shei

His cock was already twitching in his jeans, half-hard just from looking at you. He groaned while adjusting himself. The whiskey was making everything feel a little too good, a little too sharp. He closed his eyes, leaned his head back against the couch, and tried to think about something else. Anything else. But all he could see was you. The way you'd looked that night of the picture. With your hair all wild, and your lips swollen from kissing him, the way you'd moaned when he touched you, like you needed it as much as he did.

He opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling for a moment before bringing his phone back up. He figured was already going to hell anyway. So he clicked on your name, pressed the phone to his ear, and waited for you to pick up. He knew you were asleep. It was almost midnight, and you had to work tomorrow. But he couldn't stop himself.

"Hey, baby," he started when he got your voicemail, his voice already rough from the whiskey and the need coiling in his gut. He unzipped his jeans as he spoke, letting his hand slip into his boxers to wrap around his cock. "I know you're sleepin', but... fuck, I can't stop thinkin' about you."

He stroked himself slowly as he squeezed his eyes shut and let his head fall back. "Remember that time in my truck? When we drove out to the river and you climbed on top of me? Fuck, you were so wet, baby. I could feel you through your jeans. You were ridin' me like you were tryna kill me, I had to bite down on your shoulder and I loved every fuckin' second of it."

He groaned, swiping his thumb over the head of his cock, smearing the pre-cum while the next string of slurred words tumbled out of his mouth. "I'm touchin' myself right now. Thinkin' about how you looked with your tits bouncin' in that little tank top. And the wind was blowin' your hair all over the place. You were so fuckin' sexy. You still are. Drivin' me crazy."

"I wanna fuck you so bad, baby. Wanna bend you over the hood of my truck again, pull your hair until you're cryin', just like you like. Remember how you sounded? Beggin' me not to stop? God, I could listen to you beg all night." His hand moved faster, his hips now thrusting up into his fist as he kept thinking of the two of you together.

The whiskey burned in his throat, but he didn't care. He was too lost in the memory, in the fantasy of you. "I wanna taste you, too. Wanna put my mouth on that sweet little pussy until you're screamin'. You always get so fuckin' loud when I do that. Remember when Maegor was at my dad's, and we had the whole place to ourselves? I ate you out for hours, baby. You—god—you came so many times I thought you were gonna pass out. Best fuckin' night of my life."

He was panting now. His grip tight, his movements growing more desperate by the second. And his phone was pressed so hard against his ear it was probably leaving a mark. "I was watchin' this video earlier this week. Some porn shit. Whatever. This girl was gettin' fucked from behind, and she was... fuck... she was callin' the guy 'daddy.' And all I could think about was you. You callin' me that while I'm balls deep inside you. Fuck, baby, I'd give you anything if you said it just once."

He choked out a laugh and his head fell back again. "I know you won't. I know it's not your thing. But I can't stop thinkin' about it. About how fuckin' hot it would be. You, lookin' back at me with those big eyes, tellin' me to fuck you harder. Callin' me— Christ, I'm gonna come just thinkin' about it."

His strokes became erratic as the heat built. He was trembling and whimpering at the image of you back in his bed. "I miss you, baby. Fuck, I miss you so much. I miss wakin' up next to you, miss makin' breakfast with you, miss watchin' you with Maegor. But I mostly miss this. Miss how you feel, how you fuck me like you're never gonna let me go. I'm still yours, you know that? Even if you don't want me anymore, I'm still fuckin' yours."

The orgasm hit him hard; his body tensing and his cock pulsing in his hand as he spilled over his stomach. He moaned your name, a low, broken, drawn out sound. The phone slipped from his ear to land on the couch beside him. For a minute, he just sat there, chest heaving, watching the room spin from the whiskey and the intensity of it all.

Finally, he picked up the phone again, his voice now taking on that soft, tender tone he sometimes used when actually speaking to you. "Anyway. Just wanted to... I don't know. Fuck. I'm drunk. Don't listen to this. Delete it. I'll see you tomorrow when I pick up Maegor. Love y— Good night, baby."

He knew he'd regret it in the morning. Knew he'd probably made a huge mistake. But as he wiped his hand on his shirt and stumbled to the bathroom to clean up, he couldn't bring himself to care.

When he finally crashed into bed, his phone buzzed on the nightstand. A text from you. He smiled in the dark as his chest tightened with what felt a lot like hope. So he fell asleep with the phone in his hand, the glow of the screen lighting up his face from where he'd left it open to your message thread:

Perv. Go to sleep.

[ tags ] @rosph0ria @galactict3a @foremma444 @qardasngan @lostinthestreamofconsciousness @samthegreenapologist @samslvrgirl

@wixdw @chai-sipper @znbbbbbbbb @sinarainbows @wannabethe0ne @sockz360 @michvrry @mistalli @bongothelamb

There was a bluebird on the sill of your window.

You had been in the middle of your embroidery, the shiny needle coming to stop between the fabric as you came to stare at the creature in awe. Its fidgeting body had hopped and fluttered on the stone ledge, chirping away as it observed you from across the room. Excitement pulsed through you as you gently settled your embroidery hoop onto the table as delicately as you could before you began approaching the bird.

Its song filled the silence, each chirp sending a little echo through the vast room as you dragged yourself to the creature in a crouch. Your skirts crumpled beneath your body as you approached. Your heart came to swell in your throat as you pushed down memories of your mother and sister, tears coming to collect at the edges of your eyes as you admire the delicate hues of blue on the birds wings. 

You had been so captured by the bird of your family's history you didn't hear the door to your room open or shut behind you until the bird suddenly let out a hard cry and fled through the open window. You remained in a low crouch until your name being called behind you made your body instinctively straighten as you rose and turned around to face the only other person who was allowed into the room. Your fear left you with no choice but to stand still as heavy boots trudged into the room while your eyes found the floor.

"It seems my lady wife has forgotten how to greet her husband," although his tone came as a tease, Aerion's hardened gaze bore into the side of your face— your months of marriage letting you know well enough that he was not in a joking mood.

You bowed before the Prince as you spoke, "I did not expect you today, my prince". Your words coming out airy and rushed as you continued to avoid his gaze. 

You knew what he had come for, its the only reason he had ever deigned to visit your secluded chambers in the Keep. 

When he didn't respond, your eyes reluctantly left the stone floor and found his body a few feet from you though his gaze was now on the window behind you. You watch his eyes flicker between the stone ledge and your crumpled skirts, your hands coming to smooth your appearance despite futile attempts. 

"Ah," he tutted, a smile slowly spreading to show his bright teeth that matched the color of his hair. "Let me guess. Was that your mother? Maybe it was your father?" his smile had turned wicked before he let out a chuckle as he approached until he was a step away from connecting your chests. "Or, perhaps it was your sister?" 

Despite the amount of mockery or bullying he had done to you, you could still feel pure disbelief bubble beneath your skin.

Aerion knew that your family had the stories of old just as his ancestry did—how his family had dragons while your family had bluebirds that the departed would use to visit you during tough times and yet he still mocked your traditions and family legacy.

You swallow a sob as you steel yourself before the man you married. 

Guilt fills you when—for a split second—you curse your sister for dying. It had originally been your sister that had been selected as the prince's intended, the waves of happiness that had overflowed from her at the mention of becoming a princess had left your family scrambling to depart from your home and only leaving your eldest brother and yourself to stay back. 

Then news came of an upturned carriage. You could still remember the moment the scout had arrived, ears coming to ring and muffle the words of how he found the bodies of your beloved mother and father with their throats slit while your sister was found not a few feet away face down in the river.

You were only allowed a few days of mourning until a raven came with a message of acceptance of you being a suitable stand in. Your brother had come to explain how your father had owed a debt and the debt would need to be paid one way or another. The last time you had seen your brother was months ago when he put you into a carriage that arrived from Kings Landing, multiple guards attached to escort you to your new husband. 

Aerion's fingers brushing your fallen tears brought you back to the present. His body had come to crouch down to look straight into your eyes that had dropped to stare at the floor. His iris' filled with unbridled lust as he shushed you, wiping away tears with false-sympathies. 

"You should not cry for that old family," he whispered, the tone sounding so sweet you almost consider leaning into the falsehood for comfort. "I am your family now, the only one you should consider."

His words only make your body jolt in despair. He allows two more tears to slip before he lets out a loud sigh of annoyance and pulled himself away to sprawl onto the furs of your bed. His hands undo the strings of his shirt until his chest is exposed. Aerion adjusts his position before he looks at you and jerks his head at you. "Come."

Flashes from your wedding night peppered into your mind at the sight of him, saying the same words he did when the time came to consummate the marriage. The knot in your throat was just like the one you had then, blocking all words as you forced yourself into his lap. The fabric of your skirts separated your body from his as he gazed up at you with boredom before he pulled a blade from the scabbard on his hip. He had done the same thing that night, the only difference was that you now knew what to expect of Aerion Targaryen when he came to your chambers. 

Bringing the edge of the blade to your corset, he gives no warning as he slowly drags the metal down and tears the front of your dress. The tip of his blade skims the surface of your chest and between the valley of your breasts while the sound of fabric tearing fills the room. You are forced to watch as the gown you had worn had now been reduced to scraps at the princes' sick attempt at seduction. His eyes found yours in bliss as he removed the top layer of your dress and left you bare. 

"This is how you should be greeting me"

Your skin pebbled with the exposure to the cold air, the crackling fire in the hearth doing nothing but adding to the ambience within your chamber walls. Your chest rises and falls with each breath as Aerion comes close and brings your breast to his mouth, the sudden warmth making honey of your bones despite the distaste you felt in your heart for the man. His mouth latched on as his tongue circled, pebbling your nipple until the brush of his tongue made a small whimper rip from your throat. He repeated the action on the other as his hands traveled to the strings of your skirts and pulled at the knot until the fabric loosened, he pulled away and dragged the skirts over your head. 

Aerion brought the blade back to your flesh, bringing the dagger to drag against your waist as he spoke. "You want to make your husband happy, yes?" You can only nod as you fix your gaze on the cherished knife of the prince. He seemed pleased with your response as he tossed the blade to the empty space beside him on the bed.

Your body felt three times heavier as he brought his hand up and grasped at your neck and forced you closer to look into his eyes. Irritation bloomed beneath his iris' as he squeezed the flesh of your throat, not hard enough to cut off your airway but enough to make your eyes widen as you looked down at him. You’re forced still as he works his stare over your face until he finally lets go and smacks your thigh hard enough to earn a small hiss from you. He comes to smile once more before he tells you to stand.

You knew better than to hope for his departure.  He had done the jest too many times.

You roll off of his body and stand to the side as he rose from the furs and raised his hands in wait. Your body moved mindlessly as you brought your hands to pull at the strings quickly, earning a chuckle from Aerion who joked about your impatience for him. 

You only wanted to get this over with.

You fiddle with the string of his trousers, eyes fixed on the fabric so as to still your shaking fingers when his hands stop yours with a swat and instructions to lay on the bed. You follow instructions as your fate was sealed the second you repeated the vows back to him in the Great Sept of Baelor, so you lie down and watch as Aerion removed his pants.

As you drag your gaze up his body, you hold the speckle of attraction you felt as the target of your resentment. You hated the way your body instinctively shifted and preened at the sight of his toned body, his figure shaped from his time training in the castle courtyard, his smooth flesh making one think he was untrained. It was when you look upon his hands that you can see the years of training etched into the creases of his palms, taut skin scarred with nicks and cuts. Your eyes land on his toned back that gleamed with the reflection of the flame in the center of the room.

His body turns to face you fully and you're quick to force your eyes to his face, avoiding the hardened part of his body that brought you both to pleasure and pain. His eyebrow raise at the sight of your reddened face, a low chuckle coming from his chest that came flush against yours as he brings his body over you with his entire weight. His eyes find yours as his brings his head to the side of your neck and bites down, his teeth grinding your skin in between each ridge so hard you cry. 

He pulls away and you give your best smile, ignoring the tears pooling out of your eyes. He leans down again, licking at your tears as his hands come to fondle your chest. His thighs have now come up to straddle your hips, his hard cock resting against your lower belly. You can't ignore the heat he radiates or the weight of what laid between the two of you. He gives you one last glance before he pulls back off of your body and spits directly on your center, missing by a few inches but it didn't matter as his spit dripped down, his fingers come down and glide the glob of saliva up and down your lips before he pressed into you with his fingers.

The sudden intrusion makes a gasp whisper past your lips, his groan sounding over your noise. "You're so wet," he mumbled, pushing his fingers in deeper before gliding them back out. "'And you said you weren't expecting me? Was this for someone else?" his fingers come to curl inside you, your slick making a squelch sound as he curled his fingers over and over like a scratch. You shake your head at him, maybe as an answer or in protest but the response seemed to satisfy him enough to lean down and kiss your lips gently. His thumb comes to flick your clit, making your mouth open in shock before he plunges his tongue into your mouth. Simultaneously kissing and rubbing, you've no way to choose how to respond and he ends up biting you when you don't kiss back. 

He hums at the sight of you, wet and undone by his fingers. He pulls his fingers from you, cutting you from reaching completion and flicks his hands of your slick before bringing his fingers into his mouth of the remnants. "My sweet girl, my wife" his breathless words mix with the lulling vibrations of your body and you can only watch as he rubs the head of his cock against you. His body rocks against you, bumping over and under your pearl all while he held himself up to hover over you and come up right to your eye line. It overwhelmed you, the intensity of his stare. All that you bubbled down to survive in his presense had started to come up. Your gaze travels up to the decorated canopy bed, focusing on the linen sheets that resembled your family house colors, the ones that matched the sky and the wings of the birds you wished you could become.

Aerion's eyebrows furrow at your expression, not looking at him but through him. It angered him to the point of stopping to reach up and pinch your face between his fingers, your eyes zoning back in and masking once more into a loving gaze. 

But he could tell it was fake, the shining eyes he had caught a glimpse of when he entered your separate chambers, eyes on a stupid filthy bird that twittered and scraped its talons on stone—that got a look of devotion while he got antipathy. He couldn't help the snarl that came from him as he released his grip, kissing his teeth as he rose from the bed. He turned his back to dress, leaving you confused and listless as you watched his back muscles move.

You do your best to hide your relief from your face.  He would most likely return to the streets of silk.

You sit up as he pulls on his white linen shirt, your hands coming to wrap your body with the sheets when a loud chirp sounds through the room. You both still, the sound not believed to be heard until it comes again more than once. 

Not a bluebird, please don't be a bluebird.

Your eyes remain on Aerion as he drops the pants he intended to put on, letting out a chuckle as he turns toward the windowsill. You follow his gaze after you see his joyous expression, seeing a bluebird fidget on the stone as it looked about the room as if invited to comment on the decor. You feel the gasp before you hear it, finding its eyes look at you often.

Aerion walked over until he came up beside you and pulled the sheets from your chest to display you to the small audience the two of you gained. Your hands fly up to cover yourself but Aerion was always faster, his hands curling around your wrist before pushing them onto the bed and coming to hover over you once more.

"I think daddy dearest wanted to check on his little girl," he jeered, not caring that your gaze remained on the bird. You protest, your eyes filling with tears as your pleas go unheard. Aerion's free hand came down between you two and lined his pulsing cock to your core and slowly inched forward. His moan filled the room as he sheathed himself in you before he let go of your hands and brought both of his to frame your face and turn your gaze to him. "Let's show him, yeah? Show him that you are all mine"

Aerion's violet eyes fix on yours as he pumps into you, each rock making the head of his cock kiss your insides. He watched you fight the pleasure he knew you felt, your lips coming to form an 'o' like it had countless times before. He let go one side of your face to grip the underside of your thigh, brining it up to angle you so he could reach deeper. His panting breaths mixed with your shallow breathing, he licked his lips before he kissed you. His hand caressed your face once before he pulled out to turn you over. 

You're face down in the mattress before you process what happened, the furs and sheets now rumpled beneath your two bodies coming together once more. His hands came down onto your head, fingers weaving into your hair and pulling to make you turn away from the sheets and toward the room, specifically toward the window. 

"Aerion please—"

He shushes you sweetly, now petting your head as he continued his thrusts. "Your little birds gets to see what I get to do with mine"

His thrusts deepen as he holds you for balance by your head. His moans mix with the echoing slapping of skin coming together over and over. The fire continues to pop in its hearth and the bird continues to watch as your brought to completion despite your best efforts against it. He continues to thrust until he reached his rapture, filling you to the brim before removing himself from you and watched as his seed slowly glided down your leg and onto the floor.

His eyes travel to the side of your face before traveling to the window that was now vacant. He dressed himself, relishing in his satisfaction of the start of his early morning. He watched you until you rose from the bed. You take a moment to collect your expression before you turn to gaze at Aerion, ensuring your eyes meet his. He stays quiet a moment, looking over your face a few times before he reaches out and grasps your chin in between his fingers ever so gently.

“You slipped away for a little bird,” he stated, his grip cradling your chin a little. He skimmed the edge of your jaw with his rough fingers, a mock pout stretched across his face while he forced his deep violet eyes onto yours. His face is close enough to show off his unblemished skin and sharp cheekbones. He looked princely, but you knew better. 

A hiss escapes you when his fingers come and tighten on your jaw hard enough for you to know that it would leave a mark.

“Ensure it doesn’t happen again”

Giving you a pointed look, he released your face with a push and made his way out of the room without a glance back. At the sound of the door clicking to a close, your gaze lingers on the door for a moment before you feel your body jolt forward and you hear yourself let out a quiet sob.

────────────

It was hours later when a knock came at your door. 

You knew it wasn't Aerion as he would've walked in without so much as a 'hello', so you stand and walk to the door. You take cautious steps toward the door, opening it a crack until you see it is a knight that usually follows your husband. His face holding a kind smile as he present you with a box wrapped in a singular red string bow.

"A gift from Prince Aerion, your grace" 

Your face comes into a frown before you could stop yourself, the door creaking as you open it wider. You look behind the man expecting to see Aerion right beside him, smirking as he usually was—only, it was the lone knight and he looked confused as to why you had not responded. The question slips out before you could think of a more proper way of asking, your fear coming out a soft whisper.

"Is he on the way?"

The knight gives you a a frown of remorse, probably thinking the princess had missed her husband terribly in the few hours they spent apart. He shakes your head and relays the instructions he was given. 

"I was told to present this on behalf of His Highness, the prince. He is in the courtyard just outside your window and says he wishes to see your face as you open your gift"

Aerion, in all your time wed, had never sent you a gift.

The knight entered the room and walked to the sill, placing the small box down before bowing to you once then leaving. The door closed with a groan and a click but you could only stare at the box that lay a few feet away, a deep forboding feeling filling you from your toes to the crown of your head. 

A loud whistle just beyond the castle walls called out, the familiar tune letting you know that what the knight said was true. Your feet move before you realize and you are standing at the window looking down at Aerion, who was waiting for you just below on horseback. His familiar steed dressed in it's riding leathers made to look like scales of a dragon that no longer ruled the great skies.

"Open it," he called out, shrugging his shoulders with nonchalance as he stared up the stone wall. "I saw this while out this morning and knew you had to have it"

Your heart thumped right on the bone of your ribcage as you dragged your gaze from the smiling Targaryen prince to the box. Your shaky hands returned as you pulled the string and fumbled with box until it opened and you let out a cry before you fell to the floor.

There, in a box on the windowsill, laid the small body of a bluebird with broken wings and a note.

A bluebird for my bluebird —A.

The scream you let out as laughter traveled up the wall and through the window made your heart bleed just as deeply as you hurt. You don't know how long you stay there, screaming out your pain when just beyond the door, you hear the guards stand to attention and the door opens to reveal your husband. 

Your eyes had swollen and your face was smeared with your tears and despair when you come to look up at the unfeeling prince. In all your time being married, this was the cruelest thing he had done. You'd forgiven him when he had your family colors removed from all your wardrobe, coming to understand that you were now under his protection in the eyes of the seven. You even forgave him when he had all your belongings removed and replaced with ones to his liking. 

This was beyond forgiveness. 

Aerion goes to lay on the fresh sheets that were replaced mere moments after he departed from your chambers, his eyes on you as you come to stand. He raised his eyebrow at you, the look of entitlement painted clear on his face. He adjusts himself on the bed before he jerks his head at you. "Come my little blue bird"

The wind is knocked out of you at his sadistic smile, beaming bright at the sight of your fresh tears. You are out of the room before you realized that you moved, the sight of the knight in the corridor making your feet carry you out of there faster as your name is called from behind you. You reach the flight of stairs, the long winding steps stretching out the longer you stared.

You couldn't do it anymore. It would never stop. He will never stop.

Your body had racked forward with each sob you couldn't keep at bay, your tears burning the already raw skin on your face. Your hand had come up to grasp the rail when Aerion's voice called out to you from behind. 

You don't turn as you shake your head. You wouldn't go back, you'd rather—

You let out a breath and turn to face Aerion whose usual bored stance had come to attention as he gazed at you a few steps away, his brows scrunching together while he assessed your next move. It must've been written on your face because he was taking a few step forward until he was only an arms distance away.

"Step away," he muttered annoyed, keeping his eyes on yours. "If you wish to weep, you can do so in your chambers"

You shake your head and step back, stumbling until you catch yourself on the railing. He remained the bored princeling as you finally spoke. "Why do you do this?"

Aerion says nothing as he looks at you. A sob rocks your body as you ask again, your voice coming to yell loud enough to echo down the stair hall. Your hands are in your hair, pulling as if the answer will fall out along with your hair. He says something but you've come to ignore it as you cy out, hysterics taking over and making you pace until you stop and look at him.

As Aerion stands there was a dumb expression on his face, you decide then and there that the life you had dreamed of as a child would never come to pass. The image of a loving husband, who would come to kiss you the moment his eyes laid on you, would never come to pass. The laughter that echoed in your dreams of your partner and you sharing a look of love as your children say something funny or outlandish burned away along with any hope of anything getting better. 

You call his name once, your voice coming out a whisper as he looks up to your vacant face. He knew it was going to happen, he could see it within your eyes that stared back void of any emotion or light. It was like you were looking at him but more like you were staring directly into his soul. 

"I don't want to be your wife anymore"

Before he could say a word, you threw yourself back. The last thing you see is Aerion reaching out to you before the world goes black.

────────────

You could feel the cold fingertips on your forehead before you felt the world of pain that followed right after. You try to sit up in your bed only to be pushed down and instructed to remain still. You hear a voice whisper instructions to fetch a maester before you hear footsteps rush out of the room. Your hand flies up to your head when darkness greets you, panic of the possibility of blindness making your hands begin to shake.

A woman's sweet voice reassured you that you were only bandaged for your head. "Maester Robynn will see to your bandages once he arrives but you must remain calm"

You settle yourself at the womans instruction, coming to trust her by the mere sound of her voice. 

The peace only lasted so long before the sound of shouts and boots against pavement filled the halls. You had no choice but to lay there as the sounds approached until they were in the room with you. You listen as the boots come to stop at the threshold before the soft voice cuts the silence. 

"Your Grace, we await the maester but the princess is awake"

You fidget before your hands grip the sheets that covered you and go to sit up once more. You hear movement before you feel a hand on your shoulder pushing you back down. "Don't move, wait for a maester" the voice that speaks sounds strained, tight with emotion as if the words were forced out.

You settle down again but notice the hand on your shoulder had not moved from its point of contact, the warmth seeping through your clothes and burning your skin. You shrug away the hand just as another set of footsteps arrive and enter the room.

You're patient when the disembodied voice explains that your stitches would heal nicely, understanding when you're told you'd be on bed rest for a while and demure when the maester tells you to rely on your ladies in waiting for any and every need as to not strain yourself.

The consultation is cut short when an irritated voice vocalized what you had been wanting to ask for since you woke. "Remove the linen before I have you replaced"

A body approached you before you felt the wrappings around your head begin to fall loose, light coming in with each wrap removed. The maester informed you that bright lights should be avoided just as the last linen cloth is removed. You blink a bit as you try to focus, seeing blobs that slowly shifted to focus to see a nurse, a maester and a few knights in the room.

All begin to welcome you back with a smile you have no choice but to return until your eyes find the only person in the room that had yet to say a word. You look around the room to see everyone giving the man with white hair a look of relief. The man lets out a low sigh as he comes to look into your eyes before a small smile spreads onto his face. 

His hand comes to hold the one closest to him before he begins to speak. "You've been out for a few days now. They told me you might not make it but I knew," his voice faded into a breathy whisper as he continued. "I knew you'd wake. I knew it."

His fingers squeeze yours before he comes in close enough that you could smell the scent of wine and sharp smoke seeping off of his black and red clothes. He gave you another smile before he turned and began commanding everyone in the room to prepare a bath when you finally speak.

"I'm sorry, but who are you to me?"

he was never one to break a promise, and in this case, he swore you’d be dealt with. 

any woman would dream of being in your position; filled with banquets and feasts full of rich laughter, enough wine to drown in, silk crimson and plum gowns stitched with golden thread, all topped with the promise of a targaryen crown above your brow. 

but, in truth, no amount of jewels or silk could soften the edges of a sharp husband. a husband whose name commanded immediate respect from the strongest men in all of westeros. 

it seemed you had completely watched the sun fall from mid-day to ink night with how long you’d been attempting to distract yourself. 

you’ve read the same page of an old tale almost ten times over, laid restlessly in your bed, and silently cursed yourself for raising such a storm over the treatment of a servant. perhaps you were just too soft-hearted, or maybe it was the fact that you couldn’t help but fixate on other individuals' lives; hoping it would distract you from your own, if even just for a moment. 

aerion’s last words to you failed to leave you in any state of peace.

tears had left your weary eyes more times than you could even begin to count, negatively affecting your mood and motivation to do.. well, anything, besides lay in the same royal bed you’ve been promised to. 

your personal handmaidens had visited you at least twice; combing out your hair, tending to your tear-stained face. and allowing you to be changed into something far more comfortable for a lady in her private bedchambers. 

now, you lay alone, unaware of the hour. clad in off-white cotton, a thin chemise hung loosely on your frame, falling ever so slightly off of your shoulder, due to the rather wide neckline. mind wandering in the same circle: the thought of word travelling extremely quick through the red keep.

if anyone knew of the quarrel between aerion and his bride to be, or even witnessed it in the gardens, conflict was almost certain to arise within the royal court. it was almost as if your life was never allowed a hair of privacy ever since you stepped foot into the castle. 

the awful notion had been keeping you awake.

your head was resting against one of many pillows, face halfway pressed into soft silk. you had cried out enough of your sorrows and flushed out any heavy-bearing emotions by now, stirring just enough to prevent you from drifting off. 

your train of thought, as well as the silence, was interrupted by a rather gentle knock at the door. of course, your handmaidens had already bid you goodnight. sitting up ever so slightly, a sort of sleepiness within your low-lidded eyes.

the voice was all too familiar.

“may i come in?”

it was aerion, no doubt, to which you could presume he came to return to his chambers and sleep beside you out of obligation. like it always was. 

allowing a beat of silence, you decided the outcome was inevitable. with a meek voice, rather hoarse from not speaking over the course of a few hours (other than to yourself.)

“you may.” 

the crimson-colored wooden doors to your chambers slowly opened to reveal an almost calm aerion, his mannerisms almost.. reluctant. you didn’t expect him to feel much remorse after deliberately fighting fire with fire, getting you worked up over something so trivial.

you simply looked over at him from your almost-seated position, eyes raking down his frame; watching him as he gently shut the door behind him. 

something of a soft, defeated sigh came from him. almost if he had cooled off, in a sense. which was undeniably out of character.

you began to expect another argument, another dig at the power imbalance, anything. 

across the room, he began quietly and deliberately unbuttoning his shirt, speaking as he did so. “you’ve been crying.” aerion breathed out, slipping the remainder of the cotton garment off of his slender shoulders, throwing it onto a nearby chase. 

an almost hushed sigh came from him. “that was never my intention.”

had it really been that obvious of your previous state of emotion, or was someone communicating what was supposed to be kept private? the question was lingering in your head. you began to wonder if you misunderstood him. 

your eyes fell to the sheets below you, beginning to absent-mindedly fidget with the soft linen, trying to find the words. but you were only left with silence, unable to truly think of anything to say to him. he had done enough damage today, and you thought it was best to refrain from arguing for the rest of the night. 

taking note of your reticence, aerion draws much closer to the edge of your shared bed, looking down on you with a softened gaze. it was all such an unusual change from his usual, disdainful personality. it could have been the fact that you were his wife to be. but that was all the reason to be just as heartless. 

“you took what i said rather personally, dear heart.” he kneeled down gently towards your side of the bed, a gentle hand reaching out to rest on your knee, aerion’s thumb beginning to softly swipe back-and-fourth against the skin. “you’ll learn i’m not your enemy.”

his words were beginning to break down the walls you had been putting up over the course of months. but, above all, you reminded yourself it was only a false sense of security. 

your head turned slightly to look at him, resting the side of your face against the pillow propped up behind your back, serving as a way of comfort. you became much more at ease given his fiery temper was at a low. 

“you will come to understand, my betrothed.” with those last few words, it was clear he was beginning to win you over. aerion reached out a hand to gently take hold of your own, looking up at you with almost pleading eyes. it was at that moment he pressed his lips towards your knuckle, placing another kiss towards the inside of your wrist. 

the slightest bit of a smile graced your lips, finding warmth within his usually frigid touch. he gently closed his eyes, taking a moment to trail slow, lingering kisses upon the expanse of your forearm, before admiring you with half-lidded eyes. 

utterly flattered by the intimate nature of his affection, you begin to forgive him. aerion was by no means a brute, his temper was just.. less than admirable, at times. 

“will you join me, my lord?” the words slip out of your mouth, rather shy about what exactly you’ve invited him into. 

the almost ingenuity and sweetness of your tone reminds him just how gentle you really are. seeing it as something that is purely and utterly his. 

within a few moments, he begins to shift his position, standing up fully against the edge of the bed, staring at you as if he was absolutely starving. his hands reached down, beginning to slide the thin, white cotton of your chemise up and over your thighs.

you began to take the matter into your own hands, slipping the garment off and over your head completely, dropping it off the opposite side of the bed; completely uninterested of its whereabouts.

although, in the midst of your undressing, you had failed to realize aerion had stopped completely in his tracks, looking down at you with a hunger you’ve never witnessed from him before. it was incredibly enticing, being wanted to such a degree. 

his hands splayed across the expanse of your soft thighs, silently guiding and lifting your legs to rest upon his hips. 

“i wasn’t aware you were bleeding.”

your eyes widened ever so slightly, beginning to worry he would find it utterly heinous; worried he would want nothing to do with you until the time passed. it was commonly considered by court indecent for a man to be involved with a woman while she was bleeding.

you had never been more wrong in your lifetime.

before you even had time to excuse yourself for such a careless mistake, it seemed aerion was absolutely enamoured by the sight of the crimson painting your skin. he gently pushed you further up the bed, linen sheets rustling underneath you while leaning down to place chaste kisses upon the expanse of your stomach, nipping and biting down into the fat of your thighs, earning involuntary sounds of your own pleasure. 

“you drive me utterly mad, my wife,” he says breathlessly, like the sight of you and the state you were in was enough to entrance him completely. 

without any form of restrain, his hands form a rather tight grip onto your thighs, not allowing you any room to squirm or back away. a low groan elicited from him, pushing your thighs up and against your stomach, eagerly placing kisses to your cunt, becoming more drunk off the taste as the seconds go by. 

it was almost animalistic the way he was groaning into your pussy, his tongue darting out to lick flat against your clit, earning a sudden involuntary thrust of your hips upwards into his face. 

your back formed an arch from all the pleasure, hands grasping at the sheets below you as some sort of outlet, or something to hold on to. 

he began to lap and suck at your clit with more ferocity, letting out groans akin to that of a beast. one of his hands slid its way from its tight grip on your thigh to beginning to prod at your opening, spreading you open and fucking you with his fingers. 

your once shy mewls and little yelps of pleasure turned to cries of his name, looking down at the sight of him; pale face painted with bright red blood, covering his mouth and nose, lapping up all of your blood for all that it was worth. 

his nose began to bump against your clit, almost the entirety of his face smothered between your legs, slipping his fingers out to regain the grip he had on you and prevent any further squirming. 

your thighs began to twitch, hips jerking against his face, your poor body trying to squirm away from him so badly, even with him nose-deep in your pussy. after a moment, he lifted his head, licking his lips akin to that of a snake; tongue flickering out to taste the mix of your blood and arousal on his lips. 

“you fucking love that, hm?” he looked down at you to see you an absolute mess, and it was profoundly fulfilling to know that he was the one who put you in such a beautiful state. you were disoriented and breathless, blood smeared within the expanse of your inner thighs, staining the sheets below you. 

aerion brought two fingers up to his mouth, sucking the remnants of you off of his skin, crimson streaks left on his face. you, on the other hand, were all too dazed from the previous feeling to register his words. 

that earned you a sharp slap to the meat of your thigh, almost snapping you out of the haze. aerion leaned down closer to you, his blood-stained hand taking tight hold of your face, making your lips purse and allowing his fingertips to press into your cheeks. “you belong to me, yes? my betrothed. and soon enough, my wife.” he slightly shook your head, drilling the fact of his control over you. 

his hands were removed for your body for a split second, allowing him clearance to remove his breeches, undoing any buttons and slipping them off; aerion targaryen was insatiable. his cock was flushed pink at the tip, already leaking pre-cum and he hadn’t even been inside you yet. 

“spread,” his words were hasty and commanding, allowing you no time to recover from your high. forcibly, he grabbed forth your hips, bringing you closer to him. you brushed the stray hair out of your face, cheeks flushed and already covered in sweat. 

aerion quickly gave himself two strokes of his length, taking hold of himself and lining it up with your entrance; slipping inside with ease. a gutteral groan came from him, brows furrowing, staying still while he relished in the tightness of you around him. 

“oh, fuck– greedy fucking cunt.” 

his length was filling, just kissing the tip of your cervix. It wasn't long before he began heavily thrusting into you, hands forming a death grip onto your hips. while in a haze himself, he looked down to see pleasure etched across your face, watching his bloodied cock disappear into you. 

tears began to well up in your eyes, the pleasure becoming almost too much. “aerion, aerion— fuck!” you couldn’t push away or fight even if you wanted to, aerion’s cock nearly impaling you with each desperate thrust—desperate to get impossibly closer to you. 

his pace was anything but faltering, hips snapping against your own as he took you without restraint. a hand reached down to take hold of your neck, applying just enough pressure to remind you that he was the only man in westeros allowed to do this to you. 

your moans became little squeaks, given the lack of air, the thrill and adrenaline beginning to give you an almost high, completely drunk on pleasure.

“sweet girl,” he started, sounds of pleasure spilling from his mouth as he fucked you senseless, pulling nearly all the way out of your wet heat before filling you back up completely. his hips began to stutter, groans coming from him as he was determined to give you an heir. you were beginning to see stars with the combined stimulation from the way he was drilling into you, wet noises filling the room from the sheer amount of slick and blood where your bodies connected.

your nails began to scratch down his back, digging into the pale skin, leaving behind crimson streaks and crescent-shaped indents. no sound left your mouth as your back arched off the bed, pussy spasming around his cock as he made you cum. 

his lips tressed lower, nipping and kissing at the skin of your shoulder, the pace becoming almost desperate and quicker as soon as you finished.

aerion’s grip on your neck faltered, his palms now flat against the sheets next to your head, now letting his body fully cover your own. his teeth began to dig into your neck, trying to ground himself as he felt himself getting closer to filling you up completely. 

“you know i love you,” 

the words slipped out of his mouth, professing his love for you. he was so dazed from the tightness of your cunt and the way you were scratching down his back, his pace coming to a sudden halt—letting out a guttural groan as he emptied out inside you, giving you a few slow jerks of his hips.  

aerion didnt dare to remove himself from inside you just yet, beginning to soften as he watched you pant, finding the sight of you utterly fucked-out to be the most enticing thing he’d ever seen. knowing that he’d given you his seed filled him with a sense of triumph; knowing you’d be swell with his child. 

for once, aerion did not seem entirely frigid and selfish. although, he saw it as a given right to share a bed with the woman promised to him. 

beginning to regain your breath, chest gently rising and falling with each breath you took, you were scarcely even beginning to recover from such intense lovemaking. you never knew that a man could have such vitality and stamina, or that aerion possessed such lusting for your blood. 

he did say he would tend to you. 

aerion targaryen is a man unrelenting in his resolve.

to forge a flame by @aerrions

synopsis: a disgraced lady of house peake is given to prince aerion targaryen as punishment for her family’s treason. forced into dragon colors and courtly captivity, she resists him quietly until cruelty, pride, and dangerous tenderness begin to blur. f!reader.

here with me by @captainfern

synopsis: despite your warnings, aerion drinks a powerful stimulant, and then seeks your help when nothing else seems to fix him. f!reader. (18+)

uneasy lies the head that wears the crown by @vanillamacchiatos

synopsis: a rather small but challenging argument between you and prince aerion, your betrothed, leaves you in disarray. perhaps there is more than one way the prince can make it up to you? f!reader.

mine by @myladysapphire

synopsis: no one was more grateful than you when Aerion was sent to Lys, greatful for the break form his delusions and torment. But when he returns and you both remain unwed, Aerion insists you will be his bride, he doesn’t see any problem with it, for your as helplessly in love with him as he is with you, right? f!reader. (18+)

dreamer by @sedonasummer

synopsis: aerion cares for his cousin-wife as she suffers from dragon dreams. f!reader. (18+)

she's my wife by @cosmictheo

synopsis: while lunching in the red keep’s gardens with the targaryens, ser duncan spots prince aerion behaving like a civilized man beside a kind, sun-bright lady. bewildered by the rare sight, poor dunk assumes she must be prince baelor’s daughter, patient and too compassionate—because surely no woman of sound mind would choose to spend time in aerion’s company on purpose. f!reader.

growing strong by @catbayunthestoryteller

synopsis: once married against both of your wishes, learning how to charm a targaryen prince as mad as aerion is not easy, unless you know exactly how to play the game. f!reader. (18+)

lead guitarist by @drqcaryz

synopsis: it was meant to be just a fling, just a little fun and something to take the stress away but you two got carried away, and well that was a shitty mistake. modern au. f!reader. (18+)

The royal box had been an exquisite torture.

All day, you had sat among the lords and ladies of the Reach, the velvet cushion beneath you doing absolutely nothing to comfort the restless ache that had taken root deep in your belly. The sun had beaten down on the tourney grounds, the air thick with the smell of trampled grass and churned earth and the distant roasting meat from the feast-fires, but you had barely noticed any of it. Your attention had been fixed entirely, hopelessly, on the black knight.

Your husband. Every time his black destrier thundered down the lists, every time his black armor caught the sunlight and gleamed like polished obsidian, every time his lance shattered against an opponent's shield in an explosion of splinters, you felt it in the pit of your stomach, a clench, a slow molten roll of heat that had nothing to do with the summer sun. Your fingers gripped the arms of your chair. Your thighs pressed together beneath your gown, shifting against the wetness that had gathered there. Your breath came shallow and quick.

He had unhorsed three men before midday. Three, and each time he rode past the royal box you could have sworn he lingered just a moment longer when his eyes found yours. Blue and brown. The gods had given him one eye the color of a summer sky and the other the rich dark of freshly turned earth, and you were absolutely certain they had done it specifically to ruin you.

You shifted in your seat for the dozenth time, squeezing your thighs together in a vain attempt to relieve the throbbing pressure that had built between them. Lady Webber, seated beside you, leaned over with concern in her broad, honest face.

"Are you quite well, Your Grace? You look rather flushed."

"Perfectly well," you managed, not looking away from the grounds. Valarr was circling his horse at the far end, preparing for another pass. The way he sat in the saddle, the way his thighs gripped the horse's flanks, thick muscle flexing beneath dark steel, the easy confidence in his posture, the way he tucked his helm under his arm and ran a gauntleted hand through his hair, that silver gold streak on the left side catching the light—

"The heat," you added, gripping the arm of your chair until your knuckles went white. "It is only the heat."

But it was not the heat. It was remembering how those thighs felt when they were gripping your hips instead of a saddle. It was knowing exactly what that controlled violence looked like when it was unleashed in your bedchamber, when he was buried deep inside you and that same focused intensity was bent entirely on drawing scream after scream from your lips. It was the way his armor hugged his body and the way you knew every inch of what lay beneath, the lean muscle and warm skin, the trail of dark hair below his navel that you loved to follow with your tongue, the scattering of scars from a lifetime of training, the way his stomach tensed and jumped when you dragged your nails across it. It was knowing exactly what that body could do, the sounds it could wring from you, the positions it could fold you into, the seemingly endless stamina that left you wrecked and trembling and begging for more. And being forced to sit in polite company, smiling and nodding and making idle conversation, while he displayed all that power and grace and leashed violence before half the Reach—

By the time the final tilt was called and the tourney began to wind down for the day, you were fairly vibrating out of your skin. Your smallclothes were soaked through. You had imagined, in vivid and increasingly creative detail, at least seven different ways you wanted him to fuck you—bent over the railing of the royal box, on your knees in the shadow of the stands, on your back in the trampled grass with the roar of the crowd still echoing in your ears—and you had reached the point where you no longer trusted yourself to speak to anyone without your voice cracking.

So when the crowds dispersed and the lords and ladies began drifting, you did not drift with them. You walked straight toward the black and red pennants that marked the Targaryen tents.

His squire was a boy of perhaps five and ten, all gangly limbs and anxious eyes, and he was already struggling with the straps of Valarr's vambraces when you swept through the canvas flap.

You did not break stride. "Out."

The boy's eyes went wide as saucers. "Your Grace, I was just—"

"Now."

He fled. The tent flap barely had time to settle before you turned to face your husband.

Valarr stood in the center of the pavilion, still armored, his helm already discarded on a nearby table. His odd eyes found you immediately, and the corner of his mouth curved into a slow, knowing smile, the smile of a man who knew exactly what he had been doing all day.

"My wife," he said. His voice was slightly hoarse from shouting commands over the din of the lists, and the roughness of it sent a shiver straight down your spine, straight to the aching place between your legs. "You dismissed my squire rather abruptly. Have I done something to offend?"

You crossed the space between you in four strides. The tent was warm, lit by a half-dozen candles that cast dancing shadows across the canvas walls. The air smelled of leather and oiled metal and the faint, clean undertone of his sweat, that particular scent of him that made you want to press your nose to the base of his throat and breathe him in until you were dizzy with it.

"You have been offending me all day," you said, stopping so close that the steel of his cuirass nearly brushed your bodice. Your voice came out low and rough, barely more than a growl. "Parading around on that horse. Riding like that. Looking like that. Do you have any idea what you put me through? Do you have any idea how many times I had to press my thighs together just to keep from moaning aloud in front of half the nobility of the Reach?"

His brows lifted slightly, but the smile did not leave his lips. It deepened, if anything, the corner of his mouth curling in a way that was positively smug. "I was competing in a tourney. It is generally what one does at a tourney."

"You know exactly what you were doing. Every time you rode past the royal box, you looked at me. You knew I was watching."

"Enlighten me," he said, his voice dropping into something darker, more dangerous. "What was I doing?"

You reached up and pressed your palms flat against his breastplate. The metal was warm from the sun and from the heat of his body beneath, and you could feel the faint vibration of his heartbeat through the steel, steady, strong, slightly faster than it should be.

"You were magnificent," you said, your voice dropping to barely a whisper. "Every pass. Every impact. When you unhorsed Lord Ashford's cousin, when that lance hit true and he went flying, I thought I might scream. Do you know what it does to a woman, watching her husband ride full tilt with a lance in his hand, fearless, perfect, everyone in the stands cheering his name? Do you know what it does to me, Valarr, watching you dominate every man who dares ride against you, knowing that same ferocity is going to be focused on me the moment we're alone?"

His mismatched eyes had gone dark, his breath had changed, grown shallower. He did not move. "Tell me."

"It makes me wet," you said, blunt and shameless, your eyes locked on his. "It makes me ache. It makes me want to drag you off that horse by your hair and have my way with you in the dirt in front of everyone. I was ready to climb over the railing and ride you right there in the royal box. In front of Lord Ashford. In front of Lady Webber. In front of the gods and every noble house of the Reach. I would have let them all watch. I was so far gone I would not have cared." His breath caught. Through his breeches, you could see the growing evidence of his arousal, the thick outline of his cock pressing against the fabric.

"You are playing a dangerous game, wife."

"I am not playing." You pressed closer, your breasts flattening against the hard steel of his cuirass, your lips nearly brushing his chin. "I have been sitting in soaked smallclothes for hours, thinking about your cock. Thinking about how it feels when you first push inside me. Thinking about how you stretch me, how you fill me so completely I forget my own name. Thinking about the sounds you make when you're close—that raw, broken groan you try to swallow. I have been thinking about it all day, Valarr. And I am done thinking."

He kissed you. It was deep, hungry and consuming, his mouth slanting over yours with a ferocity that matched everything you had been feeling all day. His tongue swept into your mouth, claiming, demanding, and you moaned into the kiss as his free hand found the small of your back and pulled you hard against him. Your body pressed flush against the unyielding plane of his armored chest, the contrast of cool steel against your heated breasts making your nipples tighten to aching peaks. You gasped into his mouth, and he swallowed the sound, his tongue sliding against yours in a rhythm that was pure filthy promise.

You fisted your hands in the collar of his gambeson, pulling him impossibly closer, and he made a sound low in his throat that vibrated through his chest and into yours. You could taste the salt of his sweat, the faint sweetness of the watered wine he must have drunk between tilts, the heat of him. Your body was on fire. Every inch of your skin felt electric, alive, aching. The slick heat between your thighs had grown almost unbearable; you could feel it on your inner thighs, could feel how ready you were for him.

"Help me," you gasped against his mouth, your fingers fumbling with the buckles at his shoulders. "The pauldrons. Get them off. Get everything off. I need to feel your skin. I need your cock inside me before I lose my mind entirely."

He pulled back just enough to look at you, his chest heaving, his lips red and slightly swollen from your kisses. His eyes were blazing with a hunger that made your knees weak.

"Tell me what you want," he said, his voice a rasp that sent heat pooling low in your belly. "Exactly. Tell me every detail, and I will give it to you."

"I want you on your back in this tent." You wrenched one pauldron free and let it drop to the ground with a heavy thud. "I want to feel every inch of you against me without this damned steel in the way." The second pauldron followed. "I want to strip you bare and put my mouth on every part of you. Your throat. Your chest. Your stomach." Your fingers moved to the buckles of his cuirass as you spoke, your voice growing breathier with each word. "I want to take your cock in my mouth and feel you get harder on my tongue. I want to taste you, Valarr. I want to taste your release when you spend down my throat. And then I want you on top of me, driving into me so hard I cannot walk tomorrow. I want to feel you come inside me, hot and deep, filling me up until I can feel it dripping down my thighs. I want you to ruin me, Valarr Targaryen, until neither of us can remember our own names."

He stared at you for a long moment, his breathing ragged, his eyes burning. The bulge in his breeches was straining against the fabric now, thick and unmistakable. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse.

"You," he said, the word barely more than a growl, "are the most infuriating, intoxicating, utterly maddening woman I have ever known."

"Less talking," you breathed, reaching for the final buckles of his cuirass. "More undressing. I want to see what I do to you. I want to see how hard you are for me."

You made quick work of the breastplate, your fingers moving with a speed born of pure, desperate need. The steel plate hit the ground with a clang that echoed through the tent, and then you were pressing yourself against his gambeson, the padded fabric still damp with his sweat, the heat of his body seeping through to meet your own. Your hands slid down his chest, over the hard planes of muscle, down his stomach, lower—

"Gods," you whispered, your forehead dropping to his chest as your palm pressed against the thick ridge of his erection through his breeches. He was hard as iron, hot even through the fabric, and he twitched against your touch. "Do you feel what you do to me? Do you have any idea how much I want you?"

His hands—still gauntleted, curse him—slid down your sides, over your hips, and settled on the curve of your backside. He pulled you flush against him, grinding his hardness against your belly, and there was no hiding what this was doing to him. The thick length of him pressed against you, and you whimpered at the feel of it, at the promise of being filled.

"I have some idea," he murmured against your hair, his voice strained. "I have been half-hard since the first tilt, watching you watch me. Do you know how difficult it is to ride with a cockstand?"

"Then why are you still wearing so many clothes?"

You dropped to your knees. His hands hovered in the air where you had been standing, and he looked down at you with an expression that was equal parts shock and raw, naked want. His cock was at eye level now, straining obscenely against his breeches, and you could see the damp spot where his arousal had already begun to leak through the fabric.

"You are kneeling in front of me." His voice was barely a whisper, rough and desperate. "In a tourney tent. Where anyone could walk in. Where anyone could hear you when I make you scream."

"Then you had better be quick about deciding what comes next." You pulled one greave free and started on the other, your fingers brushing deliberately against the inside of his thigh as you worked. He shuddered. "Though I should warn you—I'm not feeling particularly quiet tonight. And I'm not feeling particularly quick. When you finally put your cock inside me, I intend to take my time."

The second greave came off. You stayed on your knees, your hands resting on his armored thighs, your face tilted up to meet his gaze, your lips parted and your eyes heavy-lidded with want. The candles flickered. The shadows danced. And Valarr Targaryen looked down at you like you were the most terrifying, wonderful thing he had ever seen like he wanted to devour you whole.

"Stand up," he said, his voice rough as gravel.

"Make me."

He reached down and pulled you to your feet in one motion, his hands under your arms, and then his mouth was on yours again and you were being walked backward toward the cot in the corner of the tent. Your back hit the tent pole, and he pressed himself against you, one armored thigh sliding between your legs and grinding against your aching cunt through the layers of your gown. The pressure was maddening, not nearly enough, and the sound you made was absolutely shameless, a desperate, keening moan that would have been heard three tents away if anyone had been listening.

"Yes," you gasped, arching against him, rolling your hips to grind against his thigh. "Yes, please, yes, right there, gods, Valarr—"

He kissed down your throat, his teeth grazing your pulse point, his tongue soothing the sting, and you dug your fingers into his shoulders through the gambeson, your nails biting into the fabric.

"I want you," you said, the words tumbling out of you like a prayer. "I have wanted you since the first tilt. I have wanted you since I woke up this morning wet and aching from dreams of you. I want you all the time, Valarr, every moment of every day. I want your mouth on my breasts. I want your fingers inside me. I want your cock so deep I can feel you in my throat. I want you to fuck me until I cannot remember my own name, until my voice is hoarse from screaming yours, until I am so full of your seed that it takes days to stop feeling it drip out of me—"

He stopped. His mouth stilled against your collarbone. His thigh stopped its maddening pressure between your legs. His hands, which had been sliding down to the small of your back, went still.

"What—"

"My love."

The tone made you freeze. It was tender. Affectionate. Entirely too calm for a man whose cock had been pressed against your belly moments ago, hard and wanting.

You looked up. His eyes were soft now, the hunger banked, replaced by something warm and unbearably fond. And lurking in the corner of his mouth was that quirk, that maddening, insufferable little quirk that meant he was about to say something you did not want to hear.

"I am so very tired."

The words did not register at first. You blinked, your body still humming with unspent desire, your cunt still clenching around nothing, your lips still tingling from his kiss. "What?"

"The armor. You cannot imagine. I have been carrying it all day in this heat. Every muscle in my body aches. My shoulders. My back. My..." He gestured vaguely downward. "...everything."

"I will soothe your muscles. I will soothe every part of you. That is precisely what I am trying to do." You pressed your palm against the hard length of him through his breeches to emphasize your point. He was still rock hard. Still twitching at your touch. "This does not feel like a man who is too tired."

His smile widened. He was enjoying this. You could see it in his eyes, the way the blue one sparkled with mischief and the brown one warmed with suppressed laughter. He was enjoying this entirely too much.

"You are very sweet," he said, and leaned down to press a kiss, soft, chaste, utterly infuriating, to your forehead. Then he gently removed your hand from his erection, his fingers wrapping around your wrist with infuriating tenderness. "But I fear I would be poor company. I can barely keep my eyes open. A man of two and twenty is not so spry as he once was. The spirit is willing, but the flesh..." He heaved a dramatic sigh. "The flesh is very, very tired."

"You are two and twenty. And your flesh is very clearly willing."

"An old two and twenty. The joints begin to protest. It is a terrible thing. The maesters have warned me about overexertion."

"Valarr Targaryen, I swear to every god in the Seven Kingdoms, if you do not put your cock inside me right now—"

"Perhaps tomorrow, my love." He stepped back, "After a proper night's rest. When my strength has returned. Then I will be able to give you the attention you deserve." His voice dropped, his eyes sweeping over your flushed face and heaving chest and the visible stiffness of your nipples through your gown. "Every. Single. Bit. Of it. I will take my time with you. Make you scream until you cannot remember your own name—wasn't that what you wanted? But I will only do it properly when I am not about to collapse from exhaustion."

He was already moving toward the armor stand, where a simple dark tunic and breeches lay waiting. You stood frozen in place, surrounded by the pieces of his discarded armor, your body still humming with unspent desire, your soaked smallclothes clinging to your heated flesh, your lips still tingling from his kiss.

"You cannot be serious."

He pulled the tunic over his head with deliberate, unhurried movements, covering the sweat-damp linen of his gambeson. He turned back to you, looking for all the world like a man without a care, his hair still tousled and that silver streak falling roguishly across his brow. The bulge in his breeches had—through what must have been monumental effort of will—begun to subside.

"I am always serious," he said, utterly failing to keep the mirth from his voice. "I shall send for wine. Something cool, to help with the heat. You look rather flushed, my love. And your breathing is quite... irregular. Have you been sitting in the sun? Perhaps you should lie down. In the cot. Alone. To recover your strength."

Your mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

"I have not been sitting in the sun. I have been sitting in the royal box watching my husband ride like a god of war and thinking about how much I wanted him to bend me over the railing and—"

"Careful," he said, raising a finger, his expression one of mock concern. "The canvas walls, remember? And I am so very weary I might faint at the details. Think of my delicate constitution."

You picked up the nearest object—a gauntlet—and hurled it at his head.

He caught it. One handed. Without looking away from your face. The man had been trained by knights of the Kingsguard since he could walk, and he caught it like it was a ball tossed by a child. He turned the gauntlet over in his hands, his smile widening into something that was pure, unrepentant mischief.

"Tomorrow, my love," he said, his voice dropping into something lower, something that promised and teased in equal measure. His eyes swept over you, lingering on your parted lips, on the flush that extended down your throat, on the way your hands were still clenched into fists at your sides. "I give you my word. Tomorrow, I will make you forget your own name. Tomorrow, I will have you in every way you described and several you have not yet imagined. Tomorrow, you will be so thoroughly satisfied that you will not be able to look at a tourney field without blushing for the rest of your life."

"Tomorrow," you repeated, your voice flat with disbelief and frustration and—gods help you—reluctant amusement.

"Tomorrow," he confirmed. And then he was at the tent flap, lifting the canvas, pausing just long enough to look back over his shoulder. His eyes raked over you one last time, and there was a flash of heat in them—a glimpse of the hunger he was so carefully restraining, a promise that he was suffering too, that every moment of this tease was costing him as much as it was costing you.

"Dream of me," he said, his voice a low, rough murmur that sent one last shiver down your spine. "Dream of what I'm going to do to you. In detail. I want a full report in the morning." And he winked.

The canvas fell closed behind him. You stood alone in the silence of the tent, surrounded by candlesmoke and the scent of him, your body still aching and your pride still smarting and your heart still racing and your cunt still throbbing with the orgasm he had denied you.

"Tomorrow," you muttered to the empty air, already beginning to smile despite yourself—a slow, predatory smile that promised retribution. "We shall see about tomorrow, my prince. You have made a grave tactical error. You have given me an entire night to plan." And somewhere outside the tent, you could have sworn you heard him laugh.

—

You woke to heat, a deep, liquid heat that was already pooling low in your belly, already drawing your thighs apart with an urgency that bordered on involuntary, already dragging you up from the depths of a dream you couldn't quite remember, a dream full of shadows and steel and a voice murmuring promises against your skin. Your body was responding before your mind could catch up, back arching slightly off the furs, fingers twisting in the linen sheets, a soft, confused sound escaping your lips that was half whimper, half question.

And then you felt it. The slow, deliberate, devastating drag of a tongue through your most intimate folds.

Your eyes flew open with a gasp that tore from somewhere deep in your chest. The world was waking up around you, ordinary and routine and utterly indifferent to the fact that beneath the furs, between your legs, was a head of brown hair with a distinctive streak of silver gold threading back from the temple like a bolt of lightning frozen in time.

"Valarr—" His name came out as a croak, half confusion, half moan, because his tongue had just circled the sensitive bud at the apex of your sex with devastating precision and your hips bucked entirely without your permission, your thighs clamping briefly against his ears before he pressed them back open with firm, unhurried hands. "What—what are you—isn't it—oh gods—"

He did not lift his head. He did not stop. He did not even acknowledge that you had spoken beyond a low, pleased hum that vibrated against your cunt and made your eyes roll back. His tongue flattened and dragged upward through your folds with a languid, unhurried thoroughness that spoke of a man who had all the time in the world and intended to use every single moment of it to reduce you to incoherence. One of his hands was splayed across your lower belly, holding you steady, pinning you to the cot with a casual possession that made your blood sing. The other was hooked under your right thigh, fingers dimpling your flesh, keeping you spread open for his attentions with an implacable gentleness that was somehow more devastating than force.

"Good morrow," he murmured against your cunt, the words shaped directly into your slick, heated flesh, and the vibration of his voice made you gasp and clutch at the furs beneath you.

"Isn't it—" You lost the words entirely as his tongue slipped inside you, just briefly, a teasing thrust that curled upward and made your hips roll in a helpless, seeking rhythm. "Isn't it a jousting day? The—the lists—you should be—you should be preparing—"

He hummed against you, a low sound of consideration, and the vibration coupled with the slow circle his tongue was tracing around your pearl nearly made you forget your own name, let alone your question. "The jousts have been suspended."

Your mind, hazy with pleasure and sleep and the insistent, expert pressure of his mouth, struggled to process this information with anything resembling coherence. "Suspended? Why would they—oh, right there, don't stop, please don't stop—why would they suspend the jousts?"

"The Bright Prince," Valarr said, pausing just long enough to press a hot, open mouthed kiss to the inside of your thigh, his stubble rasping against your sensitive skin and leaving a trail of pleasant friction in its wake, "has demanded a trial of seven."

"Who—Aerion?" You propped yourself up on your elbows, looking down at him through the disheveled curtain of your hair. His mismatched eyes gleamed up at you from between your thighs, one the deep blue of sapphires, one the warm brown of aged whisky, both filled with a lazy, predatory satisfaction that made your stomach flip and your cunt clench around nothing. "Aerion demanded a trial of seven? Against whom? Why? What in the seven hells happened while I was asleep?"

Valarr sighed, a warm exhale against your slick, swollen folds that made you shiver from your crown to your toes. "A hedge knight. Ser Duncan the Tall. He struck Aerion to defend a puppeteer girl, and now my dear cousin demands blood and calls it justice." He pressed another kiss to your mound, the tip of his nose nudging against the thatch of curls there. "He has accused the hedge knight of assault and the knight has demanded a trial by combat. Aerion, being Aerion, has escalated it to a trial of seven."

"That's—that's absurd, Aerion is—" You gasped sharply as his tongue dipped back into you, long and slow and curling, cutting off your outrage with a wave of pleasure that made your elbows tremble. "Valarr, I'm trying to—to care about this, it's important, you must let me—"

"I am between your legs," he said, his voice muffled against your cunt, his tongue tracing idle patterns through your folds that made rational thought nearly impossible, "with my tongue inside my wife, and she is asking about my cousin."

"You cannot simply—wake me up like this and expect me not to—to have questions about a trial of seven when—oh, gods—"

He had found your pearl again, circling it with the very tip of his tongue, a feather light touch that somehow managed to be devastating in its precision. Your elbows gave out. You collapsed back against the pillows with a moan that was frankly indecent, one hand flying to his hair, your fingers threading through the brown strands and brushing against that distinctive silver streak that marked him as surely as a banner marked an army. He made a sound of deep, masculine approval against your flesh and redoubled his efforts, his tongue working you with a rhythm that was devastatingly precise, alternating between broad, flat strokes that covered your entire cunt and focused, pointed flicks against your pearl that made sparks dance behind your closed eyelids.

"I am trying," he said between strokes, his voice low and rough with satisfaction, "to apologize for yesterday. For my behavior. For my cruelty."

"You are trying," you managed, your voice breathless and trembling and utterly lacking the sharp edge you wanted it to have, "to distract me from being angry with you. You're trying to lick your way out of the trouble you caused."

He paused, just for a moment, and looked up at you with an expression of mock-innocence that was entirely undermined by the slickness glistening on his lips and chin. "Is it working?"

Your hips were rolling against his mouth now, your body chasing its pleasure without any input from your pride, without any regard for your dignity. "No. Absolutely not. I am still—I am still furious with you—"

He sucked your pearl between his lips, gentle at first and then not, a sudden increase in pressure that bordered on overwhelming, and the sound you made was absolutely humiliating, a keening, desperate cry that you would deny to your dying day.

"You sound furious," he agreed, releasing you with a wet, obscene pop, his voice dripping with satisfaction and something deeper, something hungrier.

"You left me," you gasped, your fingers tightening in his hair, pulling just hard enough to make him hiss. "You left me aching and desperate and so wet I was dripping down my own thighs, and you winked at me like it was a game, like I was a piece on a cyvasse board you'd already captured—"

"It was a game." He dragged his tongue through your folds again, slow and thorough, from your entrance all the way up to your pearl, savoring you like a man savoring the finest vintage. "A very enjoyable game. One I intend to play again."

"For you."

"For both of us." He pressed a kiss to your mound, then another just below your navel, his stubble scraping pleasantly against your skin, leaving a trail of tingling sensation. "I believe the terms of our game included a promise for tomorrow. And tomorrow, my sweet wife, has arrived. I woke before dawn thinking about this. Thinking about you. Thinking about how you looked when I left you—flushed and furious and so gods-damned beautiful I nearly turned around and took you right there on the floor of my tent."

You yanked his hair. Not hard enough to truly hurt, but hard enough to pull his mouth away from where you desperately, desperately wanted it. He looked up at you, his lips glistening with your arousal, his chin wet, his eyes dark and amused and slightly reproachful at being denied his prize.

"I have not forgiven you," you informed him, proud of how steady your voice sounded despite the fact that your thighs were trembling and your cunt was clenching around nothing and every nerve in your body was screaming for him to put his mouth back where it belonged.

"So you've said." He tried to lower his head again, but you tightened your grip, keeping him in place. A flash of something dangerous crossed his features, annoyance, yes, but also interest. He liked this. He liked you fighting back. It was, after all, why he had married you.

"You teased me," you said, and now your voice was steadier, fueled by the righteous indignation that had kept you awake half the night. "You worked me up until I was practically begging—until I was saying please and Valarr and I need you—until I would have done anything, anything you asked, just to feel you inside me. And then you patted my head like a well-behaved hound and sent me to bed alone, aching and empty and so frustrated I thought I might scream."

"I kissed your forehead."

"Worse." You glared down at him, though the effect was somewhat undermined by the fact that you were still flushed and panting and spread open beneath him, your slickness still visible on his face, your nipples peaked and visible through the thin linen of your shift. "It was a forehead kiss. The forehead kiss of a man who knows exactly what he's doing and is enjoying it far, far too much." You leaned up slightly, your grip still tight in his hair. "Do you have any idea how long I lay awake last night after you left me? Do you have any idea what I did, alone in your tent, thinking about you?"

His smile widened, slow and wolfish. "Tell me."

"Hours." You released his hair, letting your hand trail down the side of his face, tracing the sharp line of his jaw, the proud cheekbones, the slightly too full lips that were still wet with you. "Hours, Valarr. Thinking about what I was going to do to you today. Planning. Scheming. Touching myself in the dark while I imagined all the ways I would make you pay for your cruelty."

His eyes darkened further, the pupils swallowing the irises. "You touched yourself."

"I did. Twice. It wasn't enough." You let your hand drop back to the furs. "Nothing I did to myself was enough. That's what you did to me. You ruined me for my own fingers, and then you left me alone."

"Planning and scheming," he murmured, pressing a kiss to your hip bone that was almost reverent. "And touching yourself in the dark. That sounds very industrious. What did you decide? What punishment have you devised for your wicked husband?"

"I decided you need to suffer the way I suffered." You watched his face carefully, saw the flicker of interest, of anticipation. "I decided I would make you want me so badly you couldn't think straight, and then I would deny you. I decided I would tie you to this cot and touch myself in front of you and let you watch, and watch, and watch, and never once let you inside me. I decided I would make you beg the way you made me beg."

He was very still now, his breath warm against your hip, his eyes fixed on your face with an intensity that made your heart race. "That would be a cruel punishment indeed."

"You taught me cruelty. You should be proud."

"I am." He nipped at the sensitive skin just above your hip bone, hard enough to make you jump and gasp. "I am so very proud. My wife, a quick study in vengeance." His tongue soothed the sting of his teeth. "But I notice you are not tying me to the cot. You are not touching yourself. You are not denying me anything. You are lying here, spread open, wet and wanting, letting me taste you."

You smiled. It was not a sweet smile. "Where is your armor?" you asked.

Valarr blinked. The question was so incongruous, so utterly unrelated to the situation at hand, his face still wet with you, your thighs still spread, his cock visibly straining against his smallclothes, that for a moment he simply stared at you.

"What?"

"Your armor. The black plate. The gauntlets. The gorget. All of it. Where is it?"

"In the tourney tent, I imagine." He spoke slowly, warily, as if you were a strange beast that might bite him. "My squire would have cleaned and laid it out for inspection, as he does every morning before a day of—" He stopped. His eyes narrowed with suspicion and something that might have been dawning comprehension. "Why?"

You released his hair and sat up slowly, pushing yourself back against the pillows, drawing your knees together with a deliberate, pointed movement that made his eyes flick down to your thighs with undisguised regret. You looked at him with an expression you had been perfecting since last night, sweet on the surface, sharp beneath, like honey hiding a blade.

"Take me there."

"To the tourney tent?" His voice had gone very careful, very controlled.

"To the tourney tent. Where your armor is. Where your squire has laid it out so carefully."

His brows drew together, a furrow appearing between them. "You want me to stop—" he glanced meaningfully at your thighs, at the evidence of his attentions still glistening on your skin, at the obvious, aching hard on tenting his smallclothes— "this, and walk across the tourney grounds in full view of half the realm, to my tent, because you want to see my armor?"

"I want you to put it on."

The words hung in the air between you like a challenge, like a thrown gauntlet.

Something flickered in his eyes. "You want me to put on my armor."

"Not all of it." You let your voice drop into something lower, something darker, something that made his pupils dilate and his breath catch almost imperceptibly. "Just enough. Just the pieces I want."

He was silent for a long moment, studying your face, reading the intention there. Then he sat back on his heels, still kneeling between your legs, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The gesture was casual, almost lazy, but his eyes had gone very dark.

"You want me to fuck you in my armor." It was not a question.

"I want you to finish what you started yesterday." You sat up fully, drawing your knees together, letting the shift fall down over your thighs, letting him see that you were still in control of this situation despite the fact that your thighs were still slick and your heart was still racing and your cunt was still aching with the emptiness he had left. "You were in your armor yesterday. Every time I looked at you—on the field, in the tent, standing over me with your gauntlets dripping water—you were in your armor. Every fantasy I had last night, alone in this bed with my fingers between my legs, you were wearing your armor. I imagined the sound you would make when you walked toward me. I imagined the cold of the metal against my bare skin. I imagined you taking me in your armor, still sweating from the tourney, still smelling of leather and victory." She paused, watching his face, watching the way his jaw had tightened and his hands had curled into fists against his thighs. "And then you took it off piece by piece and left me standing in the wreckage of it while you walked away in a plain linen tunic like a common hedge knight."

"Like a hedge knight." His voice was flat, but there was an edge to it now, a sharpening.

"A hedge knight would have stayed and finished what he started. A hedge knight would have put his mouth to better use. A hedge knight would have fucked me until I couldn't walk straight instead of patting me on the head and sending me to bed." You raised an eyebrow at him, letting the challenge hang in the air. "So yes. I want you in your armor. I want to feel the steel against my bare skin. I want to hear it creak and clank while you move inside me. I want to remember exactly who I married—the prince who rides like a god of war and fucks like one too, not the man who is too tired and too smug and too busy playing games to bed his wife properly." You tilted your head, letting your gaze drift pointedly to the obvious bulge in his smallclothes. "Unless, of course, you are still tired. Unless yesterday's exertions were too much for you. In which case, I am sure there is a cot somewhere you can nap on while I find other, more satisfying ways to amuse myself at this trial of seven."

The threat landed exactly as intended.

His jaw tightened until you could see the muscle jumping beneath the skin. His hands flexed against his thighs, the knuckles whitening. His breath came faster, his chest rising and falling beneath the thin linen of his tunic. And when he spoke, his voice was a low, dangerous rumble that seemed to vibrate in the very air between you, a sound that sent a shiver straight to your core and made your nipples tighten to aching points.

"Get dressed."

You smiled. Sweetly. Innocently. The smile of a woman who had just won the first tilt of the day and was already planning the second.

"As my prince commands," you murmured, and swung your legs over the side of the cot with deliberate, unhurried grace.

He caught your wrist before you could stand. The movement was so fast you barely saw it—one moment he was kneeling on the bed, the next he was pressed against your back, his chest against your spine, his mouth at your ear, his fingers wrapped around your wrist like a manacle of warm, living steel. You could feel every inch of him through the thin linen of his tunic, the hard planes of his chest, the ridged muscles of his abdomen, and pressing insistently against the curve of your lower back, the hot, rigid length of his cock, still trapped in his smallclothes, still achingly hard.

"You are going to regret this," he murmured, his lips brushing the sensitive shell of your ear, his breath warm and uneven, his voice a promise and a threat and a prayer all tangled together. "When I get you in that tent, surrounded by my armor, with no one to hear you scream and nowhere to run and nothing between us but steel and need—you are going to regret every single moment of bratty defiance you have given me this morning. Every sharp word. Every wicked look. Every time you pulled my hair and stopped my tongue and denied me what is mine."

His free hand slid around your waist, palm flat against your belly, fingers splayed wide, pulling you back against him so you could feel exactly how hard he was, exactly how much he wanted you.

"I am going to bend you over my shield," he continued, his voice dropping to a whisper that was somehow more terrifying than a shout, "and fuck you until you cannot remember your own name. I am going to take you against the armor stand and let the whole camp hear you scream. I am going to put you on your knees in the middle of my war gear and use that clever mouth until tears are running down your cheeks and you are begging me—begging me, the way you made me beg with your eyes yesterday—to let you come. And I am not going to let you. Not until you have apologized. Not until you have taken back every insolent word. Not until you have admitted, out loud, that you are mine and that no one else—no hedge knight, no high lord, no god on earth or in the heavens—could ever satisfy you the way I do."

His teeth grazed your earlobe, a sharp, bright spark of sensation that made you gasp and arch against him involuntarily.

"Do you understand me?"

You turned your head just enough to meet his eyes. Blue and brown. Burning with a fire that matched your own. The dragon's eyes, you thought, and felt a thrill of something that was half fear and half desperate, aching want.

"Prove it," you said, your voice steady despite the trembling in your thighs. "Put on the armor. Show me the prince I married. And then maybe—maybe—I'll let you have what you want."

You pulled your wrist free with a sharp twist, stood, and began to dress with hands that only trembled a little. Behind you, you heard him exhale, a long, slow breath, the breath of a man steadying himself for battle.

—

Valarr walked a half-step behind you the entire way, close enough that the heat radiating from his body seeped through the thin fabric of your gown like a fever you couldn't shake, close enough that when you passed through a narrow gap between two pavilions his hand found the curve of your backside and squeezed hard enough to make you stumble mid stride, his fingers digging into the soft flesh with proprietary confidence before delivering a sharp, stinging slap that echoed in the confined space. You shot him a glare over your shoulder, heat flooding your cheeks. He smiled back, utterly unrepentant, his eyes glittering with dark promise and the kind of smug satisfaction that made you want to slap him and kiss him in equal measure.

The camp churned with the news of the trial of seven like a kicked anthill. Everywhere you looked, men and women clustered in tight knots, speaking in low, urgent voices that hummed with equal parts dread and morbid fascination. You caught fragments as you passed, snippets of conversation that floated past your ears barely registered—"Aerion Brightflame," spoken with the particular revulsion reserved for mad dogs, and "the hedge knight, seven feet if he's an inch, and the Reachmen have flocked to his banner," and "who in the Seven Hells will stand for the accuser against a prince of the blood?"—but the words washed over you like water over stone. Your focus had narrowed to a single point, a lodestone pulling you inexorably forward: the black and red pennants of the Targaryen tourney tent, snapping and twisting in the morning breeze ahead, their fabric tongues of dragonfire against the pale blue sky.

His squire was waiting outside, a gangly boy of perhaps fifteen with anxious eyes that darted about like startled sparrows and a perpetually worried expression etched into the soft planes of a face still waiting for its first proper shave. He straightened so abruptly when he saw you both approaching that he nearly tripped over his own feet, relief flickering across his features like sunlight breaking through storm clouds.

"Your Grace—"

"Leave us," Valarr said, not breaking stride, not sparing the boy so much as a glance. "Stand guard. No one enters this tent. Not the hand himself. Not the High Septon. Not the Stranger incarnate. Do you understand?"

The boy's eyes went very wide, the whites showing all around the dark irises. He swallowed audibly, his prominent Adam's apple bobbing. "Yes, my prince. No one. Absolutely no one. I will guard the tent with my life. I swear it on my mother's—"

"See that you do."

Valarr held the tent flap open for you, the heavy canvas lifted high on his forearm, and you stepped inside, the cooler shadows of the interior washing over your flushed skin like a balm.

The space within was exactly as you remembered it from yesterday, you walked to the center of the tent, the trampled grass soft beneath your slippers, and turned to face him with deliberate slowness, letting him see the curve of your smile, the arch of your brow.

"Well, my prince," you said, your voice pitched light and teasing, a silk-wrapped needle, "shall we begin?"

He was already reaching for the gambeson draped over the stand, the padded linen garment rustling as he lifted it. "You wanted to put me in my armor. Put me in my armor. Every piece. Every buckle. Every strap."

"I want you to tell me," you said, stepping close enough that the hem of your gown brushed against his boots, taking the padded garment from his hands with deliberate slowness, your fingers dragging across his knuckles, "what you're going to do to me. Every detail. Every moment. While I dress you piece by piece."

His eyes darkened, the pupils swallowing the violet and the black alike. "You want a story?"

"I want a promise." You shook out the gambeson, holding it open for him. "I want to hear exactly what's waiting for me. Consider it... motivation to survive the day."

He slid his arms into the padded sleeves, and you stepped behind him to help guide the garment over the broad expanse of his shoulders, your fingers brushing the bare, warm skin of his arms, the corded muscle that flexed beneath your touch like a living thing. The gambeson was still cool from the night air, but beneath it, his skin was furnace-hot, radiating warmth through the padded linen. You moved around to his front and began to lace the garment closed, starting at his sternum and working your way down with excruciating slowness, your knuckles pressing against his chest with every pass of the cord, feeling the steady, accelerating thunder of his heartbeat beneath your touch.

"When I have you," he began, his voice dropping to that low, rough register that vibrated in your bones, "the first thing I am going to do is put you on your knees."

You sank down before him, not in obedience but to reach for the sabatons, kneeling at his feet to fasten the articulated steel shoes around his boots. The position was not lost on him; you watched his hands flex at his sides, the tendons standing out against the skin, watched his jaw tighten as he looked down at you kneeling before him with your hair spilling over your shoulders and your face level with his hips. "On my knees," you repeated, your voice soft and feigned innocent. "And then?"

"And then I am going to watch you take my cock out of my breeches. Slowly. No rushing, no tearing at the laces like you're unwrapping a gift. I want to see your hands on me—both hands, your fingers wrapping around my length, your thumbs tracing the ridge of the head. I want to see your face when you first feel how hard I am for you, how much I've been aching for you since I opened my eyes this morning." His voice dropped to something barely above a growl. "I've been half-hard since I woke up thinking about the sounds you made last night. Since I tasted you on my tongue. Gods, I can still taste you—salt and sweet and something I can't name but can't forget. It's been driving me mad all morning."

You fastened the second sabaton, your fingers steady despite the molten heat building low in your belly, spreading outward like wine spilled on silk. You reached for the first greave, the shaped steel plate cool against your palms. "Go on," you said, and your voice emerged steadier than you felt. "Tell me more."

"Then I'm going to put my hand in your hair—" he reached down and suited the gesture to the word, his fingers threading through the hair at your crown, tightening just enough to tilt your head back, to force your gaze up to meet his, "—and guide your mouth to me. And you are going to take me as deep as you can, until your lips meet the base of my shaft and your nose presses against my belly. I want to feel the back of your throat. I want to feel you swallow around me. I want to see tears in your eyes—not from pain, but from the effort, from wanting to take all of me, from being so full of me you can barely breathe." He paused while you buckled the first greave around his shin, your fingers working the leather straps through the buckles, pulling them snug against the padded linen beneath. "But I'm not going to let you finish me that way. Not today."

"No?" You looked up at him through your lashes, your hands pausing on the second greave.

"No." The word was a growl that seemed to originate somewhere deep in his chest, rumbling through the air between you. "Today, I want to be inside you when I spend. I want to feel you come around my cock, feel you clench and pulse and cry out my name so loudly that the whole Red Keep knows who you belong to. I want to fill you up until it drips down your thighs, the way you said you wanted yesterday, the way you whispered in my ear when you thought you were being scandalous. Every word you said to me yesterday—I remember all of it. Every filthy, beautiful, desperate word. And I intend to make every single one of them come true before the sun sets."

You rose, your body humming with anticipation like a plucked harp string, and reached for the cuirass. The black steel was cool and heavy against your palms as you lifted it from the table, the three-headed dragon crest seeming to watch you with knowing ruby eyes. You pressed the breastplate into place against his chest, and he held it there while you moved around behind him to begin fastening the side buckles. His eyes tracked you in the polished reflection of the armor, never leaving your face as your fingers worked methodically down his sides, pulling each strap through its buckle, testing each fastening with a sharp tug.

"Then I'm going to bend you over the armor stand," he said, his voice a low, dark rumble that vibrated through the steel beneath your hands, through your fingertips, into the marrow of your bones. "And I'm going to push your skirts up around your waist—slowly, so I can watch the fabric slide up the backs of your thighs, so I can see the curve of your arse inch by inch before I bare you completely. And I'm going to take you from behind, standing up, with my armor still on. You'll feel the cold steel of my cuirass against your back, hard and unyielding. You'll feel the chill of my greaves against your calves. You'll smell the metal and the leather mixed with the scent of us. But inside you, I'll be hot. Hot and hard and so deep you'll feel me in your throat, in your chest, in the very core of you."

Your breath caught in your chest like a trapped bird. Your fingers fumbled on the last buckle, the leather slipping through your grasp before you caught it again, and you heard him exhale, not quite a laugh, but something darkly satisfied, something that said he knew exactly what his words were doing to you.

"Then," he continued, relentless, merciless, "when I've had my fill of watching myself disappear inside you from behind, I'm going to carry you to the cot and put you on your back. And I'm going to take off my gauntlets so I can feel your skin with my bare hands. I'm going to hold you down, one hand between your breasts, pinning you to the mattress. And I'm going to fuck you slowly. So slowly you'll feel every inch of me, every ridge, every pulse. So slowly you'll beg me to go faster. And I won't. Not until you apologize for every bratty, insolent, maddening thing you said to me this morning."

You finished the last buckle of the cuirass with hands that trembled ever so slightly—you knew he could see it, could feel it in the minute vibrations transmitted through the steel—and reached for the gorget. The throat armor was shaped to cradle his neck, to protect the vulnerable hollow where his pulse beat visibly beneath the skin. "Apologize?" you managed, your voice emerging breathier than you intended, a half-octave higher than your usual register. "For what, precisely?"

"For pulling my hair when you knew it would drive me to distraction. For denying me what we both wanted because you were enjoying the game too much to end it. For threatening to find satisfaction elsewhere." His eyes burned into yours, twin flames of violet and shadow, and his voice dropped to something barely above a whisper, something that was somehow more commanding than any shout could be. "You are going to say 'I am yours, Valarr, and no one else's. My body is yours. My pleasure is yours. Everything I am is yours.' And then, and only then, will I let you come. Not a moment before. No matter how much you plead."

You swallowed hard. Your throat was dry as parchment left in the sun. "And if I refuse? If I'm stubborn and willful and refuse to give you the satisfaction?"

His smile was slow and wolfish and altogether dangerous, the kind of smile that would have made a lesser woman run for the hills. "Then I'll keep going until you don't. I can do this all day, sweetheart. I can bring you to the edge again and again and again until you forget your own name, until you forget why you were resisting in the first place, until the only word left in your vocabulary is 'please.' And then I'll make you wait a little longer, just because I can."

The gorget was in place, the final buckle secured beneath his left ear. Only the gauntlets remained on the table, and the helm—a sculpted thing of black steel with a dragon crest sweeping back from the crown like frozen fire. You reached for the gauntlets, the articulated steel fingers clicking softly against each other, but he caught your wrists in his bare hands before you could lift them.

"Leave them," he said, his voice rough as stone dragged over gravel. "I want to feel you. I've been waiting all morning to feel you."

And then his mouth was on yours. The kiss was a conquest and surrender woven together into a single act. His hands slid into your hair, tilting your head back to expose the vulnerable column of your throat before his mouth descended. His tongue swept into your mouth with a hunger that bordered on violence, tasting of the wine he'd drunk before you arrived, tasting of want and need and barely leashed desperation. The steel of his cuirass pressed cold and unyielding against your breasts through the thin fabric of your gown, and the contrast of sensations, cold metal against your front, hot mouth against your lips, hard steel against your soft flesh, soft tongue sliding against yours, made your head spin like you'd drunk an entire flagon of the Arbor gold on the table.

You kissed him back with everything you had, with every ounce of frustration and desire and desperate wanting that had been building since yesterday, since this morning, since the moment you'd first laid eyes on him. Your hands fisted in the fabric of his gambeson where it showed above the cuirass, pulling him closer, closer, until the steel was pressed so tight against you that you could feel the steel imprinting on your skin through your dress.

"Gods," you gasped against his mouth, pulling back just far enough to drag air into your burning lungs, "I want you. I want you now. Right now."

"Then have me."

He walked you backward with the steady, unstoppable momentum of a tide, his armored body a wall of heat and steel pushing against your softness, until your spine hit the armor stand. The wooden frame rattled violently, a pauldron clattering to the trampled grass with a dull thud, a vambrace following it a moment later, and then his hands were on your hips, the heat of his bare palms searing through your gown, lifting you onto the edge of the campaign table with effortless strength. Your skirts bunched around your thighs, the fabric rucking up past your knees, past midthigh, until the cool morning air kissed skin that was already flushed and feverish. His armored body pressed between your legs, the steel of his cuirass shockingly cold against the heated, sensitive skin of your inner thighs, and you wrapped your legs around his waist with a desperation that surprised you, pulling him closer, the ridges of the armor pressing into your soft flesh in ways that would leave marks, and you didn't care, you didn't care at all.

"Tell me you want this," he said, his voice ragged, his forehead pressed against yours, his breath coming in harsh pants that mingled with your own. "Tell me you want me. I need to hear you say it. I need to know this isn't just—I need to know you want this as much as I do."

"I want you," you breathed, the words spilling out of you like water from a cracked dam, unstoppable and honest and raw. "I want you all the time, every moment of every day, until it drives me to distraction. I am yours, Valarr Targaryen. I am yours and no one else's, now and always, today and tomorrow and every day after. My body is yours. My pleasure is yours. Everything I am is yours."

He kissed you again, harder, more desperately, the careful control he'd maintained all morning finally snapping like an overwound harp string. One hand left your hip and you felt him fumbling between your bodies, working at the laces of his breeches with urgent, unsteady fingers, and then he was free, and you felt the hot, hard length of him pressing against your inner thigh, leaving a trail of slick moisture against your skin.

The first press of him against your entrance made you gasp into his mouth. You were still slick from his attentions this morning, your body still aching and empty from the interrupted promise of the night before, still desperate and ready despite—or perhaps because of—everything. And when he pushed inside you—one long, slow, relentless thrust that filled you completely, that stretched you in ways that walked the perfect line between pleasure and exquisite ache—you cried out so loudly you were certain the entire camp must have heard, certain the squire outside the tent must be blushing to the roots of his hair, certain the news would spread through the tourney grounds faster than word of the trial itself.

"Yes," you sobbed, your head falling back, your nails digging into the back of his neck hard enough to leave crescents in his skin, your inner muscles clenching around the sudden, overwhelming fullness of him. "Yes, yes, yes—"

He took you with a ferocity that drove the breath from your lungs in sharp, punched-out cries, each thrust hitting deep enough to make your vision blur at the edges. His bare hands gripped your hips, fingers digging into the soft flesh hard enough to bruise, pulling you onto him with every driving thrust, meeting your body with his own in a rhythm that was more storm than song. The armor stand rattled and creaked beneath you with the force of his movements, the remaining pieces of armor clanking against each other like discordant bells, and you had to brace one hand behind you on the table to keep from being driven backward onto the scattered steel.

The sound of it was utterly obscene, and you were past caring. The clank of steel against steel. The creak of leather straps straining. The wet, rhythmic slide of your bodies joining and parting and joining again. The raw, desperate, animal sounds tearing from your throat with every thrust, moans and gasps and half-formed words that might have been his name or might have been prayers. You wrapped your legs tighter around his waist, your ankles locking behind the small of his back, and the slight shift in angle made him hit a spot deep inside you that sent white lightning arcing up your spine, that made you scream, that made your inner muscles flutter and clench around him in involuntary spasm.

"That's it," he growled against your ear, his voice dark with satisfaction and unspent hunger. "Let them hear you. Let the whole camp hear who you belong to. Let the gods hear. I don't care. I want everyone to know."

"Valarr—Valarr—I'm going to—I'm so close, I'm going to—"

"Come for me." The command was a growl, a plea, a demand all at once. "Now. I want to feel you."

The command shattered what little control you had left. Your orgasm crashed over you like a wave in a storm, white-hot and blinding, starting somewhere deep in your core and radiating outward in pulses of pure, incandescent pleasure. You screamed his name so loudly your voice cracked and broke on the second syllable, your head thrown back, your spine arching, your body convulsing around him in rhythmic, milking pulses that drew a guttural groan from somewhere deep in his chest. The world went white at the edges, then gray, then nothing at all for a suspended moment of pure, perfect oblivion.

He followed you over the edge moments later, burying himself to the hilt inside you with a final, deep thrust, his face buried in the curve of your neck, his breath hot and ragged against your sweat-damp skin, his body shuddering with the force of his release. You felt him pulse inside you—once, twice, three times, four—felt the hot, flooding spill of his seed filling you, felt it begin to drip down your thighs even before he pulled out, a slow, warm trickle that traced paths down your trembling skin.

For a long moment, neither of you moved. The tent was filled with the sound of ragged, desperate breathing, yours, his, indistinguishable from each other, two sets of lungs working in tandem. The armor stand creaked beneath you with a final, settling groan. The fallen pauldron gleamed on the grass, its polished surface now smudged with fingerprints. Somewhere in the distance, a crier was calling something about the trial of seven, his voice high and thin and utterly irrelevant, a fly buzzing at the edge of a world that had shrunk to the space between your bodies.

Valarr lifted his head from your shoulder slowly, as if it weighed more than his helm, and looked at you with those eyes still hazy with the remnants of pleasure, still dark with hunger despite everything you'd just done, still burning with something that looked terrifyingly like devotion and his lips were kiss-swollen, and there was a mark on his neck where your nails had raked across the skin, and he was the most beautiful thing you had ever seen.

"I believe," he said, his voice hoarse and scraped-raw, the words emerging between still-labored breaths, "that I owed you a proper apology. For my behavior. For my presumption. For everything."

You laughed, a breathless, exhausted, utterly satisfied sound that bubbled up from somewhere deep in your chest and emerged as something between a giggle and a sigh. The movement made him shift inside you, still half-hard, and you gasped at the oversensitive friction. "Accepted," you managed, your own voice barely more than a whisper. "Though I should warn you—if that's how you apologize, I may need to find reasons to be cross with you more often."

—

Outside the tent, the squire stood at rigid attention, his spine so straight it was on the verge of snapping, his face the color of curdled milk, his eyes fixed on the distant treeline with the desperate intensity of a man who was trying very, very hard to be somewhere else entirely. His name was Edric, he was fifteen years old, he had been in Prince Valarr's service for exactly eight months, and he was fairly certain that nothing in his life had prepared him for this.

He had heard everything. Everything. The first moan had been bad enough, a high, breathy sound that had made his ears turn pink and his gaze drop to his boots. The second moan had been worse, drawn out and trembling, followed by a rhythmic creaking that could only be the armor stand, the armor stand, gods preserve him, the very armor stand he had polished that morning, taking a structural battering it had never been designed to withstand. And then there had been words. Words. The princess had said things—things he was fairly certain he should not repeat even under threat of torture—and the prince had responded in a voice so low and rough and possessive that Edric had actually taken three involuntary steps away from the tent flap.

Now there was screaming. Not the bad kind of screaming but the kind of screaming that made his entire body flush with heat and his throat go dry and his brain very pointedly refuse to form coherent thoughts.

He was going to die. He was going to die of embarrassment right here, outside his prince's tent, and the maesters would have to invent an entirely new category of death to explain what had happened to him.

Maybe I should have become a septon, he thought miserably. Septons don't have to stand outside tents listening to—

A particularly sharp cry rang out from within, followed by the unmistakable sound of something wooden and structural creaking in rhythmic protest. Edric squeezed his eyes shut and began mentally reciting the names of all seven aspects of the Seven. Father, Mother, Warrior, Maiden, Smith, Crone, Stranger—

The Stranger, he felt, was particularly appropriate. He was fairly certain he was about to die of embarrassment.

"VALARR—yes—right THERE—"

Edric opened his eyes and fixed them on a cloud that was drifting lazily across the morning sky. That was a nice cloud. Clouds were safe. Clouds did not make sounds that would haunt his dreams for the rest of his natural life.

He was so focused on the cloud—and on mentally reciting every prayer he knew, and on wondering whether it was possible to un-hear something through sheer force of will—that he did not notice the approach of the man until a shadow fell across him and a voice spoke from approximately two feet away.

"Where is my son's armor?"

Edric jumped approximately three feet into the air and spun around with a strangled yelp that he would deny to his dying day.

Prince Baelor Breakspear stood before him.

"Y-y-your Grace." Edric's voice cracked on every syllable, pitching upward like a boy of twelve instead of a squire of fifteen. "Prince Valarr's armor is—ah—it is—it is inside the tent. Yes. Inside. The tent. Where the armor is."

Baelor's eyes, the same deep blue as his son's left eye, narrowed slightly. "Are you quite well, lad? You look rather flushed."

"I am perfectly well, Your Grace. Perfectly. It is only the—the heat. The morning heat. Very hot this morning. Unusually hot. I was just—standing here. Guarding. As one does."

Baelor studied him for a long, uncomfortable moment, then seemed to decide that squires were simply peculiar creatures and not worth further investigation. "Good. I have need of the armor before—"

His hand was already reaching for the tent flap and Edric's soul departed his body.

"Your Grace, wait—"

Baelor stopped, his fingers an inch from the canvas. He had heard something.

A sound. A distinctly human sound. "Oh, Valarr—" The voice from within was high and breathy and unmistakably feminine, stretched taut with something between ecstasy and desperation. "Right THERE—don't stop—gods, don't you DARE stop—"

Baelor Breakspear's hand froze in midair. His fingers curled inward, retreating from the canvas as though it had suddenly burst into flame.

Edric wanted to die. He wanted the earth to open up and swallow him whole. He wanted to be anywhere else in the Seven Kingdoms—the Wall, the deserts of Dorne, the smoking ruins of Valyria itself—anywhere but standing next to his prince's father while said prince was audibly, enthusiastically, thoroughly fucking his wife twenty feet away.

"I—Your Grace, I am under—under very strict orders—" Edric's voice was barely a whisper, his face now achieving a shade of crimson that would have impressed a painter. "No one is to enter the tent. Not anyone. Not for any reason. Those were—those were Prince Valarr's exact words. His very exact words. He was quite specific."

Another sound from within, a rhythmic creaking, the unmistakable clank of steel against something wooden, a low, rough, guttural male groan that was absolutely, undeniably, catastrophically Prince Valarr's voice.

Baelor stood frozen outside his son's tent with his mouth slightly open and his cheeks slowly, inexorably turning the color of a summer rose.

"Valarr! VALARR—I'm—I'm going to—I'm—"

A scream. Female. Ecstatic. Utterly, comprehensively unmistakable. It was the kind of scream that left nothing to the imagination—the kind of scream that painted a very detailed picture of exactly what was happening inside that tent, a picture that Edric desperately, desperately did not want to be seeing in his mind's eye.

And then, as if the scream had not been damning enough:

"VALARR! YES! YES, RIGHT THERE—FILL ME UP—DON'T STOP—"

The silence that followed was deafening.

Baelor Breakspear stared at the tent flap as though it had personally insulted his entire bloodline. His hand, still raised, slowly lowered to his side. His jaw worked soundlessly for a moment—opening, closing, opening again—like a fish that had been unexpectedly yanked from the water and was still trying to process its new reality.

"I..." He cleared his throat. "I... see."

"The armor," Edric whispered miserably, staring at the ground as though it might offer him salvation, "is... occupied, Your Grace."

Baelor's voice, when he finally found it, was remarkably steady for a man who had just been forced to confront the fact that his son was, at present, engaged in activities that would make a Dornish courtesan blush. "Occupied."

"Very occupied."

"Yes—like that—exactly like that—oh, gods, I can feel you so deep—"

"Extremely occupied," Edric amended, his voice barely audible. "Thoroughly occupied. Could not be more occupied if they tried."

A long, agonizing pause. From within the tent came the unmistakable sound of bodies shifting, the creak of the cot—the cot, gods, they had moved to the cot—and a low, breathy laugh that was definitely the princess.

"Well," Baelor said, and his voice had acquired a slightly strangled quality, as though someone had their hands wrapped around his throat, "it is... it is good that they are... that the marriage is... that they are clearly very..." He paused, searching for a word that would not make this situation worse. "...compatible.""

"Harder—HARDER—I want to feel you for DAYS—"

Baelor closed his eyes. He drew a long, slow breath through his nose. He opened his eyes again and looked at the sky as though beseeching the Seven themselves for intervention.

"Right," he said, to no one in particular. "Right. Well. I suppose... I suppose I shall find armor elsewhere. Ser Humfrey Hardyng may have something suitable. He is roughly my same proportions. Give or take. Or perhaps Lord Ashford keeps spares in the armory. For... for emergencies." He paused.

"VALARR, I'M GOING TO COME AGAIN—"

Baelor turned on his heel with the rigid, mechanical dignity of a man who had decided that the only way to survive this encounter was to pretend it had never happened. His movements were stiff, precise, the movements of a soldier retreating in good order from a battle that could not be won.

"I shall go now," he announced to the world at large. He took three long strides toward the main thoroughfare of the camp.

"Your Grace!" Edric called after him, his voice cracking with desperation. "Shall I—should I—do you want me to tell Prince Valarr that you came looking for him? When he is—when he is finished with his—with the armor?"

Baelor did not break stride. He did not slow down. He did not look back. If anything, he appeared to walk faster.

"You may tell my son," he said, his voice carrying back over his shoulder with a strained composure that was honestly quite heroic under the circumstances, "that I wish him joy of his morning. That I am pleased—very pleased—that his marriage is so... vigorous. That I am profoundly, deeply, inexpressibly glad that I did not walk into that tent. And that if either of them ever—ever—speaks of this in my presence, I shall deny it happened until my dying breath."

He paused, just for a moment, and added in a tone of immense, bone-deep exhaustion: "The Seven give me strength."

And then Prince Baelor Breakspear, the finest knight of the realm, disappeared around the corner of a supply tent with the speed of a man who had suddenly remembered an urgent appointment on the other side of the known world.

Edric stood alone, staring at the spot where his prince's father had been, listening to the sounds still emerging from within the tent—a rhythmic thumping now, another rising moan, and something that sounded distressingly like the cot beginning to splinter—and wondered if it was physically possible to die of embarrassment.

It was, he concluded, probably not possible. Which meant he would have to live with this memory for the rest of his natural life.

"Oh—oh—VALARR—"

The air was thick with everything at once—roasting mutton, dark ale, sweat from a hundred bodies packed onto rough-hewn benches, the smoke that curled lazy and grey toward the high rafters where banners hung in the dim.

You sat pressed against your husband's side, your amber silk gown warm against your thighs where it pooled across the bench, and you were not listening to Lord Harren Blackwood.

You had stopped listening approximately seven minutes ago, somewhere between "barley yield" and "and if you consider the oat rotation, my lord, the true cost is—" and you had not been missed.

Lord Blackwood's attention was fixed entirely on Maekar's face, his ruddy cheeks flushed from wine and earnest desperation, his hands gesturing with the ink-stained cuff of his wool tunic as he charted numbers in the air like a septon casting prayers.

He did not see you.

He did not see how your fingers had begun to trace slow circles on your own knee beneath the table, or how your gaze had drifted from his tedious mouth to your husband's jaw.

Maekar's jaw.

That hard line of it, the close-cropped beard that did nothing to soften the cut of his bone, the muscle that worked beneath his temple as Lord Blackwood droned on.

He was being patient.

You could feel it in the way his hand had gone still around his cup of wine, the way his shoulders had settled into a posture of strained courtesy. He was letting the man finish.

And you were very, very bored.

“My lord, as I was saying,” the elderly lord continued, oblivious, “the western granaries produced nearly twenty percent less grain than expected.”

Prince Maekar nodded once. “Then import from the Reach before winter drives the prices higher. Waiting will only worsen the matter.”

You sat beside him, slowly dying of boredom.

Grain.

More grain.

An astonishing amount of grain.

“My prince is wise,” the lord agreed. “Though transportation costs remain a concern—”

You leaned toward your husband. You shifted closer to him, letting your shoulder press against his arm, the silk of your gown whispering softly against his sleeve. He did not react—not visibly—but you felt the slight hitch in his breathing, the way his chest paused for half a heartbeat before continuing its steady rise and fall.He knew you were there.

He always knew.

“Maekar.”

His violet eyes flicked toward you briefly. “Not now.”

Lord Blackwood continued. “If we could negotiate lower tariffs—”

A rather pleasant thought crossed your mind at that moment, humming beneath your breath as you took a sip of your wine and then smiled sweetly.

“Did you know,” you murmured into Maekar's ear, “that I've spent the last ten minutes imagining how quickly you'd drag me out of this hall if I interrupted your very important discussion about wheat?”

The moment the words slipped from your mouth, Maekar froze, a brief moment long enough for him to send you a scalding glare, “Tariffs,” he said evenly to the lord, staring straight ahead, “can be renegotiated.”

The lord nodded eagerly. “Yes, exactly, Your Grace.”

Your lips brushed the shell of your husband's ear, close enough that your breath was warm against his skin, and you let your voice drop to a low, honeyed purr that only he would hear.

“My lord husband,“ you murmured, your tongue tracing the ridge of his ear just once, featherlight, “I have been sitting here for the better part of an hour, listening to a man describe the moisture content of barley, and I have come to a decision.”

The muscle in his jaw jumped. His eyes did not leave Lord Blackwood's face, but you felt the shift in the air between them—the way his attention, that vast and careful attention he was giving the grain lord, fractured.

“Is that so,” he said, his voice flat, pitched for the conversation he was still technically having. Lord Blackwood, blessedly oblivious, continued talking about soil acidity.

“It is,” you breathed. You hand slid from your knee to his thigh beneath the table, palm flat, pressing through the wool of his breeches. “I've decided that you are paying too much attention to oats and not nearly enough to me.”

The muscle beneath your hand tensed. Hard. His thigh was solid, all dense strength from years of riding and sword work, and you traced the edge of it with your fingertips, a slow exploration that stopped just short of where he would feel it most.

“And I've further decided,” you continued, your lips still brushing his ear, “that if you do not find a way to end this conversation in the next minute, I will slide my hand higher. And I will find out exactly how much of your attention I can claim while Lord Blackwood explains the difference between spring wheat and winter wheat.”

Maekar's hand moved.

It dropped below the table and closed around your wrist—firm, his calloused fingers a band of heat around your delicate bones. He did not squeeze hard enough to hurt. Just hard enough to stop you.

“Wife,” he said, and his voice had dropped. Lower now. A growl that vibrated through his chest and into your shoulder where you leaned against him. “That is not a game for this table.”

“I'm not playing a game,” you said, and you let your teeth graze his earlobe. Just once. Just enough to feel him shiver. “I'm making a point.”

Lord Blackwood took a breath. “—so you see, my lord, the adjustment would only be a few silver stags per bushel, and I assure you the yield increase would—”

Maekar turned his head. Just slightly. Just enough that his mouth was against your temple, his breath hot against your skin, and his voice was a low, rough warning that only you could hear.

“If you do not stop,” he said, “I will throw you over my shoulder and carry you out of this hall like a sack of flour. In front of every lord here. In front of your Dornish friend, who has been watching you since you sat down.”

Your heart stuttered.

A flash of heat, sharp and bright, that traveled from your chest straight down to your core.

You knew that tone.

You knew the weight in it, the promise that was not a threat but a statement of intent. He would do it. He absolutely would do it.

You drew back.

Just enough to meet his gaze, your eyes catching the firelight, and you let your mouth curve into a slow, deliberate smile.

“You wouldn't,” you said, and your voice was a challenge now, a dare wrapped in silk.

His violet eyes held yours.

“Try me.”

You should have stopped there. You knew you should have stopped there. The line was drawn, the warning delivered, and any sensible woman would have pressed her knees together, taken a sip of wine, and waited for the conversation to end with her dignity intact.

But you had never been sensible. And you were not done.

You let your smile widen—just a fraction, just enough to show you knew exactly what you were doing—and then you turned your head.

Across the table, Lord Anders Dustin sat lounging in his seat with the easy grace of a man who had no particular business at this feast and no particular care for who knew it. His dark hair was pulled back from his face, the silver scar on his brow catching the torchlight, and his sharp brown eyes had been watching you for some time.

You had felt his gaze on your skin like a whisper, like a question. And now you answered it.

You smiled at him. Slow. Deliberate. The kind of smile that meant something—or at least, the kind of smile that could be mistaken for meaning something.

Anders's mouth curved in response, a lazy, knowing tilt that acknowledged the game you were playing. He raised his cup to you, just slightly, a salute that said I see you, and I see him, and I am very curious how this ends.

Lord Blackwood was still talking. He had moved on to drainage. Nonsense words, water and silt and percentages that you did not hear because you were still smiling at the Dornishman, and because Maekar's hand had tightened around your wrist.

“That,” Maekar said, his voice so low it was barely a vibration, “was a mistake.”

And then you squeezed his thigh, palmed the visible evidence of his straining cock and grinned.

Hard.

The lord blinked. “Are you unwell, Prince Maekar?”

“No.”

You squeezed once more and feeling quite emboldened by the wine and the fact that your husband hadn't paid you much attention since the feast began, moved your hand higher and slipped beneath his legs, fluttering your eyelashes when your husband quietly groaned beneath his breath.

“You appear tense.”

“I am listening.”

“You do not seem to be listening.”

“I assure you,” Maekar replied through clenched teeth, “I hear every word.”

You rested your chin on your hand. “How impressive. A prince capable of discussing grain and tariffs while wondering whether his wife is about to behave herself.”

Maekar inhaled, slowly, dangerously and you smirked behind your cup, taking another sip as you tried to appear as innocent without making it obvious that you were now rubbing the evidence of his hardening cock beneath—as you promptly deemed it at that moment—too much clothing.

The lord frowned. “Your Grace?”

“The harvest,” Maekar said, voice strained, “was lower than expected.” a hiss tore from his lips as he rolled his shoulders, your fingers squeezing once more over the fabric of his breeches, grinning innocently at him, though he paid you now attention.

“Yes.”

“And the grain must be moved before winter.”

“Yes.”

“And if my wife says another word, I may personally carry her from this hall.”

Lord Blackwood blinked.

You grinned. “Carry me?”

Maekar finally looked at you. The stare promised consequences.

“Be quiet.”

You rose an eyebrow in challenge. “Make me.” The silence that followed was deafening. Across the table, one knight abruptly became fascinated by his wine. Another choked on his drink.

The lord looked between the two of you and wisely decided that perhaps grain could wait until tomorrow. “On second thought,” he said, standing quickly, “I believe we have discussed the matter sufficiently.”

The moment he was gone, Maekar seized your wrist beneath the table.

“Seven hells,” he muttered as his head tilted back, violet eyes darkening as you looked entirely too pleased with yourself.

“At least you're paying attention to me now.”

His jaw tightened.

“Keep smiling.”

“Why?”

“Because in five minutes,” Maekar said, rising from his seat, “you are going to regret reminding me that I have been ignoring you all evening.”

For the first time during the feast, you were no longer bored. “Is that a threat, Your Grace?”

He leaned towards you, lips pulling back and then he did not unexpected—your husband's lips wrapped around your earlobe and then he nipped, “No, sweet wife, it's a fucking promise. Now behave, or else I'll bend you over this fucking table and shove my cock so deep in your cunt that you'll be screaming my name,” and then he leaned back, looking entirely too pleased with himself at the flustered look on your face, “and I am seconds away from doing so.”

You cleared your throat, but his fingers wrapped around your wrist before you could pull your hand away, “I do not think I gave you permission to stop,” and then your lips parted, his violet gaze clashing against your own and then he grunted, “fuck it, we're leaving.”

You laughed.

It was a bright, ringing sound, the laugh you used when you knew you were being wicked and wanted everyone to know you knew it. It cut through Lord Blackwood's monologue like a blade, drawing his attention for the first time in minutes, drawing the eyes of the nearest tables, drawing Anders Dustin's amused gaze and the tilt of his scarred brow.

The lord, who knew better than most than to utter a word, glanced away and took careful interest in the plate of untouched food in front of him, “We will continue this discussion on the morrow, I find that I must tend to far more important matters.”

You did not see the hear the scrape of Maekar's chair. You only felt the air shift, the sudden absence of his warmth at your side, and then his hands were on you—one gripping your arm, the other sliding around your waist as he pulled you up from your seat with a strength that left no room for resistance—

and then threw you over his shoulder, ignoring the several gasps that tumbled from the ladies huddled somewhere in the corner of the hall, gossiping most like, your husband paid them no mind and turned to face his brother, Prince Baelor Targaryen who looked far more amused at the lack of decorum than he had any right to be.

“Maekar,” Baelor murmured beneath his breath, “this is not a fitting image of a prince of the realm to act,” Maekar grunted.

“Fuck off, I've had enough of this fucking feast and talks of grain, now please excuse me, I have to teach my wife some manners,” and then Maekar did indeed keep promise to his words when he carried you the hall.

The world swung upside down, stone and torchlight and gasping faces tumbling past your vision as Maekar's shoulder drove into your stomach hard enough to steal your breath.

His arm locked across the backs of your thighs like iron, your crimson gown pooling around your ears, the silk of your skirts sliding against your face as the hall spun to a stop.

“Maekar,” you gasped, the word punched out of you by the impact, but your husband was already walking, boots striking the flagstones with the unhurried rhythm of a man who had nowhere else to be and no one to answer to.

Behind you, the hall erupted. A lady's shriek, cut short. The scrape of a chair pushed back too fast. And beneath it all, Baelor's laughter—low, silken, utterly delighted—following you past the doors like a ribbon of sound.Your hands found Maekar's back, gripping the leather of his doublet as you tried to right yourself, but the angle was wrong, your weight balanced on his shoulder with nothing to brace against but the broad span of his spine.

Your hair swung forward, strands catching in your mouth, and you spat them out with an undignified huff.

“Put me down.” His hand slid up the back of your calf, callused fingers pressing hard enough to leave marks.

“No.”

The corridor swallowed the torchlight. Damp granite chilled the bare skin of your arm where your sleeve had ridden up, and the echo of Maekar's boots flattened against the narrow walls, footsteps chasing each other into the dark ahead.

You heard the whisper of a servant pressing themselves against the wall to let the prince pass, heard the sharp intake of breath, heard the scurry of retreating feet.

“Everyone is staring,” you said, your voice muffled by the angle, by the fabric of his doublet pressing against your cheek.

“Let them.” His hand was still on your calf, thumb tracing the seam of your stocking, and the touch was deliberate—not absent, not accidental. He was touching you like he owned you, like the corridor was his chamber and your leg was his to map in the dark.

Your face burned. “You made a scene.”

His laugh was a grunt, barely a sound at all, but you felt it move through his shoulder, through the meat of his back where your hands still clung. “I haven't even started.”

The corridor turned. The air changed—cooler, damper, the smell of old stone and something earthier. The tower stairs. You heard them before you saw them, the hollow echo of a space that opened upward into darkness.

Maekar's hand left your calf. You felt the absence like a loss, the ghost of his fingers still warm on your skin. Then his palm landed flat on your arse, squeezing once, hard, and you yelped.

“That's for smiling at the Dornish lord.”

“I didn't—”

“You did.” His voice was flat, matter-of-fact. “Three times. Once when he complimented the wine, once when he said your gown suited you, and once when he leaned close enough to touch your hand.”

Your mouth opened. Closed. “He was being polite.”

“He was being a cunt. You thought I didn't pay attention to you? You grabbed my cock, teased me and now you want to complain? Fuck that.”

The stairs began. Each step jolted through you, his shoulder driving into your stomach with every downward stride—no, upward. He was carrying you up, not down. The tower. The royal apartments. Your chambers.

His thumb hooked the top of your stocking and pulled. The silk snapped against your skin, sharp and stinging, and you gasped.

“You should have thought twice before wearing red,” he said, his voice low, almost thoughtful. “Makes me want to tear it off you.”

Your pulse hammered. “It's the Targaryen color.”

“It's my color. On you. In this light.” His hand slid higher, fingers brushing the bare skin of your inner thigh, and you felt the heat of his palm like a brand. “Makes me want to put my mouth on every inch you've covered.”

You couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. The stairs kept turning, the walls close and dark, and his hand was still moving, fingers tracing the edge of your smallclothes through the silk of your stocking, and you were wet—you could feel it, the slick heat gathering between your thighs, the shameful, aching want that bloomed every time he touched you.

“Maekar.” His name came out wrong, too breathy, too desperate. “I was bored and you were talking about grain.”

He stopped walking.

The sudden stillness was worse than the movement. You hung over his shoulder, your blood rushing in your ears, your cunt clenching around nothing, waiting.

His hand left your thigh. “And you thought smiling at another man, teasing me like you didn't expect this outcome? Oh, no, no. You'll fucking learn, sweet wife.”

You heard the click of a latch. The groan of a door swinging open. Warmth washed over you—candlelight, the smell of beeswax and dried lavender, the familiar scent of your chambers.

He stepped inside. Kicked the door shut behind him. The sound of the lock turning was louder than you expected.

He crossed the room in three strides, and then you were falling, the world righting itself as he dumped you onto the bed, the mattress catching your weight with a creak of ropes and feathers. You bounced once, your gown tangling around your legs, your hair wild across your face, and before you could push yourself upright, he was there—one knee on the bed, his hands gripping your ankles, pulling you flat.

“Stay.”

The word was a command, not a request, and your body obeyed before your mind caught up, your legs stilling, your hands falling to your sides.

He looked down at you. The candlelight caught the silver of his hair, turned his violet eyes to molten amethyst, and his jaw was set, his stubbled cheek shadowed, his chest rising and falling with the breath of a man who had carried his wife through the Red Keep and was not finished with her.

“You're going to learn,” he said, “what happens when you smile at other men.”

So perhaps this wasn't because you had teased him, but rather assumed that he hadn't paid attention to you

Your throat tightened.

“I—”

“Shut up.” He said it without heat, the way he said everything, and then he leaned down, his hands finding the neckline of your gown, and he pulled.

The fabric tore.

Not the careful unlacing of a maid's hands, not the patient work of a husband undressing his wife—a rip, a surrender, the sound of silk giving way to force. Cool air hit your chest, your stomach, the tops of your thighs as he rent the gown down the middle, baring you to the candlelight in your shift and stockings and nothing else.

You gasped. Your hands flew up to cover yourself, but he caught your wrists, pinned them to the mattress above your head, and held you there with one hand while the other traced the line of your collarbone, the swell of your breast through the thin linen of your shift.

“Pretty,” he said, and the word was rough, almost reverent. “So fucking pretty like this. Spread out for me. Waiting.”

Your breath came in short, sharp pulls. “Maekar—”

“I'm going to fuck you," he said, his voice dropping, his thumb finding your nipple through the linen and pressing, circling, watching your face as you bit your lip. “I'm going to fuck you until you forget every man in that hall exists. Until the only name you remember is mine.”

He released your wrists. Stepped back. His hands went to his belt, working the buckle with the practiced ease of a man who undressed in the dark more often than the light, and you watched him—watched the leather fall away, watched his fingers find the laces of his breeches, watched him free his cock.

It was thick.

Heavy.

The head flushed dark, already slick with something that caught the candlelight, and your mouth went dry.

“On your knees.”

You moved before the words finished leaving his mouth, rolling off the bed, your bare feet finding the cold stone floor, your knees pressing into the rug at his feet. The torn gown pooled around your hips, your shift rucked up to your waist, and you looked up at him from the floor, your heart hammering so hard you could feel it in your throat.

His hand found your hair.

Wrapped around the tumbling waves, twisted, pulled until your head tilted back, your throat bared, your lips parted.

“Open.”

You opened your mouth. He guided his cock to your lips, the head pressing against the soft heat of your tongue, and you tasted him—salt and skin and the musk of his arousal, clean and sharp and wholly him. Your lips closed around him, and his hand tightened in your hair, and he pushed deeper.

Not rough.

Not gentle.

The weight of him filling your mouth, stretching your lips, sliding across your tongue until the head pressed against the back of your throat and you gagged, your hands flying up to grip his thighs.

“Breathe through your nose,” he said, his voice steady, his hips rocking forward once, twice, seating himself deeper. “You can take it.”

You tried. Your nose burned, your eyes watered, and his cock was thick in your throat, pulsing against your tongue, and you wanted—gods, you wanted—to please him, to take all of him, to feel him lose control in your mouth.

Your hands found the backs of his thighs, nails digging into the leather of his boots, and you relaxed your throat the way you'd learned, the way you'd practiced in the dark when you were alone and thinking of him, and he slid deeper, his cock filling you completely, your nose pressed against the coarse hair at his base.

He groaned.

The sound was low, guttural, punched out of him, and his hand in your hair tightened, holding you there, holding you still while his cock twitched on your tongue.

“Good girl,” he breathed. “Fucking good girl.”

He pulled back, slow, letting you breathe, letting you gasp against his skin before he pushed in again, setting a rhythm—deep and slow, each thrust pressing you open, each withdrawal leaving you empty and aching for more.

Your jaw ached.

Your throat burned.

Your cunt was dripping, slick and desperate, clenching around nothing as you knelt at his feet and let him fuck your mouth, let him use you the way he needed, the way you needed him to.

His breathing changed. Shortened. His hips stuttered, once, and he pulled out, his cock sliding across your lips, leaving a trail of spit and the taste of him on your tongue.

“Maekar...” you whined in protest.

“On the bed.” His voice was rough, frayed at the edges. “Face down.”

You scrambled up, your knees weak, your shift clinging to your sweat-slicked skin, and you threw yourself onto the bed, face-down, your cheek pressed to the furs, your arse in the air.

You heard him behind you—the creak of the bed frame, the rustle of fabric, the low, rough sound of his breathing.His hands found your hips. Gripped. Pulled you back until you were on your knees, your face buried in the pillows, your cunt bare and wet and waiting.

“Look at you.” His voice was almost wondering. “Soaking, just for me.”

You couldn't answer. Couldn't form words. Your whole body was a prayer, a plea, a desperate, wordless begging for him to fill you, to take you, to claim you until you couldn't remember your own name.

He leaned over you, his chest pressing against your back, his breath hot against your ear. “You want my cock?”

“Yes.” The word was a sob.

“Say it.”

“I want your cock.” Your voice broke. “Please, Maekar, please—”

He pulled back. His hand left your hip. And then he was there, the head of his cock pressing against your entrance, slick and hot and thick, and he pushed.

The stretch was everything. The burn, the fullness, the way your body opened for him, swallowed him, gripped him like it had been waiting for this since the moment you met.

He seated himself to the hilt in one long, slow thrust, and you cried out, your fingers clawing at the furs, your back arching, your cunt clenching around him.

“Fuck,” he breathed. “Fuck, you're tight.”

He didn't move.

Just stayed there, buried inside you, his cock throbbing, his breath ragged, his hands gripping your hips hard enough to bruise.

“You feel that?” His voice was low, almost tender. “That's me. Inside you. Where I belong.”

You nodded, your face pressed to the pillows, tears leaking from the corners of your eyes.

“Say it.”

“You're inside me.” Your voice was muffled, broken. “You belong inside me.”

He pulled out.

Slow.

Almost all the way, until only the head remained, stretching your entrance, and then he thrust back in, harder this time, the slap of his hips against your arse loud in the quiet room.

You moaned.

Lost.

Shameless.

He set a rhythm. “This is what you wanted, isn't it? To fucking tease me, to test my fucking patience? Now fucking take the punishment.”

Hard and fast, each thrust driving you forward into the mattress, your body rocking with the force of him, his balls slapping against your clit with every stroke.

The sound of it—wet and obscene and perfect—filled the room, filled your ears, filled your head until there was nothing but him, his cock, his hands, his breath, his voice.

“Whose wife are you?”

“Yours.”

“Whose cunt is this?”

“Yours.”

“Who do you belong to?”

You couldn't answer.

The pleasure was building too fast, coiling in your belly, spreading through your limbs like fire, and you were close, so close, your cunt clenching around him with every thrust, your body begging for the release it couldn't name.

His hand found your hair. Pulled. Forced your head back, your spine arching, your throat bared to the ceiling. “I asked you a question, woman.”

“You,” you gasped. “I belong to you.”

“Good girl.” His hand released your hair, slid down your spine, gripped your hip. “Now come for me.”

Your orgasm hit like a wave, like a fall, like the world ending and beginning in the same breath. Your cunt clenched around him, gripping him in waves, and you cried out—his name, a sound, a sob—as the pleasure tore through you, leaving you shaking, gasping, boneless beneath him.

He didn't stop. Kept fucking you through it, his thrusts growing rougher, less controlled, his breath coming in harsh, ragged gasps.

And then he stilled, his cock buried to the hilt, his body shuddering, and you felt it—the hot pulse of his release, filling you, marking you, claiming you from the inside.

He stayed there.

Breathing.

His forehead pressed to the back of your neck, his weight heavy and warm, his cock still twitching inside you.

Minutes passed.

Or hours.

You couldn't tell.

Finally, he pulled out. You felt the loss like a wound, the emptiness where he'd been, the trickle of his seed sliding down your thigh as you collapsed onto the mattress, your body spent, your mind blank.

The bed creaked. The candle flickered. And then his hand was on your hip, warm and heavy, and his voice was low in the dark. “Next time you smile at a Dornish lord, I'll make you suck my cock in front of him.”

You laughed, a broken, breathless sound. “You wouldn't.”

His teeth found your shoulder, biting down just hard enough to sting. “Try me.”

His teeth stayed sunk in your shoulder, the sting of his bite a living brand, and you felt the low rumble of his approval vibrate through his chest against your back. Then his hand moved—slid down your hip, across the curve of your belly, and slipped between your thighs from behind.

You gasped as his fingers found the wet heat of your cunt, slick with your combined release, his seed already cooling on your skin. He didn't pause. Two fingers pushed inside you, gathering the proof of what he'd done, and you felt the stretch, the intrusion, the obscene wet sound of his touch.

“Still dripping,” he murmured against your shoulder, his lips brushing the mark his teeth had left. “Still hungry. I can feel it. The way you clench around my fingers like you're begging for more.”

You couldn't deny it. Your body was already responding, your hips pressing back against his hand, seeking more friction, more depth, more of him. The aftershocks of your orgasm still trembled through your thighs, and yet—gods—you wanted him inside you again. Wanted to feel him stretch you, fill you, claim you all over again.

His fingers curled, finding that spot inside you that made your vision blur, and you moaned, your face pressed to the furs, your hands fisting the bedding.

“That's it,” he said, his voice rough, approving. “That's my wife. Always ready for me. Always wanting.”

He withdrew his fingers, and you felt the absence like a loss, felt the cool air against your wet skin. Then his hand landed flat on your arse—a sharp, stinging slap that echoed through the quiet room, and you cried out, more surprise than pain, your hips jerking forward.

“That," he said, his hand rubbing the reddening skin, "is for teasing me at that feast. For making me watch you smile at that Dornish cunt while I sat there with my cock hard under the table, imagining bending you over the dais and fucking you in front of the whole hall.”

Your breath caught. The image bloomed in your mind—the cold stone of the throne room, the gasps of the court, Maekar's hands on your hips, taking you in front of everyone—and your cunt clenched around nothing, desperate and aching.

“You liked that.” His voice was flat, knowing. “You liked the thought of everyone watching while I took what's mine.”

Another slap, harder this time, and you sobbed—a broken, shameless sound. His hand soothed the sting, his palm warm against your heated skin, fingers tracing the curve of your arse before dipping lower, finding the slick evidence of your arousal smeared across your thighs.

“Look at you,” he breathed. “Wetter now than when I had my cock inside you. You're a wanton thing, aren't you? My wanton little wife.”

“Yes,” you whispered. “Yours.”

His hand left your skin. You heard the wet sound of him slicking his cock, and then the head was pressing against your entrance again, and you held your breath, waiting, aching.

He pushed in.

The stretch was sharper this time—your body still sensitive from the first fucking, still raw and open, and the sensation bordered on pain before it blurred into something deeper, something that made your toes curl and your back arch.

He seated himself slowly, deliberately, his cock filling you inch by inch until his hips pressed flush against your arse.

“Fuck,” he breathed, the word a prayer. “You feel that? The way your cunt grips me? Like it knows where it belongs.”

You couldn't answer. Couldn't think. His cock was throbbing inside you, and you felt stretched, full, claimed in a way that went beyond the body. He was inside you, and you wanted to stay like this forever—his, filled, possessed.

He pulled out.

Slammed back in.

The sound of skin meeting skin was obscene and perfect, and you moaned, your fingers clawing at the furs, your body rocking with the force of his thrusts.

“You want to know what happens when you tease me?” His voice was low, dangerous, each word punctuated by a thrust. “I fuck you. I fill you. I put my seed so deep inside you that it takes root.”

Your heart stuttered.

“I want to see you swell with it.”

His hand found your belly, pressed flat against the soft curve of your stomach, and you felt his cock moving inside you through the pressure of his palm. “I want to watch your body change. Watch your tits grow heavy. Watch you round with my child.”

A sound escaped you—something between a sob and a moan, your throat tight, your eyes burning. The thought of it, of his child growing inside you, of being so completely his that you carried his legacy in your body—it undid something in you, loosened a knot you didn't know you'd been holding, because gods you understand now why the man had six children.

“You'd like that, wouldn't you?” His thrusts slowed, deepened, each one pressing against your cervix, pushing deeper than before. “Being filled with my seed. Carrying my children. Walking through the Keep with my child in your belly, and everyone knowing exactly who put it there.”

“Yes,” you gasped. “Yes, Maekar, please—”

“Please what?”

“Please fill me. Please put your child in me.”

The words tumbled out, broken and desperate, and you meant them, meant every syllable, meant the want that burned through your veins like wildfire. “I want to carry your children. I want everyone to see. I want to be yours in every way.”

Gods, had you imagined this would happen because you had teased him, well, you knew for certainty that you would have done so sooner.

He groaned—a guttural, animal sound that vibrated through his chest and into your back—and his hand left your belly, found your hip, gripped hard enough to leave bruises as he fucked you harder, faster, each thrust driving you deeper into the mattress.

“I'm going to fill you,” he said, his voice ragged, frayed. “I'm going to fuck you until my seed takes, until you're so full of me you can't walk straight. And then I'm going to fuck you again and again,” his teeth sunk into your shoulder once more, every word muttered answered with a harsh, brutal thrust, “every night until you are pregnant.”

Your orgasm was building again, coiling low and tight in your belly, your cunt clenching around him with every thrust. The sensation was overwhelming—the fullness, the rhythm, the sting of his hand still warm on your reddened skin, the weight of his words sinking into your bones.

“You're close,” he said, “I can feel it. The way you grip me. The way your breath catches.”

His hand slid between your thighs, found your clit, pressed and circled in time with his thrusts, and the pleasure spiked, sharp and blinding, tearing a scream from your throat.

“That's it,” he said, his voice a growl. “Come for me. Come on my cock. Let me feel you fall apart around me.”

You shattered. Your orgasm crashed through you like a wave breaking against stone, your body arching, your cunt clenching in violent pulses around his cock, and you cried out—his name, a prayer, a surrender—as the pleasure tore through every nerve, left you trembling and gasping and utterly his.

He didn't stop.

Maekar fucked you through it, his thrusts growing rougher, less controlled, his breath coming in harsh, ragged gasps. And then he stilled, buried to the hilt, and you felt it—the first hot pulse of his release, flooding you, filling you, spilling into the deepest part of you.

He kept coming, his hips pressing against you, his cock twitching as he emptied himself inside you, and you felt the warmth spread, felt the excess leak around his shaft and run down your thighs.

He stayed there, buried, refusing to let a drop escape, his hand pressing against your belly as if he could hold it in by will alone.

“Breathe, sweet wife. I am not done. Do not move, no drop is to be wasted. You wanted this, you knew exactly what you were doing.”

Maekar Targaryen was not a man that wasted words.

209 A.C Flea Bottom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dunk?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

213 A.C Ashford

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You spoil her."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Pink!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It had been the longest day of your life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But on the fourth day, the door had opened.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Y/N."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

The screaming started before you understood what was happening.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The puppeteer's fourth finger snapped.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You've loosened one of my teeth,"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You saw his face.

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

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

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

"Dunk."

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

"Dunk."

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

"DUNK."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aerion turned to look at you.

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

Something calculating.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"RHAENYRA!"

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

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

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

"No! Don't touch him!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the Kingsguard obeyed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He thrust.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You could let him die.

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

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

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

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

"Aerion..."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The nights were the worst.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dunk.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then you told him about Rhaenyra.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No, I never..."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But he doesn't move away. That's the thing about your temperamental dragon. The refusal is always louder than the retreat, and the retreat never comes.

He stands exactly where he is, tension drawing his slender shoulders tight beneath his tunic, pale eyes narrowed to slits. You rise from the bed and cross the distance between you, bare feet quiet on the stone, and he watches you come the way a hawk watches an approaching hand, nostrils flaring.

You reach up without an invitation and he catches your wrist in a vicegrip. Hard enough that the bones grind.

"I said no." His voice has dropped into something serrated, all edge, no breath. "That is a whore's ornament. You will not put a whore's collar on a prince of the blood."

"I'm not putting it on a prince of the blood," you say, and your thumb finds his pulse, hammering, frantic, a traitor drumming against your skin. "I'm putting it on my husband."

His lip curls. Genuine, blistering contempt, the kind he wears like armour, the kind that has made grown men step back from him and whisper he's mad. "You've lost your mind, wife. This is beneath me. Take your Lysene filth and—"

"And what?"

You don't raise your voice. You tilt your head and watch him, patient as winter frost, while his mouth keeps shaping poison but his hand hasn't tightened, hasn't shoved you back, hasn't done any of the things Aerion is so very capable of doing when he means his refusals.

His body knows you even when his pride won't permit him.

You can see it in him, the war happening behind his eyes. Hatred and want tearing at each other like dogs. His breathing has gone uneven, the tendons in his neck taut as bowstrings. He's furious, genuinely furious, and he's half-hard already, and the combination is doing something to his expression that looks almost like anguish.

"You also haven't moved," you observe mildly, pressing a little closer.

Aerion's nostrils flare. But his grip on your wrist loosens. It's not a permission, never permission, just the muscles giving out under the weight of what he wants and won't ask for.

You step into the space he hasn't made for you and he lets you, jaw clenched so tight you can see the bone beneath that smooth pale skin, and when your fingers brush his throat he flinches like you've put a blade there, sneering down at you.

You fasten the collar with steady hands. The clasp clicks, quiet as a lock turning. Gold settles against Aerion's skin like it was poured there. Fine links pooling into the hollow of his throat, amethysts glowing dark against all that pale, furious warmth, the delicate chain trailing down his collarbone. His pulse jumps so hard beneath the metalwork you can see it in the tremor of the links.

He is, objectively, the most striking thing you've ever seen.

You let him watch you realise it. You don't hide the way your gaze tracks the gold against his jaw, the flush climbing his neck beneath the chain, the way his platinum hair glows against the gleam of metal.

You take your time with it. Look at him the way you'd look at something you own. Appraising, proprietary, openly pleased with what it's infront of you.

"My beautiful dragon," you murmur, and there's nothing teasing about it. Just a wolf admiring what belongs to her.

Aerion's whole body locks up. there's a crack in his expression and for a half-second you see the raw thing underneath, stunned and starving, before the hatred slams back down like a portcullis.

"Quiet," he warns, voice scraped thin. "Don't call me that."

"Beautiful?" You trace the line of gold with one finger, following it along the tendon in his throat. His skin is burning. "But you are. All collared up for me. All that pride and fury wrapped in gold like a gift." Your finger reaches the chain and curls loosely around it. "Like something I bought. Something I'm keeping."

"I will break your hand," he snarls, but his voice has fractured somewhere in the middle of it, gone hoarse and bitten, and his hands are fists at his sides that aren't moving, aren't reaching, aren't doing anything at all because his body has chosen you over every hateful word in his mouth.

"Look at you," you breathe, and you let your admiration sit open on your face, undisguised, almost tender. "My prince. My pretty, collared husband. Wearing a courtesan's chain because his wife asked and he couldn't say no."

"I said no—"

"Your hateful mouth said no." Your eyes drop, pointed, unhurried, to where the evidence of his body's opinion is unmistakable. "The rest of you has a different answer, husband."

The sound he makes is closer to snarl, like he's about to leap forward and throttle you.

"They tell me these are put on courtesans in the pillowhouses," you tell him, conversational, your thumb stroking idle circles against the chain at his throat. "On the loveliest ones. The ones men cross the Narrow Sea just to kneel before." You lean in, your mouth near his ear, close enough to feel the heat pouring off him. "A collar to say this one is precious, this one is wanted, this one has been claimed by someone who can afford the price of them."

Your lips brush the shell of Aerion's ear. He's shaking. Fine, continuous tremors he can't control, running through him like current through wire.

"But you're not a courtesan, are you?" you murmur. "You're a dragon. My dragon. Collared and flushed and hard for me, and all I've done is call you pretty and put gold on your throat."

His hips snap forward, involuntary, vicious, a jerk of motion so sharp the chain shivers in your grip and his breath tears out of him ragged. You feel the length of him grind against your thigh and the confirmation of what you already knew floods you with something hot and deeply, viciously satisfied.

You smile. Wolfish. The smile of a predator who's found the exact place her teeth fit best.

Aerion's hand comes up and seizes your face. A capture, fingers digging into your jaw, your cheeks, wrenching your head so you're forced to meet his eyes. They're blown black, the pale lavender almost gone, eaten alive. His mouth is a shaking, vicious line.

"You think this is funny?" he rasps, and there's something fraying in his voice, an edge that sounds like it's being held together by nothing but spite. "You think you can play with me, collar me like some—some Lysene bed-slave and then smirk at me—"

You don't stop smiling. You let him see every inch of it. The smugness, the heat, the cool Northern certainty that you've claimed something he'd sooner die than hand over. You turn your face into his grip and press your lips to his palm, unhurried, greedy, and feel his fingers twitch against your skin.

"I think," you say knowingly against his hand, "that you liked it when I called you beautiful. I think you liked it so much your whole body told me before your mouth could catch up." Your tongue skims his palm, just barely, tasting salt. "I think my pretty husband wants to be admired. I think he always has. And I think if I told him he was good right now, he'd come apart."

His hand tightens on your face until it almost hurts. His chest is heaving, every breath hauling through him like he's physically fighting something inside him. You can feel the chain taut between your fingers, connecting your hand to his throat like a leash, like a lifeline.

Aerion stares at you and you stare back. The room is so quiet you can hear the candles gutter and the chain clink, once, with the tremor running through him.

Then he crashes his mouth onto yours.

His teeth catch your lower lip and bite, hard enough that copper blooms on your tongue, and you hiss into it, fingers tightening in the chain. He licks the blood off your mouth and comes back for more, tongue pushing past your gasp, his free hand fisting in the back of your hair so hard your scalp sings.

He's trying to take it back—every sound you pulled from him, every tremor, every helpless grind of his hips—kissing you like he can swallow the evidence of what you've done to him and burn it.

You let him have the violence of it. You open your mouth and take his tongue and bite it, feel Aerion jolt, feel the groan rattle through his teeth into yours. Your free hand comes up and grabs his jaw, holds him still, and you kiss him back with teeth and intention, licking into his mouth with the focused, unhurried authority. You catch his bottom lip between your teeth and pull, dragging it out, and the noise he makes is humiliating and so gorgeous you smile.

He breaks away panting, wild-eyed, mouth swollen and blood-smeared, and you don't let him get far.

You tug the chain.

A measured pull, the gold biting into the back of his neck.

Aerion's head tips forward, forced, the angle dragging him down toward you, and you hold him there, his mouth hovering over yours, breathing your air. The chain pressed firm against his throat. His pulse hammers against the links hard enough that you can feel it thrumming through the gold into your fist.

"Stay," you murmur against his mouth. A command. A wolf's word.

You pull again. Harder. A real pressure now, the collar snug against his Adam's apple, gold links creasing the flushed skin, and you watch Aerion's eyes go glassy and his lips part on a breath that has nowhere to go.

He moans.

Not behind his teeth. A real, wrecked, open sound, the kind of sound courtesans are trained to coax from their wealthiest patrons, obscene and helpless and utterly without dignity. The kind of sound a prince of the blood should never make. If anyone else heard it, it would ruin him, you know.

He moans like a whore with your hand wrapped in his leash, and the vibration of it travels through the chain and into your fingers and settles, hot, at the base of your spine.

You hold the chain taut. His throat works against the pressure, swallowing around gold. His mouth finds yours again. Wetter this time, messier, all desperation and no technique, his teeth clashing against yours, biting at your lips like he can punish you for this even as his body bows into you.

You kiss him back with blood on both your mouths and one hand in his hair and the other wrapped in gold links, holding his throat, keeping him exactly where you want him.

Your collared, shaking, furious, beautiful husband. Yours.

Aerion doesn't break the kiss so much as redirect it. One moment his mouth is on yours, blood and spit and the taste of his own undoing, and the next his hands are at your waist, hauling you backwards. You feel your spine hit the edge of the bed frame hard enough to knock the breath from your lungs.

"On the bed," he snarls against your mouth. "Now."

You could resist. He knows it. The chain is still wrapped around your fist and his throat is still collared in gold and if you pulled right now he'd have to stop, have to kneel, have to wait. You could make him beg for it if you felt like it.

You choose not to.

You let yourself fall back onto the furs and he follows you down like gravity, one knee between your thighs shoving them apart. He wrenches them apart, graceless, nothing courtly about it.

His hands find the laces of your gown and yank. Fabric tears. You hear stitching give, the soft rip of silk surrendering, but Aerion doesn't care, doesn't pause, just drags the ruined bodice down your shoulders and off your arms with the efficiency of a man stripping armour.

"Wretched thing," he breathes, and the words land hot against your collarbone. His mouth follows the words. Teeth scraping the jut of bone, tongue dragging through the hollow of your throat. "Wretched, insufferable—"

He bites the swell of your breast through your shift and your back arches off the bed. His hands are everywhere, pulling linen, shoving wool, ripping where pulling isn't fast enough. Cool air hits your skin in patches—your stomach, your ribs, the tops of your thighs—and his mouth chases every new inch of you like he's starving and you're the only thing left in the larder.

"You think you can collar me," he hisses, dragging the shift over your head and throwing it somewhere behind him. His eyes rake down your body, naked now, spread beneath him on the dark furs, and for one raw second the hatred in Aerion's face cracks and what's underneath is so hungry it looks like pain. "Think you can put a leash on a dragon and smile about it? You smug, superior—"

"Beautiful," you interrupt softly, admiring. Your eyes trace the collar at his throat, the way it catches candlelight as his chest heaves.

His jaw locks so hard you hear the teeth grind.

"—vicious little wolf," he finishes, and his voice has gone thick with something that isn't anger anymore.

He's still dressed. His tunic is rucked, his breeches straining, and when you glance down you can see the dark stain spreading at the front of the linen where he's leaking, where his body has been ahead of his pride since the moment you fastened the clasp.

You let your gaze settle there. Deliberate. Hungry.

"You know," you say conversationally, tracing one finger down the chain at his throat, "in the Lysene houses they auction the prettiest ones. The patrons bid all evening. Wine and silks and perfumed halls, and the courtesans walk among them, collared just like this—" your nail taps a single amethyst "—so everyone knows the goods are spoken for."

Aerion's nostrils flare. A muscle jumps in his cheek.

"They'd have bid high for you." You tilt your head, considering him. That platinum hair mussed, mouth bitten raw, gold at his throat, cock straining wet against his laces. "Very high. A prince with a face like that? Those eyes? That mouth?" You smile, slow and wolfish, briefly dragging your thumb over his full bottom lip. "I'd have outbid them all. Every merchant prince and magister in the room. I'd have bought you for myself and taken you home in your collar and kept you exactly like this. Hard, and furious, and all mine."

A sound rips from Aerion, rumbling through his frame.

His hand shoots to his laces, fumbling, tearing at the ties with shaking fingers, and you watch him strip his breeches down his hips with none of the control he prides himself on. His cock springs free flushed and dripping, slick at the head, twitching with his pulse, and the evidence of what your words have done to him is obscene and unmistakable.

He doesn't give you time to admire it.

His hands seize your thighs and wrench them open. Wide, wider, until the stretch burns and your hips cant off the furs. He settles between them and you feel the blunt, wet head of him drag through the slick mess of you once, catching at your entrance, and then he drives in.

One stroke. All of him. No preamble, no patience, no tenderness.

Your head snaps back. The sound that leaves your mouth is half gasp, half snarl. He's thick and hard, furious inside you, every inch of him a declaration, and your body seizes around him in a clench that makes Aerion's shoulders shudder.

"There," he grits out, teeth bared, hips already pulling back for the next thrust. "Is this what you wanted? Your collared whore between your legs?"

He snaps forward. Hard. Your body jolts up the bed, furs bunching beneath your spine. His hands pin your hips, thumbs digging into the hollows, holding you open, holding you still while he fucks into you with furious, punishing strokes. The narrow cant of his hips drives a rhythm that's all fury and no mercy.

"Spoiled—" Thrust. "—conniving—" Thrust. "—wolf—"

Aerion bites the junction of your shoulder and your neck. Sucks the skin between his teeth hard enough to bruise, hard enough to mark, and the sound you make is shameless, back bowing, your fingers scrabbling at his ribs.

He bites lower. The top of your breast. The ridge of your collarbone. Everywhere his mouth lands he leaves evidence. Welts, teeth-marks, the wet shine of his tongue, mapping you like territory he's conquering even as the collar at his throat says otherwise.

You let him have it. The fury, the pace, the bruising grip. You let him think he's reclaiming himself.

Then you wrap the chain around your fist and pull.

The collar bites into his nape. Aerion's head jerks forward, forced, and the angle changes, drives him deeper, and the sound he makes is guttural and broken, so far from princely it would make his father weep.

"My pretty whore," you murmur up at him, and your voice is steady even with him buried to the hilt inside you, even with your thighs shaking around him. "My beautiful, expensive, collared—"

Aerion's hand closes around your throat.

His fingers find the column of your windpipe with the precision of a man who's t done this before, who knows the anatomy, who's imagined the give of it. Real pressure follows his grip and your airway narrows to a reed.

You lean into it.

Your chin tips up, back arching. You press your throat harder against his palm and moan. Open-mouthed, loud, the kind of sound that fills a room and stains the air. The look on Aerion's face when he realises you're not afraid, that you like it, that the compression of your breath is making you clench tighter around his cock, is something you will keep behind your teeth for the rest of your natural life.

"You," he manages, and his hips haven't stopped, punishing rhythm gone ragged at the edges now, his voice husky. "You're the whore of the two of us. Acting like this. Taking my cock like this. Listen to the mess of you. Moaning with my hand on your throat like a—a dockside—"

You yank the chain. Harder than before. Hard enough that the gold bites welts into his skin, hard enough that Aerion's breath cuts short and his eyes roll and his next thrust goes so deep you feel it in the back of your teeth.

Your hips snap up to meet him—deliberate, brutal, grinding him into the deepest, most sensitive part of you—and the wet sound of it is filthy, unmistakable, the slick drench of your body taking his echoing off the stone walls.

His composure shatters.

What's left is animal, narrow hips pistoning, the obscene slap of his skin against yours, his fingers spreading you wider, thumbs hooking your thighs and pulling until you're split open around him in a way that's almost too much. The stretch burns. The fullness borders on pain. You're going to ache tomorrow, going to feel every brutal inch of this for days, and the knowledge of it—the phantom soreness already gathering in your hips—makes you wetter, makes you greedier, makes you tighten around him until he chokes.

"Fuck—"

He hooks your legs over his shoulders. The angle goes deeper, filthier, the wet sound of his cock working in and out of you loud enough that you can hear every thrust, every slick drag, the rhythmic slap of his balls against you keeping time like a drumbeat.

You reach up and wrap both hands in the chain and haul him down toward you, bending yourself nearly in half, pulling him deeper by his collar until Aerion's forehead presses against yours and you're breathing the same ragged air.

"Come in me," you tell him. An order, a wolf's command.

"Do not order me—"

But his hips stutter, his jaw going slack. The muscles in his neck cord tight against the gold links and you feel him break. The first hot pulse of him inside you floods you, thick and sudden, and Aerion's whole body seizes above you like a man struck by lightning.

He spills in deep, wrenching surges, hips grinding against yours with each gush, and there's so much of it—gods, so much—you feel it flood the space where you're joined, feel it overflow, feel the hot trickle of it escape around his cock and drip in slow rivulets onto the sheets beneath you.

The heat of it, the sight of your pretty dragon shaking apart above you, collared, spilling himself into you, desperate and greedy, pushes you over.

You come snarling. Your back arches off the bed, your teeth bared, your fingers coiled in the chain. The pleasure tears through you in savage waves and your body clenches around him. A vice-grip that wrenches a shocked, gutted noise out of his chest.

Aerion's hips slam forward on instinct, burying himself as deep as he can go, and both hands grab your backside, full handfuls, fingers sinking into the flesh, dragging you onto him like he can crawl inside you.

"Fuck—fuck, you're—gods—" Greedy and petulant even now, grinding into your contractions, chasing the squeeze of you. His cock pulses and you feel the fresh hot leak of him, not a full release but close, dangerously close, his body trying to spend itself again just from the clench of yours. "Take it—take all of it, you greedy—perfect—fucking —"

The filth spills out of him unchecked, half-words and fragments, praise tangled up in profanity. His arms lock around you, both hands still full of your ass, and he folds over you, curling, coiling, a dragon wrapping around his mate with his face buried in your throat and his hips still rocking in small, helpless pulses.

Burrowing into you. Trying to get closer when closer doesn't exist.

You hold him through it. Chain slack in your fist now, your other hand in his silver hair, your legs still trembling where they're hooked over his shoulders.

He stays inside you through every aftershock, twitching, half-hard, refusing to pull out even as the mess between you gets obscene. His spend leaks around his cock, dripping in slow pearly rivulets down through your folds, pooling beneath you on the sheets.

You reach between your bodies and touch yourself, fingers sliding through the slick ruin of his release and your own, spreading it over your core, your navel, the trembling plane of your stomach. Painting yourself with the evidence of him.

Aerion watches you do it. His chest heaving, his mouth open, his eyes tracking your fingers with the dazed, shattered focus.

You bring your fingers to your mouth. Hold his gaze. Taste.

His cock twitches inside you. He makes a low, growling sound.

Then, slowly, as if his bones have turned to water, he collapses. Aerion's weight comes down on you in a controlled fall, his face dropping into the curve of your neck, his breath coming in long, shuddering pulls against your pulse. The chain goes slack between you. The collar shifts, warm against your collarbone where his throat presses.

For a long moment there's nothing but breathing. The guttering candles. The cooling sweat between your bodies. His heartbeat thuds against your ribs, gradually slowing.

You burrow into him. Turn your face against his chest and press your mouth there. Teeth grazing his sternum, his collarbone, the smooth skin over his ribs. You nip. Suck a patch of skin between your lips and release it flushed. Your tongue drags through the salt-sheen of his sweat, tracing the cut of muscle, and your hand drifts up to stroke his chest, his throat, fingertips trailing the chain at his collar, the ridge of his Adam's apple, the hollow beneath.

Petting him. Mapping the territory you've claimed.

Aerion's hand comes up and cradles the back of your head. His fingers thread through your hair, and he shifts, angling his neck, tilting his shoulder down, offering you more skin. Easier access.

"You're an animal," he informs you, voice scraped raw and dry as bone. His thumb traces the curve of your skull. "A feral, uncivilised creature who should have been left in the kennels at Winterfell."

You suck a bruise into the ridge of his collarbone. He exhales through his nose, slow and controlled, and tips his chin higher, baring the collared line of his throat to your mouth with an ease that contradicts every word coming out of it.

"Disgusting habit," he adds, as you nip the tendon below his ear. His fingers card through your hair, untangling, smoothing. Stroking, greedy and possessive. "Gnawing on your husband like a bone. Do they teach you that in the North? Is it in the wedding vows, hm?"

You hum against his skin. Your teeth graze his pulse point and his breath catches—just barely, just enough—and his hand gentles at your nape, cradling rather than holding.

You can feel him preening under it. The commentary is armour but his body is liquid, angling into every scrape of your teeth, every press of your lips. Offering himself up piece by piece while his mouth pretends outrage.

You press a kiss to the hinge of his jaw. Soft. Almost sweet.

Then you pull back just enough to meet his eyes.

"My pretty whore," you murmur fondly.

The reaction is instantaneous.

His eyes flash, pale lavender burning through the blown-black aftermath, and his hand snaps from the back of your skull to the nape of your neck, gripping hard, fingers digging into the tendons. He drags you up and kisses you. Bruising. All teeth, his tongue pushing into your mouth, tasting himself on you, tasting everything on you.

His other hand slides down your body. Between your thighs. Through the mess of his own spend. He pushes two fingers into you easily, so wet you barely feel the stretch of him, just the sudden fullness and the obscene sound of it, his seed squelching around his knuckles as he curls deep.

"Whore," he repeats against your mouth, low and dangerous, his fingers pumping into you with a rhythm that's already building toward something. "You want a whore, wife? I'll fuck you like one." His teeth catch your lip. His fingers twist and you gasp. "Over and over. Till you can't walk. Till the whole Red Keep knows what I've done to you. Till you're dripping with me for days."

You laugh. Breathless, warm, the sound vibrating between your mouths. Your hand finds the chain and you pull him closer—not hard, just a steady pressure, a reminder of what's still fastened at his throat—and your legs wrap around his hips, drawing him in, fitting your body against his like a key turning in a lock.

"Good," you say.

His fingers curl inside you, his mouth finds yours again. The collar gleams between you in the candlelight.

Aerion Targryen was known for his obsessions. They controlled him and moulded him into who he was and who he would become. 

His first obsession was Maegor the cruel. To Aerion, Maegor the cruel was everything he wanted to be. A hard, seasoned warrior, a dragon incarnate, who thought for what he wanted and got it. He was who Aerion wanted to be, he wanted to be a dragon, to wield dark sister and rule the realm. His obsession with Maegor is why he demanded a trial by seven at Ashford tourney, why his obsession with dragons possessed him entirely.

The more time that passed, the more he began to fully believe he was a dragon. He knew he was. Knew it in the way he hoarded jewels. The way he took what was his. New obsessions grew and developed, obsessions over fire, jewels and clothes, but his latest obsession was you. 

He didn't meet you, not properly, until the tourney at Ashford Meadows. He had met you at your wedding, had been bewitched by you, but the meeting had been fleeting. It lingered on his mind, but it wasn’t until Ashford that his obsession truly started. 

You had been married to Valarr for a few moons by then, and you were both hopelessly in love with each other. You were the perfect wife for Valarr, the perfect lady for the perfect prince and heir. But to Aerion, you deserved better than Valarr; you deserved him. 

His obsession with you wasn’t like his other obsessions. This one started quickly. The second he laid eyes on you, to him, you were entirely his. His eyes always found you, always searching for you and watching wherever you moved. He would follow you around the room, making conversation wherever he could. And you, a lady, he had no doubt you were told every story about him, everything there was to know about him, every tantrum and outburst. And yet you talked to him. Encouraged conversation and gave him a kind smile whenever he spoke or your eyes locked.

That kindness, the politeness of you, was what truly made him obsessed with you. 

And to him, your kindness meant you felt the same, the panicked smile you gave Valarr when he came to whisk you away and into his own tent, to Aerion, that panicked smile was about leaving him and ending your conversation. There was no other reason, not fear of him, not you being uncomfortable by him, no, too him, you were as obsessed with him as he was with you. 

An obsession he thought was mutually felt by you both, even after his years away in Lys. 

To anyone meeting someone twice, then being shipped off to Lys for two years with no contact and then coming back, sure that you were entirely in love with each other, was insanity. 

But with Aerion, the very Targayren that would give their house the reputation of madness, years apart festered this obsession and love. 

So when he returned to Westeros, your husband was dead, and your families in need of another marriage to stabilise the alliance, Aerion demanded you marry him.

You had fallen in love with Valarr quickly. Not over time or steadily, you and he had fallen in love long before the ink dried on the alliance treaty. And the grief you had felt when he passed back just as quickly as the love for you he had. 

You spent moons loving him and would spend years mourning him. Years you would not be granted, as alliances seemed to take precedent over your own emotions and opinions. 

The day Aerion returned to Westros, you knew the life you had grown accustomed to over the past year, since the spring sickness reaped its way through Westros, would change. Aerion made his presence known instantly.

“My lady,” Aerion greeted, his eyes focused only on you, as he entered your room, his voice sweeter with you than anyone else.

“My prince,” you greeted with a polite smile on your lips, as you stopped writing in front of you. “I did not realise you had arrived back from Lys,”

His smile widened into a grin, his hands coming to your desk, his fingers flexing, fighting the urge to reach out and touch you, “This morning,” he hummed, his eyes boring into you, waiting for you to look him in the eyes. “Did you miss me?”

“i hardley know you, my prince,” you dismissed, eyes flickering to meet his briefly, your focus remaining on the letter in front of you. 

“That doesn’t answer my question,” he hummed, moving to stand next to you, his eyes scanning your letter.

Your hand covered the words on the page, your pleas to return home. Your eyes locked with Aerions, a silent beg for him not to read the pleas you had written to your father, begging him to send you home, “I suppose,” you cleared your throat, “had I known you more, my prince, I would have,”

He hummed, pleased with your answer, his hand coming to brush a strand of hair behind your ear, “I missed you.”

“You did?” you asked, a shy smile on your lips, “Why is that?”

“You were the last beauty I saw, of course, I missed you.” 

Your breath quickened at his words, “That is most kind, my prince, though I am sure there were many beauties in Lys” 

He hummed, playing with a strand of your hair, “mayhaps, but not could compete next to you,” 

“My prince-”

“Aerion,” he corrected, “you should always call a dragon by his name.”

“And are you a dragon, my prince?” 

He grinned, his face reaching down to meet yours, “Isn’t it obvious?”

Your hand reached for his hair, he had grown it out considerably since you’d last seen him. Tucking it behind his ear, you studied his face, “You do look like a dragon,” you mused, weighing up the features of his face, “Do you breathe fire also?” 

He smiled, enjoying every word from your lips, every validation from your tongue that you were unknowingly slipping out, “good,” he hummed, his hand coming to grip your jaw and pulling it up to meet him, his lips hovering over yours. 

You should have pulled back, should have told him to stop, should have slapped his hand away, but you did no such thing. 

Aerion had something about him that stirred in you. His eyes had always followed you, and your eyes had always followed him. Yes, you had loved Valarr, loved him with your body and soul, but something in Aerion pulled you in. 

“You are a treasure, my treasure,” he hummed, his face moving closer, his lips hovering closer to yours but not kissing you, not yet, “do you know what a dragon does with its treasure?”

You shook your head, your eyes focused on his lips, a part of you begging him to kiss you, another part begging yourself to pull away. You had met Aerion twice before, you scarcely knew him, just off him and yet in this moment, you prayed his next words matched the thoughts playing in your mind. “We treasure it …worship it,” 

His mouth kissed the corner of yours. A blush rose to your cheeks, “Aerion,” you breathed, “I hardly know you…this is improper,” 

He stepped back, his face harsh, “It’s not improper to take what is mine!” 

“Yours?” You sat up in your chair, following Aerion as he prowled your rooms.

“Mine!” He repeated his eyes, piercing into you, “You have always been mine!” 

“I- my prince, I have not,” you stuttered, your hand reaching for his hand as it swiped down his face. 

“You are mine!” He demanded again, his eyes locking with yours. 

“Are we to be betrothed? I had thought I would marry Daeron…I-“

“My brother?” He stopped pacing, grabbed your hand that gripped his and walked you towards the bed until your legs hit it. “They think that a drunkard is worthy of you? 

“They…they need a marriage for their alliance, as Makears Heir he-“

“He is not worthy of you, no one is”, he breathed, his hand cradling your face. “No one but me, I should have been your husband from the start.”

“I loved Valarr, he was my husband”, you shook your head, moving back in the bed slightly. 

Aerion dropped between your legs, his hands resting on your thighs.

“He is dead, and I have loved you since the day I met you.”

“You hardly know me, you cannot love me”

“Then let me show you…Please,” Aerion never begged, for anyone. But for you, his treasure, he would do anything for you.

“My prince, this is improper,” you dismissed, though you did nothing as Aerion hands bunched your skirts over your hips or as he pulled your small clothes off your legs. All you did was lie back and allow the desires you had let fester in you to take over. 

You would never admit it, but Aerion was beautiful to you, and the idea of him being obsessed with you? You’d be lying if you said that didn’t appeal to you. The idea of being wanted as he wanted you, it's all you had wanted for years. To be loved and cherished, even if it wasnt the same type of cherishment that Valarr had given you, Aerion's type was possessive, deluded. But just what you wanted. Needed.

The last two years had been lonely, spent with you cracking the love of your husband. Two years spent with your mind wandering to Aerion on occasion. Wondering what he was doing and how he was faring, hoping the sickness didn’t reach him, also. 

Aerion's mouth pressed bruising kisses up your thighs. “Aerion,” you sighed, not as a warning but more as permission, not that Aerion was seeking it. He placed a long lick across the length of your slit, moaning at the taste of you as his hands gripped your arse, pulling you closer to him as he feasted on you, his tongue moving in and out of your cunt, his nose nudging deliciously against your clit as he feasted, whispering moans of the word “mine” as he did so. 

“Oh gods, Aerion”, you moaned, your head falling against the bed as you gave in to the pleasure. Aerion stilled at your words, his grip on your arse poisoning as he moved up your body, placing a heated, bruising kiss to your lips. You moaned as your lips finally joined his, the taste of your cunt lingering in your tongue "Praise the dragon,” he praised, loving his name on your lips. “My dragon,” you moaned against his lips, moaning at the feel of him pressed against your body. 

He delved back down your body at those words, resuming his feast of your cunt, his cock hard. He feasted on you as his life depended on it, His hands holding you impossibly close to his face as his tongue thrusted in and out of you. Your legs wrapped around his hand, your hands tugging in your hair. He moaned at the feel, urging you to pull tighter, and you did. Your peak washing over you, and your legs tighten around his head, so tight that you are sure you are cutting off his oxygen.

“Aerion, my prince,” you moaned, hands reaching for him, “my dragon,” you were half delirious, half unsure how your third time meeting a man your husband had told you to stay away from had led to his head between your thighs or to you becoming his.

“You will marry me,” he declared, standing up and placing a quick kiss on your lips, his hand coming to grip his cock through his breaches. 

“My father-“

“Your father already has agreed that you are mine,” he hummed, reaching to soothe your hair in an uncharacteristic soothing gesture for Aerion.

“You make me question sense,” you murmured, still entirely unsure how this had happened. How your passing attraction for him had led to this. 

“Good, you make me question my sanity.”

“Or what’s left off if,” you whispered, just loud enough for Aerion to hear. 

Your father, eager for the power that would come from an alliance with House Targaryen, had readily agreed to marry you to Aerion. A prince was a prince in your father's eyes. And with House Targaryen even more desperate, they had jumped at an alliance with any of their sons, especially when it calmed Aerion's temper.

Aerion's first words when he arrived home were the demand for your hand, no faux curtseys, a simple demand all knew would end in tantrums and pain for the family should they refuse. 

The courtship was quick, with you having little time to blink between the night with Aerion between your thighs and planning your second royal wedding in so many years. 

Within a moon of his return, Aerion had got the one thing House Targaryen hoped would tame the wildfire burning inside of him. A keeper. 

You knew how to play him well. You fed into his delusion with just enough scepticism that had Aerion feeding out of the palm of your hand. He told everyone that he only guarded what was his, that he followed you to protect you. You were his treasure, and treasure needed to be guarded, protected.

And you, who craved love since Valarr, ate up everything he gave you just like he did with you. 

But there was such a stark difference between how Valarr had treated you and how Aerion treated you now. Valarr had worshipped you, loved you with his whole soul just as you did with him. Your love was pure, innocent and free of challenges. And when you made love, it was making love. Every nerve in your body felt alive when you and he came together. In the way he knew how to play your body like a piano. In three moons, he had mapped out every inch of your skin. Every curve, every blemish and mole. You and he became so intertwined in your few moons of partial bliss that it was impossible to separate where you stopped and he began.

But with Aerion, it’s different. Aerion viewed you as treasure, to be protected and hidden. Someone to worship and even control. Not in a cruel sense, he just wanted to keep you safe. He feared losing you. And to a dragon, the only way to protect treasure was to hide it and control it. 

“You are not yet my husband, Aerion, you can not dictate these things,” you dismissed, brushing down the perfectly smooth silk of your dress as you readied for tonight’s feast. Your last feast as a widow before being bound to him, before becoming the dragon's wife. 

“You are mine,” he breathed as if it explained everything, explained why he had ordered a whole new wardrobe made for you, clothes to match his with jewels to match. 

You shook your head, swallowing roughly, before speaking again, your eyes focused on your vanity as you began to choose your jewellery for the feast. “Not until tomorrow,” you hummed, “then I am all yours, my dragon.” You had learned what he needed to hear quickly. He needed the validation, the praise. The knowledge that he was right. And then, once praised and docile, you give him what you wanted, playing it off as his idea entirely. It worked, of course it did. 

The few similarities between Valarr and Aerion were their need for validation, praise and a ‘good boy’ when appropriate. 

Though learning these things never quite explained how quickly your life had changed, how knowing Aerion for only a moon had made you learn more about him than Valarr in the moons you had known him. 

“You should have some tunics made to match my gowns also,” you hummed, forcing yourself to lock eyes with Aerion in the mirror. He had been temperamental the last few days. Eager to wed you, to claim you before the realm. The last thing you wanted was for your month of learning what he needed of what words and actions tamed him to go to waste over one argument. “This gown, for example,” you pointed to the purple gown you had donned tonight, “tis the colour of your mother's house, you would honour her through wearing it,” 

Aerion perked up, his eyes assessing your dress. “I do honour her, I loved my mother!” He snapped, pacing your room, as he often did when his emotions went awry.

You stood your hands quickly flying to his shoulders and turning him towards you, “I know you do,” you shushed your hands going to the ties of his shirt, relacing them from where he had pulled them out in frustration. “And I know you love your mother's house, twas merely an idea,” you smiled, your hands reaching to soothe his hair.

His eyes pierced into yours, “you-“ he started fumbling over his words, unsure of how to react, something that only ever happens with you, “you don’t think I honour her enough?”

“You do honour her enough, my dragon,” you soothed, swallowing the bile in your throat. 

“I don’t believe you,” his hand flexed at his side, itching to come to your throat, “you hurt my feelings,” You shook your head, your hands leaving his body, “I-“

“Apologise,” he clicked his tongue.

“I’m sorry, Aerion, I did not mean it like that-“

“No!” He shook his head, tutting, his hands reaching to the laces on his breaches, freeing his length, “get on your knees,”

“Aerion, you can’t be serious,” you dismissed, your usually soft voice hardening. 

He smirked, “You’ve never had an issue with getting on your knees before.” 

You spluttered, your hands reaching for the hair your maid had spent an hour on.

He frowned, a cruel look coming to his face, “Fine, don’t apologise,”  he turned his back to you, his temper seething. 

“Aerion-“ you started, only for him to rush off, leaving his anger in the air. 

It was unlike Aerion to let his anger fester. He reacted, he rarely plotted revenge. His emotions hit him quickly, and he reacted as a result. He never let it fester. But ignoring and giving the cold shoulder was common for him. Just not for you. 

He never ignored you, his presence was always relentless. And yet at the last feast to celebrate you both before your wedding, he ignored you entirely. Not a word nor a look was shared with you. Instead, you spent the night with Daeron. A man who had befriended you over the years and you had believed would marry you. 

You'd be lying if you didn’t do it, spend your night with Daeron, to make Aerion jealous. It was easy, even if he didn’t spare you a glance, you could feel the jealousy and anger steaming off of him. 

“You hurt my feelings,” Aerion began, having burst into your rooms through a secret door you had never noticed.

“Aerion!” you jumped, your hands stalling as they brushed through your hair, “you can’t burst in here after ignoring me all night!”

“I can, you're my wife,” he prowled towards you, his hands reaching for your vanity chair and spinning it until you faced him. 

“Not for a few more hours,” your eyes assessed him up and down, snagging on the rising tent in his breaches. Your hands reached for your night robe, tightening it around you, a chill washing over you, “Why are you here?”

“Stand up,” he spoke, ignoring your question, his face void of any emotion. Your eyes stayed on his hardened cock as you stood, your hands reaching for the robe, tossing it on your vanity chair. 

He circled you, like a dragon on the hunt. His eyes pierced you as he assessed every dip and curve of your body.

“You tried to make me jealous,” he clicked his tongue, pausing in his assessment. “Spoke to Daeron…spoke to him all night,”

“He’s my friend,” you began, only to be pushed by the press of Aerion's finger on your lips, his hand coming to your throat as he continued to speak. 

“He is not your friend, only I am. He tried to take you from me, and you.” his grip tightened, squeezing your throat lightly. His finger slid down your mouth, pulling your lip down, swiping across it before slowly pressing two of his fingers in, watching as you began to suck on his fingers. “You are mine,” he murmured, groaning at the sight of you. 

His fingers withdrew from your mouth slowly, “say it,” 

“I'm yours,” 

He smiled, his hand on your neck, squeezing softly before pulling away, “Get on your knees,” 

Dropping to your knees, you knew exactly what he wanted. What you had denied him earlier, and what had your mouth watering the second he unclaced his breaches and revealed his hard, long cock. 

Wordlessly, you reached forward, wrapping your hand around his length, pumping it before your hand slipped to the tip, your thumb spreading his precum over the tip of his cock. You moved forward, eagr you tast him. Aerion's hand reached for your head, stopping you, his fingers sliding back down your mouth, urging you to open your mouth, “open,” he commanded, his hand reaching for his cock, sliding into your mouth with a single thrust of his hips. 

His hand reached for your hair, wrapping it around his wrist as he thrust into your mouth, groans of pleasure leaving you as he fucked your mouth. Slick gathered between your thighs as he did, your own moan echoing around his cock as he fucked your mouth. His hand tugged your hair back at the noise, pulling his cock from your mouth, a proud smile on your lips, “see you mine,” he murmured, “all wet and I haven't even touched you yet,”

A blush rose to your cheeks, your hand reaching to wipe the saliva from your mouth as Aerion motioned you up, “get on the bed, bend over,” he ordered, his hands reaching to tug his clothes off his body, his eyes never leaving your form as you pulled the nightgown from your body, and you crawled on the bed.

Aerion groaned at the sight of you crawling across the bed. He quickly followed you, his hands coming to your hips, his finger sliding between your folds, “so wet,” he murmured, “all wet just for me,”

Your ass moved back into him, begging him to touch you, for him to slide his finger into your wet, aching cunt. 

His hand stopped you, coming to land on your ass in one swift smack. Your body fell forward, a gasp falling from your lips. His hand reached to soothe your ass, where he smacked it, before reaching out to place another smack. 

“Say you're sorry,” he murmured, placing another smack on your ass. 

“I'm sorry, my dragon,” you groaned, “I'm sorry, please touch me,” you begged, your asspushingg back, hitting his hard cock, begging him to fuck you. 

“Good,” he said, humming, placing one last smack to your ass before turning you over, “tell me I'm your dragon,”

“My dragon, you're my dragon,” you spoke, your hands reaching out to cradle his face.

He closed his eyes, a serene look on his face at your words, a moan falling from his lips as you continued to whisper them to him, like sweet nothings. 

“Have you ever wanted to ride the dragon?” he asked, his eyes still shut as his finger traced its way down your body, finding your cunt, his thumb circling your clit as his finger pushed into you, a soft moan leaving your lips as his finger thrusted out of you.

“Yes, my dragon…please let me ride you,” you begged, sighing as Aerion's finger withdrew from you, flipping you both in one swift motion, “then ride the dragon, my treasure,” 

Your hand reached for his cock, lining it up with your cunt and pushing down onto it in one swift motion, a loud moan leaving you as your cunt impaled itself on his cock. “My dragon,” you moaned, your hands flying to his chest as you adjusted to his size. Your hips moved against him, riding him with reckless abandon. Your head thrown back as moans left your mouth. Aerion’s hands steadied you on your hip, with one hand reaching to play with your nipples, pinching them to bring your attention back down to him. 

His eyes bore into you, his hand leaving your breast to reach for your throat, bringing you closer to him, as you rode him, as a rider would with her dragon.

He moaned at the sight of you, the pleasure taking over you as you fucked yourself on his cock. “Aerion,” you moaned, his hand squeezing your throat as you came, his own peak washing over him at the same time. 

All of the muttering on, the worrying and fussing over his opponent, that’s all he’s heard. All evening long.

He unhorsed him, that was all. A clean break in the leg and nothing more. And yet you were insistent.

“But what of him? They say he is to be permanently wounded Aerion that is not—“

“It’s the way of the sword. Nothing else to be done.” His fingers curl tight around the pommel as they drag the cloth over it, making short attempts to clean what little dirt littered the edges. While trying desperately to ignore the way you stand in front of him, frantic and far too observant.

“Yes but he—“

“Then he should not have challenged me.”

The air in the pavilion is thick. So thick it’s hard to breathe, but you don’t stop, you can’t. And not with him being so careless. The hearth crackles in the corner but the sound doesn’t break the tenseness between you, it only heightens it. Counting every second that passes as violet eyes cast over you, slowing the work on his dagger.

It’s dark and watchful, daring you to speak again, to challenge him, to tell him that he’s in the wrong. You know that he is, everyone who booed and jeered in the tourney grounds did.

You go to speak. Not so much to argue, but to reason. And he notices, the way Aerion does.

Snarling.

“Enough.” His voice comes fast, slamming the pommel to the table at his side, rising to his feet in less than a blink.

He has you then. Red faced and stuttering around the grip of his fingers he has piercing at your throat. His smirk grows dark, lips curving with a hitch from the back of his throat.

But that’s only the beginning. He hasn’t quite got you where he wants you yet, he hasn’t vanquished the argument, he hasn’t given his point, he hasn’t fucked all of those useless thoughts from you that leave only him.

But he vows it, in his gaze, in the way he backs you into the bed hand still closed around your throat, the other curling at your side to sink into your dresses.

“I believe you are contradicting your Prince on his own victory..”

The ‘your’ is punctuated with his thumb dragging over the hollow of your throat, eyes flickering to watch where it bobs and panics, and not on you. He’s transfixed. The way your body reacts, so beautiful like this. So, his..

“No Aerion I would not—“ You choke out from his grip, hands raising to grab at him, to pull him closer, to assure him. And by the Gods it’s the truth. And he knows it, he sees it, feels it. And that’s enough.

“Good.”

That’s all he gives, all he can bare to before he’s tearing the layers from you, teeth biting into your lips as he crowds you.

Your hands fist into the sheets, your mouth hung open with every thrust that sends you jolting up the bed and back into the cage of his arms. He keeps you grounded there, one hand grasped at your breast tightly, the other wrapped your leg at his hip

And he’s relentless.

“You just don’t know when to stop do you?” He calls out to you, and you barely make it out, eyes rolling into your head with the feel of him rutting deep into your tight cunt.

Pale planes of muscle glimmer and glint with the sweat that sheens him in the candlelight, the slap of skin lewdly filling your ears only adding to the pressure that coils in your belly. Your moans turn into babbles, your mind overwhelmed and turned to a muddle with the amount of times he’s made you come undone. His fingers, his mouth biting bruising marks into your skin, his cock..

His hand fists into your hair, gripping you tightly with both hands to spin you onto your front. Your mouth shoved the sheets, open and blissed.

“..So pretty dove.” The one hand moves, both settling to take fistfuls of the fat of your hips, dragging you back down onto his length as he bends you more into the mattress, his knees grinding into the backs of your thighs.. “So..” Thrust. “So..” Thrust.

“Pretty when you shut that mouth.”

He leans over you, coiling much like a snake, the hot air from his mouth blowing over the shell of your ear. And he stills, delicious and aching, settling right up where you squeeze him tight, cock shoved leaking and kissing at the plug of your cervix.

“Nothing more to say?” He tries not to stutter, grappling at your body to keep you anchored tight to him, tongue clicking against his lip.

His eyes flicker up, dragging over you with a darkness. An intensity that makes your skin burn and face heat up even where you can’t see him. All that leaves your lips is a moan, guttural and wanton. Because chest heaves at your back, sheen coating your bodies where your breaths tremble and bodies ache for more.