable these days. It was difficult to rid him from your thoughts, especially when he had been offering to escort you back to your apartments at the end of the night or sparing you lingering glances across crowded rooms. For a moment, you let yourself believe he may feel the same, that his actions are more than just kindness towards you. That he also lay awake at night exhausted after a full day of containing his affections for you—affections that were getting harder to hide, even for a man as composed as him.

You toss and turn for hours, begging sleep to claim you so you may rest, vanquishing the war within yourself. But begging did little to help as you stared, wide awake, up at the ceiling above. You feel sick, nauseous with nerves and petrified by the thought of seeing Baelor again tomorrow because of your growing affections that become harder to hide with each passing day. You flip onto your stomach, burying your face in your pillow to muffle the groan of frustration that leaves you.

Unable to bear it anymore, you slipped a flowy, blue gown over your shift, the fabric whispering over your skin. Your riding boots were cold as you shoved your feet inside, knowing well enough that Father would scold you come morning, but you didn't care—not right in this moment. As you peer out from your doorway, you glance down the barren and silent hallway.

Flickering sconces lit with dancing flames provided you light as you wandered the stone walls of the keep. If anyone caught a glimpse of you now, they might think they’d seen a ghost—your gown billowing behind you like the dark waters of Blackwater Bay, deep circles like shadows beneath your eyes, hair wild and loose, cascading down your back. The hush settles around you like fresh silk sheets, calming and cool, as you quietly make your way outside to the stables.

The distant sounds of King's Landing late into the night—the far off murmur of restless streets and soft huffs of horses—cloud your drowsy senses. Your horse peeks her head from her stall, a cream colored mane falling over her gentle, brown eyes. You hush her with a soft murmur, your fingers brushing a quiet greeting along her velvety snout.

"I thought that was you I saw."

You whirl around, eyes wide, heart pounding so harshly you feel it in your throat. "Your Grace."

There stood Baelor, draped in velvety black fabrics, his mismatched eyes heavy with fatigue but sharp with a knowing look. Just your luck that the man who frequents your dreams and every waking thought would follow you in your search for solitude. Yet, rather than irritation, a strange warmth blooms inside you, and you bask in his presence like a flower soaking up the sun’s rays.

"I did not mean to wake you—"

"I was not abed. No need to ask for forgiveness, my lady," Baelor replies, his voice sounding rougher than usual, but still soft, "I was in my study and I swore I heard little footsteps." A soft smile tugs at his lips and your shoulders relax, some of the tension from earlier melting away.

"Just wanted some air. Like back home," you murmur, eyes returning to your horse as you brush your thumbs gently over her nose, "a ride always puts me to sleep." Just the thought of the dark waters, the salty breeze, and the familiar crashing of waves feels like a salve for your restlessness.

Baelor steps closer, his presence steady and reassuring in the cool night air. “If you’d like, I can accompany you. My mother would never forgive me if I let a lady ride off alone at night.”

You glance up at him finally, half surprised by the offer, half grateful. Something in his eyes makes you nod without hesitation, as if you're under his spell. Together, you lead your horses out of the stables, the soft clomp of hooves echoing through the empty courtyard. The air grows colder as you follow the winding path toward the shore, carrying the faint scent of seaweed and a briny tang. Above you, the stars sparkle against the midnight sky, the moon's reflection shimmering across the tides of Blackwater Bay.

You breathe in deeply, the familiar scent of salt and sea filling you with a quiet peace, memories of Driftmark washing over you like a soothing tide. You squeeze your legs and click your tongue, urging your horse forward.

“Fancy a race, Your Grace?” you call, leaning forward and glancing over your shoulder. Baelor tightens his hands on the reins and grins.

"If you are prepared to lose, my lady," he calls back.

You waste no time, tapping your horse’s flank and spurring her onward. The wind whips your hair around your face as your mount speeds up, the sound of Baelor’s horse closing the distance behind you compelling you to glance back. Hair flying wildly, you flash him a smile, adrenaline surging through your veins. Soon he is riding beside you, matching your pace as you both race along the cliff side. You try and keep your eyes to yourself, not allowing yourself to get distracted by how his hips move as he rides. Out of breath, you gradually bring your horse to a stop, legs trembling with exhilaration.

Baelor continues to trot beside you, neither of you saying anything as you come to a halt beneath a looming oak, it's gnarled roots digging into the cliff side. You dismount, your fingers stiff from the cold as you tie the reigns to a scraggly bit of trunk, moss climbing the bark. Behind you, Baelor does the same and murmurs something quietly to his horse.

As you turn towards the water, the waves below crash against the rocky shoreline and burst upward into the air, spraying your skin with salty droplets.

"You will catch a chill if you do that," Baelor's voice comes from behind, calm and steady as ever. You shut your eyes and embrace the next wave as it coats your skin again, savoring the shiver that runs up your spine.

"Perhaps," you murmur, eyelashes fluttering open, water beading on the ends and dripping down your nose. Baelor is beside you now, his short hair tousled by the breeze. His lips press into a faint smile, deepening the lines of his face. The waves do not settle under the light of the moon, though with each spray of water, you can feel your muscles relaxing. The water is cold, bitter against your skin as it seeps through your light-weight gown.

"May I speak freely, Your Grace?"

Baelor nods once, a subtle tilt of his head caught from the corner of your eye.

"Valarr does not intend to choose me, does he?"

Baelor's throat bobs slightly, the corners of his lips dipping downward, "he expressed his desire to marry Kiera of Tyrosh just this morning."

"Mhm," you hum softly, nodding quietly to yourself. How long would it be now? How long before your father carted you off like cattle to whatever lord was willing to take you? Worse still, how long would you continue to dream of Baelor Targaryen with his soft voice and calculating, but calm, presence. Would you still be dreaming of the handsome heir to the throne as you grew old and frail, wondering what could have been? "I suppose I am to be married to whichever lord will have me now," you sigh, eyes drifting off to stare at the chaotic waters of Blackwater Bay. Perhaps—if you asked it kindly enough—the sea would swallow you whole, drag you down to it's dark depths where you may be kept safe from men, and fathers, and marriage.

Baelor remains silent beside you. "If that is true, it would be a great shame."

“Yes,” you whisper, “it will be.” You turn towards him. “I am… glad to have met you, Your Grace. You’ve made my brief stay far more tolerable than I had expected.”

"Baelor."

"I beg your pardon?" you blink, surprised.

"You may call me Baelor, if you wish," he replies with a gentle firmness, "no need for formalities."

"You would not find me improper?"

"I am the one giving you permission, am I not?" Baelor jests lightly.

"Then I am glad to have met you—Baelor," you say, testing the way his name feels on your tongue. It tingles, like the feeling of waking from a half-remembered dream.

His voice is as smooth as butter on warm bread when he speaks your name in return. Your knees tremble at the sound, the way your name sounds coming from him. It is a sound you will cherish for the rest of your life, you decide. Slowly, his hand rises, settling between you with thinly veiled hesitation.

“My Prince?” you whisper, brows knitting in question.

Your voice shatters whatever had been holding him back. Baelor’s nimble fingers curve around the side of your neck, slow, as if not to startle you. The night air had chilled the rings adorning his hand, cold compared to the warmth of his palm on your skin. His thumb presses gently just below your jawbone, sending a shiver through you as he drags the rough pad over your skin. You cannot look away as he gives your neck a soft squeeze—then, just as quietly, he pulls away. The night mist wraps around you both, heavy with words left unsaid—tension draws tight like a bowstring singing through the night air.

“Come,” he says softly, voice barely above a whisper. “Let us return.”

You nod, reluctant but understanding. A chill had settled in your bones, water dampened fabric sticking to your skin. You found yourself mounting your horse alongside Baelor, bidding the waves goodbye as you both trotted back to the Red Keep. Neither of you speak of the exchange when you return to the keep, where you finally find rest amongst silken sheets.

Upon waking the next morning, you curse yourself for letting the bay’s cold water soak your clothes the night before. From the second you open your eyes, dread flows thickly through you as the realization that you have fallen ill hits you. You stay abed all day, shivering despite the sweat slicking your skin, wrapped amongst a heavy layer of bedding. Your father sends for a maester as soon as he discovers your condition, who arrives with a pouch of herbs and a damp cloth soaked in cool water, pressing it gently to your forehead with steady hands. Due to your condition, you will miss the feast tonight—the grand celebration for Valarr’s intended—and strangely, you find yourself at peace with that.

Your father brushes damp strands of hair from your forehead as he and your sister prepare to depart for the feast, his fingers lingering softly against your skin.

"I am terribly sorry you will miss the feast, my dear," he murmurs, careful as to not disturb your fragile state.

"I've had enough feasts to last a lifetime," you croak out in response.

“But you would want to be there if the prince chooses you, wouldn’t you?” your sister interjects, her eyes flickering between you and your father.

"Valarr will not choose me," you say quietly. Your father stiffens above you, but you reach out, gently taking his hand in yours, squeezing it comfortingly, "I tried my best, Father. I promise… I did try this time."

He sighs, planting a kiss to the back of your hand, "I know, darling."

They leave shortly after, the quiet click of the door behind them settling you back into your solitude. Most of the day passes in fevered sleep, you dream mostly of Baelor and the feeling of his hand on you from the night prior. A maester returns in time with more herbs and hot tea, which helps to clear some of the fog from your mind. You are too weary to think of much else than Baelor, letting him wipe the sweat from your brow and replace the cloth. Eventually, you fall back asleep, allowing your body to rest once more.

Later, closer to night fall, the door to your chambers creaks open. You groan softly, pressing the damp cloth harder against your forehead, eyes squeezed shut as another shiver runs through you.

“Father, please. I am resting. I do not wish to hear of the festivities.”

A soft chuckle breaks the silence, and your cheeks flush immediately—the chuckle most certainly does not belong to your father. You rip the cloth from your forehead and pry your eyes open. There, quietly closing the door behind him, stands Baelor—his lips curving into an amused smile. Despite your exhaustion, your spine straightens stiffly as you sit up in bed, sheets pooling at your waist.

“I remember saying something last night about you catching a chill,” Baelor says, stepping closer with measured, deliberate steps. You try not to think about how disheveled you must look—hair plastered to your forehead, and your shift clinging damply to your skin.

“You did,” you manage to whisper. Baelor gestures for you to lie back down, and you obey without hesitation, sinking back into the plush bedding. He settles into the chair at your bedside, and you swallow the urge to ask why he’s here. He should be celebrating his son’s engagement—drinking wine and feasting with the rest of the castle. And yet… he is here, with you.

"Perhaps you should consider listening to me more often," Baelor says, his voice softening with each word he speaks.

"You should be at the feast, should you not?" you ask, brows knitting together tightly. Part of you wants to remind him how precarious this situation is were someone to walk in—that neither of you needs to become the next subject of court gossip.

"My absence will go unnoticed," Baelor replies. You highly doubt that, his list of titles is quite lengthy, but you keep your mouth shut. He reaches over your body, pressing the back of his hand gently to your forehead. It takes every ounce of your willpower not to lean into his touch as he pulls away briefly.

“Your fever is almost gone,” he notes, flipping his hand to press his palm against your skin again. “Your father said it felt like you had hot coals beneath your skin this morning.”

"Hm, a conversation with my father?" you prod tiredly, a weak smile tugging at your lips, "must have been positively exhilarating."

"Very," Baelor says, "though his mood brightened considerably after I asked for your hand."

You blink up at him in disbelief, brows pinched together. His thumb soothes the heated skin of your forehead, brushing against you with a steady rhythm.

"My—"you falter, searching for the words, "hand? As in…?"

"Marriage," he says plainly, a small smile on his lips, eyes glinting in the soft candle light, "if you'll have it, that is. We wouldn't want you bound to an old man against your will, now would we."

Your mouth drops open and your jaw works as you try to speak. Despite your brief moment with the prince last night, you had not expected this, not even in your most… detailed dreams. It hits you all at once—he asked, not your father. Baelor himself asked to marry you, and it wasn't because of your father's desperate attempts to further your status. His skin against yours feels different now, all your time spent with Baelor feels different now—all the times he guided you to your chambers, all the times you found his eyes already on you across a room, every smile, every word feels different.

"You are hardly old," you finally murmur, heart hammering in your ribs. For a fleeting moment, you wonder if this is another fevered dream—another daydream of the man who fills your every waking thought. Baelor simply watches your expression, his eyes soft as he brushes stray locks of hair from your skin.

"Is that your way of accepting?" he asks.

“Perhaps,” you manage out with a grin, savoring the feel of his fingers threading gently through your hair, slowly working the strands apart with slow, careful strokes. His touch moves to massage your temple, tender and unhurried. “Are you certain I am not dreaming, Baelor?”

"I am most certain, my heart," he says with a tilt of his head. Baelor leans in then, pressing his lips to the clammy skin of your forehead. The smell of parchment, oranges, and sandalwood flood your senses as his body passes over yours. His beard tickles your nose, and you smile. "You are not dreaming."

"I had to be sure," you murmur, "I find myself dreaming of you quite often these days."

"You are not alone in that," Baelor says, his lips linger a moment longer, a quiet vow pressed against your fevered skin.

“What—” you begin, but stop yourself, unsure if the heat flooding your veins is from the fever or the prince’s closeness. He is near enough that a slight tilt of your head would brush your lips against the pulse at his jugular, still, you hold yourself back. “What do you dream of?” you breathe out, as if you barely spoke at all.

“Would you truly like to know?” Baelor whispers, his lips brushing the space between your brows as he speaks, and your stomach flutters with a sudden, dizzying heat. You nod, mind swimming from the closeness, unable to form words once more. He hums softly, tilting his head so his mouth presses gently to the hinge of your jaw, just below your earlobe.

“I dream of waking up beside you,” he murmurs, his breath hot against your damp skin. “I dream of your eyes—the way you look at me when I speak.” His lips trail lower, tracing a slow path down the line of your neck as he confesses, “I dream of you in ways I certainly should not, if I’m honest.”

"How so?" you ask, softly, rolling onto your side, breaking his contact with your skin. His eyes stare back at you now, not more than an inch apart. Your nose brushes his accidentally and you cannot help the way your eyes flicker between his lips and back to his eyes again.

"I should not say."

"Baelor—"

He leans in again, a playful smile tugging at his lips as he presses a soft kiss to the corner of your mouth. “I do not wish to spoil what I plan to do to you on our wedding night.”

You knew that you were a foreigner in the Red Keep, but you assumed that the lords of Westeros would realize that you were not simple. Even if you were unable to speak their language—which you were not—there was no explanation other than pure disdain for the glares that they fixed you with as you sat beside your new husband.

Some were certainly still aggravated that out of all of the ladies drawn to King's Landing to meet Prince Baelor, the heir to the Iron Throne, you were selected as his bride over their daughters and sisters. You were quietly—as quietly as an explosion, that is—accused of seducing the prince or using some kind of magic to alter his mind to select you as his bride.

If anything, however, you appeared to be the only woman who was not automatically enthralled by him. You refused to speak in the common tongue during your meeting and asked him pointed questions that would cause most Westerosi women to faint.

And after all of that and about fifty other women meeting with him, you were selected as his bride.

"To the happy couple!"

King Daeron concluded his wedding speech by lofting his chalice into the air. Each and every person in the room did the same, wishing the two of you a fruitful marriage. Most seemed to be half-hearted, but that only amused you. You took a slow sip of your wine, which did not taste nearly as rich as the wine back in Lys, before carefully setting it down.

"My new maid tells me of the custom of a bedding ceremony," you stated in High Valyrian to your husband, eyeing the men leering at you among the collected revelers.

"It is a custom here, yes." Baelor turned to you, studying your expression. "You do not have something similar in Lys?"

"Not in my family, no." You turned to meet Baelor's gaze, lifting your chin slightly. "For a culture that appears rigid in its morals, I am surprised that other men and women are allowed to view the couple in their nakedness. Even before the other spouse sees them in such a state of undress." You glanced at the leering men once more. "I must admit that I feel as though they wish to parade me through the castle in all my glory before they relinquish me to your chambers."

Baelor turned to the crowd of guests and noted the stares that particular men cast in your direction. Twisting a ring around his finger, Baelor returned his gaze to you.

"I am sure that Maekar can create some distraction to allow us to slip away before such matters could occur."

Your eyes trailed over to Baelor's youngest brother, who appeared grumpy as he sat at the end of the table beside his mother. His stature reminded you of a petulant child, but it was perhaps that energy that would be helpful for this mission. You picked up your chalice and smiled as you took a sip of the horrible wine once more.

"If he does, I will be sure to reward you for your efforts."

Several barrels of wine later, Maekar was dancing in the middle of the hall with his mother and the rest of the Dorne contingency. It was a chaotic dance that appeared to encourage the bolder and drunker guests to join them. Even some of the Stormlanders seemed to forget their hatred of Dorne as they tried to match the energy.

You took Baelor's hand as he led you out a side door of the room. Glancing behind you, you could not help but giggle as you caught a few last glimpses of the chaos. You and Baelor made your way to your quarters unmolested by the rowdy wedding guests and the kingsguard standing at the entrance to your chambers would not allow any spectators to interrupt your night.

"Normally, there is no maid waiting due to the custom," Baelor explained to you as you looked around your new quarters. "But if you wish for me to call for one, I will."

"Surely, you can undo simple knots?" you asked rhetorically, casting a smile at your husband over your shoulder.

"I believe I can manage."

Baelor carefully undid the clasps, buttons, and knots that held your wedding dress in place against your body. The fabric pooled at your feet as Baelor undid the corset. You stepped away, shedding the components that laid under your dress, until you were standing with only the shadows to cover you.

“Do you need a servant to undress you or do you trust your wife to do it properly?” you asked him, drinking in the sight of him in the firelight.

He chuckled and folded his hands behind his back. “I trust you.”

You stepped forward and began to undo the buttons of his doublet. The heavier fabric hit the floor as you worked on removing the layers your husband wore. As you reached for his belt, Baelor’s lips found your own, drawing your attention momentarily. But as Baelor focused on the kiss, you focused on removing his clothes.

“I believe I owe you a reward for your plot this evening,” you breathed out against his lips as you both stood in equal states of undress.

“You are my reward,” he replied, drawing you in for another kiss. He gently cupped your cheeks with his hands. “And you are all I require.”

“You are a man of words.” You pressed a kiss to his palm. “But I am a woman of action.”

Baelor appeared confused before you lowered yourself to your knees in front of him. There was a protest on his lips surely about how you did not need to do such things for him. And yet when his hand tightened in your hair and a strangled gasp that surely no one else had ever heard slip from his lips, you were more than content to give your husband his earned reward.

*~*~*

Nine and a half moons after your wedding to Baelor, your firstborn son and heir to Dragonstone, Valarr, was born. His hair was the silver-gold associated with House Targaryen, save for the lone dark curl above his temple. Surely, those who complained about Baelor’s Dornish features would be able to shut their mouths now. And Valarr’s mismatched eyes were indisputably drawn from his father.

The realm rejoiced and everyone assumed that one or two more children would follow before your family would be complete.

Matarys, your second born, followed just under two years after Valarr and was your spitting image. Down to the attitude.

Then, your third born, a daughter you named Rhaelys, was born just one year later. She had her father’s eyes as well, but lacked the streak of dark hair that Valarr possessed.

After Rhaelys was born and reached but a few moons old, the Blackfyre Rebellion broke out. Baelor was sent into battle and you, cautious and concerned about the safety of your children in Westeros, wrote to your family.

You would spend the war in Lys. Some claimed that you were a coward and abandoned your husband at the first sign of struggle. Others pointed out that the young princes and princess would be safer in Lys. You did not care how the lords construed your decision—your children remained your priority.

But now, after the Battle of Redgrass Hill, the rebellion had been crushed and it was time to return.

“Kepa!” Valarr shouted when he spotted Baelor standing on the dock, waiting for your return. Matarys tried to look over the railing of the ship, but you were quick to grab both of them before they could get any ideas.

“You must remain here until the ship is docked,” you instructed your sons, who nodded along.

You brushed their hair with your hands as you turned back to your approaching husband. There was a wariness to his stance that was not there before he left for battle. The deaths of thousands of men clearly weighed on his shoulders and his mind. But he offered you that same familiar smile that always made your heart beat just a bit harder.

“It is safe now, my lady.”

“Go see your kepa,” you urged your sons, who did not need anymore encouragement to rush down the gangway and into their father’s arms.

Baelor bent down and took Valarr in one arm and Matarys in the other before hoisting them into the air and against his chest. You slowly walked down the gangway yourself with Rhaelys resting on your hip. Baelor pressed kisses to the top of Valarr and Matarys’s heads before turning to you.

“Are you in one piece?” you asked softly, glancing over his figure for any sign of injury.

“I am now.”

You rolled your eyes at him before leaning forward to plant a kiss on his lips. Baelor could not help but chuckle when your sons made noises of disgust.

“Am I not allowed to kiss your mother?” he asked, adjusting his holds on his sons.

“Not here!” Valarr complained, causing you to smile.

“Then perhaps we should head inside,” Baelor suggested with that look in his eyes that you were more than familiar with.

As the two of you walked towards the castle together, your arms full of your children, your hand snuck around and gave a hearty squeeze of your husband’s backside. And by the time that he turned to you, your hand was securely back at your side.

The day droned on and you feigned exhaustion, requesting to take your dinner in your room. There would be plenty of festivities over the next few days and you wished to enjoy a quiet night with your husband before the chaos returned. The children were tucked away safely in the nursery and Baelor requested that no one disturb the two of you.

Your fingers intertwined with Baelor’s as his hips rocked into yours. “Gods, I missed you,” he rasped, nipping at the soft skin of your neck. “Every day. Every night.” You let out a little gasp as he punctuated his point with his hips.

“No ladies laid in your tent while I was away?” you asked, though you knew the answer.

“I would be a fool to even be tempted by another woman.”

You hummed in agreement as your hand reached to cup his cheek and draw him in for a heated kiss. A little press against his chest as he rolled over for you, allowing you to straddle him. Resting your hands on his strong chest, you stared down at your husband.

“And if I had a request from you to make up for the time we were forced apart?”

One of Baelor’s hands rested on your hip while the other reached out to cup your cheek. “I would not deny you. And certainly not when I desire the same.”

In nine moons time, the realm was rejoicing the birth of two princes—Caemon and Verrys. They appeared so identical that you tied a red silk ribbon to Caemon’s foot and a black silk ribbon to Verrys’s foot.

And with five healthy children, the realm assumed that your family with Baelor was complete. It would not be the first or last time that the realm was wrong about a Targaryen. Especially, when you knew that Baelor secretly desired to have more children.

He would never force you to bear anymore children, but he would also not take much convincing to have more with you.

*~*~*

As the newly instated Hand of the King, Baelor was more often away from you than at your side for a number of years. The realm was recovering from the rebellion and cracks needed to be filled and tears needed to be mended before House Targaryen could truly breathe a sigh of relief.

And, in truth, you did not have much free time yourself. Five children kept you busy on your own, especially as you insisted upon being involved in their education. No child of yours would be solely raised by maids and septas. And you would not allow for your children to not learn your mother tongue.

Your fifth pregnancy came as a surprise—the likely result of a brief diplomatic journey to Dorne—but you and Baelor were quickly overwhelmed with joy.

The court, taking the passing of four years since the birth of the twins as the end of your childbearing, appeared dumbfounded. And then dumbstruck quickly turned to contempt.

“Can they not control themselves?”

“She must be the one to initiate. Prince Baelor has always shown restraint in everything else.”

“It is the way of the Lyseni, is it not?”

“She’s bordering on obscene.”

It was amusing to you that rumors at the beginning of your marriage alluded that you would be unable to get pregnant as a result of the blood magic that you apparently practiced. And now, they were accusing you of bearing too many children for your husband. You doubted, however, that they would ever make up their minds about the subject.

And you did not care. And neither did Baelor.

He had become a lighter sleeper ever since the days of the Blackfyre Rebellion. There was no telling when an attack could occur. And it stayed with him ever since. Sometimes it was annoying, but other times it came in handy.

Like when your water broke in the middle of the night.

Baelor did not recall what he was dreaming about but he was slowly lulled away from it as he came to realize that his sleepwear was becoming soaking wet. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, trying to assess the situation in the dark. But when he found the stain of your water, he moved to get out of bed.

The sound of the heavy door closing caused you to open your eyes. Letting out a breath through your nose, you felt the wet sheets below your body. And when a familiar pain stabbed at your back, you let out a sigh. Resting your hand over your bump, you spread out your fingers.

“Impeccable timing, sweetling.”

When Baelor returned with a midwife, you had already situated yourself for delivery. With your fifth pregnancy and sixth child, you were more than familiar with the process.

Prince Aelyx was born in the wee hours of the morning. By the time that the sun rose, he was already lulled to sleep against your breast.

“Another boy,” you mused, running your finger through your son’s hair.

“Daughters are a rare gift among Targaryens,” Baelor replied, lying beside you in your bed. “When did you wish for the other children to meet him?”

“Whenever they rise and break their fasts.” You adjusted your hold on your son as you turned to your husband. “Allow dear Aelyx a moment to enjoy being an only child. As far as he is aware, at least.”

Baelor smiled and nodded before leaning over to press another kiss to your forehead. Lying beside you, he quietly watched your son sleep as you brushed your son’s back with your hand.

*~*~*

Surely, after Aelyx was born, Baelor’s family would be complete. The realm was sure of it this time. Six healthy children with the features of Old Valyria and the same impeccable manners as their father. And sons strengthened Baelor and King Daeron’s claim all the more among grumblings that the surviving Blackfyres were growing in Tyrosh.

But nearly four years after Aelyx was born, you were spotted walking around the Keep with a swollen belly. And so, the rumors of your supposed blood magic and ability to seduce your otherwise unmovable husband to impregnate you once more circulated.

And King Daeron was bearing the brunt of it. Lords would come complaining about the perception of such matters. Baelor was not a pig farmer who required ten children to run his farm. He was a future king. Two would have been sensible. Five at most. But now seven? And others suggested that it mocked the lack of virility in other lords.

One lord commented that surely you—as a non-believer of the Seven—were certainly trying to mock the religion that you refused to abide by. King Daeron shut down such implications immediately, and never heard them again.

But, secretly, the proliferation of Targaryens was a concern.

When Daeron was born, he was but one of two heirs left to the throne. It was precarious and was only made more so by his father’s indiscretions. He had never dreamed of seeing so many children bearing the surname of Targaryen.

And yet, now it was proving just as precarious, but in another manner. He called for a meeting with his eldest, as well as his youngest, who was in King’s Landing for a period of time.

He needed to address the issue now, before it got out of hand.

*~*~*

Baelor walked down the hall to the King’s quarters when he heard footsteps behind him. Turning around, Baelor was surprised to see Maekar striding towards him.

“What did you do?”

Maekar scoffed. “Why do you assume it is something I have done?”

"About twenty such past instances just like this."

"Those were a long time ago," Maekar grumbled before brushing past Baelor.

The two brothers made their way to the King's quarters together. When they arrived in his study, Daeron gestured to the seats across from him. He wore a weary look, which instantly concerned both Baelor and Maekar, though neither showed it.

"Are the Blackfyres on the rise again?" Maekar asked, causing Daeron to shake his head.

"No, this has nothing to do with the Seven Kingdoms and everything to do with the two of you." Baelor raised an eyebrow and shared a glance with Maekar before they both turned back to Daeron.

"Father?"

"I know that when the two of you were young, the number of Targaryen heirs was low. And it was a concern, given the number of bastards your grandsire left running about. But now, I believe that we have more than exceeded a number of heirs that House Targaryen needs. And yet, both of your wives are with child again."

"You are concerned with our children?" Baelor asked quietly.

"More the number than anything else. You, Baelor, are about to welcome your seventh. And you, Maekar, are about to welcome your sixth. And while your mother and I are overjoyed at the proliferation of grandchildren, I believe that it is raising concerns with the populace. Too many dragons are just as dangerous as too few."

"Who is concerned about the number of children?" Maekar questioned, folding his arms over his chest.

"Certain lords, mostly. Those who find your families to mock their own."

"It is our problem that these lords cannot get their wives with child?"

"I believe what Maekar is trying to say," Baelor interjected, shooting his younger brother a look, "is that our children and our decisions with our wives are private affairs."

"It would be if you were pig farmers. But you are princes of the realm."

"Might it, however, be possible that such sentiments expressed by the lords are based more on the regions that our wives originate from, rather than an actual concern about such matters?" Baelor asked diplomatically, folding his hands in front of him. "I know that my wife has personally been accused of witchcraft and being a former resident of a pleasure house because of her Lyseni heritage."

"I am certain that it informs the concerns, but I am not at liberty to deny such concerns, as I have similar ones." King Daeron glanced between Baelor and Maekar. "With so many sons, many, if not most, who will have no chance at ever ascending to the Iron Throne or Small Council, I ask if you would consider sending a son or two to train as maesters or septons."

"You cannot be certain, Father," Maekar demanded, though King Daeron remained solemn.

"And yet, I am."

"We would need to consult with our wives before such matters would be considered properly," Baelor stated, though there was a concern to his tone that was not there before. "And I do not seek to speak for my wife, but I doubt that she would allow any of her children to be sent away to serve gods she does not believe in."

"And you believe she would never compromise?"

"I believe that her definition of compromise would involve taking our children back to Lys," Baelor stated, not even jesting.

King Daeron sighed. "Decisions do not need to be made today. But I cannot stress the seriousness of this enough, I and the realm require that these children that your wives carry be the last. Seven, in particular, is a rather auspicious number."

"Yes, of course."

After they were dismissed, Baelor returned to your shared quarters. You surveyed a napping Aelyx and offered Baelor a soft smile as he stepped inside. Valarr and Matarys were out training and your daughter Rhaelys was spending a quiet afternoon reviewing her languages. And the twins, Caemon and Verrys, were off with their own lessons. Baelor walked over to your side and pressed a loving kiss to your lips.

"What was the trouble?" you asked softly, mindful of your volume.

"Well, it seems that some lords have been complaining to my father that we have decided to have too many children." Baelor's hands dropped to cup your bump. "He requests that this be the last grandchild we give him."

"Does he?"

"Yes. He has already mentioned the possibility of some of the younger boys, including Maekar's, being sent away to become maesters or septons." Your mouth flew open with an immediate response that Baelor could already guess, which is why he added, "I told him that septons were out of the question."

"Unless he wishes me to sail to Lys with all of our children."

"Yes, I informed him of such a risk."

You nodded and glanced at your youngest son, who was sleeping contentedly. You rested your hands on your lower back as you turned back to Baelor.

"I have some news to share with you as well."

"What is it?"

"Well, I am in the part of my pregnancy where the babe likes to move about," you began, causing Baelor to nod. "And I believe that it appears likely that I am once more carrying twins."

Baelor froze as his eyes dropped to your bump once more. His thumbs brushed against the swell before he turned to meet your gaze once more. A wide smile broke out on his lips as he leaned forward. You accepted his loving kiss with a grin. He pulled back slowly and rested his forehead against your own.

"I believe you always find a way to get what you wish."

"It took you this long to discover that?" you teased, pressing another kiss to his lips.

*~*~*

Baelor did not often get an afternoon off from duties, so when he was granted a brief respite, he knew exactly who to spend it with. Entering the chaos of his family chambers, he grinned at the sight.

Valarr and Matarys were locked in chess match, though their youngest sister, Maeryn, seemed intent to try and bring the chess pieces into her mouth if Valarr did not catch her hand in time. Rhaelys was painting by the window as Aelyx sat at her feet, reading a small book that your family sent from Lys. Caemon and Verrys, inseparable, were running about the solar, chasing each other with wooden swords and carvings of dragons. And you sat on the daybed with your second youngest, Elaenar, sleeping in your lap as you sewed.

Caemon was the first to notice him and dropped his sword. "Kepa!"

Baelor chuckled as Caemon and Verrys ran full speed towards him, throwing their arms around him. "You are never here at this time," Verrys noted as Baelor stood up once more.

"Indeed, but it seems that matters could be paused until tomorrow."

"Does that mean that you'll spend the afternoon with us?" Rhaelys asked from over by the window.

"If you'll have me."

You smiled and set aside your embroidery. Picking up a still sleepy Elaenar, you made your way over to your husband. He took your daughter from you before pressing a loving kiss to your lips, earning groans of disgust from your children.

"Of course, they will have you," you spoke loud enough for your children to hear. And leaning in closer to his ear, you whispered in addition, "And I will have you tonight in our bed, if they do not tire you too much."

"Now, that is an offer I cannot refuse," Baelor replied with a smile before turning to his children.

“…and if young Lord Peake believes I shall simply overlook missing accounts because he smiles pleasantly, or if he ever thinks I have forgiven and forgotten which side his father took during the rebellion…”

His voice continued to fill the chamber with the affairs of the realm, but all you could think was how, at court, singers praised his strength, the princely solemnity of him. Ladies whispered over the broadness of his shoulders as though they were girls discussing tourney champions. Fools. None of them knew the true self of Prince Baelor Targaryen. It was this, the quiet intimacy of him after dark. With you.

You studied him carefully. The sight of him never failed to send shivers up your spine… and between your thighs. “Mhm,” you murmured.

“Darling,” Baelor said carefully, “are you listening to me?”

“Of course,” you said, trying to sound confident, but your eyes did not meet his. They wandered over the silver beginning to appear at his temples, making him look less like a storybook prince and more like a man carved from something old and steady and safe.

“You appear very occupied.” His hand stroked your left thigh loosely. “Are you tired?”

“No, no. I’m listening. Yes, the fool young Lord Peake. Continue…” you said, starting to run your fingers through his beard. The silver had become your favourite part, though he often complained it made him look older than you, his younger, beautiful wife. You had shushed him numerous times, assuring him his beauty was no different.

Baelor shifted slightly against the pillows, and the collar of his sleeping tunic loosened further. “…which is why I told him if he wished to continue insulting the crown’s judgement, he might do so from a dungeon cell instead...”

Your gaze drifted down his body. The texture of his beard fascinated you, yes, but the sculpted strength of his chest, this was different. A glimpse of skin appeared beneath the linen. Warm bronze touched with gold by candlelight, dusted with dark hair across his chest. You found yourself distracted once again by the sight of him. So your hand slipped lower, fingertips tracing idle circles through the soft hair at the centre of his chest.

Baelor faltered for the briefest moment, but he continued speaking, “…the Master of Coin insists the matter may yet be settled peacefully, though I suspect he would call a wildfire blaze an unfortunate warmth...”

Without realising it, you smiled faintly against him. The realm’s beloved prince. Your husband. Older than you, yes. Wiser, certainly. Worn thin by duty and councils and the endless burdens placed upon noble shoulders. And yet here he was, warm beneath your fingertips. Safe in your arms. Entirely yours. A frighteningly smug feeling settled inside your chest.

There was something deeply satisfying about touching him like this while listening to him speak. Perhaps because the rest of the realm treated him as though he belonged upon a pedestal somewhere. His honey-like voice filled your ears like music, serenading the space. He was always so composed and thoughtful, except for a few nights when he took you to bed and let his stress out of his system - where he could be cruel and torturous - but you knew the real man behind your beloved husband.

His voice vibrated pleasantly. “…and if the crown permits one lord to evade taxes, every lesser bannerman shall soon attempt the same...”

You liked his voice so much that sometimes you would linger in the council chambers, listening to him discuss matters that were not entirely important to you, but the sound of his voice somehow brought you calm.

You studied his features again. He was so handsome you almost found it irritating. The silver in his beard, the scar near his shoulder from some ancient tourney injury, the strength beneath softened fabric. Even the lines at the corners of his eyes suited him unfairly well. Ageing had not stolen his beauty.

After a while, you realised he had stopped talking.

“…darling.” Baelor looked down at you now, one dark brow slightly raised. “I am certain you are not listening to me at all.”

“Of course I am,” you tried to bite back laughter, your fingers continuing to comb absently through the hair upon his chest.

His hand caught your wrist, stopping your wandering touch. “Then tell me what I was speaking of.”

“The lord,” you shrugged.

“The lord,” he repeated.

You tilted your chin upward just enough to smile at him. “The deeply troublesome lord. You will send him to the dungeon if he dares question the crown’s taxes.”

Baelor stared for another moment before a quiet laugh escaped him. “Right,” he agreed, a mischievous look followed behind his eyes.

You returned to tracing patterns against his chest while he resumed speaking, his voice now had softened with amusement. Something about shipments, or ports, or perhaps prisons. Truthfully, you tried listening for nearly a full minute.

You could not stand it any longer. “You are very handsome,” you announced abruptly.

Baelor stopped mid-sentence. “I beg your pardon?”

“You are handsome,” you repeated, looking up, voice sounded entirely serious now. “Distractingly so.”

For a moment, the Prince of Dragonstone looked completely defenseless. Colour rose slowly across his cheeks. He blinked, then a smile followed, softening, unravelling, the one reserved only for you, his wife.

“I know you weren’t even listening, my heart. Does this old man really bore you with his lore?” he teased.

“You are not old, Baelor. How many times do I have to say that? And you are very handsome. It pains me,” your eyes found his mismatched eyes. The danger in those eyes could change depending on the mood he carried at times.

Baelor exhaled through his nose, dragging his hands further up your thighs, somewhere between amusement and surrender. “You have retained nothing from the past quarter hour.”

You brought a palm to cup his cheek, stroking it lightly. “I retained handsome.”

“That was not part of the discussion,” he said, turning his face to press a kiss into your palm. The gesture always sent butterflies through your belly.

“It should have been,” you said softly. Your hand found his where it rested against your thigh, large, warm, steady. Your gaze moved over him slowly; studying the colours of his eyes, his well-sculpted nose, his delicate lips, his strong jaw, his broad chest, even the full breadth of his body built by years of court training and rebellion.

And when you looked up at him again, the fondness in his gaze struck you with such force you nearly forgot your own teasing. That gentle tenderness of his made women write songs, men swear oaths, and kingdoms place impossible hopes upon his shoulders. Gosh, how handsome.

And as though he could read the thoughts behind your eyes, he drew you closer and pressed a long, unhurried kiss to your lips. Slow and certain, as if reminding you that he had always been yours.

“What would the court think,” you murmured against him, “if they knew the future king melts beneath his wife’s touch?”

He smiled into the kiss, “Then it is fortunate,” he said softly, meant only for your ears, “that they never will.”

“My lady wife,” he rasps, breathing carefully through his nose.

“Yes, husband?”

His lashes flutter at husband. “You bit me.”

“I know.”

A moment of quiet. You watch him assembling himself. The careful prince, the orderly mind that organises kingdoms and councils, trying to apply it to the creature sitting across his hips with visible satisfaction.

“Are you going to do it again?” he asks.

You lower your mouth to his collarbone and answer the question directly.

This bite is lower, slower. You take your time, teeth finding the ridge of bone and pressing in measured stages. You’re not breaking, not being sharp, but building by degrees the way he builds arguments in council, the way he builds trust, the way he does everything: methodically, with patience, with the absolute certainty this is your right and you’re claiming his skin for yourself.

You bite him the way he does everything else, and the irony sits warm in your chest, and Baelor shudders underneath you in one long full-body wave, his hands tightening on your shoulders and the low rough sound he makes vibrates through your palms where they rest flat against his ribs.

You tongue the mark after.

He makes a strangled, ruined sound. Something that starts as a word and doesn’t finish as one.

You sit up and look at your work again, humming.

Two dark prints on the gold of him. A map. A claim. You trace the second one with the pad of your index finger. No pressing, you tell yourself, just touching, and watch his jaw tighten with the effort of stillness.

“This is—”he begins.

You move your mouth to the inside of his bicep.

Baelor gives up on speaking.

The inside of the arm is thin-skinned and you know it because you’ve watched him in the training yard, in the bath, at his desk, and you have had three weeks of marriage and considerably longer of wanting, and you’ve been taking notes the whole time.

You know the places he’s sensitive. You know the spot below his ribs where he’s ticklish, which he finds deeply undignified and which you find delightful. You know the back of his knee and the inside of his wrist and the very specific place at the nape of his neck where Baelor’s hair curls slightly when it’s damp, the one that makes him go pliant when you put your mouth there as if something in his spine simply unhooks.

You’re not interested in pliant tonight.

You bite the inside of his arm, and his back comes off the mattress.

Not all the way. Not the rearing jerk of pain. The controlled, straining rise of a man whose body overrides his composure one degree at a time. Baelor’s hands leave your shoulders, and his head presses back into the pillow, the long line of his throat exposed from jaw to collarbone, every tendon in sharp relief.

You run the flat of your tongue across the mark. You feel the flare of his pulse against your lips.

“Three,” you call out huskily.

He opens one eye. Just one. The blue one. “Are you counting?”

“I am.”

He closes it again. “Of course you are.”

“Four,” you tell him smugly, and move to make your claim.

The fourth lands at the join of his neck and shoulder, where the skin is thicker but the bone beneath gives the bite something to work against. You take more time here. Teeth press in measured stages, feeling the precise moment pressure tips into something else, feeling his whole body brace and then give, feeling him stop fighting the sound in his chest and let it come. Low, raw, rougher than a groan, torn from somewhere further down than his throat.

His hand rises into your hair.

Not to pull you off. Not to guide you. Just to hold. Fingers cradle without gripping, and you feel warmth pool in your chest at the security that grip imbues into you.

You tongue the mark again, lapping at the skin. He shudders.

“My wolf,” he manages, voice rubbed rough at every edge.

You bite him again before he can say anything else.

Five at the jut of his clavicle. Six at the base of his sternum where the skin is thinnest and the hurt is sharpest and Baelor’s whole body jackknifes under you at the contact, hips rising involuntarily, hands flying to your waist on reflex. You press your weight down. He subsides with a hissed sound. His chest moves fast under your palms, breath coming in measured pulls through his teeth.

You sit up again and peer down at him.

Six dark marks on the gold of him. Throat, collarbone, the inside of his arm, the join of neck and shoulder, the clavicle, the sternum. A constellation. Your own private cartography, drawn in bruise-dark on skin the whole court covers tomorrow with fine cloth and Targaryen colours. Each mark already rising, faint on the smooth planes of him, and something in your chest goes very still with satisfaction, the same way the wolf in you goes still and satisfied. Which is to say completely without remorse, and entirely pleased with the claiming.

Baelor watches you look at the marks. His hair is loose his face, dark except where candlelight finds it and turns it deep amber. His mouth carries the evidence of much earlier in the evening. He has three weeks of marriage in his eyes and considerably longer of wanting, and his hands rest loosely at your waist because he knows now that there’s no rush. That you’re his and he’s yours and there’s just… this.

“Are you finished?” he asks, his voice rough.

You look at the marks, then at him. You look at the long stretch of unmarked skin below the sternum.

“No,” you answer simply.

There’s a glimmer across his expression. The careful prince, briefly visible, briefly calculating; and then the man underneath—the one who’s never in his whole life been looked at the way you’re looking at him right now, who is still learning how to receive it except by giving himself over entirely—rises and burns the prince to ash.

“Carry on, then,” he says, and his voice has gone low and rough. Dornish-edged in the way it only gets when he stops translating himself. “My wolf. My lady. My—”

You bite him again and the sentence ends.

Seven at the dip below his sternum. Eight at the notch of his hip where he hisses sharply and his hand yanks you closer rather than away (noted, to be revisited). Nine lower still, at the ridge of muscle angling inward, and by now Baelor makes sounds that no one in this castle has ever drawn from the Prince of Dragonstone before.

You are, privately, extraordinarily pleased about that.

You sit back after nine and look at the full count. The marks begin at his throat and wind down the centre of him, following the sternum, fanning across the ribs, curving at the hip. Your work. Your claim. Your hand-print on the body of the dragon, written in a language only the two of you read for however many days they take to fade.

Baelor stares at the ceiling. His hands lie lax on your thighs, all the grip gone out of him. His chest moves in long, slow heaves and you see his pulse in his throat above the first mark, the flutter of it against the bruise, and the sight warms the wolf-like place in your chest that’s always known exactly what it wanted even when the wanting was inconvenient.

“Are you done?” he wonders, ragged, to the ceiling.

“Are you asking because you want me to stop, husband?”

A long silence. His hands tighten once on your thighs.

“No,” he admits.

You lower your mouth to the first mark, the one at his throat, directly over the hammering pulse, and you kiss it. Soft. Not a bite, not now. The kiss of a woman acknowledging what she’s made. Baelor’s whole body tightens and then slowly, slowly, releases.

“Ten,” you murmur lovingly against the bruise.

His hand comes up. Fingers curl around the back of your neck, warm and unshaking. Steadier than he was at seven, steadier than at three, as if somewhere around nine he passed through the wall of his own composure and found a strange calm waiting on the other side.

“My wolf,” he says softly, and the Dornish lilt runs deep in it now, a man who’s finally stopped translating altogether.

You kiss the mark again. Gently. Baelor’s pulse beats against your lips, steady as a drum, steady as the tide, steady as the man himself beneath all that careful armour.

“Yours,” you whisper into the bruise.

By the end of court, Prince Baelor looked tired. Not visibly. At least not to anyone who did not know to look for it.

The prince still stood straight beside the Iron Throne, broad-shouldered and composed in dark velvet adorned only with the Hand’s pin on his chest. His voice remained measured, calm as still water while lords argued themselves breathless around him.

No one else seemed to notice the strain settling gradually behind his eyes. But then, no one else watched him the way you did.

You stood beside Queen Myriah throughout the proceedings, hands folded neatly before you while petitioners droned on endlessly about taxes, borders, marriages, grain stores, wounded pride, and imagined insults.

Through all of it, Baelor listened. Gods, he always listened. Even when men interrupted him. Even when courtiers spoke to him as though patience were weakness. Even when the King’s temper turned sharp enough to sour the entire hall.

Baelor listened carefully to every word regardless.

It exhausted him and you could see it. The realization sat heavily in your chest long after court dismissed.

The Queen had retired to her chambers with two septas in tow, leaving you momentarily alone in the outer solar while servants hurried about preparing for the evening meal. You had been sorting through folded correspondence when footsteps sounded quietly behind you.

You glanced up. Prince Baelor stood in the doorway.

Without the noise and spectacle of court around him, he looked strangely younger. Less like the heir to the Iron Throne and more like a man carrying too much too carefully.

“You escaped early,” you said.

A faint smile touched his mouth. “So did you.”

“Your lady mother dismissed me.”

“I suspect she noticed your attention wandering.”

Heat rose immediately to your face. “Was it so obvious?”

“To me.” He stepped farther into the room. “You were frowning at Lord Buckwell with remarkable intensity.”

“He spoke for nearly an hour and said nothing.”

Baelor laughed softly. The sound did unfortunate things to your composure.

You returned your attention to the letters too quickly. “You should sit down, my prince.”

“I assure you I am capable of standing.”

“That was not concern for your physical ability.”

That earned you another look. Not surprised anymore. Prince Baelor had long since learned that you spoke before caution could intervene.

It did not seem to displease him nearly as much as it should have.

“You think I looked tired,” he said. Not a question.

You hesitated. Lying to Baelor felt impossible most of the times. He listened too well. Saw too much.

“Yes.”

He moved closer then, slow and unthreatening, until he stood opposite the table where you sorted parchment into careful stacks.

“I did not realize it showed.”

“It did not to most people.”

“But it showed to you.” Again, not a question.

You looked down at the letter in your hands instead of at him. “You always wait until everyone else has spoken before speaking yourself.”

“That is diplomacy.”

“No,” you murmured. “I think it is effort.”

Silence settled between you. Not uncomfortable in its nature, but attentive. When you finally looked up, Baelor was watching you with an expression you could not entirely decipher.

You became abruptly aware of how close he stood, but that was another problem entirely.

Gods.

Prince Baelor possessed a kind of beauty that became actively dangerous in quiet rooms. Court made him seem untouchable, polished into something princely and distant. But here, in the soft evening light filtering through the windows, he simply looked human. Tired, kind. Warm in ways he tried too hard to conceal.

“You notice a great deal,” he said quietly.

“You make it easy, my prince.”

His brows lifted slightly, and immediately you realized how that sounded.

“Oh,” you muttered. “That was not meant flirtatiously.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “Of course not.”

“You should not sound so amused.”

“You should perhaps stop saying such alarming things to a prince of the realm.”

“That has been suggested to me before.”

“Yes,” he said lightheartedly. “By nearly everyone who has met you, I imagine.”

You laughed despite yourself. Baelor’s gaze softened slightly at the sound. Then he looked away first. A tiny thing that you would not have noticed it once, but now you noticed everything.

“You were kind to Lord Staunton today,” you said quietly.

“He lost two sons last winter.”

“Most men would have dismissed his anger as tiresome.”

“Most men are fortunate enough not to understand grief.” The answer came simply. No pride nor performance in it, just truth.

Something in your chest ached unexpectedly, because there it was again, that impossible gentleness. Not weakness, never weakness. Something that made him feel human despite the façade that the court expected of him.

You set the parchment down carefully. “You make people feel safe.”

The words left before you could stop them and Baelor went still, completely still. Outside the windows, however, the world carried on around without paying any attention to the quiet devastation you had apparently inflicted upon the heir to the Iron Throne.

His eyes lowered briefly, and there —

A flush began to rise slowly across the tops of his cheeks. It spread gradually, warming the tips of his ears first before touching the sharp line of his cheekbones. A light hue that tainted his skin and made him look impossibly real.

“Forgive me,” you said faintly, because suddenly you felt as though you had intruded upon something private.

Baelor let out a quiet breath that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.

“You say things,” he murmured, “with a terrifying amount of sincerity.”

“You dislike my sincerity?”

“No.” His gaze lifted to yours again. “That is very much the problem.”

Your pulse stumbled.

The flush remained visible still, though he carried it with more composure than most men could have managed. Yet you could see the effort of that composure now —the careful control settling back into place piece by piece.

And somehow that affected you more than the blush itself.

“You look surprised,” you admitted softly.

“I am.”

“No one has told you that before?”

His smile turned quieter then. Sadder, somehow. “Not in those words.”

Something inside you twisted painfully, because suddenly you understood. People praised Baelor constantly. His honour, his diplomacy, his wisdom. But perhaps very few people praised the man beneath all that duty. Very few people looked at him and saw just how hard he tried.

“You are very good,” you said before caution could save either of you, “at carrying things no one else notices.”

Baelor closed his eyes briefly and the color deepened immediately across his face. It was no longer the faint tone that started mere seconds ago, and when he looked back at you this time, there was something almost helpless in his expression, as though your honesty had struck somewhere beneath the armour he had forgotten he was wearing.

“You must learn,” he said quietly, “to stop speaking directly into the centre of people.”

You swallowed. “Forgive me, my prince, but I do not know how.”

For a long moment he simply looked at you. Then Baelor smiled —soft and genuine and unbearably fond.

“I fear,” he said, voice warm with embarrassment and something dangerously close to affection, “that I had already realized that.”

The first time you realized Prince Maekar truly hated being compared to his brother, he was sixteen years old and bleeding from the mouth.

You remembered it because no one else had noticed.

The training yard had been crowded that morning, thick with knights and squires and courtiers eager to watch Prince Baelor spar after returning from court. Baelor had fought beautifully —of course he had. Prince Baelor Targaryen did most things beautifully.

The praise afterward had been endless. A born leader, a perfect heir and the best of King Daeron’s sons. And then, inevitably—

“Prince Maekar might learn elegance from his brother.”

You had turned instinctively toward Maekar then.

Not because of the insult itself. Men said cruel things thoughtlessly at court every day. No. You had looked because, unlike Baelor, Maekar did not know how to hide hurt quickly enough.

For one brief moment, before the coldness settled over his face, you had seen it. Something raw. Something furious. Resignation.

As though he had heard the same thing so many times that eventually it had carved a permanent place into him.

Years later, the memory returned to you unexpectedly while watching him stand alone on the castle battlements at dusk.

The wind tugged at the dark fur mantle around his shoulders, pale hair catching silver beneath the fading light. He stood rigidly still, one hand resting against cold stone while the city stretched below in flickering gold.

You almost turned back because you knew that Prince Maekar was not a man who welcomed interruption.

Unfortunately, your sense of self-preservation had still not improved.

“Your lady mother wondered where you vanished to,” you said as you approached.

“I am not vanished. You found me easily.”

“That may say more about your hiding places than my skill.”

A quiet huff escaped him. Not quite amusement, but you took that as encouragement. The evening air was cold enough to sting your cheeks. Below, King’s Landing glimmered in the gathering dark while distant bells echoed faintly through the city.

Maekar did not look at you immediately.

“You stayed late in the yard today,” you observed.

“So?”

“You looked angry.”

“I often look angry.”

“That is true.”

His violet eyes cut toward you sharply. “You are remarkably brave for a woman who annoys armed men regularly.”

“I serve Queen Myriah. It has made me resilient.”

That earned you the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth before it disappeared beneath the beard again. Silence settled briefly between you.

“Ser Gormon praised Baelor again today,” you said carefully.

At once, the air changed. You felt it as if it had been physical. Prince Maekar went still in the particular way he always did before anger.

“You came here to discuss my brother?”

“No.”

“Then do not.” The words landed flat and hard.

You should have stopped. Instead, and against the better judgement of anyone who had observed long enough your exchange of words, you said softly:

“You looked tired afterward.”

His expression sharpened immediately. “After what?”

“After pretending it did not bother you.”

For a moment neither of you spoke.

The wind moved through his white-gold hair, pale strands shifting against the darkness of his cloak. The old pox scars remained half-hidden beneath his beard, though you had long since stopped noticing them as flaws.

Maekar looked carved from something harder than most men, as though gentleness had never been allowed to touch him without consequence.

“You imagine much,” he said at last.

“No.” You leaned against the stone beside him. “I observe much.”

“That is somehow worse.”

You ignored that. “I think people expect you not to care.”

“And you think otherwise?”

“I think no one enjoys standing in someone else’s shadow.”

His jaw tightened visibly.

“There is no shadow,” he said. “Baelor is heir. He was raised for it. He is better suited to it than I am.”

The answer came quickly enough to be judged as muscle memory. Practiced.

You looked at him then properly. At the tension held constantly in his shoulders. At the exhaustion hidden beneath severity. At the anger he wore so naturally it had become mistaken for personality.

And suddenly the truth of it hurt.

Prince Maekar had spent his entire life being measured against a brother no man could reasonably equal. And worse, he had begun measuring himself the same way.

“That is not what I meant,” you said quietly.

“Then do explain.” The challenge in his voice should have warned you.

Instead, you met his gaze directly. “You speak as though your worth depends upon being compared to Baelor.”

His expression closed instantly, almost dangerously.

“You presume too much.”

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

“Then why are you angry?”

“I am not angry.”

“You nearly bit through your own teeth when Ser Gormon praised him.”

Silence, but not denial. Just silence.

The realization settled heavily between you. Seven above, no one spoke to him about this. Not honestly. Perhaps because no one dared.

Maekar looked away first, gaze fixed on the city below. “You should return to the queen.”

“No.” The word escaped before caution intervened.

His eyes flicked sharply back toward yours and you swallowed in valor, then continued anyway.

“No one says these things to you, do they?”

“What things?”

“That you are enough as you are.”

The breath seemed to leave him all at once. Small thing, barely visible enough to notice, had you not been looking at him with all the attention that the galloping beat of your heart allowed you.

“You are cruel tonight,” he said quietly after a moment.

Your chest tightened painfully. “Why would that be cruel?”

“Because you speak of things you do not understand.”

“Then help me understand.”

Maekar laughed once bitterly.

“You wish to understand what it is to spend your life beside someone people call perfect?”

His voice had roughened unexpectedly.

“You wish to understand hearing your brother praised while men look at you as though you are the lesser version carved badly from the same stone?”

The words struck harder than you expected, not because of the bitterness, but because of the certainty. As though he believed it completely.

“That is not how I look at you,” you said softly.

“I did not ask how you look at me.”

“No,” you agreed. “You did not.”

The wind howled briefly across the battlements, tugging at your sleeves. Maekar stared out toward the city again, rigid and guarded and so clearly waiting for disappointment that something inside of you ached.

You thought suddenly of all the ways court misunderstood him. They saw harshness and never restraint. Anger and never loyalty. Severity and never care.

Because Maekar cared fiercely once someone belonged to him. You had seen it in small, hidden moments: the way he positioned himself between danger and others instinctively, the way he remembered injuries, the way he watched over younger squires when he thought no one noticed.

No one looked long enough to see those things. Or perhaps they simply preferred Baelor’s easier warmth.

“You are not lesser,” you said quietly.

His eyes closed briefly, just briefly, as though the words themselves exhausted him.

“You should stop talking now.”

“No.” The answer startled something that almost looked like helplessness across his face. You stepped closer before courage failed you.

“Prince Baelor shines easily,” you murmured. “People love him easily. He was made for it.”

Maekar’s jaw tightened immediately. “And you think I was not.”

“I think,” you said carefully, “that you were made differently.”

He looked at you then, the fading light caught violet in his eyes.

“And what does that mean?”

“It means people mistake warmth for worth.”

The silence afterward felt enormous. You could see the exact moment the words reached him. Not because his expression changed dramatically —Prince Maekar had too much control for that.  But suddenly he could not seem to hold your gaze steadily anymore.

His attention flickered away. Then returned, then left again. Colour began creeping slowly upward beneath the high planes of his cheekbones.

Gods.

You had never seen him blush before. It transformed him strangely. Not softening him but exposing something younger beneath all the armour.

“You,” you said softly, “are loyal in ways that frighten people. You love fiercely. You protect everything entrusted to you even when no one thanks you for it.”

The flush deepened immediately, spreading toward the tips of his ears. Maekar looked genuinely cornered now.

“You should stop.”

“No.”

“You do not know what you are saying.”

“Yes, I do.” Your voice gentled despite yourself. “You are not failing because you are not Baelor. You are not failing at all.”

Something in his face cracked then, not visibly enough for most people to notice, but you did. And suddenly Maekar looked unbearably tired. Tired of proving. Tired of comparison. Tired of carrying himself like a weapon because he no longer knew how to be anything else.

“You are enough,” you said quietly. “You yourself. Not in comparison to anyone. Not after earning it. Now.”

The red in his face deepened all at once. It was not graceful embarrassment and certainly not fleeting color. A real blush climbed visibly across his cheeks and ears while his eyes fixed somewhere over your shoulder as though direct eye contact had suddenly become impossible.

You stared in honest shock. Prince Maekar looked horrified by his own reaction, which only made it worse.

“You,” he said roughly, “have no idea what you do to people.”

Your heart stumbled painfully against your ribs.

“I only speak honestly.”

Baelor realized something was wrong with you long before you intended him to.

Or perhaps not wrong. Simply dangerous.

Because lately, every time he came too close to you, your entire body betrayed you in increasingly humiliating ways.

You noticed the breadth of him constantly now. The size of his hands when he passed scrolls across council tables. The way his shoulders filled doorways. The warmth of him whenever he stood behind you, large enough that his presence alone seemed to crowd the air from your lungs.

And Gods, when he touched you, even casually, you felt it everywhere. And, tragically for you, once Baelor noticed it, he could not stop noticing.

The realization had settled slowly over weeks. You liked how large he was. Not merely admired it, enjoyed it; craved it. And, perhaps, the most devastating part was just how innocent your reactions seemed at first, as though you did not fully realize how transparent you became around him.

Like now.

The Queen’s solar had emptied for the evening, leaving only soft firelight and drifting silence behind. Queen Myriah had retired already, and you sat curled sideways upon one of the chairs, sorting correspondence while Prince Baelor stood nearby reviewing council reports.

Or pretending to, because he had caught you staring at his hands three separate times in the last several minutes.

Your gaze kept lingering where his fingers wrapped around parchment, broad palms flexing absently as he turned pages. You looked up at precisely the wrong moment, because Baelor was rolling his sleeves slowly, exposing strong forearms corded subtly with muscle from years of swordsmanship despite the duties that now kept him behind council tables more often than battlefields.

Your throat went dry instantly. Unfortunately for your dignity, he looked up and caught you staring directly at his forearms.

Silence stretched, and then one dark brow lifted slightly. “You are distracted tonight.”

Heat climbed into your face immediately. “I am not.”

Baelor’s mouth softened faintly at the corners, though his eyes remained terribly observant.

“I am sure you have read the same document three times.”

You looked quickly back down at the parchment in your lap despite retaining absolutely none of it. “That proves nothing.”

A quiet breath of amusement escaped him. Heat continued spreading through your face. Baelor noticed that too. His mouth softened faintly at the corners before he set his own parchment aside and crossed the room toward you.

And gods, there it was again, that impossible awareness the moment he approached.

Baelor moved quietly for such a large man, but his presence still filled the space around you effortlessly. Broad shoulders blocked firelight as he stopped beside you, one hand resting lightly against the carved wood of the back of your chair that rose above your head.

You had to tilt your chin upward to look at him properly. That alone sent warmth curling low through your stomach.

Baelor saw the reaction immediately, his eyes darkened slightly.

“Ah,” he said softly.

Your heartbeat stumbled. “Ah, what?”

“You truly do like this.”

Gods. You wanted the floor to swallow you whole.

“I do not know what you mean.”

“You do.” His voice remained maddeningly calm. “You become very quiet whenever I stand over you like this.”

Your pulse turned traitorous beneath your skin. Because he was right.

The sheer size of him this close affected you in ways you struggled to explain even to yourself: the breadth of his chest, the quiet, gentle steadiness of his strength, the feeling of being surrounded completely by someone capable of overwhelming force who nevertheless handled you with unbearable softness.

Safe. You felt safe. And perhaps he understood that now.

Baelor’s expression softened visibly at whatever he saw in your face. Then, slowly, he crouched before you. Even kneeling, he remained large enough to make your breath catch.

“You should have told me,” he murmured.

“There was nothing to tell.”

A quiet laugh escaped him at that. “So, this means nothing?”

Before you could answer, his hands settled carefully around your waist. Warm and broad and completely spanning you.

The breath left your lungs instantly, Baelor felt it happen.

You saw the realization move through him all at once: the visible understanding, the dangerous tenderness entering his gaze, the sudden awareness of how deeply this affected you.

His thumbs brushed lightly against your sides. “You like when I touch you like this,” he said softly.

Heat climbed higher into your face and Baelor looked devastatingly pleased by that, something dangerously close in resemblance to smugness dancing in his eyes. Because underneath the teasing calm, you could see what truly affected him: that you trusted him, that you relaxed beneath his frame instead of shrinking away.

“You make me feel very small,” you admitted finally, voice quieter now. The words shattered something visible in him.

Baelor inhaled slowly, eyes softening almost painfully. Hands tightening faintly around your waist before loosening again with deliberate care. No one had ever looked at you like that before, like your vulnerability was precious.

His forehead lowered slowly against the crook of your neck, pressing against it with utter tenderness. The intimacy of the gesture nearly stole your breath.

“You have no idea,” he murmured softly against you, “what that does to me.”

Your fingers slipped instinctively into his dark silvered hair and Baelor exhaled shakily, his warm breath sending shivers against the soft skin of where your neck met your chest . Then, before you could fully gather yourself again, he rose smoothly to his feet and lifted you with him.

Effortlessly. Completely effortlessly. A startled sound escaped you immediately.

Baelor held you securely against his chest as though your weight meant nothing at all, one arm beneath your thighs while the other supported your back.

The room tilted slightly with the sudden movement. Your hands grabbed instinctively at his shoulders. And gods, the look on his face afterward nearly ruined you entirely.

No longer smugness. Wonder. Like he could physically feel how much you loved this.

“You should see yourself right now,” he murmured.

“You are enjoying this far too much.”

“Yes,” he admitted softly. “Because you are looking at me as though I have hung the moon.” He smiled tenderly, the tip of his sharp canines showing.

You hid your face briefly against his shoulder in embarrassment and Baelor laughed quietly beneath his breath before setting you again safely on the chair. His arms remained firm around you, body surrounding yours entirely in warmth and impossible steadiness alike.

You could feel how carefully he handled you despite all that strength and that was the worst part by far. Not merely that he was large enough to overwhelm you easily, but that he chose gentleness anyway.

The armoury always smelled like steel and oil and smoke. You liked it more than you probably should have, perhaps because it carried traces of him everywhere.

Prince Maekar spent more time here than he did in half the rooms assigned to him in the Red Keep. The space suited him too well —dim torchlight glinting off blades and armour, stone walls holding the lingering warmth of exertion, the air thick with the sharp scent of metal and sweat alike.

It felt honest, and so did he. At least here.

You found him exactly where you expected: near the long wooden table at the centre of the room, still dressed in training leathers darkened slightly with sweat, one large hand braced against the edge of the table while the other adjusted the leather wrapping at his wrist.

Gods, the sight alone nearly sent warmth through your entire body. Maekar looked enormous beneath the low torchlight.

Broad shoulders stretched tight beneath dark fabric, white hair damp from exertion and half-loosened from his usual tidied placement, pale strands sticking faintly to scarred skin and beard alike. Every movement carried heavy controlled strength, the kind that made lesser men instinctively move aside when he entered rooms.

And unfortunately for your dignity, you liked it far too much.

You had tried not to, you really had, but the first time Maekar absentmindedly lifted you above a table in the middle of a conversation just because you had not wanted to look him in the eyes and that movement left you at the perfect height for him, something in your brain was forever altered.

Now every little thing affected you: the size of his hands, the breadth of his chest, the way he crowded close without realizing how overwhelming he felt physically.

And recently, gods help you, you thought he had started noticing.

You leaned lightly against the doorway. “You are avoiding dinner again.”

Maekar glanced over immediately, then paused. That always happened now too, that tiny hesitation the moment he saw you. Like some instinct in him shifted instantly toward you before the rest of him caught up.

“I was occupied,” he answered.

“With trying to bludgeon innocent training dummies into submission?”

“They lost.”

You laughed softly and noticed how the sound visibly affected him. His eyes darkened slightly while something warmer flickered briefly beneath the usual severity of his expression.

Then his gaze lowered, straight to the way your hands gripped the doorway while looking at him, and suddenly you realized, much too late, that you had been staring again.

At his arms. At his shoulders. At the sheer impossible size of him beneath torchlight.

Heat crept into your face immediately. Maekar went very still.

“You are doing it again,” he said quietly.

Your heartbeat stumbled. “Doing what?”

“Looking at me like that.”

Oh, no.

You tried for innocence. “I do not know what you mean.”

Maekar stared at you for one long moment, then slowly, deliberately, he straightened to his full height.

Seven hells. It should have been illegal for one man to look like that.

The movement only emphasized the terrifying breadth of him, heavy muscle beneath dark fabric, towering height, the raw physicality of someone built more like a warhorse than a prince.

And the worst part? He was watching your reaction now. Carefully.

Your pulse fluttered traitorously beneath your skin and Maekar noticed immediately in the way you faltered. The realization moved visibly through him. Not arrogance, but rather something similar to shock. Like he genuinely had not expected this.

“You like it,” he said quietly. The words landed directly in your stomach.

You crossed your arms instinctively. “You are imagining things.”

“No.” He stepped closer. “I am not.”

Gods. Every step of his felt unfair.

The armoury suddenly seemed much smaller with him crossing it toward you, torchlight catching sharply against pale hair and violet eyes alike while his sheer size crowded warmth and tension into the air around you.

You held your ground anyway. Mostly because your knees might have failed if you attempted retreat.

Maekar stopped directly before you, close enough that you had to tilt your head back fully to maintain eye contact. And gods, that was part of it too: the feeling of being small beside him. Of being physically surrounded by someone so much larger and stronger while knowing with absolute certainty he would never hurt you.

Your breath caught softly and, unfortunately for you, Maekar heard it. The look that crossed his face afterward nearly ruined you. Slow understanding. Heat. Something dangerously close to hunger.

“You truly do,” he murmured.

His hand settled against your waist then. And gods, just one hand. One massive hand spanning nearly the entirety of your waist through the fabric of your gown.

Your entire body reacted instantly. Maekar felt it happen. You saw the exact second realization struck him fully: the widening of his pupils, the deeper pull of breath into his lungs, the way his fingers tightened instinctively before loosening again with visible restraint.

“You become nervous when I stand close,” he said softly.

“I do not.”

“You stop breathing properly.”

Your face burned hotter and Maekar looked devastatingly affected by that. Not smug, more like emotionally overwhelmed. Like the knowledge that you desired him this way genuinely unsettled him somewhere deep beneath the ribs.

His other hand came up slowly until both palms rested at your waist now, entirely surrounding you. The contrast nearly made your head spin: you looked tiny beneath him. Maekar noticed you realizing it too. And gods, something in him snapped quietly at the sight.

Before you could fully gather your thoughts, he lifted you. Effortlessly.

A startled breath escaped you as your back met cool stone beside the doorway a second later, Maekar settling you easily atop one of the lower storage tables built into the wall.

The movement had been so casual. So easy. Like your weight meant absolutely nothing to him. And gods, that affected you embarrassingly much.

Maekar stepped between your knees immediately afterward, large hands still firm at your waist while his chest pressed close enough for warmth to radiate through your clothes.

You could feel every inch of how much larger he was like this. The breadth of him. The weight of him. The sheer, overwhelming presence surrounding you entirely.

Your fingers caught instinctively against his shoulders. Solid, broad, immovable. Maekar looked at you then with an expression so raw it nearly stole your breath entirely.

“You like when I handle you,” he said hoarsely.

The vulnerability hidden beneath the observation shattered something soft inside your chest.

“Yes,” you finally admitted quietly.

He closed his eyes briefly, like the answer physically affected him.

When he looked at you again, something darker had entered his gaze now —unadulterated hunger tangled tightly with emotion.

His forehead lowered slowly against yours.

“You have no idea,” he murmured roughly, hands tightening carefully at your waist, “what that just did to me.”

It is the first time I am writing something this suggestive and I really don't know how it turned out. What do you think?

He doesn't visibly enjoy hurting people. He sits across the table from a man who's betrayed him and he says, in a tone so warm it sounds almost affectionate, I think there's been a misunderstanding, and he tilts his head a fraction, and he keeps eye contact while one of his people unfolds a knife behind the man's chair. And the entire time Valarr is smiling that beautiful, slightly apologetic smile and somehow the man on the wrong side of the table believes he deserves this. Believes it is his own fault. Believes that if he'd only been smarter or quicker or more loyal, Valarr would not be doing this to him.

Valarr makes people agree with their own destruction. It's the most frightening thing about him.

He sleeps eight hours a night and never once has nightmares.

The rivalry between them isn't new, either.

It dates back to a summer at the family compound when they were nine and seven and Valarr won a sailing race and Aerion broke Valarr's collarbone with an oar two days later. Their fathers separated them.

Their fathers re-separated them at thirteen and fifteen, after Aerion put Valarr's face through a glass coffee table at a christening. They've been arranged-marriage civil to each other for twenty years and there's not a man in either organisation who doesn't understand that the second Maekar and Baelor are both in the ground, one of them is going to put the other in a hole, too.

The only question is which one. Money says Valarr, because Valarr is patient, surgical and has institutional weight. Money is wrong, because Valarr underestimates Aerion the way the world underestimates a stray dog with a steel jaw.

Aerion thinks Valarr is a phony. A polished show-piece. A man who's never bled for anything in his life and gets to inherit the larger share of the city purely because his father was born first.

Valarr thinks Aerion is a feral, embarrassing liability. A hand grenade with the pin missing. Useful, because he's terrifying and family, but the kind of relative you keep at a distance from your reputation.

They both, on some level neither would ever say aloud, want to be the one their fathers chose.

—

And then you come south.

—

You don't come south because of the family. That's the thing.

You come south because your father is dead.

Barthogan Stark, of Winterfell, of the north, killed not in any spectacular way but slowly, over three years, by something that ate him from the inside while you held his hand and read aloud to him in the long evenings.

The lawyers need you in the city for a month to handle the estate.

Your father's estate is large, and complicated. Your father was a Stark, which is its own kind of weight in this city even before you start opening drawers and finding things you wish you hadn't.

Your father owned half a shipping line. Your father had a standing reservation at a restaurant Baelor's people own. Your father had, you discover three days in, a file in the locked drawer of his study with the name Targaryen on the tab and photographs inside that you don't yet have the stomach to look at fully.

So you come south. Head-to-toe in black, your father's signet ring on a chain at your throat because you can't yet bring yourself to wear it on your hand.

You don't know the scene yet.

You just know your father knew these people, and you know your father is not in a position to explain why anymore.

—

You meet Bloodraven first.

A man approaches you at your father's funeral. White-haired, in a beautifully cut black coat, the wine-coloured birthmark down one side of his face, an old scar slashing through one eyebrow where the eye underneath no longer lives, partially hidden by the silky white hair.

He doesn't offer condolences. He says, "Lady Stark," in a tone of mild interest. "I knew your father."

"So did most of this city, apparently."

His mouth twitches, but it's not a smile. It's a near-smile, the way a knife is a near-flower.

"Not most of this city, no. Very few people knew your father the way I did. Barthogan and I had a long-running arrangement."

That makes you look at him properly for the first time. "Of what kind?"

"Of the kind," he says, almost gently, "that suggests you and I should also speak."

He is, you realise dimly, the most unsettling person you've ever stood next to, and you grew up surrounded by northern men who killed people for a living.

"I don't know who you are," you tell him.

Technically a lie. You've heard the name. You've heard the name in three different rooms in the last forty-eight hours, always in a hushed register, always with a small instinctive glance at the door.

"Brynden Rivers," he says. "I work for the family."

He doesn't specify which one. You understand, somehow, that this is because he works for neither and both.

"I would like to invite you to have a conversation with me, when you've finished receiving people."

"About my father."

"About a number of things."

His eye (the good one, the red one) settles on you with an unblinking focus that should feel violating and doesn't, quite, because there's nothing leering or hungry in it. It's just attention. Complete, terrible, exact.

"Starks have always been of interest to me, Lady Stark. I hope you don't disappoint."

He inclines his head a fraction and walks away.

You stand at your father's grave with this sentence sitting in your chest like a fist and think—what the fuck does that mean.

—

You find out on a cloudy Tuesday.

He sends a car and you almost don't get in it.

You even reach for your phone to call your lawyer and ask whether there's any conceivable universe in which getting into a car sent by Brynden Rivers is a survivable decision. And then you remember that you're a Stark, your father raised you for this, and your father had a file, and so you get in the car.

It drives you to a house outside the city. You expect a warehouse or a grave, frankly, but no, a house, narrow and elegant and packed floor-to-ceiling with books. A woman lets you in without speaking. (You will learn later she's mute, you will learn even later that Brynden himself had her tongue removed). A maid pours you tea you don't drink. Brynden is waiting for you in a study with three ravens perched on a sideboard like ornamental gargoyles.

He doesn't get up.

"Sit, Lady Stark."

"Brynden."

He pauses.

A small thing. He's been mid-gesture, indicating the chair across from him, and his hand stills in the air for half a beat at the use of his given name.

It is, you suspect, the first time he's been called by it in this house in a very long time. The men who come to this study call him Lord Rivers. Call him sir. Call him Bloodraven, when they're not in his hearing. Possibly two people address him the way you've just addressed him, and both of them are dead now.

His good eye crinkles at the corner, and his hand completes the gesture, his mouth turning toward that near-smile thing again.

"As you like."

You sit.

He sets a folder on the desk between you, a folder you recognise.

It is, in fact, a folder from your father's locked drawer, and the only way Brynden Rivers can have it is because your father gave it to him a long time ago and he made copies of his own, or because Brynden Rivers can simply get things and the locked drawer in your father's study did not present a meaningful obstacle.

You suspect the second. You suspect this is going to be true in a great many things from now on.

"Your father and I had what I would call a working friendship. He kept his half of the country quiet. I kept this half informed. When we exchanged information, it was always to the realm's benefit. He was, by my standards, an honourable man, which is rarer in my line of work than it should be." His good eye glitters as he takes you in, considering. After a brief pause, he adds, "I was sorry to hear of his passing. I do not say that often."

"Thank you."

The near-smile comes again at the quiet sincerity in your voice. He files it. He doesn't comment on it.

"You have, I imagine, discovered some of what he kept on the Targaryens."

Your neck prickles, and you choose your answer carefully, "Some."

"Have you read all of it?" he wonders, stirring his tea.

"No."

"May I suggest you read all of it."

It's not a suggestion and you both know it, despite how dry and mild his tone remains. A beat.

"Why are you helping me, Brynden?" you ask.

He gazes at you for a long time. One of the ravens shifts on its perch and gives a rattling croak. Brynden doesn't blink at the disturbance.

When he answers, his voice is still mild, almost amused, almost (and this is the part that will keep you up at night for weeks) fond.

"As I've told you already: Starks have always been of interest to me, my lady. Because your father gave me twenty years of clean information and asked me for almost nothing in return, and I find I would like to repay that. In a fashion he might have approved of. Because the boys you are about to meet—and you will meet them, very shortly, whether you choose to or not—both believe themselves cleverer than they are, and I have a certain professional appetite for watching clever men be corrected."

He tilts his head. "And because the city is approaching an inflection point I have spent fifteen years preparing for, and you, Lady Stark, have arrived at precisely the moment I had stopped hoping someone like you would arrive. I do not believe in providence. I do, however, believe in well-timed pieces."

You bristle. "I'm not a piece."

"No." He allows himself a half-smile this time. "You are a player. That is the part I find encouraging. I would like to be useful to you, while you are in the south. With the understanding—and I want to be entirely clear about this—that I am not a friend. I am not safe. I have my own reasons."

His good eye fixes on yours. "You should never, at any point in our acquaintance, mistake my interest in you for affection. And you should never, at any point, fail to ask yourself what I am gaining from the help I am offering. I will not be insulted by the question. I will respect you less if you fail to ask it."

You stare at him. "And if I disappoint you, Brynden?"

His expression doesn't change. "Then I will be sorry. But you will be a great deal more sorry than I am, my lady."

A very long silence follows those words.

"Alright," you say. "I would like to know one more thing before I agree."

He dips his chin. "Ask."

"What does it mean, practically, to be working with you?" you wonder, watching him carefully.

He considers the question for a beat. Sets his cup down. Folds his hands.

"It means that I have certain... habits. Of watching. Of knowing where things are, and where people are, and what is being said in rooms I am not in. These habits, when applied to a person, can be expensive. They can also be useful."

He pauses, watching his tea with a slight tilt of his head. "If you and I are doing business, my lady, then a number of my habits will, by necessity, settle on you. You will find that things you did not arrange happen on your behalf. You will find that people who might otherwise have been a nuisance discover other commitments. You will find that the city is, in certain narrow ways, easier than it would otherwise be for a woman in your position to navigate."

Your brows furrow. "You're saying I will be under your protection?"

"I am saying," he corrects, mildly, "that I am not in the habit of using that word. Protection implies an obligation. I do not take obligations to people. I take interests. While my interest in you persists, the practical consequences may be very similar to what other people would call protection. They are not the same thing."

"And if your interest in me ceases?"

"Then the practical consequences cease with it," he says simply, frankly, "I will not punish you for it. I will not seek you out. I will simply no longer be... there." His good eye crinkles slightly at the edges. "I tell you this so you understand the structure. I do not deceive my partners about the terms of the arrangement. It is one of my few professional vanities."

"And while your interest persists?"

"While my interest persists, my lady, you will find that certain men in this city become quite remarkably reluctant to inconvenience you. Aerion Targaryen, for example. Valarr Targaryen, for example."

He pauses. Picks up his cup, sipping from it for a moment.

"You are about to do something dangerous, Lady Stark," he says, leaning back into his seat. "I am familiar with what you are about to do, because I have been doing related work for a long time. You are not going to survive it on your own. You may, possibly, survive it with me. I am offering you the second option, because the first one is not, in my professional estimation, available to you."

You absorb this.

"Brynden."

"Yes, my lady?"

You laugh weakly, a slightly hysterical edge to the sound. "That's the kindest thing anyone has said to me since my father died, and it terrifies me."

He dips his chin slightly. "It should."

Another silence. Different in texture from the last one.

"Alright," you say finally. "I accept."

He tips his head. The half-smile spreads further than you have yet seen it spread. He looks, for one second, like a man who's just received a piece of news he's been waiting on for several years.

"Alright. Then we will begin, little wolf."

You look at him sharply.

He gazes back. He's called you my lady three times tonight and Lady Stark twice. He has, just now, chosen something else, and he's done it knowing exactly what he was doing, and his good eye is on yours with the calm expectant focus, curious to see what you'll do with this small test.

"Little wolf," you echo.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because it suits you. Because your father called you something similar, I believe. And because it amuses me to mark the agreement we've just made with a name only I will use, which neither of the Targaryens will be permitted to. Forgive me the vanity."

You consider him.

"That is a great deal of meaning to put on two words, Brynden."

"All my words have a great deal of meaning on them, little wolf. You will learn to read them in time."

He pours you a second cup of tea. You don't drink it this time either. You sit across from the most dangerous man in the continent and you discuss your father's files, your timelines and the people you're about to meet.

When you leave two hours later you're walking out of his house with a hand-drawn map of the city's power structure that you will memorise in your hotel room that night and burn in your bathroom sink before dawn.

You are walking out, also, with the cold clear understanding that you've just made an alliance with someone who could end you in a heartbeat. And you're walking out, also, with the unmistakable, unsettling sense that he likes you.

That this terrifying man, this man who's unmade entire dynasties and re-made governments and put bodies in walls, has decided in the space of one tea service that you're interesting. And that this is going to be, for the rest of your time in the south, both the most useful and the most dangerous fact about your situation.

At the door, as you put your coat on, you say, "Goodnight, Brynden."

He inclines his head. "Goodnight, little wolf. Please do not take the cab to the corner of your hotel."

"I know," you say. "Four blocks. Check three times."

"Very good," he says mildly.

You take a cab home. You do not let it drop you at your hotel. You have it drop you four blocks away and you walk the rest, and you check the street for tails three times before you go inside, just the way Brynden told you to.

—

You meet Aerion first.

It's at a club. One of theirs. Though you don't know it yet.

Brynden didn't tell you outright. Because he doesn't work like that.

Brynden mentioned, over the second pot of tea, that there was an establishment on a certain corner that did interesting business on Wednesdays. And that if you just so happen to be in the neighbourhood on a Wednesday around midnight you might find the atmosphere instructive.

You understood the shape of what he was saying without him needing to spell it out.

When you walk into the club, no one knows you came from Bloodraven's tea table. No one knows you were briefed on the colour of the wallpaper before you arrived. As far as the city is concerned, you're a Stark heir who's decided to take a walk on a Wednesday, and the city is going to draw its own incorrect conclusions about what that means.

You wear black. A simple slip of a dress, hair down, your father's signet ring on the chain at your throat because you can't yet bring yourself to wear it on your hand. You don't look like a girl who walked in by accident.

You also don't look like a girl who knows what she's walking into, which is the part Aerion notices first.

He's at the bar.

Silver hoops catching the red light, ringed fingers loose around a glass of something amber, the half-smile of a man pretending to find his lieutenant's story amusing. He watches you cross the floor in the mirror behind the bottles and doesn't turn around.

By the time you're three feet from him, he's already decided he's going to fuck you. He's already decided he's going to enjoy it. The only question still genuinely open in his head is how long he's going to let you pretend it's not a foregone conclusion.

"New face," he calls out, without turning.

You don't lift your eyes. "New bar."

"Is it?" His mouth twitches at the corner. He still hasn't turned. He tips his glass a fraction, watching you in the mirror over the lip of it. "What brings you in?"

"A recommendation."

"From?"

"Someone."

His eyes (pale, very pale, the kind that always look like they're catching light even when there isn't any) track up the mirror until they find yours in it. He holds you there a beat too long. You don't look away.

He sets the glass down. He turns.

Oh, you think. Oh.

You've met dangerous men before. Your father's house was full of them. You have not met one quite like this.

It isn't that he's beautiful, though he is, in a way that feels almost spiteful. Like he resents his own face for being a thing other people can use against him. It isn't the rings, or the hoops, or the half-visible ink crawling up the side of his neck.

It's the stillness. The way he looks at you like he's three moves ahead of the conversation.

His lieutenant has gone quiet. His lieutenant has gone, in fact, professionally invisible. He's slid one stool down and turned his shoulder and become deeply interested in his own phone, in a way that tells you several things at once, none of them good. The bartender has found a glass to polish at the far end of the bar.

No one is watching you. Everyone is watching you.

"Let me buy you a drink," he says.

"No, thank you," you respond crisply.

"No?"

"No."

A beat. His head tilts a fraction. Amusement curls in at the edge of his full mouth. "You walk into a stranger's bar at midnight in that dress made for taking off and won't take a drink off the house?"

"I didn't realise it was the house offering."

He laughs under his breath, a private sound. "You know who I am."

"I have a guess," you confirm neutrally.

"Do you?" His eyes go down you once, unhurried, assessing not your body but your posture, which is the thing about him he tries to hide and cannot, which is that he's far more clinical than he lets on. "Guess out loud."

"I don't make guesses out loud, Mr—"

You let it hang. You don't give him the name. He watches you not give it to him and his mouth curls, something a touch closer to approval. Not stupid, you can feel him think. Good.

"Sit," he says, and taps the stool beside him.

"No."

His brows lift slowly. "No?"

"I don't sit on command," you tell him flatly. "Ask properly."

A pause. He looks at you. Truly looks. And his expression shifts through several gears in the space of one breath. The half-smile sharpens into something almost predatory and then that drops away into something far more dangerous, which is curiosity.

Genuine curiosity. He's not been told no by a woman in his own establishment in a long time and the woman in question has done it without flirtation, without the breathy little curl of fear that he's used to detecting in women who are pretending to defy him as a form of foreplay. You have meant it. And he's so unaccustomed to meaning that he is, for one half-second, fascinated.

"Please," he drawls with a smirk, almost mocking, like this is a fun game he's indulging.

You watch him for a beat. Then, "No, thank you."

His laugh this time is incredulous. It cracks out of him before he can stop it. The lieutenant beside him doesn't look up from his phone but you can see the small involuntary tilt of his head. A man who's worked for Aerion Targaryen for a long time and has not, in his hearing, encountered this particular sound before.

"Interesting," Aerion says, under his breath. "Who are you?"

You shrug. "Someone passing through."

"Someone passing through doesn't walk into my bar."

He says my and lets it settle in the air between you. Lets you absorb it. So you understand, if you were in any doubt, exactly whose room you're standing in. It should frighten you. You're aware that it should frighten you. He has the power in this room. But you've decided, on the cab ride over, that you will not let it frighten you.

"Yet here I am."

His eyes drift to your mouth. They come back up. And then they catch, and stay, on the line of your throat. On the chain. On what hangs from the chain, the heavy old metal of the signet. The wolf cut deep and familiar enough that you can feel his recognition before he names it.

His hand moves.

He doesn't ask. He leans in (close, closer than is acceptable in a public space) and he hooks two ringed fingers under the chain at your collarbone and lifts the ring out from where it has settled inside the neckline of your dress. His knuckles brush your sternum. Aerion doesn't pretend they didn't.

He holds the ring up between you, between his thumb and forefinger, and tilts it once into the light, and looks at it, and then at you, and looks at it again.

His mouth changes shape.

The smallest possible thing. A flicker. A recalculation happening behind his face in real time. You watch him watch the ring and you watch him arrive at the answer to some internal question. You understand that the next three seconds are the only seconds in this entire conversation in which you have the advantage, because they're the only seconds in which he's been surprised.

He lets the ring drop.

It lands warm against your skin from his fingers. But his hand doesn't retreat all the way. He lets his knuckles trail, deliberately, down the line of your sternum (half an inch, no more) before he withdraws his hand. He's letting you know he did it. He wants you to know he did it. He wants you to think about it later.

"Stark," he murmurs, almost to himself.

"Yes."

"You should have led with that," he says with a lazy smirk.

"You should have asked," you retort dryly.

Aerion laughs again. It is, this time, not startled. Something more dangerous than startled, which is interested. Fully interested. The kind of interested that has costs attached to it.

He drains the last finger of amber in his glass, sets it down without looking at the bartender (who's already refilling it before the glass touches wood) and turns his whole body toward you, finally, properly, all the unhurried weight of his attention.

"Lady Stark," he drawls smoothly, tasting the name.

"Mr Targaryen."

Heat flickers in those pale eyes. "Aerion."

"Mr Targaryen," you say again, flatter.

His mouth twitches. "You're going to be difficult."

"I imagine I am," you agree mildly.

He steps a half-step closer, and you don't move.

You're distantly aware of every place on your body he's not touching.

The half-inch between his sternum and yours. The small distance between his jaw and your temple. The fact that he's breathing a fraction out of rhythm and you can feel it on your collarbone where his face is angled toward you. He's doing this on purpose, you realise, teaching you the geography of him by withholding it.

One of his rings rotates on his finger. You notice it. A tell, you'll learn later, the thing he does when his head is doing work he hasn't yet allowed his face to show.

"Have a drink with me."

It doesn't come out as a question, or offer.

"No."

"Have a conversation with me," he insists, mouth curling.

You tip your chin slightly. "We're having one right now."

"A longer one."

"No."

His eyes are on your mouth again. They have, you realise, been there for some time. He doesn't bother to pretend otherwise.

When Aerion speaks again his voice has dropped, pitched only for you, and there's a thread in it that's not flirtation, exactly. It's something more dangerous than flirtation, which is appetite, the unmasked kind, the kind he's not bothering to pretty up.

"Why are you in my bar, Stark?" he asks.

You keep your expression neutral. "To look at it."

"And?"

"And I have looked at it."

"And?"

"And I'm going to leave," you tell him flatly.

A beat follows.

"No, you're not," he says, smoothly, matter of fact.

the line of your mouth flattens ever so slightly. "I am."

"You're not," he disagrees in that confident, dangerous drawl.

You tilt your head a fraction further, eyes narrowing. "Are you stopping me, Mr Targaryen?"

Silence.

It stretches. Long enough that the lieutenant beside him gives up on his phone and is now openly, if discreetly, watching the side of Aerion's face, waiting for an order, you conclude.

Aerion doesn't turn. His eyes are on yours and his jaw is pulsing and his thumb is tracing the rim of his refilled glass in a small absent circle. You understand (you can see him understand) that the answer to your question, if he gives the honest one, is yes.

That he wants, with a clarity that's almost embarrassing, to put a hand on your waist and walk you to the back room and find out exactly how long it takes to make you stop talking to him like that. And that he is, with effort, choosing not to. Because something about you is making him choose not to, and he's not yet certain whether he resents you for it or wants to put his teeth in your throat about it.

"No," he says, finally. "I'm not stopping you."

"Good."

"Come back," he says and it sounds more like an order.

"Perhaps," you say.

"Come back, Stark."

You gaze at him, and let him have one moment of looking back. You let your eyes drop, just once, to his mouth. To the line where the lower lip meets the upper, to the faint pale scar at the corner that you had not previously noticed. Because you're not above the small cruelty of letting him know you've noticed him too.

Aerion's nostrils flare a fraction. The hand at his side flexes once and stills. This is, you suspect, going to keep him up tonight.

"Goodnight, Mr Targaryen."

His tongue touches the corner of his mouth, hooded eyes pinned to you. "Aerion."

"Goodnight, Mr Targaryen," you repeat pleasantly.

You turn.

He stops you.

Not with his hand. With his voice. Quieter this time. Almost a question. Almost.

"Wolf."

You go still.

It's the first time anyone has called you that since you came south.

You half-turn. Over your shoulder.

"Mr Targaryen."

His mouth curls. A private thing. Pleased with itself. Half cruel.

"That's what you are. You walked in here in a black dress with a wolf at your throat and you'd not be in my bar at midnight if you didn't want to be looked at. Don't make me call you Lady Stark, sweetheart. We're past that."

"We're not past that."

He loosens a small, throaty sound. "We are."

"Goodnight, Mr Targaryen."

"Goodnight, wolf."

You walk out of his Wednesday establishment in a black dress and a Stark ring at your throat and the eyes of every man in the room on your back, and you don't look back, and you don't check your phone in the cab.

You do not let yourself smile until you're inside your hotel room with the door locked and the chain on.

You stand in the dark in front of the mirror and you lift your father's ring from your sternum and you look at the heat where his knuckles touched you, the small downward trail of it, and you think calmly, that one is going to be a problem.

Your phone, on the bedside table, is silent.

It will stay silent for almost six hours, which is the longest Aerion Targaryen has ever waited to make a second move on a woman he wanted. You don't yet know this. But Brynden will tell you over the next pot of tea, because Brynden knows everything, and Brynden will set the cup down and offer a thin smile and say, that is interesting, little wolf. That is very interesting indeed.

—

You meet Valarr four days later.

At a gala. Your mother's foundation has a table and your mother's foundation now requires, by the inconvenient reality of inheritance, your face above one of the chairs.

You've been doing duty appearances for two weeks now, smiling at men who knew your father and women who knew your mother and accepting condolences from people who really only want to know what you intend to do with the shipping line. You're tired. But you're good at not showing that you're tired, which is its own kind of exhausting.

You're in dark green tonight. Not black.

You've made the small decision, in front of your hotel mirror, that you will not wear black to every event for the rest of your life. Your mother would not have wanted it, and your father would have been embarrassed by the theatre of it. So. Dark green. Heavy silk, high neck, long sleeves. The ring is on your hand tonight, finally. The chain is in a drawer in your hotel room.

You've decided that you can carry this much of him now.

You're at the bar, because the table is full of people you've already done your duty by, and you're looking at a glass of champagne you're not going to drink, when you become aware that someone has crossed the room toward you.

You don't see him coming. That is, you'll learn, the trick of him. He doesn't come at anyone; he arrives. You become aware of him in increments: a small change in the volume of the conversation behind you, a redirection of a waiter's path, the soft polite shifting of two men you'd been half-listening to as they make room without quite acknowledging that they're making it.

By the time you turn your head he's already at your elbow, easy, unhurried, with the half-smile on.

"That's a Krug," he says conversationally, looking at your glass. "You're not drinking it."

"I don't like champagne."

"Why hold it?"

"Because if I put it down they bring me another one."

His smile widens.

It is (god) it's a very good smile. You're going to have to be careful about that smile. Because it's not some practised, professional smile of a man who's been taught how to smile by a publicist. It's real. That's the problem.

His eyes are involved in it; the corners crinkle a fraction, a small genuine warmth pulling at his mouth, and the brown eye and the pale blue eye both go a touch softer. You feel (physically, in the sternum, in a way you do not allow on your face) the small unwanted lurch of someone clocking an exceedingly attractive man at very close range without the benefit of warning.

"I have a solution," he offers.

"Do you now?"

"Give it to me," he offers. "I'll hold it until they stop bringing them."

He extends one hand, palm up, and it's a beautiful hand. The white streak at his temple catches the chandelier light when he turns.

You look at him. You look at the hand. You look at him again.

"Why?"

"Because I'm trying to get you to talk to me, and you're not going to do it while you're holding a drink you do not want. Your posture says I'm not going to be here in three minutes."

You almost laugh but you don't let yourself.

"That obvious?" you wonder.

"To me." He tilts his head a fraction. "And only to me, I would say. You do it very well."

You regard him for a beat. Then you put the champagne flute into his palm.

His fingers close around the stem and brush yours in the handover. It's a deliberate, courteous, almost ceremonial touch, and Valarr doesn't let his fingers linger and that is the entire point. Because the brevity of it is what makes you feel it. He's given you the smallest possible amount of skin and let you understand that you're going to spend the next several minutes thinking about it.

He sets the flute on the bar behind him, turns the stem so the foundation's logo embossed on the napkin underneath is no longer facing you, and steps a half-foot closer. Not enough to be inappropriate. Just enough to drop the volume he needs to use.

"Thank you."

Your brows lift ever so slightly. "You're welcome."

"Valarr."

"I gathered," you tell him.

His eyes crinkle again. "Have we met?"

"No."

He tilts his head slightly and it's devastatingly handsome gesture. "How did you gather?"

"The streak," you tell him bluntly.

His hand drifts up, almost involuntary, the pads of two fingers brushing back through the white at his temple. It's an unconscious gesture and the moment he realises he's made it his mouth flickers in a different way. A private, rueful thing, the look of a man who's been caught.

Which he doesn't mind being caught at by you, because being caught at it suggests you've looked at him long enough to know which thing about him is a tell.

"That obvious?" he wonders lightly.

Your mouth curves. "To me."

He laughs. A delighted, slightly startled sound. The laugh of a man who's realising he's going to have to recalibrate the next forty minutes of his evening.

"And you are?"

You tell him.

A calculated risk. But you take it deliberately. You watch his face when you say Stark, and you watch his face do... nothing.

Not the recalculation Aerion's did. Not even a flicker. Valarr Targaryen has known you were a Stark since you walked in. Valarr Targaryen has had a brief on you sitting in a folder on his desk for ten days. Valarr Targaryen recognised you across the room when he came in and chose his approach accordingly. He was already most of the way across the floor before he allowed himself to look directly at your face. And the fact that his face didn't change when you said the name is not because it didn't matter to him. It's because he was prepared for it to.

You notice all of this. You say nothing.

"Lady Stark," he says, instead. And the way he says it (unhurried, faintly amused, with a small careful weight on the lady) tells you that he knows you've read him, and he respects it, and he's choosing not to lie about it.

"Mr Targaryen."

"May I," he gestures fractionally at the stool beside you, "or are you going to refuse me on principle?"

"On what grounds would I refuse you?" you question, half genuinely curious, half interested in what he'll say.

He manages to look bashful when he says, "On the grounds that I've just confessed, more or less, to having you on a list."

"Do you not have everyone on a list?" you wonder.

His eyes warm. "Yes. But not everyone gets the seat."

You tilt your head. "Sit down, Mr Targaryen."

He sits.

He does so smoothly, settling onto the stool with the practiced grace of a man who's been taught posture by people who took it seriously, jacket falling clean without bunching, the cufflinks at his wrists catching the light when he sets his hand on the bar.

Valarr doesn't look at you while he sits. He looks at the bartender and orders, without asking you, two glasses of something that's not champagne. A rich burgundy that is, you realise when it arrives, the wine your father used to keep at the house.

You don't ask how he knew. You assume he knew. You assume he has known for some time.

"I am sorry about your father."

It's the only condolence anyone has offered you tonight that has not felt rehearsed. It sits in his mouth simply, without weight or catches.

You take the glass he hands you and you set it on the bar between you and say, "Thank you."

"I met him twice," Valarr offers.

"I know."

"Did you?" His head turns. "How?"

"My father kept very thorough notes."

A pause, short one. And then his smile turns a fraction sharper, a fraction more amused, a small genuine respect surfacing under the polish. "I see."

"Do you?"

"I am beginning to."

You sip the wine. It is, of course, perfect. You put it down. You look at him over the rim of the glass.

"Why did you come over, Mr Targaryen?"

He gazes at you with intent, simple heat. "To look at you."

"And?"

"And now I would like a great deal more time to keep looking at you."

Such simple sentence. No performance in it. That's the thing about Valarr that you're going to have to remember, you understand, in the moment he says it, he doesn't perform. He means what he says, while he's also playing you, and the two things are not, for him, in conflict. He can tell you the truth and use the truth as a move at the same time.

It's far more dangerous than lying would be.

You set the glass down.

"How much more time, Mr Targaryen?"

He knuckles settle against his mouth. "As much as you'll give me."

"That's not an answer."

"No," he agrees, pleased. "It's a proposition."

A beat.

"Dinner," he says smoothly. "This week. You choose the place. You choose the night. I'll be there at whichever hour you tell me to be there."

"And if I say no?" you ask.

A tiny smile curves his lips. "Then I'll ask again next week."

"And if I say no again?"

His smile shrinks. Goes private. And it doesn't reach his eyes the same way the first one did. And you understand (for the first time tonight, in a way that's almost a relief) that you've just seen the underneath. The thing Brynden warned you about. The dark well underneath the gold.

"I'm a patient man, Lady Stark."

"How patient?" you question coolly.

A soft laugh tickles out of him. "More patient than is good for the people I'm patient about."

Silence.

It stretches. You hold his gaze. He holds yours. The brown and the pale blue, and underneath both of them, quietly, the dark flicker underneath everything.

"Friday," you say lastly.

His expression doesn't so much as flicker. But his hand, where it's resting on the bar beside his glass, makes one small involuntary movement (the index finger lifts a quarter-inch and sets back down) and you tuck that away. A tell. Good. Everyone has one. You've just found his.

"Friday," he agrees. "Where?"

You name the restaurant.

He inclines his head a fraction. He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and produces a small card )cream, simple, a number printed on it and nothing else) and sets it on the bar between you with two fingers, sliding it the last inch toward your glass.

"In case you change your mind," he says smoothly.

"I won't."

"In case anything else changes."

You pick the card up, but you don't put it in your bag. You slide it, without looking, into the cuff of your sleeve, against the inside of your wrist, where it sits warm against the pulse. You watch his eyes track the movement and stay there.

He doesn't pretend he isn't watching. He's been letting you see, all evening, the small disciplined ways in which he's paying attention to you (your mouth, your throat, the cuff of your sleeve) and there's something more affecting about being looked at like this by a man who's in this much control of his own gaze than there would be about being grabbed by one who was not.

"Mr Targaryen," you say neutrally.

"Valarr, when we're alone," he says softly, still drinking you in.

"We're not alone."

"We are, in fact, alone," he says with a wry little smile.

You glance around, then back at him. You've been at this bar for eleven minutes and the four people who were standing within earshot of you when he sat down are no longer there. You didn't see them go. You did not see anyone signal them. They're simply gone, the way the bartender is now polishing glasses at the far end of the bar with the absorbed concentration.

You turn back to him.

"How did you do that?"

His eyes light up with almost playful light. "Do what?" he asks innocently.

"Mr Targaryen."

His mouth twitches. "Valarr. Please."

"How?" you demand.

"A man has to be useful for something, Lady Stark."

He stands, buttons his jacket. He picks up your glass and his own and sets them on the bar in front of the spot where you're sitting, a small arrangement, your wine on the right where your hand can reach it. He leans down (just enough to be heard, no more) and you smell him for the first time. Clean. Something cedar. Nothing showy. Nothing about him is showy and that is, you realise with a small internal alarm, going to be the most dangerous part.

His mouth, when he speaks, is closer to your ear than is correct. Not touching. He doesn't touch you. It's the not touching that does the work.

"Friday, love."

You go still.

Same trick. Aerion did this with wolf, except he's doing it the other way. Quietly, almost as an afterthought, slipping the endearment in under the noise of the gala as if he's been calling you that for months. As if it's already settled.

You've given him no permission.

You can hear, faintly, the small intake of breath this is doing to you. You suspect he can hear it too. He chose this exact distance for that reason.

"Mr Targaryen," you bite out politely.

"I'll see you Friday."

Valarr straightens, stepping back. He inclines his head to you the way a man inclines his head to an equal in a room full of subordinates, and he turns, walking back into the gala. Within thirty seconds he's in a conversation with a senator and his wife, laughing at something the senator has said. He doesn't look at you again. Not once. For the rest of the night.

You watch for it. He doesn't look.

You understand this is its own kind of move.

You finish your wine, sliding off the stool. You walk out of the gala with his card warm against the inside of your wrist and ghost of cedar in your hair where he leaned in. You ride back to your hotel in the dark of the car with your hand pressed flat against your sternum and think, very calmly, that one is also going to be a problem.

Your phone buzzes when you walk into your room.

A single message. A number you don't have saved.

Looking forward to Friday, love.

You don't answer.

You put the phone face-down on the dresser. You slide his card out of your cuff, setting it beside the lamp. You go to the window and gaze down at the city, all that gold and red and dark glass. You think about the two of them (Aerion's knuckles trailing down your sternum, Valarr's mouth at the air beside your ear and the word love tucked inside it) and you understand, in a way you did not understand four hours ago, that you're in genuine trouble.

Your phone, in the dark, lights up a second time.

A different number. One you also don't have saved.

You went home alone, wolf.

You stare at it.

You don't type how do you know. Or type how did you get this number. You don't type anything at all.

You put the phone face-down again and you stand at the window in your dark green dress with a Targaryen on each shoulder of your nervous system, and remember: Brynden told me to be expensive.

You're going to be exactly that.

—

And this is where the game begins. Properly.

—

The following three weeks unfold as follows:

—

Aerion chases you with animal focus.

He doesn't pretend otherwise. He turns up where you are. He sends a man to drive you home from a dinner you did not request a ride from and the man is perfectly polite when you get into the car because the alternative is making a scene. Aerion is leaning against the hood of his own car waiting for you at your hotel one night, smoke in one hand, the silver hoops catching the streetlight.

You say, "This is harassment."

"This is escort, wolf. Don't be dramatic."

His eyes drop to your mouth and stay there a beat too long. He doesn't touch you. He doesn't have to. He's been touching you for four days through the air between you and you both know it.

He kisses you for the first time in the stairwell of a building neither of you owns.

You've followed him into it because he told you he had something to show you, and you went, knowingly, because not going felt like a kind of cowardice you were not prepared to extend to him.

The stairwell is dim. The kiss is not gentle.

Aerion doesn't let it be gentle. He has you against the wall, one ringed hand braced flat beside your head, the other at the line of your jaw, his thumb under your chin to tilt your face up the half-inch he wants it. He doesn't ask, doesn't pause. He kisses you the way a man eats after he's been told he might starve.

You taste smoke. The cinnamon thing he was chewing earlier. Expensive alcohol. Something hot underneath all of it that's just him.

You kiss him back like you're trying to mark him with your teeth. Aerion makes a noise in his throat that he's going to deny later—a raw, involuntary sound—and his hand at your jaw slides back into the hair at the nape of your neck and he uses it. He tilts your head exactly where he wants it and then he makes a pleased noise against your mouth at having gotten it there.

His hips press in once. Deliberate.

He's hard against you within thirty seconds and he doesn't pretend he isn't. He grinds in, once, and your breath stutters out of you against his mouth and he feels it (you feel him feel it) and his teeth catch your lower lip in something almost like punishment for letting him have it. He pulls back enough to look at you. His pupils are blown so wide the pale of his eyes is almost gone. His thumb drags across your wet lower lip.

"Fuck, you're fun to kiss," he murmurs. "Wolf."

"Aerion."

"Mm." His mouth twitches. He likes that, likes that he got the name out of you. He drags his mouth down the line of your jaw, taking his time about it now. He kisses the place where the chain would be if the chain were there tonight. Which it isn't, which means he's noticed the absence.

Aerion drags his mouth lower. He puts his teeth lightly where your pulse is. He waits there. He waits until you make a sound you have not given a man permission to drag out of you in some time. He lifts his head.

"I like that sound," he drawls, a raspy, smug tone in his voice.

"Aerion."

He drags his tongue across your pulse, humming. "What."

You glare are him, angling your head away.

"What?" He's smiling, a lazy, mean thing. His thumb is at your bottom lip again, dragging it down. "We both know you came down here because you wanted me to put my hand under your dress in a stairwell."

"I have a meeting," you say flatly.

He laughs against your mouth. Laughs. He bites your lower lip. Tugs, rolling it between his teeth with hungry, low growl.

"Of course you do."

He kisses you one more time. Deep, bruising. The kind of kiss that's more humiliating than the hand under the dress would have been because of how thoroughly he's making sure you will think about it later. When Aerion pulls back his hand stays at the nape of your neck for one more second. His forehead drops to yours.

"Go to your meeting, wolf."

You go to your meeting.

You sit through it with the ghost of his teeth on your lip and his hand in your hair and you don't let a single person in the room see it on your face. You go back to your hotel and stand in the shower for forty-five minutes. You make yourself come twice. You don't let yourself think his name once while you do it, on principle.

You fail. Both times.

He texts you the next morning at six. You're going to come back to that stairwell.

Am I?

Yes.

Are you asking?

A pause.

Please.

You roll your eyes, don't answer.

You go to a board meeting, turn your phone face-down on the conference table and three of the other directors notice and none of them comment. When you check it after the meeting there are no further messages, which is its own message.

Aerion has learned not to push. Aerion has also learned that he can push you to a place and stop and you will, eventually, come back to that place on your own. And this is the thing he's most dangerous about. He understands restraint as a form of seduction, even though restraint is not native to him, even though every cell in him is howling and burning.

He's genuinely cruel sometimes.

He turns up at a restaurant where you're having dinner with one of your father's old contacts and he sits at the bar across the room. Doesn't approach but doesn't leave, and the contact across from you eventually says, Lady Stark, is that man bothering you? and you say, evenly, no, and the contact looks once at Aerion and once at you and decides not to ask any further questions.

When you leave, Aerion is on the curb. He flicks his cigarette into the gutter.

"Old," he remarks dryly, mockingly.

"None of your business, Mr Targaryen."

"Sixty if he's a day," he goes on, one hand slipping into his dark jeans.

You roll your eyes, walking past him. "Goodnight, Mr Targaryen."

"Wolf."

You stop, turn.

He's leaning against the lamp-post now, hands fully in his pockets, the silver hoops catching the streetlight, that pale steady stare on you, and you understand (looking at him) that he's angry. Not visibly or in a way anyone else could identify. There's a thread of it under the casual posture, in the set of his jaw, in the way one of his rings is rotating on his finger.

"I don't share, wolf."

You snort. "You don't have me," you remind him coolly.

"Not yet."

"You may not get to," you say, harder this time.

His jaw works. He pushes off the lamp-post, crossing the three feet between you without hurry and stops just shy of touching you. His voice, when he speaks, drops enough that the doorman at the restaurant cannot hear it.

"Get in the car."

"No."

He rolls his eyes, opening the door of the sleek, black thing he drove here with. "Please get in the car."

You get in the car.

He doesn't touch you in it. He keeps both hands on the wheel and he drives like a man who's consciously not doing several things at once, and the silence in the car is thick enough that you can hear your own pulse in your ears. At a red light Aerion turns his head and looks at you. He doesn't blink, neither do you.

"You let him pour your wine," he drawls calmly, too calmly.

"I let him pour my wine."

"I don't like that."

"Mr Targaryen."

"I know." His jaw moves. He turns back to the windshield. The light goes green. "I know I don't get to not like it. I'm telling you anyway."

The car slides forward into traffic.

He drops you at your hotel without a word. As you reach for the door he says, without looking at you, "I'm going to ruin you, wolf."

You pause, bristling. You look at him over your shoulder, reaching out until you hand ends up at his sharp jaw. You thumb traces over this full bottom lip, and you say, "You're going to try, Mr Targaryen."

His lips part, eyes narrowing. "Wolf."

"Goodnight, Mr Targaryen," you say politely, letting your hand drop.

You get out, shut the door behind you.

He waits at the curb until you're inside. You see him through the lobby glass. Aerion sits for a long moment with both hands on the wheel and his head tipped back against the rest, and then he drives away.

You make yourself come three times that night and let yourself think his name twice. You consider it a fair compromise.

—

Valarr's version of the chase is worse, because its buried under so much polish that you don't see it until he's already taken what he came for.

There's nothing performative about his charm. That's the part that disarms you and disarms him in equal measure.

He genuinely is funny. He genuinely is attentive. He genuinely does listen to the small thing you said in passing at the gala about preferring grey to white and does remember it three weeks later when something grey arrives at your hotel as a thank-you for a meeting. He doesn't perform interest in you. He is interested in you.

That's the trap. The cruelty of Valarr Targaryen is not that his charm is fake but that his charm is real and the darkness underneath it is also real, and the two are not in opposition, they're the same thing in different lights.

He doesn't turn up where you are. He arranges.

You go to a restaurant and he's already at the table next to yours, alone, reading something, looking up with mild surprise as you pass. You accept a charity board seat and discover the meeting is at a building he owns. Your lawyer mentions, conversationally, that a competing offer has come in on a piece of property you'd been quietly inquiring about, and you don't have to ask who the competing offer is from.

He's funding the property out of his personal portfolio. You buy it anyway, at the inflated price, because losing it would be a worse signal than the cost. The next morning Valarr sends you a card congratulating you on the acquisition and offering you, as a gift, a piece of information about the building's foundation that you did not have and that materially changes the financial picture.

I would not want you to be disadvantaged on a property you fought me for, love, the card says, in his beautiful hand. I want to be a worthy opponent.

You read the card three times. You stare at the love a long moment. Then set the card on fire in your bathroom sink, the way Brynden taught you, and you stand watching it burn and you think, oh, you absolute bastard.

He takes you to dinner on Friday.

You've prepared. Spent an hour with Brynden the night before, going through a third pot of tea, while he gave you a thoughtful little précis on which restaurant Valarr was most likely to favour and what his ordering habits suggested about his cognitive patterns.

You go in prepared. Valarr knows you're prepared. Valarr is also prepared. This is the second-most fun you've had in six months and the most fun belongs to the stairwell, which Valarr doesn't yet know about, which Valarr will eventually know about because Valarr knows everything, but which Valarr doesn't yet have confirmation of, and which is therefore not yet weaponised.

You eat duck. He eats fish.

He asks you about the north, and you tell him true things, because lying to Valarr is a fool's game—he has the resources to verify everything and the patience to do it because it's you, and no stone is unturned when it's you—and you also tell him carefully selected true things, because Valarr doesn't need to know every true thing you know.

He reciprocates. He tells you a story about his mother that he's not, you're fairly certain, told many other people. He's doing this deliberately. You appreciate the move. You don't commend him for it aloud.

He looks at you, across the table, the way a man looks at a problem he has decided is going to be the most interesting problem in his life. And one he's determined to riddle out.

He does it without looking, mostly. That's the part that does the work. He keeps his eyes on yours during the conversation, polite, level, attentive. But in the small silences, the moments when the wine arrives or the dish is changed, his gaze drifts to your mouth, to the line of your throat, to the place at your wrist where the cuff of your sleeve sits, and stays there a beat longer than is appropriate before returning to your eyes.

There's a quiet, devouring hunger in this man that could burn you down to nothing if you were a lesser woman.

You're not a lesser woman.

He's letting you see him do it. That's also a move.

Halfway through the meal he reaches across the table.

He doesn't take your hand. He picks up the wine glass next to it, drinks, sets it down (his glass, not yours, although for half a second you'd thought he meant yours and your pulse had jumped, which he can see) and when Valarr's hand returns to his side of the table his fingertips brush the back of your wrist, once. Briefly. The bare strip of skin between your sleeve and your ring.

It's not really a touch. It's the suggestion of a touch.

It's followed by him resuming his sentence without looking at his hand, as if his body has not just made an entirely separate move from his face.

"You are staring, Mr Targaryen."

"I am, love," he admits, utterly unabashed.

"Why?"

"Because I'm trying to decide whether you know how very beautiful you look in this light, or whether you have decided not to know on purpose."

You set your wine down.

"That's an extremely Valarr Targaryen thing to say."

He laughs, gentle and genuine, a dimple appearing. "Is it?" he wonders, his head cocking.

"It's the kind of compliment that has a hook in it," you clarify.

His smile is quiet. Pleased. The brown eye and the pale blue eye are very steady on yours, a low, simmering devouring.

"Lady Stark."

"Mr Targaryen."

He hums, eyes crinkling at the crisp sound of his surname. "I'm going to ask you a question, love. You may, of course, refuse to answer."

Your spine sets. "Ask."

"Are you going to let me kiss you tonight?" he asks softly.

You stare at him.

He's not moved closer or lowered his voice. The waiter comes back to refill your water and Valarr keeps watching you watching him, and for a long moment, neither of you gives ground.

You consider him.

"No," you reply simply.

He nods, once. Not surprised. "Alright."

"Alright?"

"Yes." He picks up his wine again. "Alright."

That's all. No pushing, no teasing, nothing. He doesn't look wounded. Doesn't adjust his strategy. Valarr takes the no the way a man takes a card off the top of a deck. Looks at it, files it, plays the next hand. And it is (god) it's more affecting than if he had pushed. It is, in fact, the most attractive thing he's done all night, which you suspect he knows.

You finish dinner. He pays. You didn't see him do it.

At the end of dinner he walks you to your car and he doesn't kiss you.

He stops, two feet shy of the car door. The driver has the engine running. The street is mostly empty. Valarr turns to face you and he does the thing he has been doing all night, which is look at you too steadily with that devouring, soft intensity without performing the looking, and then he lifts your hand.

He kisses your knuckles. Brief. Gentle.

Then he turns your hand over. His thumb presses, once, on the inside of your wrist where your pulse is. He holds it there a half-second longer than is correct. Long enough to feel the kick.

He smiles. A small private thing. He felt it.

"I had a very pleasant evening, love."

Despite yourself, you admit, "As did I, Mr Targaryen."

Because it's true, and pretending otherwise would be foolish.

"Do you think next week we could try first names?" he jokes lightly.

Your mouth twitches slightly. "We'll see how the week develops, Mr Targaryen."

Valarr laughs, delighted, and he gets the car door for you. As you slide in he leans down and says, just close enough that no one else in the world can hear, "You're going to be the most enjoyable problem I have ever had."

You glance at him. "That's the plan."

Valarr closes the door and you watch him in your wing mirror as the car pulls away. He's standing on the curb, hands in his pockets, his white streak gleaming under the streetlight, watching you go.

You go home.

You don't make yourself come thinking about Valarr Targaryen. You instead lie in the dark of your hotel room with your hand pressed flat against your sternum and your thumb on the inside of your wrist where his was, and you think, in a tone of considerable alarm, I'm attracted to both of them. I'm genuinely attracted to both of them. And you understand, in the same moment, that this is, structurally, the thing that's going to make this work.

—

And then the rivalry gets worse.

—

It's a Thursday at one of their family's clubs. The bigger one. The legitimate one. The one Valarr's side technically owns and Aerion's side technically launders through.

You're at the bar and you've not invited either of them.

Because you're there with Brynden.

Brynden is the one you came with. Brynden in a charcoal three-piece suit, drinking water, the most unsettling man in the room and the room knows it. No one approaches you, no one even dares to look.

Brynden Rivers turning up at one of the family clubs with the Stark heir on his arm is the kind of social event that's going to be discussed in three boardrooms by morning, and Brynden knows this, which is precisely why he's done it.

"I'm being used as a signal flare, Brynden," you murmur.

"You're being used as a negotiating position, little wolf. There's a difference. You understand the difference, and you've already agreed to it. Drink your water."

You drink your water.

Aerion spots you first.

He comes in from the back and his eyes find the bar before they find anything else, the way they always do now. The moment they land on Brynden beside you Aerion's whole body locks into stillness. You can feel it from across the room.

He comes toward you.

He doesn't approach Brynden. He stops three feet short of you and he says, in a voice that's not his charming voice, "Lady Stark."

You incline your head. "Mr Targaryen."

Aerion's pale, unblinking stare slides to your companion. "Lord Rivers."

"Aerion," Brynden returns mildly.

You watch them. Aerion's jaw is set. One of his rings is rotating on his finger (a tell of his you've started to notice) and his eyes are on Brynden, not you. And then they're on you. And then they're back on Brynden.

You understand, in real time, that Aerion has just received a piece of information he doesn't know what to do with, which is that the most dangerous man in the continent has decided to escort you into one of Aerion's family's establishments without telling him first.

"May I borrow her?" Aerion asks Brynden.

The fact that he asks almost makes your jaw drop. You've never seen Aerion ask anyone anything. He takes. Always.

"That," Brynden says idly, without looking up from his water, "is a question for the lady."

Aerion's eyes flick to you. Hard, burning.

And then Valarr walks in.

Valarr is in a dark blue suit, no tie. He's in the middle of a conversation with one of his lieutenants when he walks in, head turned a fraction to the side, listening.

And then he comes through the doorway and his eyes go to the bar by pure professional habit (Valarr always clocks every entrance and exit and every person of significance in a room within four seconds of entering it) and his eyes land on Brynden beside you and his face does not move.

That's the part that's genuinely impressive. No flicker or doubletake. His face doesn't move at all, but the man he's speaking to falls silent without being told to. Because the temperature in the room has just dropped a second time, and the room feels it.

Aerion sees Valarr in the mirror behind the bar.

Valarr sees Aerion seeing him in the mirror behind the bar.

They both turn their heads, fractionally, and they look at each other, and you watch the entire ten-year cold war between Aerion Targaryen and Valarr Targaryen reignite in the space of one breath.

Neither of them moves. Neither of them speaks. You're standing between them, at the bar, with Brynden Rivers at your elbow drinking water like a man at a Sunday brunch.

You've just become the most fought-over object in the city.

Brynden, almost into his glass: "This is going splendidly, little wolf."

"Shut up, Brynden."

"Yes, my lady."

Valarr crosses to you first.

You've wondered, after, which one of them would have moved first if Brynden hadn't been there. You suspect Aerion. But Valarr is better at public spaces, and Aerion's expression has gone to a place that Valarr clearly doesn't want him acting on in the middle of a club full of men with phones, and so Valarr crosses first.

He comes up to your other side. He doesn't look at Aerion.

"Lady Stark," Valarr says in that smooth, charming voice of his.

"Mr Targaryen."

Valarr inclines his head towards Brynden. "Lord Rivers."

"Valarr," Brynden returns, equally as mildly as earlier with Aerion.

Valarr peers at you, face open. "May I buy you a drink, love?"

You feel Aerion go still at your other shoulder. Not the practised stillness, but the other one. The bad one.

"I have one, thank you," you reply carefully.

"Another one, then," he hedges. "When that one is finished."

"Perhaps."

A pause. Valarr's mouth twitches. You can feel Aerion at your other side practically vibrating. Brynden has set his water down on the bar and is now standing with both hands clasped behind his back, his good eye on the middle distance, the very picture of a man who's professionally ignoring the situation he's personally engineered.

Aerion says, under his breath, "Valarr."

Valarr doesn't turn. "Aerion."

"You're at my Thursday establishment."

"I'm at our Thursday establishment, cousin," Valarr dismisses. "I sign the licence."

"You sign the legitimate licence."

"Yes." Valarr's smile is small and too polite, almost predatory. "The one that allows you to remain operational. You're welcome."

"Valarr." Quieter this time.

You've learned what that quieter register from Aerion means.

"Gentlemen," you interrupt.

Both of them turn to you simultaneously.

It's almost comical. Or it would be comical if it weren't also one of the most dangerous moments of your life. You have the absolute attention of both of them and you can feel Brynden (feel him, without looking) begin to laugh, internally, in a way that doesn't move a single muscle in his face.

"I'm here with Brynden. Who is, as I understand it, a guest of both of your fathers. It would be courteous of you both to permit him to enjoy his evening unmolested." You offer them a cool, bland smile that turns just a little more cutting, promising, around the edges as you gaze at them. "It would also be courteous of you both to permit me to enjoy mine. You may each, separately, ask me to dinner this week, and I will, separately, consider both invitations on their merits. Is that acceptable?"

Aerion's jaw works.

Valarr smiles his beautiful, awful smile. "That's acceptable to me, love."

You angle your head. "Aerion?" you say.

He tries for a smirk, but there's a dangerous edge to it. "Whatever you say, wolf."

You hear Valarr's breath do a small, almost inaudible intake at the wolf. You don't turn your head.

"Thank you," you say, turning toward the pale haired man behind you. "Brynden, I would like another water."

"Of course, little wolf."

Both cousins watch Brynden signal the bartender for a glass of water for you, in their family's establishment, with their family's bartender, in front of their family's men, and use a name for you that neither of them has heard him use before. Neither of them speaks and you almost smile at the subtle power play.

You sip the second water, turning your back on both of them, and you continue your conversation with Brynden as if they're not there.

It takes Valarr forty-five seconds to leave and Aerion three minutes.

When you and Brynden walk out an hour later both of them are gone and the bartender has placed two notes under your coat at the coat check, one in each pocket. Neither of which you read until you're back in your hotel room and Brynden has gone home. You lock the door and run a shower for the ambient sound, the way he taught you to.

Aerion's note says: Saturday. Anywhere. You choose.

Valarr's says: Saturday. Anywhere you wish, love. Let me know what to wear.

You read them both, set them side by side on the desk. You don't respond to either of them until Friday afternoon.

You accept both.

Aerion at seven. Valarr at ten. Neither of them, of course, knows.

You call Brynden. He picks up on the first ring. He always does when you call him.

"Little wolf."

"I have a question of operational ethics, Brynden," you begin, fingers brushing idly over both notes.

A rasp of a breath. "Go on."

"I've just accepted dinner with both of them on the same night," you tell him.

A pause follows your declaration.

And then—and you will, for the rest of your life, swear that this is what you heard—Brynden Rivers, the most dangerous man in the country, makes a sound on the other end of the line that's unmistakably a laugh. One short, quiet laugh.

"Little wolf."

It takes you a second to respond from sheer shock. "Yes?"

"You're not going to disappoint me, are you?"

You smile slightly toward the horizon through the hotel window. "No, Brynden."

"Good," he says, a beat, "Wear black."

He hangs up.

—

And here, finally, is the twist.

The thing they don't know. The thing they'll not know until you choose to let them know, in your time, on your terms, with the maximum possible benefit to you.

Your father's file was not a file on the Targaryens as criminals.

Your father's file was a file on the Targaryens as victims of one.

There is, somewhere very high in Maekar's organisation and somewhere equally as high in Baelor's, a man both of them trust who's been quietly working for someone else for fifteen years.

A man your father had been tracking, on Brynden's behalf, since before you were born, because Brynden suspected and your father confirmed and your father then kept the file, because your father didn't trust Brynden completely either.

Because your father, Barthogan Stark, was nobody's fool.

The photographs in the locked drawer—the ones you finally looked at, fully, in the small hours of a Thursday morning, sitting on your hotel bathroom floor with the door locked because you didn't trust the rest of the building—show this man in three meetings, over three years, with people he should not have been meeting.

And you've decided (and Brynden agreed, with the small private fondness you've learned to read on his ruined face) that you're not going to give this information to either of the Targaryens until you've used it to its absolute maximum value to you.

You're going to date them.

You're going to learn their rooms, their men, their weaknesses, the architecture of their loyalties.

You're going to let Aerion fuck you stupid in stairwells and you're going to let Valarr take you to dinner at his mother's table and you're going to enjoy both of these things genuinely. Because you're not a liar and your attraction to both of them is, troublingly, real.

And you're going to wait.

At the exact moment of maximum leverage (at the sit-down you can already see coming, at the moment when both branches of the family are in one room, when the rivalry between them is at its peak, when each of them believes that you are his) you're going to walk in with Brynden Rivers at your shoulder, and you're going to set the file on the table, and you're going to name the man.

Both branches of the family are going to owe you a debt larger than the one your father is owed.

You're going to extract from that debt exactly what your father would have asked for, which is the thing he died waiting for and did not get.

Your father did not die of nothing. Your father was poisoned. Patiently. Over three years. By the same man in the file.

And Brynden Rivers knew the second he heard of the passing.

Brynden Rivers told you, over the second cup of tea at the second meeting, when he set the photograph down on the desk between you and watched your face for the moment of recognition. Watched you not cry, and watched you instead set the photograph back down and ask him who else knows, and listened to your voice when you asked it and decided, then, finally, that you were going to be useful.

Starks, he had said, have always been of interest to me. I hope you don't disappoint.

You're not going to disappoint him.

Valarr loves it, too. that's important to note. he doesn't love it in a cold calculating way (he's not staging anything, not managing optics in the cynical sense for once) he genuinely, sincerely, loves seeing the two of you together in pictures. he loves the visual fact of you beside him. his instagram becomes (and this is a development, because Valarr's instagram used to be very tasteful, curated, and young CEO doing CEO thingsTM) his instagram becomes increasingly, helplessly, about you.

candid of you laughing at brunch with no caption. your hand in his on a beach somewhere with a single white heart emoji. you reading on his terrace, photographed from behind so your face isn't visible because he knows you don't love being photographed, but he needs to post it. he needs the small proof of you in his life to exist where people can see it.

the back of your head against his shoulder on a flight. your boots beside his in the snow. he posts you constantly, helplessly, with the air of someone who can't quite believe his luck and needs the world to witness it.

his comment sections become a phenomenon. every post about you racks up thousands of comments within the hour. she's so lucky. HE'S so lucky. the way you love her. please marry her. couple goals. I'm going to cry. it becomes a running joke in certain circles of the internet. Valarr Targaryen's insta is just a slow-motion proposal in twelve-month instalments.

and you see it. you see every post. the comments. you see your own face captioned with hearts and flame emojis and queen and goals, and you can't fault him for any of it, because what is he doing wrong? he loves you. he's showing the world that he loves you. there's no version of this complaint that doesn't sound insane out loud: my devastatingly handsome boyfriend who's publicly besotted with me is too publicly besotted with me??? you'd be laughed out of every room.

because you're not, at the end of the day, a woman who's naïve about public perception and its power.

you're the Stark heir. you've been photographed since you were a child. you understand, intimately, what it means to be seen as a unit with someone. what doors that opens, what conversations that ends, what kind of narrative it writes about you in the rooms you'll be walking into for the rest of your life. and a public relationship with Valarr Targaryen is, in the cold light of strategy, extraordinarily good for you.

it makes you legible. it softens you. for years the press has written about you as the cold one, the difficult one, the Stark heiress who never smiles in photographs. who reportedly turned down three perfectly suitable suitors in her early twenties, and is rumoured to be impossible. difficult. a challenge.

Valarr's adoration rewrites you in real time. suddenly you're not impossible, you were simply waiting for your perfect prince. you were not actually cold, you were simply unmet. the woman who appears beside Valarr in those photographs, hand in his, smiling genuinely, is being read by the entire watching world as finally happy, and that reading benefits you in ways you'd be a fool to refuse.

your father, who's been worried about your unmarketability for a decade, is (and he would never say this) relieved. your father's board members nod approvingly at galas. women who used to look at you with thinly-veiled contempt at your independence and sharp tongue now compliment your dress. you walk into rooms differently. you read differently. you are, in the public imagination, loved, and being loved by Valarr Targaryen is a kind of social currency you would have to be genuinely stupid to spend frivolously.

so you let yourself be photographed in public. you let him post you (this one is genuinely easier because you see how happy it makes him). you attend his mother's birthday and smile for the family photographer. you make a sport of dodging the more invasive press in ways that come across as charmingly private rather than rude. because you've been trained since girlhood in exactly this.

you give Vogue the one sit-down they've been chasing for a year and you talk about him with unfaked warmth (he's wonderful, I'm very lucky, no comment on weddings) and the resulting feature is so flattering it borders on hagiography. it's the right move. you know it's the right move. you make it cleanly.

you're not ignorant. you are, in fact, quietly excellent at this, because being excellent at this is part of what it means to be a Stark.

and the thing about Valarr that's important to hold steady on is that the intensity is unmistakable to anyone who looks closely.

the press reads it as romance, because the press has a vocabulary for besotted young men and that vocabulary is romance. but if you slow the videos down, if you look at the photographs for longer than three seconds, you can see it. the way his eyes never leave you. the way his hand on your waist is always there, cradling you close. the way he's positioned, in every group shot, between you and every other man in the frame. the way he laughs at every joke you make a half-second before the punchline lands, because he's watching your mouth that intently.

most people don't notice. most people just see a man in love.

but every so often someone with sharper eyes will say something. a journalist will write a column noting that there is something almost feverish about the Targaryen heir's devotion. a guest at a gala will lean to her husband and murmur god, he watches her like a hawk, doesn't he?