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𝐇𝐎𝐋𝐘 𝐖𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒 𝐈𝐗. ♱ baelor targaryen.

⊹ ࣪ ˖ summary: In which the future of the realm is decided.

⊹ ࣪ ˖ pairing: baelor "breakspear" targaryen x f!stark!reader

⊹ ࣪ ˖ wc: 5.4k+

⊹ ࣪ ˖ notes/content: no real warnings for this part that won't be spoilers so!!! even though this one is shorter, there's a reason for why that is (and you'll understand why when you read it). cannot believe it's only been a little over a month since this series begun and we only have two more parts left to go, hope you enjoy and thank you as always for your amazing support!!!

read on ao3. ⊹ series masterlist.

“Will you dance, Lady Stark?”

There’s sternness to the offer, no matter how hard Maekar attempts to soften the severe lines of his face.

The Great Hall glows around you in an inviting, syrupy candlelight, too many eyes glued to your every twitch. Heat gathers under the stone, saturated further by wine and roasted meat. Crushed mint and rosemary in the rushes release their sharpness when boots grind them down, blowing towards you in too-warm gusts of air whenever the dancing crowd surges. The court spins beyond the high table, the feast in full force now, dragon banners sitting snug beside Stark grey.

Your shoulder aches beneath your gown, a low, steady throb that reminds you you’re far from whole. There’s a faint tang of iron from where you’ve worried the inside of your cheek raw on your tongue.

Maekar’s hand is already out. Stiff, offered towards you more like a blade. He’s dressed like a prince tonight, but the finery sits on him the way a borrowed cloak sits on a soldier. He suits it better than you would have expected, handsome in the warm light in that stern way of his, but he seems to be dismissive of his own appearance, focused instead on how he stands and moves. His jaw is a rigid line. His eyes are too steady, assessing you not with the leers men usually level at a woman, but with a soldier’s proficiency.

Around you, people are rising as the musicians move into a slower tune. One meant for coupling and pretty shows meant to entertain and distract, no doubt. Silks flare in your peripheral, boots scuffing the stone as laughter ripples through the hall. Someone’s bracelets chime right behind you as a couple spins past the high table, bright as coins.

You hear Bloodraven’s voice in the back of your skull, then, mild as a blade slid between ribs. A wolf’s pelt hung where everyone can see it. Bait struggles less when it understands the hook. And then, the part that made your stomach tighten with some deep understanding you still don’t have a name for even now. Then perhaps you might be inclined to make it more expensive.

You are expensive tonight, by your own design. You’re also armed.

No one can see the knife hidden beneath the layers of silk and extravagance of your gown, tonight more in style with southern fashion to mark the final night of your stay in King’s Landing. No one would notice, except men who know how to look and where. Maekar knows. You feel it in the way his gaze snaps—quick, almost imperceptible—to the seam of your sleeve and back up to your face.

You place your fingers in his hand, standing from your spot beside your father.

You let him lead you onto the floor.

There’s no softness in Maekar, not even in dance, only effort; you can feel the strain of his restraint, the way he holds himself back from guiding too hard, from jostling your healing shoulder, from doing anything that might draw attention to the fact you are not whole. The steps are simple enough. Old patterns you’ve been taught since you were young, familiar turns and rhythm. Maekar moves through each rotation like you saw him fight—efficient, clean, no wasted motion, no flourishes. He doesn’t smile for the watching eyes, and he doesn’t pretend to enjoy himself. His hand settles at your waist with firm steadiness and nothing else.

For a few beats, you let the music speak for you. You let the room watch the wolf and the dragon’s son move in a neat, obedient circle. A pretty picture bards can write songs about one day, perhaps, all while another man’s taste still lingers on your lips. Hours have passed since Baelor led you back to your room and kissed you hard against your chamber doors to bruise, both hands on your face, a low groan caught in his throat. He watched you in the low torchlight after, palms still hot on your skin, for what felt like an eternity, with an expression that thrilled and frightened you, before bidding you good night and leaving you with a kiss against your brow.

Maekar breaks the impasse first, his words low enough that the sound doesn’t travel beyond you two, “He’s absent.”

Your throat tightens anyway, your fingers briefly tightening around his.

“He’s been absent all day,” you say, a question tucked carefully into your observation. “Is he punishing the hall by denying it his presence?”

Maekar’s mouth twitches like it wants to be humoured by your words and can’t quite make it. “I haven’t seen him since morning. He left the council early. Said he has… matters to attend to.”

“Matters,” you echo quietly, meeting Maekar’s hard stare with a thoughtful hum.

Maekar’s hand tightens once at your waist, a small tell you try to examine and fail, then he steadies again. His gaze slides forward, fixed on some harmless point beyond your shoulder, seeing something there you can only guess at. Maekar, who has known Baelor all his life, who has bled with his brother and fought beside him since they were nothing but small princelings, looks uneasy in the hazy light.

“Either he’s running,” Maekar mutters, an edge to his words, “or he’s finally stopped.”

You don’t need him to explain what he means by those words. What would the world be like in reality where Baelor stops being dutiful, stops being careful, stops holding himself leashed, choosing the realm and the good of everyone else over his own wellbeing, over his own happiness? Memory hits you so bright it feels like heat under your skin: Baelor by the altar, one hand braced on stone as if it is the only thing keeping him upright, his voice raw with want, You shouldn’t ask me. Because I won’t stop. And your own voice, greedy with burning desire to drive him over the edge with your taunt, then forget.

And he did. Baelor answered you. Where does that leave you? Where is he now that his father sits at the high table, watching you and Maekar dancing with a thoughtful, serene expression, the future of both your house and his captured in the space between your body and his youngest son’s.

You turn beneath Maekar’s arm, skirts whispering, shoulder tugging, and for a heartbeat, the hall blurs around the edges. Your body returns towards him, both of you settling into a new rhythm.

“Are you angry with me?” Maekar asks suddenly.

Your eyes snap to him, and you feel a small indent form between your brows. “For what?”

“For being the one they chose,” he replies stiffly, jaw pulsing once. “For standing where he wants to stand.”

You can feel the court around you, pulsing and moving like a living being, tracking you both greedily, pretending not to, so they can latch onto some scandal. Because they know something is amiss, that a prince who doesn’t entertain frivolous court attics is dancing with you, while the usually dutiful son and heir is nowhere to be found. Your father’s gaze burns between your shoulder blades, as biting as first frost in Winterfell, and you try not to seek his weathered face for comfort. King Daeron watches, too, you know, as do his sons and his queen.

“I don’t blame you,” you tell him frankly, because that much is true.

Maekar frowns, an unconvinced tug to his mouth. “You should.”

“Why?” you ask softly, and this time you don’t bother softening the edge in your words, your stare meeting his. “Because your father is a king who thinks of peace before his sons’ happiness? Because men keep trying to move me like a piece? What happened is not your fault, My Prince. We’re both victims of circumstance. I don’t wish you to be my enemy, only my friend, perhaps, if you are open to such a notion.”

Maekar makes a thoughtful sound at the back of his throat, rough and almost irritated in its gruffness, but his gaze jumps to the seam of your sleeve and back up again. He knows. He’s seen you with your blade back when you all went riding, seen you use it, though the blade pressed to your body today is nowhere near as noticeable, instead a gift from someone who is more shadow than man, more whispers than pretty speeches. Because you’re a wolf that learned, too young, that pretty halls are still dangerous, that sometimes the only way forward is to move yourself.

“You’re armed.”

Your expression doesn’t change at his challenge. “Am I?”

His mouth flattens, then, almost grudgingly, “Good.”

The set ends, but he doesn’t release you immediately. His hand lingers at your waist for one heartbeat too long while you both wait, watching each other—long enough for looks to be exchanged and whispers to start up because it’s too easy to misread this tension between you—then he steps back and bows over your hand with the same stiff courtesy.

You dip your chin respectfully in return. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” Maekar answers under his breath, and briefly scans the crowd with lethal, warrior focus. “Not until we see what bites.”

You’re about to answer him, about to ask where Bloodraven is watching from, because you can feel him even when you can’t see him, like a thread pulled taut through the hall—

The great hall doors creak open with a groaning boom. The sound pierces the room, momentarily drowning out the chatter and the fiddles, strings plucking into silence. Conversations stutter all around you, one by one, like strings being cut. Laughter thins into silence, heads swivel in a single wave, drawn toward the sudden spill of cooler night air that cuts through the hall’s heat like a blade.

Baelor steps inside. He should look like a prince arriving late to his own feast. Beautiful but controlled, desired and hated both.

He doesn’t.

There’s something loose about him, just like last night—unlatched, unbound, moving like liquid, like when he pressed his fingers covered in holy oil into your skin. His hair is slightly mussed, dark as ink, as if he's dragged his hands through it too many times to count, but doesn’t care about it enough to fix it for once. His collar sits open enough to show the line of his throat, powerful and sun-kissed, less restrained than usual. He wears no chain of office tonight, no Hand pin, no visible weight of duty. Just a man in fine robes, here to enjoy his night without any other weight on his shoulders.

It makes him look lighter and somehow more dangerous all at once.

Baelor pauses just inside the threshold, taking the room’s measure with those mismatched eyes. His gaze sweeps over his father, over the high table, over the packed hall, over your father’s rigid posture—

Then it catches on you and pins you with such force, you feel the breath in your lungs punch out of you in one hit. The air itself seems to change density around you, your lungs momentarily forgetting what they’re supposed to do. Maekar stills beside you, soldier-instinct sharpening, like he can sense something in his brother that even you can’t comprehend easily.

Baelor crosses the hall unhurriedly, arms at his side, expression one of that easy serenity, nothing like the agonised weight you’ve seen him wear these last few weeks, and people part for him without thinking. They always do. Crown or no crown, Baelor makes his own gravity.

He stops a few paces away from you and Maekar. Close enough that you see every line of his handsome face, the earnest way he typically holds himself dulled enough to make him look genuinely relaxed in a way that dries your mouth. He inclines his head, bare minimum courtesy, gaze roaming over your face.

“My lady,” he says.

There’s nothing courtly about how he says my, so much so that Maekar makes a small, strangled sound beside you. You feel a dozen eyes on you three, tracking, measuring, crafting a narrative. You also feel the knife warm against your body, a small, steady reassurance that no matter what happens, you’re not helpless, not tonight.

You hear your own voice before you cautiously decide to speak.

“Your Highness,” you begin, a controlled greeting, and you level him with steadiness you have bled to earn. “Will you dance with me?”

A hush falls over the hall. Not perfect absence of sound—candles still crackle, someone’s cup still clinks as a trembling hand sets it down in a rush—but the human noise drops away like every soul in the court has collectively leaned in at once. A ripple of shock rolls through the crowd, gaping mouths and bulging eyes all around you at your gall. A respectable lady shouldn’t ask a man for a dance, much less a prince, much less the future king of the Seven Kingdoms.

Maekar’s gaze snaps to you, sharp with disbelief, but Baelor doesn’t hesitate.

“At once, my lady,” he says warmly, and holds out his hand, nodding at his brother as he does so.

His eyes burn, warm and hungry in such a gentle way your insides squirm. Despite what you’re trying to do, your plans, you reach for his hand eagerly, letting your fingers curve around his. Baelor’s fingers close around yours the second your skin touches, warm and certain, like his hand was carved for the sole purpose of holding yours, and the memory of him below the keep, at his mother’s altar—saying he won’t stop, warning you he will forget himself entirely—flares so vividly your breath catches again. He leads you further in the dancefloor, his thumb brushing your knuckles once absently, an intimate graze, like he can’t help himself, this indulgence you know at least several people standing closest notice.

The musicians scramble into motion at a subtle nod from the high table. The tune shifts into something slower, older, a melody that moves you both in an unhurried, intimate spin. Baelor’s hand settles at your waist. Not so low that it would be seen as scandalous, not high enough to be proper.

Exactly where it needs to be to feel like possession, a man touching his woman, the subtlest of claims.

“Are you trying to kill me?” he murmurs, voice pitched low beneath the strings. "Looking like that tonight."

“Not yet,” you answer, and the bite of humour is the only thing keeping your pulse from spilling out of you.

His gaze drops to your mouth for a heartbeat, then rises again. Baelor doesn’t pretend he didn’t do it. The whispers that follow your moving figures are loud enough, even over the upbeat music, and you try not to cringe away and hide.

“You shouldn’t have asked me,” he remarks, almost casually.

“I shouldn’t do a great many things,” you reply, letting the dance turn you, letting the court watch the twitch of your mouth. You search the edges of his face instead, letting your suspicion show. “You’ve been absent all day.”

His mouth twitches, almost playful. “Have I?”

“Yes,” you say flatly, eyes narrowing. “Unless you’ve learned to haunt rooms without being seen.”

Amusement flashes in his eyes, warming his features, wiping years off his face and your neck prickles. The longer this goes on, the more eyes are on you, the more eyes are on you, the more opportunity there is for something to tip.

“I’ve been getting my affairs in order,” Baelor tells you, still in that same infuriatingly calm voice.

He says it carefully enough to set off alarm bells inside your skull. In all the weeks you’ve known Baelor, he’s never once struck you as a man to use his words lightly.

“Your affairs,” you echo, testing the ice underfoot.

The dance draws you close for a beat, almost chest-to-chest, faces bowed towards one another. Baelor leans in as if he can’t help himself, breath warm against your ear.

“You’re armed,” he murmurs, so softly it threads under the music, under the hall’s noise. His hand at your waist doesn’t move, but his thumb presses into the hollow there like he's anchoring himself. “You always are.”

You don’t look away. “Someone has to keep pretty princes safe.”

A quiet exhale slips from him—almost a laugh, but closer to a growl. His hand tightens at your waist for half a beat, then eases, careful with your shoulder even in this.

The dance brings you closer again, and when you’re close enough to exchange air, he says, “I can’t do this.”

Your throat tightens. “Do what?”

“This,” Baelor repeats, and his voice goes rough at the edges like it’s scraping itself raw on truth. “Be what he needs. Be what the realm expects. I thought I could. Gods, I know I should, but then you kissed me back.”

He looks at you then, so deep it’s like he’s reaching into you, and the careful prince is gone. You see dragonfire smouldering behind his eyes without leash or bridle this time. Worse—better—he looks happier like this than you’ve ever seen him look while doing everything right.

“It’s done. I’m done.”

Your fingers clench around his hand. “Baelor—”

“I’m going to abdicate,” he declares with a small laugh, and the words suck the oxygen out of the hall.

Everything around you disappears. Your world narrows to the warmth of Baelor’s hand at your waist, and the sound of your own pulse pounding so loudly you momentarily forget where you are.

“You can’t,” you force out.

Baelor’s mouth curves into a pensive line. “Can’t I?”

“The realm needs you,” you hiss, and it comes out like you’re trying not to bite. “Your father—your brothers—”

“My father has three other sons,” he reminds you, and you can’t quite read his tone or how he feels about this fact. “My brothers will live. The realm will live, it always does. There are plenty, I’m sure, who will be glad to hear this news.” His gaze is piercing when it meets yours again, adding, “And I cannot keep living like a man already dead.”

You swallow down all the emotions trapped in your throat. “Where have you been all day, Baelor?”

Baelor’s hand flexes at your waist. You feel it—him fighting the urge to pull you closer, to press his mouth to yours like he did at the altar, messy and greedy, like the world couldn’t exist if it were not you and him in it. You remember his mouth on yours, his breath stuttering against your cheek, his voice half-choked don’t stop. You remember the way he protected your injury even when he was lost in want, how that care only made you want him more.

Baelor leans in again, just enough that his words warm the shell of your ear.

“Writing letters,” he murmurs. “Closing doors. Opening others. Saying things I’ve put off for years because I thought I could be… good.” A beat. His voice turns almost amused, almost disbelieving. “As if goodness is a kind of armour.”

“It can be,” you whisper.

“It can also be a cage,” he corrects, and his thumb presses into your waist harder, an intimate pressure that makes your breath go thin around the edges. “I have been in a cage my whole life.”

The dance turns you once more in another rotation. His hand guides you effortlessly through the pattern, like he could move you through any storm with those fingers alone.

“Baelor. You cannot give up the throne for me.”

Because as much as this thrills you, as much as you want nothing more than to reach forward and kiss him, right here in front of everybody, the thought of being the spark that burns him down makes something in you go cold.

“I’m doing this because of me,” he disagrees softly. “Because I’ve reached the point where I can’t pretend the chain doesn’t chafe anymore.” His gaze flickers over your face—your mouth, your eyes—then locks back on your eyes, everything in his perusal shameless in a way you’ve never seen him be shameless. “And because wherever you go, I find myself going too.”

Your heart clenches so hard it takes everything to keep your expression steady.

“You said something like that,” you manage to choke out, voice low, “before.”

Baelor’s mouth softens. “I meant it then,” he says gently. “I mean it now.”

You lift your chin a fraction, staring him down the way you did last night, your heart roaring in your ears. “Say it.”

Because if he means it, if he’s truly mad enough to even suggest something like this, if he wants you enough to give up the very thing that’s always defined him, that’s been meant for him from the day he was born—

Baelor’s gaze sharpens like a blade pulled from a sheath. “You are the shape my heart has taken,” he says softly, and the words are quiet enough that only you can hear them, “and always will.”

Your breath catches hard enough that it hurts. The entire hall is watching you. You can feel the weight of that expectation pressing into your skin from all sides like a brand. But Baelor’s doesn’t seem to care. For the first time, he looks like a man who has decided his life is his own.

“I don’t care anymore,” he adds, softer, rougher. “That’s—” He laughs low under his breath. “That’s the worst and best of it.”

Duty demands that you put a stop to this foolishness. That you remind him that even if he wishes this, there’s no feasible way Daeron would ever permit his heir to simply disappear into the northern snow, never to be seen again. That he was born for duty, for a crown, and it’s his to bear.

Instead, you hear yourself say, “Then don’t stop.”

You hear Baelor draw in a deep breath, his broad shoulders moving with it. His gaze drops to your mouth again, hungry and open. The memory of his kiss flashes between you again. The messy greed of it, the scrape of teeth, the sound he made when you bit his lip, and he couldn’t pretend anymore.

It’s madness, you know, you will have to claw for even a chance of this, but together you can try, together—

Baelor leans in—

And the hook snaps tight.

A servant threads toward the edge of the dance floor with a tray held steady at shoulder height, his head bowed. House Peake colours, plain and unremarkable, made to vanish in the blur of the feast. He moves like someone used to going unseen, but you see him anyway. Maybe it’s Bloodraven’s words lodged under your ribs. Maybe it’s the wolf in you that never stops listening and anticipating, your father’s lessons bred into you before your feet could touch the floor. Maybe it’s simply that his eyes never lift—not even as he nears the king’s heir.

The tray holds cups.

And a slender carving knife that shouldn’t be there.

He dips his head as if offering refreshment or moving past you. Then his hand flashes, and steel catches candlelight. The knife comes up in a fast, piercing arc, angled for the space beneath Baelor’s arm where it can slip deep and quick.

Time slows into sharp, precise pieces. You move before thought finishes forming in your head. Your fingers rip free of Baelor’s hand, your body leaning into the strike. Your sleeve knife slides into your palm with the ease of something you have practised in the dark for years, a small, unfamiliar weight that makes your blood go calm and cold in your veins. Metal meets metal with a piercing ping, your blade catching his with a sharp, ringing scrape that vibrates up your arm. Shock flickers across the man’s face—brief as a blink—because he doesn’t expect a wolf to have teeth.

He snarls and twists, trying to roll his wrist and slip past you, switching targets with the desperate speed of a man who has already failed once. His blade flashes toward your throat now.

Baelor descends on him like a storm.

His hand clamps at your waist, not to hold you still but to move you, wrenching you sideways in a pivot that keeps you within the dance’s pattern for half a breath, two bodies turning as if the song is still the thing driving you and not violence instead. His other arm drives across, a brutal, efficient strike into the attacker’s forearm.

You hear the impact more than you see it. The bone gives with a sick, dull crack. The carving knife jolts free, spinning, catching the light once, and clatters into the rushes under a swirl of skirts, then vanishes. The man lunges anyway, empty-handed now, grabbing for Baelor’s throat like he thinks he can tear dragonfire out by force. Your knife flashes again, a clean slice across his forearm, a shallow, precise cut, just enough to open skin and make him flinch. Blood blooms dark and immediate across the man’s sleeve.

Baelor doesn’t draw a sword. He hits the man with his fist again, a furious, deadly strike. Knuckles meet jaw with a sound like meat struck on a block. The attacker staggers from the sheer force, and Baelor catches him by the collar in the same motion, hauling him in close for one heartbeat—close enough that Baelor can snarl something only the man hears—then driving him down into the rushes with brutal force.

The hall erupts around you in a roar. Screams, shouts, chairs scraping back, steel singing as the Kingsguard draw swords—

And inside the chaos, you and Baelor move like you planned to move. Like you have already spoken about where you will stand, where you will turn, what you will do if the hook catches, and the fish thrashes. What happens if the fish finally takes the bait carefully laid out for it all night.

Because you have.

The attacker tries to spit through bloody teeth, eyes wild with hatred. “Long live the Black Dragon—”

Then shadows move. Not Kingsguard or gold cloaks. Not brave lords suddenly remembering they have swords and need to defend the royal line.

Bloodraven’s men.

They’re on the attacker with practised speed—hands snapping manacles onto the man’s wrists, a cloth shoved into his mouth before he can bite down on poison or shout anything scandalous to the hall. Maekar is with them, face pinched tight, but Baelor was right when he said his brother would refuse to sit this plan out, hauling the attacker up like he weighs nothing at all. His face is hard, merciless fury.

Your father is on his feet at the edge of the floor, his sword in hand, standing in front of the queen and king, eyes locked on you like he’s counting your limbs to make sure you still have them all.

Baelor’s hand is still at your waist, the touch burning through the silk. You breathe into his touch.

“Easy, Your Grace,” Bloodraven urges Maekar, strolling through the crowd, as the prince yanks the attacker’s head back by his hair.

Maekar’s eyes flick to the master of whispers—savage, bright, and furious—then he forces himself still by sheer will alone. His jaw clenches so hard you see the muscle jump there. Because tonight isn’t for easy revenge. Tonight is for catching.

Baelor turns his head slightly, gaze skimming over you worriedly. “Are you hurt?” he asks, voice pinched low.

“Maybe my pride,” you murmur in response, your heart beating in your throat, because if you answer honestly, you will say I’m alive, and you’re touching me, and the realm is watching us, and I still want you like fire wants air.

His thumb presses into your waist again, steadying, a small, possessive caress. “Stay with me.”

At the high table, King Daeron rises to his feet, guards close at his side. The hall is still in disarray. A lady is sobbing somewhere to your left. Bloodraven bows his pale head towards the Daeron marginally, then flicks his fingers towards his little birds in a tiny gesture that has them hauling the prisoner away at once.

Daeron steps forward and looks out over the chaos with tired, iron calm. The room quiets the way prey quiets when the larger predator enters the clearing.

“You see,” Daeron calls out, voice soft but carrying, “what old mistakes look like when we pretend they have healed.”

Silence grips the hall in a hard fist. Daeron’s gaze sweeps over drawn swords and all the pale faces, over the bleeding traitor being dragged toward the doors, over you—wolf with a knife, his son’s arm around you like an iron band—and then to his other son on your other side.

“We tell ourselves the Blackfyre wound has scarred,” he continues. “That the fever has broken. But it takes only one loyal fool with a blade to remind us that rot lingers beneath the skin.”

He pauses, eyes sharpening, looking, just for one moment, lost in his own head.

“Bravery is not only found in battle,” Daeron says. “It is also found in the moment a man looks at history and chooses not to repeat it, even when repeating it would be easier. Perhaps safer.”

His gaze goes to Maekar—clenched, furious, controlled by will alone. To Baelor—flushed with adrenaline and something looser, more dangerous. On the way both of them stand half-turned toward you without thinking.

“Tonight,” Daeron continues, “I was meant to make an announcement.”

You feel Baelor go still as stone beside you. A tiny movement, like he means to step forward, to intercept, to stop this before it’s too late, before his bravery can take shape and be rewarded.

Daeron’s eyes cut to him at once, a knowing gleam there. “Stand down, Baelor,” Daeron orders calmly.

Baelor’s jaw works, his grip on you growing tighter for a single breath. Daeron exhales at the sight, a tired, worn sound.

“I have spent my reign trying to fix past mistakes,” he says, and for a heartbeat, you hear the man beneath the crown, hear that same weariness you heard in him yesterday afternoon when he told you about his sister. “Trying to be wise. Trying to put the realm first, even when it asked for blood.”

He angles his chin. Your pulse drums loud in your ears. Daeron’s gaze finds you again in the chaos, every inch the king. “Lady Stark.”

Your title sounds too small and insignificant for the weight of the moment. Daeron takes several measured strides towards you, his guard moving with him. “You came south as a guest. You bled for my heir. You’ve been used as a symbol and a story by ambitious men in these very walls.”

A ripple of discomfort moves through the crowd because they know it’s true, but didn’t expect Daeron the Good to accuse them so bluntly.

“You will not be used without your consent again. I intended to bind North to the crown with a match that made sense on paper,” he explains, a remorseful tilt to his mouth. “Steel and winter. A son with fewer burdens. A marriage that would not provoke the realm.”

Maekar goes rigid beside you. Baelor’s hand tightens until it almost hurts against your ribs.

“But I did the sensible thing once already,” Daeron says softly, “and the realm bled for it anyway.”

The hall is so quiet you can hear candles popping.

“Therefore,” King Daeron announces, his voice lifting, carrying through the hall, lifting his eyes to look at you, side by side, fused together. “I name my heir, Prince Baelor Targaryen, betrothed to Lady Stark of Winterfell.”

At first, no one breathes, then the hall explodes into gasps.

Maekar turns his head slowly toward Baelor, expression carved of stone and something like shock. Baelor stares at his father as if struck—then his gaze snaps to you, disbelieving and bright with something dangerously close to joy.

At the edge of the hall, near the shadowed arch where the traitor was dragged away, you catch a glimpse of pale hair and a ruined face half-hidden in dim light, one red eye gleaming as it watches you.

Bloodraven’s mouth quirks, thin and sharp, satisfied in a way that should probably chill you. And you realise, all at once, that the whole display tonight—the dancing, the daring, the knife he gave you, and the eventual catch—has always been a kind of bait, just not the one you thought you agreed to.

You’re not the helpless thing to be moved around anymore.

You’ve learned how to move yourself.

an: I hated this chapter so so much so if it's extra janky I'm sorry but ayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. Next chapter is going to be way longer because we have a LOT of ground left to cover but leaving this one here felt right, so see you soon with more. It's not all going to be smooth sailing just yet but we're making STRIDES people!!!!

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