ﾟ*｡✧Lyss✧｡*ﾟ

You had been staring at the same spreadsheet for the better part of forty-five minutes, and in that time, you had accomplished precisely three things: checking the formulas, rechecking the formulas, and arriving at the slow, creeping suspicion that you had chosen the wrong degree.

The university library hummed quietly around you, the soft percussion of keyboards, the occasional rustle of pages, the distant thud of a textbook someone had given up on and none of it was helping. Your eyes kept dragging back to the same column of numbers that stubbornly refused to cooperate, as though they had developed personalities and were doing this specifically to you.

One job, you thought, pressing two fingers to the bridge of your nose. You have one job.

The spreadsheet did not care.

You leaned back in your chair until it creaked in protest and stared at the library ceiling, briefly entertaining the fantasy of throwing your laptop off the business faculty roof. Or yourself. Whichever was more efficient.

A chair scraped against the floor.

The sound was close, directly across from you and was accompanied by the energy of someone who had absolutely no awareness that other people in this building were suffering. You looked up.

Jacaerys sat down.

He was wearing that smile. The annoyingly bright one, the one that had absolutely no business existing on someone who had just interrupted your academic crisis, the one that made his eyes crinkle at the corners in a way that you found deeply inconvenient given the current circumstances. His baseball cap was pulled low, and he’d dropped his bag onto the seat beside him with the casual ease, clearly his afternoon was going extremely well.

Yours was not.

You stared at him.

He stared back.

“I need your help,” he said breaking the staring contest. You blinked, waiting for context.

“…With?”

He held your gaze with the gravity as if he was about to announce a news of natural disaster.

“It’s about my hair.”

Silence.

You stared at him for a long moment. The spreadsheet still hadn’t balanced. The library still hummed.

Somewhere nearby, someone was highlighting something with aggressive enthusiasm.

“…Your hair,” you repeated.

He nodded.

You sighed and let your head tip back again.

┈┈・୨ ✦ ୧・┈┈

For even context, you had to go back three and a half months.

Three months ago, Jacaerys Velaryon had kissed you goodbye at the airport with his hair the way it always was: cropped short, a mullet at the end with the barest suggestion of a wave at the crown, the kind of low-maintenance cut that required approximately zero thought. He’d left for a summer internship at Winterfell S-Corp, the sprawling industrial giant run out of the North by the Stark family, a company that had made its fortune in wall defence systems, industrial fencing, and infrastructure engineered to survive centuries of arctic storms and the kind of winters that made King’s Landing people genuinely reconsider their relationship with the concept of cold.

You, meanwhile, had gone south. Tyrell Luxury Group had accepted you into their Maison Tyrell couture division, and for three months you had lived inside a world of silk and structured lighting, watching hairstylists perform what could only be described as amazing work on the heads of runway models. You’d learned things, even things about fashion completely irrelevant to your degree.

Three months.

Different cities. Different climates. Different worlds, almost.

Barely any FaceTimes because the hours were genuinely cruel on both ends, you were often busy creating power points or coordinating things between people at midnight while he was already halfway through a morning site briefing. Mostly texts. Voice notes when you missed each other enough to want the sound of the other person’s voice without the worry of a call.

And then, finally! you’d reunited.

Except.

Jace no longer had the hair he’d left with.

Winterfell, apparently, had other plans. The northern cold air, clean, relentlessly damp northern air had done something to him in the intervening months. Where there had once been a short, manageable cut, there were now curls. Proper curls. Shoulder-length, loose-but-defined, soft-looking curls that caught light in a way that seemed almost deliberate.

The cold climate had transformed his hair into something that belonged in a different century or a fantasy novel, maybe, the kind where people rode dragons and looked devastatingly good doing it. (😏)

You had become, immediately and without shame, completely obsessed with his hair.

It had started the afternoon he’d come back, when you’d reached up almost instinctively to touch one of the curls and felt it spring gently back against your fingers, and something in your brain had simply misfired in the best possible way. After that, your hand seemed to find its way into his hair every chance you got. Watching TV? Your fingers were working slow, idle patterns through the curls at his temple. Studying? One hand on your notes, one hand buried in the soft weight of his hair. Walking together? You weren’t entirely sure how you managed it, but somehow, with enough creative coordination, you found a way.

Jace never said a word about it.

Instead, he’d started investing excuses. Excuses to be horizontal on the sofa or when you were studying at the coffee table. Reasons to rest his head in your lap, or against your chest, his eyes drifting half-shut while you absentmindedly scratched behind his ears and massaged his scalp in slow, looping circles. He’d made a sound once, low and content, like a large cat who had worked out exactly where it wanted to be. You hadn’t teased him about it. It felt too soft for that.

It had become, quietly and without either of you naming it, his favourite kind of affection.

Unfortunately, King’s Landing air had opinions.

The city in summer was a humidity machine. You knew this. You’d grown up with it, the thick, wet air that settled on everything like a second skin, it made fabric cling and tempers shorten and hair do things hair was not supposed to do. It had apparently taken approximately two weeks to undo everything Winterfell had built.

┈┈・୨ ✦ ୧・┈┈

Back in the library, Jace reached up and slowly removed his baseball cap.

You gasped.

It wasn’t a dramatic gasp. It was involuntary, something your body produces before your brain has time to intervene.

“…No.”

His face fell. “What?”

“You-” You pressed your lips together, hard, because the library had a noise policy and you were genuinely at risk of violating it. “You look like Dora the Explorer.”

Silence.

A long silence.

“…Didn’t realise it was that bad,” Jace said quietly.

The curls, his beautiful, Winterfell-blessed, soft and defined curls, had staged a coup. The King’s Landing humidity had gotten to them, and the result was a triangle. A perfect, enormous, fluffy triangle of frizz that began somewhere around his ears and expanded outward with a confidence that was almost impressive. It was not the romantic northern curl situation you had spent weeks running your fingers through. It was something else entirely.

“Hey.” He pointed at you, affronted, which was difficult to pull off with that hair but he managed. “What do you mean I look like Dora?”

You clapped both hands over your mouth.

The sound that escaped anyway earned you a sharp look from the student two tables over.

“I’m sorry,” you managed.

“You are absolutely not sorry.”

“I’m trying to be.”

“You failed.”

You dissolved anyway, shoulders shaking, the giggle fighting its way out despite every effort. There was something about the combination of his genuinely offended expression and the spectacular geometry of his hair that made containment impossible. He was so pretty, normally. The contrast was doing something to you.

“I look that bad?” he asked, and there was something almost plaintive under the indignation.

You nodded. “I still love you though.”

He sighed and dropped his forehead directly onto the table.

You watched him with fondness and residual laughter and with something warm underneath both of those things.

“This is tragic,” he announced, face down, voice muffled by the table.

You reached over and gently poked one of the frizzy curls. It didn’t spring back. It barely moved. That was the problem.

“You need a proper curly hair routine,” you said.

His head lifted. He looked at you like you’d said something in a foreign language.

“…A what?”

“A curly hair routine.”

“…There’s a routine?”

“Yes.”

“I thought hair was hair.”

The look you gave him communicated, as clearly as a look could, that this was perhaps the most incorrect thing he had ever said. “No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“There are routines. Multiple. Depending on curl type, porosity, climate-”

“Plural?”

“Very plural.”

His eyes widened slightly. He looked, for a moment, genuinely alarmed by the scope of this information. You thought of the hairstylist’s backstage at Maison Tyrell, the way they’d talked about curl care with the intensity of chemists and felt something like vindication on their behalf.

“I learned loads working backstage,” you said. “Trying to coordinate things backstage. I watched the hairstylists.”

“So, you know how to fix this.”

It wasn’t quite a question. His eyes had gone hopeful, and something about that expression, eager and a little helpless, so different from his usual composed self, made it very hard to say anything other than yes.

“I think so.”

His whole face changed. The bright smile returned, the one that made the library feel less fluorescent.

“Perfect.” He slapped both palms flat on the table.

“Let’s go.”

“…Go where?”

“Shopping.”

You blinked at him. Then at your spreadsheet. Then back at him.

“Jace,” you said carefully.

“What?”

“I have an accounting quiz tomorrow.”

“And?”

“I need to study.”

He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest with an expression telling you that he is about to present a proposal he’s very pleased with.

“As the top student in our year,” he announced, “I shall tutor you.”

You narrowed your eyes.

“In exchange…” He pointed, dramatically, at his own head.

“You fix this.”

For a moment you just looked at him. The triangle of hair. The hopeful expression underneath it. The absolute audacity of the entire interaction.

Then you started laughing again, quickly muffled behind your hand, earning yourself a second sharp look from the student two tables over who was clearly having a worse afternoon than even you.

“I cannot believe,” you said, once you’d recovered, “that you are negotiating with your own girlfriend.”

He shrugged, entirely unrepentant. “It’s called business.”

“You’ve become insufferable.”

“I learned from the best.”

“…Who?”

“My mother.”

You snorted. You couldn’t help it. Rhaenyra Targaryen was, among many things, a formidably good negotiator. The resemblance was uncanny.

“Fair enough,” you said, and began closing your laptop.

┈┈・୨ ✦ ୧・┈┈

The Sephora on the high street was cool and white and smelled like overlapping perfumes that somehow managed not to cancel each other out. You stood in the hair care aisle with your notes app open like it was a battle plan because, in a sense, it was.

“Okay,” you said, scanning the list. “We need Gisou Honey Infused Leave-In Conditioner.”

Jace picked it off the shelf and dropped it into the basket without ceremony.

“Done.”

“Ouai Curl Crème.”

In it went.

“Pattern Beauty Curl Gel.”

Another toss.

“And-” You let yourself feel a small, private flicker of triumph. “Gisou Honey Infused Hair Oil.”

Basket complete. Mission accomplished.

Jace held the basket up and examined the growing collection of products thinking about a bill he hadn’t fully anticipated.

“…Is all of this strictly necessary?”

“Yes.”

“It feels expensive.”

“It is.”

A pause. “How expensive?”

You told him a rough estimate.

He absorbed this.

“Right.”

You looked at the basket again, and then a small, guilty feeling began assembling itself quietly in your chest. You’d approached this like it was your own bathroom, your own money, your own decision and it wasn’t.

“Actually,” you said.

Jace caught your expression immediately. He’d always been quick to read you. “What?”

“I feel bad.”

“For?”

“Making you buy all this. It’s a lot. And I just sort of- assumed.”

He looked at you for a moment. Then he reached into his back pocket taking out his wallet and produced a sleek black credit card with ease as if had never once thought about the number on a price tag which he probably didn’t considering his background.

“…Mother’s,” he said simply.

You stared at the card. Then at him.

“Must be fun,” you said, very pleasantly, “being born into nepotism.”

“HEY!”

A woman browsing dry shampoo three feet away turned to look.

“It’s true,” you said.

“I work hard.”

“I’m sure you do, Prince Jacaerys Velaryon.” You said in a teasing tone.

“I am not a prince.”

“You practically are.”

“I take genuine offence at your tone.”

“I take genuine offence at your bank account.”

He laughed so loud, the woman with the dry shampoo gave up and moved to the next aisle muttering about how kids these days are so disruptive.

“You are unbelievable,” he said, still laughing.

“And yet-” You smiled up at him, very sweetly. “You still date me.”

He looked at you. Something in his expression went soft before he could stop it.

“…Unfortunately,” he said.

“Liar.”

“Very unfortunately.”

“You’re smiling while you say that.”

“I know,” he said, and made no effort whatsoever to stop.

┈┈・୨ ✦ ୧・┈┈

Rhaenyra’s penthouse was exactly what it always was: impeccably maintained, decorated in understated luxury that announced itself without trying, and carrying the faint, clean scent of whatever candle she kept burning in the entryway. You liked it here. It felt, in the way that certain places do, like somewhere that was just calm.

You emptied the shopping bags onto the kitchen island and were doing a mental inventory when something clicked.

“Shoot.”

Jace, who had been reading the back of the curl gel with more focus than he’d given most of his coursework this semester, looked over. “What?”

“I forgot my hairdryer.”

“…That’s all?”

“And my diffuser.”

He shrugged with the ease of someone for whom this was a solvable problem rather than a logistical crisis. “We’ll borrow Mum’s. Pretty sure she has those.”

“Are we allowed?”

“We’ll ask.”

The front door opened.

As if summoned by fate itself, in walked Rhaenyra Targaryen. She was still in her work clothes: a black suit, perfectly cut, and not a wrinkle on it despite what must have been a full day inside it. Her laptop bag was over one shoulder. Behind her, Joffrey trailed in from school with his bag already halfway off his shoulder, heading for his room after giving Jace and you a quick greeting. He must have some activity planned for himself.

“Hello, you two,” Rhaenyra said.

“Hi, Mum.”

“Hello!” You said enthusiastically.

She paused, looking between the two of you with a suspicious expression she reserved for moments when something was clearly afoot, but she hadn’t yet worked out what. “What are you plotting?”

“Nothing,” you both said in sync.

She looked at you. Then at Jace. Then at the collection of hair products arranged on her kitchen island.

“I don’t believe either of you.”

Jace scratched the back of his neck, a tell you’d learned to recognise months ago. “Can we borrow your hairdryer?”

“…My what?”

“And the diffuser attachment.”

A beat of silence. Rhaenyra’s gaze moved, slowly and deliberately, between the two of you. She was the kind of person who could communicate volumes without raising her voice, and what she was currently communicating was something in the vicinity of I raised this child, and I know exactly what that face means.

“Should I ask why?”

“No,” Jace said.

“…That’s somehow more concerning.”

You smiled your most innocent smile. “It’s for science.” A brief, long-suffering pause.

“I regret asking,” she said. Then, after another moment of studying you both: “Fine.” She pointed toward the stairs. “But if I come home to a flooded bathroom-”

“It won’t be.”

“Or my hairdryer broken-”

“It won’t be. I’ll handle it” you said quickly.

“Or glitter anywhere-”

“There isn’t glitter.”

“There had better not be.”

She moved toward the door again. She had only returned to drop Joffery back home after school since the driver had to leave for an emergency but then paused, glancing back once more at her son’s hair, the triangle situation, now freed from the baseball cap and said nothing, though her expression said quite a lot.

Joffrey had already made it most of the way down the hall. “You two are weird,” he called, without turning around.

“We know!” both of you answered, at exactly the same moment.

┈┈・୨ ✦ ୧・┈┈

Jace’s room was as tidy as it could be. He hated making a mess and sometimes you teased him about perhaps having an OCD with how he takes pleasure in cleaning his room. His books stacked with a loose intention of order, a desk that looked like it had seen serious work, curtains that let in the late afternoon light in long, golden bars that fell across the floor.

You laid everything out across the desk with the methodical care of someone who was, in this specific domain, taking this extremely seriously. Leave-in conditioner. Curl crème. Curl gel. Hair oil. Diffuser. Borrowed hairdryer. Small microfibre towel. Everything in order.

“Right.” You clapped your hands together. Jace looked up from where he’d been reading a product label again, apparently trying to extract information that wasn’t there. “First things first.”

“What?”

“We need to wash your hair properly. No shortcuts, it needs to be clean for any of this to work.”

“Okay.”

You looked at him. He looked back.

“So,” you said. “Take your shirt off.”

A slow, wicked grin spread across his face like sunrise. “…Yes, ma’am.”

You recognised that expression. You’d seen it before. You pointed at him immediately. “Don’t. You. Dare.”

He stepped closer. He was feeling playful, leaning down until there were only a few inches of air between your faces, his curls (the chaotic ones, the tragic ones) falling forward slightly.

“If you wanted to get me shirtless,” he said, with great deliberation, “you could’ve simply asked.”

You smacked his arm, which made him laugh, and then you physically pushed him in the direction of the bathroom. “Shut up.”

“I was being helpful.”

“You were being annoying.”

“Same thing, sometimes.”

“Not even close.”

┈┈・୨ ✦ ୧・┈┈

The sink situation was, in retrospect, predictable.

You’d known it would be a little awkward, washing someone’s hair over a bathroom sink required a certain amount of spatial negotiation but you hadn’t quite accounted for Jace’s general inability to remain still when he found something funny, or his apparent talent for misdirecting water in every direction that wasn’t the drain.

Your white shirt took a direct hit.

You felt it happen. That cold spreading bloom of water soaking through the fabric. You looked down. Then up. Jace had frozen, the guilty expression because he knew exactly what he’d done written plainly across his face.

“…Oops,” he said.

You looked down again. Back up. Slowly folded your arms.

“So,” you said, in a mockingly pleasant tone.

He waited for you to continue.

“If you wanted to see my bra,” you said, “you could’ve simply asked.”

The pink that climbed up the sides of his neck to his ears happened so fast it almost startled him. “I- that’s not-” He pressed his lips together.

Then he laughed, helpless and real and embarrassed, and the sound of it bounced off the bathroom tiles.

“Now you’re using my lines,” he managed.

“I know,” you said, noting in your mind to change your shirt.

The actual process, once it began in earnest, had a quiet rhythm to it.

Jace sat on the low stool you’d dragged in from the corner of his room, which was barely adequate, but he folded himself into without complaint. You worked the leave-in conditioner through his damp hair carefully, section by section, making sure it was evenly distributed before handing him the bottle.

“Work this through while I change,” you said.

He glanced at the bottle, then at you. “You trust me?”

“Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“About sixty percent.”

His expression was deeply offended. “I deserve at least seventy.”

“Prove it and we’ll renegotiate,” you said, and disappeared into the bedroom to swap the wet shirt for one of his oversized T-shirts that lived on a hook behind his door. It smelled like him. You spent approximately no time thinking about that.

When you came back, the leave-in conditioner had, in fact, been distributed with reasonable competence.

“…I’m impressed.”

“I follow instructions.”

“Occasionally.”

He opened his mouth. You talked over him, squeezing the curl crème between your palms and beginning to work it through.

It happened almost immediately. The moment the product touched his damp hair, and you began scrunching, gathering sections upward, coaxing them into shape, the curls began responding. Coming back. Reforming with a soft, almost indignant energy, as though they’d always been there and the humidity had merely been an interruption.

Jace caught it in the mirror.

“…Wait.”

“There they are,” you said quietly.

“I can see them.”

There was something in his voice that wasn’t quite awe but was adjacent to it. You didn’t comment on it, just kept working, methodically and with more care than the task required, because these were his curls and you had spent two weeks deciding you were very attached to them.

The hair or curl gel came next. You demonstrated first by taking a small section, working the product through from root to tip, then coiling the curl gently around your finger.

“See how that defines it?”

He watched, then tried.

“Like this?”

“Almost but make it looser. Let the curl do the work.”

He adjusted. The curl sprang gently into shape.

Something in his expression shifted, he focused with concentration, learning a new thing.

You worked in companionable quiet for a while. Then—

“My hands are tired.”

“Hush.”

“This takes a long time.”

“Curly hair requires patience.”

“No one told me that.”

“I’m telling you now.”

“I’ve made a terrible decision.”

“You asked for this.”

“You like them more. Don’t lie!”

“That’s...true” you said.

The diffuser was the final step, and it was, honestly, the most important one. You attached it to Rhaenyra’s hairdryer, set it to cold, and began working it carefully beneath each section, lifting the curls up rather than disturbing them, letting the air do its work without the disruption of direct heat.

Jace tried to copy your movements once you handed him the drier back but he looked faintly absurd doing it, which was deeply endearing.

“This feels ridiculous,” he said.

“It works.”

“I look like I’m doing something from a tutorial.”

“You are doing something from a tutorial. My tutorial.”

He made a sound that wasn’t quite agreement and wasn’t quite disagreement.

The room filled with the low hum of the dryer and the smell of warmed product, sweet, clean, faintly floral from the honey oil you’d set aside for the end. Outside, the King’s Landing afternoon was doing its best impression of early evening, the light going amber through the curtains. You were aware, at the edges of your attention, of the spreadsheet you hadn’t finished and the quiz that was tomorrow and the tutoring session Jace owed you.

But that was later.

You switched the dryer off.

The quiet it left was comfortable. Easy.

You stepped back. Folded your arms. Regarded him with the gravity of someone revealing a finished painting.

“And,” you said, with appropriate ceremony, “voila.”

“It’s voilà,” he said automatically.

You pointed at him. “Don’t ruin my moment.”

He laughed, and then he turned toward the mirror, and the laughter quieted.

His shoulders went still.

The curls were back. Properly back and not the explosion of frizz from the library, not the soft but undefined waves of the days before you’d intervened. These were curls. Defined and bouncy, with a softness to them that caught the warm light and held it. They framed his face in a way that made him look like himself again, the Winterfell version of himself, the version you’d been very quietly delighted by for the last several weeks.

He turned his head. Slowly. Watching from one angle and then another.

“They actually look…”

“Amazing,” you supplied.

“…Amazing,” he agreed, like he was still arriving at the word.

You added the finishing touch, a few drops of the honey oil, warmed briefly between your palms before you smoothed it lightly over the surface of the curls, giving them that last suggestion of shine and then stepped back for real.

“Done.”

He kept looking at his reflection with an expression you didn’t see often, genuinely caught off guard, a little undone, the studied composure he usually wore without thinking temporarily absent.

“I haven’t seen my hair look like this since Winterfell,” he said.

“I know.”

He was quiet for a moment. Then he turned from the mirror, and without ceremony or announcement, he wrapped both arms around you and pulled you in.

“You genius,” he said, into your hair.

A kiss to your forehead. Then your cheek, the warmth of it brief and deliberate. Then the other cheek. Then the tip of your nose, which made you scrunch it. Then your jaw.

“Jace.”

Another kiss found its way to your temple.

“Jace.”

His lips curved against your cheekbone. You could feel him smiling.

“Enough,” you said, though the word didn’t come out with any real conviction.

He pulled back just far enough to look at you, still smiling, and then pressed one last proper kiss to your lips, brief and fond and slightly smug.

“Thank you,” he said.

You rolled your eyes. Fond. Always fond, with him. “Now you know how to do it yourself.”

“I’ll probably forget.”

“Then I’ll make you a list.”

He considered this. “Better,” he decided, with the satisfaction of someone whose problem had been neatly solved and reached for your hand. ┈┈・୨ ✦ ୧・┈┈

Rhaenyra walked past the doorway a few hour later.

Jace was at his desk, working through a set of accounting questions with a focused look he put on when he was actually concentrating, a pencil turning slowly in one hand. You were curled in the sofa across the room with your notes in your lap, the study session having you guys dispersed around to concentrate. It was quiet between you in the way it sometimes was, comfortable and unhurried, two people occupying the same space and not needing to fill it.

She paused.

Took one step back.

Looked inside.

Her gaze moved from you to him, and landed on his hair, the curls, soft and defined and clearly the work of deliberate effort, catching the desk lamp light in a way they hadn’t in weeks. She blinked once. Twice. The expression on her face cycled through something unreadable before arriving at something that was, unmistakably, approval.

She looked at you.

“…What did you do?”

You smiled. The small, satisfied smile of someone who had earned it. “Curly hair routine.”

Rhaenyra looked back at her son.

A quiet came over her, and then she said, with perfect composure and a warmth she wasn’t quite hiding: “…Finally.”

Jace looked up from his work. “What does that mean?”

She smiled at him softly and simply replied, “It means,” she said, “that my son’s hair no longer looks like a bird built a nest in it.”

A beat of perfect silence.

Then, from somewhere down the hallway, with the unerring timing of a younger sibling who had been waiting for precisely this moment:

“I TOLD YOU IT LOOKED LIKE A BIRD’S NEST!”

Jace’s expression collapsed into something pained and theatrical. He dropped his pencil. He put his face in his hands.

“I live with traitors,” he announced, to no one in particular.

You and Rhaenyra looked at each other across the room.

And then you laughed, both of you, properly, helplessly until Jace groaned again and neither of you could have answered him if you’d tried.

Then the door opened, and a different kind of warmth entered the room.

Your mother couldn't be there, so the responsibility of getting you home safely had fallen, quite naturally, onto your boyfriend. Jacaerys had shown up the moment you were free from the surgery, dark curls slightly damp from the rain outside, jacket still smelling faintly of the cold. But when he stepped through the doorway and your eyes landed on him, there was no flicker of recognition, only a slow, owlish blink.

You stared at him with your mouth hanging open around the gauze, a thin line of drool catching at the corner of your lip, utterly unbothered by your own state.

A laugh broke out of him before he could stop it. "Hey pretty," he murmured, leaning down to poke gently at your stuffed cheek. "You look like a chipmunk hiding treats." You didn't respond, too busy watching the lights flicker, while he turned his attention to the doctor rattling off post-op instructions: soft foods only, pain medication every six hours, no straws, call if there's excessive swelling. Jace nodded along, committing it all to memory the way he committed everything that mattered to you to memory, quietly and completely.

It wasn't until you were buckled into the passenger seat, the car humming low beneath you, that a single brain cell finally sparked to life.

Jace drove with one hand on the wheel and the other resting against your knee, a habit he'd never quite admit to. You clutched a worn travel pillow to your chest like it was the only solid thing left in the world, blinking at him with wide, glassy eyes, trying very hard to figure out who, exactly, this devastatingly handsome stranger was.

"Hey-" you finally said, words slurring soft around the gauze. "Hey, pretty boy."

His mouth twitched. He glanced over, just for a second. "Yeah? You talking to me?"

"You're really pretty," you informed him, with the serious conviction of someone delivering important news. Your gaze tracked the line of his jaw like it was the most fascinating thing you'd ever seen. "But you gotta pull over. If my boyfriend Jace finds out a supermodel is driving me home, he's gonna get so sad. He has the prettiest eyes. I can't make him sad."

Something warm cracked open in his chest, equal parts tenderness and barely contained amusement. He decided, then and there, to see exactly how far this would go.

"Oh yeah?" he said, clearing his throat, eyes fixed dutifully on the road, the picture of an innocent stranger. "This Jace guy sounds like a lucky dude. He treat you well?"

You looked at him like he'd just insulted a national monument. "The best. He let me borrow his favorite hoodie. He’s super smart and caring. He makes me feel safe and seen and heard." Your voice dropped, almost reverent. "And he has these tiny curls right at the back of his neck. I like to twirl them when we watch movies."

His ears went hot. He had not, in fact, expected you to get that specific. "Is he now," he managed, voice a little strangled.

"Yes. So don't try anything, mister." You pointed a wobbling, accusatory finger at him, the threat losing most of its power when your attention scattered seconds later, caught entirely by a particularly interesting tree sliding past the window.

There was a beat of silence, and then, out of nothing, you said, "You know, I used to think he was gay."

That got his attention fast. "What- Why?"

"Yeah, he has this really cool friend, Cregan. I love Cregan too, but I thought I had no chance. Cregan is also pretty." You said this all with the breezy honesty of someone who had never once filtered a thought in her life. Jace opened his mouth, fully prepared to defend his honor against this slander, but you'd already moved on, eyes welling with sudden, mysterious tears because the tree that had just passed reminded you of something you couldn't quite name. He sat there, half laughing, half stunned into silence, completely unequipped to keep up with the loopy logic unspooling beside him.

By the time they reached his apartment, you'd transferred your loyalty fully to the concept of fidelity, informing him at every step up the stairs that you were taken, thank you very much, even as YOU were the one clung to his arm like it was the only thing keeping you upright and it was.

He settled you onto the couch, propped against a small mountain of pillows, and disappeared into the kitchen for two minutes, just long enough to grab the ice packs and your liquid pain medication. He needs to make sure you’re taken care of. When he walked back into the living room, you looked up, and your whole face transformed.

Something in your brain finally clicked back into place. The pretty stranger from the car evaporated, and in his place stood the only person who'd ever mattered.

"Jace!" The gasp came out thick with loopy, dramatic tears, your eyes shining. "You're here. You saved me."

He set the ice packs down gently and lowered himself onto the edge of the couch, utterly endeared. "I'm here, sweetheart. I've been here the whole time."

You threw your arms around his neck, burying your face into his shoulder like you hadn't seen him in years instead of minutes. "The guy who drove me home was so sketchy, Jace. He kept trying to flirt with me. I told him I only love you. I told him about your hoodie."

He wrapped his arms around you fully, rubbing slow circles into your back, laughter shaking quietly through his chest as he pressed his face into your hair to hide it. "I heard all of it. You did a great job defending my honor. I'm very proud of you."

A pause. Then, suddenly urgent: "Is Rhaenyra here?"

He blinked. "What? No, we're at your apartment, not my mom's place."

Your face crumpled instantly, lower lip wobbling. "But I wanted the cookies. Your mom makes the best cookies. She's so lovely." A fresh wave of tears threatened, and Jace, slightly panicked and entirely charmed, reached for his phone before you could spiral further.

Rhaenyra picked up despite clearly being in the middle of something, her voice warm even through the distraction in the background. You snatched the phone from Jace's hand with surprising speed for someone who could barely sit upright, and launched into a slurred, heartfelt conversation that made his mother laugh more than once. She teased you gently, said something that made you giggle into the phone, and Jace, watching this whole exchange unfold, felt a small, ridiculous flicker of jealousy.

"Okay, that's enough, she's mine to tease," he said, leaning in to pry the phone back, pressing a quick goodbye to his mother before she could embarrass him further.

As the heavier wave of the pain medication finally pulled at your eyelids, Jace pressed the ice packs carefully against your swollen cheeks. You whined softly at the cold, pouting up at him with such genuine betrayal that he had to bite back another laugh. His eyes, though, stayed soft the entire time, unguarded in a way they rarely were with anyone else.

He leaned down and pressed a slow, careful kiss to your forehead.

"Sleep," he murmured against your skin. "I'll be right here when you wake up."

And he was. He made sure you were cared for. He also definitely recorded your tantrums and showed you later as you whined, asking his to delete them.

We all deserve a cutie patootie like Jace in our lives <3

Fire danced with a horrific, erratic grace across the blackened waters of the Gullet, transforming the vital shipping lane into a sprawling, floating graveyard. Flames leapt from ship to ship in hungry arcs, feeding on timber and pitch and the desperate prayers of drowning men. Beneath the merciless onslaught of Team Black’s dragons, mighty Triarchy war-galleys splintered like kindling, their hulls cracking open to swallow their crews whole. Great masts toppled into the waves with the slow, theatrical finality of falling monuments. And yet, this was no easy victory. No clean triumph etched into the history books with golden ink. Below, Lord Corlys Velaryon’s fleet fought with everything it had, attempting to trap the armada in the narrow, choking passage, buying time in blood and smoke and screaming iron.

The atmosphere was a living thing, a suffocating shroud woven from the sharp salt tang of brine, the acrid bite of billowing smoke, the unmistakable iron-sweetness of fresh blood, and the sickening, almost honeyed stench of burning pitch. It coated the throat and burned the eyes.

High above the carnage, roaring through the roiling tempest of fire and ash, rode Prince Jacaerys Velaryon.

He sat astride Vermax like a man born to the sky because he was. The great emerald dragon cut through the smoke-choked air like a gleaming blade, his scales catching the hellish firelight below, wings spread wide. Jace’s riding leathers were already dark with spray and soot. His dark curls whipped against his face. He did not notice. His eyes were fixed on the battle, calculating and measuring, feeling the terrible weight of command settle across his shoulders with the intimacy of something he had worn all his life.

He had locked his mother in her chambers at Dragonstone before leaving. Had stood outside the door and listened to her pound against it, her voice cracking on his name. The sound had nearly unmade him entirely. But she was the queen. She was the cause. She could not be lost, and Jacaerys Velaryon had long since made peace with the arithmetic of that.

She lives. Therefore, I go.

Beside him, Baela streaked across the smoke on Moondancer fierce and brilliant, her silver hair streaming behind her like a war banner. And then, piercing through the mist like something half-imagined, a new silhouette emerged. Jace’s eyes snapped to it. His stomach lurched with shock before his heart swelled with a pride so fierce it nearly hurt.

Rhaena. Flying the wild dragon Sheepstealer.

Of course she was.

Together they were three dragons raining hell from the heavens, and for one blazing, exhilarating moment, Jace believed they might actually win this despite Sheepstealer almost knocking him out. He watched their collective fire devastate Admiral Lohar’s vanguard below, great tongues of flame consuming the armada’s leading ships, sending men screaming into the sea. He felt the savage triumph of it. The rightness.

Then the heavy, rhythmic thrum of scorpions began.

Massive iron bolts tore through the clouds around them. The Triarchy fleet was enormous, he had known this, had known it academically the way one knows a thing from maps and reports but knowing it and watching it materialize below him in all its terrible scale were entirely different experiences.

He pressed Vermax into a steep, dangerously low dive.

Below, through the roiling chaos, Jace had spotted Lord Corlys’s flagship being violently rammed by Lohar’s vessel. The silver-haired sea snake, his grandfather by every measure that mattered, surrounded and struggling. Jace made his decision in the space of half a breath. He would break the enemy lines. He would fly low. He would end this.

He flew too close to the water.

His focus had narrowed to a single burning point, the ships, the threat, the duty and so he did not hear the volley until it was already too late.

A heavy iron shaft sliced violently through the membrane of Vermax’s right wing with a sound like tearing cloth and screaming metal fused together. Another slammed directly into the dragon’s chest with a concussive, world-shaking force that Jace felt through every bone in his body.

Vermax screamed.

The sound ripped through Jace like a physical blade. Not a roar, not the magnificent, terrible declaration of a dragon in battle. A scream. Raw and agonizing and so deeply personal that Jace felt his own lungs seize in sympathy, as though the bolt had pierced him too. The great emerald body shuddered beneath him. The massive wings faltered, losing the steady rhythm that held them aloft. The world tilted.

They were falling.

“No-”

Jace yanked desperately on the reins, his boots straining hard against the stirrups, body thrown forward as the sea rushed upward to meet them with terrifying speed. Wind screamed past his ears. The fire and the smoke and the battle became a chaotic blur of sensation.

“Vermax, fly!”

The dragon fought. Even now, even broken and burning, Vermax fought. A beast born of fire, refusing absolutely to yield to the water. One wing beat heavily, then another. The torn membrane fluttered uselessly, a tattered rag of what it had been, but still Vermax tried, and something in Jace’s chest shattered at the sight of it.

“Soves!” His voice broke on the word, all royal dignity stripped away, reduced to something raw and helpless and very young. “Soves, Vermax! Please-”

One final, agonizing beat of the wings.

It was not enough.

Freezing, brine-heavy water swallowed Jacaerys Velaryon whole. It was not like diving, it was like being struck by the earth itself, like the sea had become solid in the last instant before collision, and he felt the shock travel up through his ankles, his knees, his spine, rattling his teeth in his skull. The sheer velocity of the crash tore his fingers from the saddle. The weight of his armor dragged at him immediately, a slow, patient, lethal pull downward into the dark.

Primal instinct flared.

He unhooked himself and practically clawed upward. His lungs burned. The cold was absolute, the kind that doesn’t feel cold at all but rather feels like being unmade, like the sea was simply erasing him a layer at a time. He could see nothing, only dark water and distant fire and the enormous bulk of Vermax somewhere below him, a shadow become a nightmare. He burst through the surface with a gasp so violent it tore his throat.

“Vermax!”

He spun in the churning water, hair plastered to his face, salt burning his eyes. The battle raged on around him, ships groaning and splitting, men screaming, iron raining from all directions. The world had not paused for him.

“Vermax!”

Through the haze of cresting waves, he found him. His dragon, his Vermax, who had carried him since boyhood, who had grown as he had grown, who had been as much a part of him as his own heartbeat was desperately trying to swim. The damaged wings beat uselessly to try to swim up. His great neck was straining upward. His eyes, when they met Jace’s from below the water, held something that a person with less grief in them might have dismissed as imagination. They did not look like the eyes of an animal.

They looked like the eyes of someone saying goodbye. A massive anchor, or debris, Jace could not tell which, tangled around Vermax’s exhausted body. The sea accepted its offering. With a final, sorrowful look that Jacaerys Velaryon would carry with him for the rest of his life.

He never resurfaced.

Something inside Jace broke. Not cracked. Not bent. Broke, the way an old bone breaks, the kind that doesn’t ever quite knit back the same way. He hauled his upper body onto a large piece of floating wreckage with the determination of a body that had not yet received the message from his mind that none of this mattered anymore. His chest heaved in ragged, desperate gasps. He was shaking. He was exhausted in a way that reached all the way down into whatever part of him had believed, until this moment, that he might survive this.

He had not brought enough of that belief. He saw that now.

He thought of his mother.

The image of her face, proud and terrified and trying not to show either rose unbidden. He had done this for her. Had done all of it for her. He hoped she would understand, someday, that locking her in her chambers had been the most love he had ever offered anyone.

He thought of Baela. Of Rhaena.

He thought of-

A sharp, dull impact struck his upper back.

Jace lurched forward with a sound that was almost nothing, barely a breath. Confused, of all things, not yet understanding, he glanced over his shoulder. A heavy crossbow bolt protruded from his shoulder blade at an angle that his mind catalogued with strange, distant calm, the way one notices a detail in a painting.

Slowly, numbly, he turned his head toward the source. A Triarchy war-galley drifted just yards away. Lined along the wooden railing stood a row of Admiral Lohar’s soldiers, unhurried, methodical, their crossbows leveled at the figure in the water.

They knew exactly who he was. There was no urgency in their posture, no battlefield fever. This was an execution.

The heir to the Iron Throne, stranded and defenseless. A second bolt flew. It slammed into his chest. He heard it before he felt it.

Then a third...straight to the neck.

A strange, sudden calm washed over him.

The deafening roar of the battle receded, becoming muffled, distant, the way sounds narrow when one goes underwater. The sea rocked him gently now, almost tenderly, as if it had been waiting all along to offer this small mercy at the end. He had not expected kindness. He was grateful for it.

He thought of his mother, safe on Dragonstone.

He thought of Baela’s laughter.

He thought of his brothers.

And he thought with a softness that surprised him, with something that might have been the very last warmth his body could generate, of you. Of a future that would not be built. Of a promise he was not sure, now, that he had ever been given the chance to make.

The last image to imprint itself on the fading mind of Jacaerys Velaryon was that reflection.

A burning sky, mirrored in the water.

Beautiful.

Tragic.

Then everything went black.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

Jacaerys bolted upright with a gasp that felt like surfacing.

His eyes flew open. His hand flew to his chest and then to his neck, pressing hard against his sternum, feeling for something, a wound, an absence, a bolt buried in bone and found nothing but the soft cotton of his t-shirt and the solid, living rhythm of his own heart. He sat there for a long moment, chest heaving, and simply stared at the ceiling.

White plaster. Crown moulding. A small water stain shaped vaguely like a continent.

No smoke.

No dragon.

No sea.

No battle.

Just a bedroom. His bedroom.

Morning sunlight filtered through floor-to-ceiling windows in long, clean shafts, illuminating the warm disorder of his life: the desk buried under business textbooks and notebooks with pages dog-eared and margins crowded with his handwriting, his laptop open from the night before with a lecture slide still visible on the screen, a hoodie slung over the back of his desk chair. Outside the windows, King’s Landing stretched endlessly in the early light, the city already stirring, glass towers catching the sun.

His alarm clock flashed 7:00 AM.

No swords or the banners of House Targaryen. Jace pressed the heels of both palms against his eyes and breathed.

The memories were still there. That was the wrong word for them, memories. They did not feel like the soft, dissolving stuff of ordinary dreams that faded on the edges as soon as you tried to examine them. They felt like the other kind of remembering, the kind that lives in the body rather than the mind. He could still feel the cold of the Gullet in his fingers. He could still smell the smoke. He could still feel the weight of dragon-riding leathers across his shoulders, the particular pull of Vermax’s movement through the air, the way the saddle had sat against the backs of his thighs.

He could still feel the bolts.

Just a dream, he told himself. The words felt inadequate in his own mouth, like trying to describe a storm with the word weather. He muttered them anyway, pressing his face harder into his palms.

“Just a dream.”

A dream where he had been a prince.

A prince who had died.

His stomach dropped with a physical lurch. The alarm was still beeping. He silenced it with a slap and sat on the edge of the bed for one more moment, just one, breathing in the ordinary scent of his ordinary room.. Then his brain supplied the information he had been avoiding.

Classes.

Shit.

He was already late.

He moved through his morning routine with the efficiency of someone running on instinct rather than thought, shower, clothes, a cursory battle with his curls that ended, as it always did, in a draw. He emerged from the bathroom in jeans and sneakers and his favorite dark hoodie, his hair doing exactly what it wanted. There wasn’t time to argue with it. There was rarely ever time.

The smell of coffee reached him in the hallway. It pulled at something in his chest and he followed it through the penthouse to the kitchen.

His steps halted in the doorway.

Rhaenyra stood at the island counter, reading something on her tablet with the focused, slightly stern expression she wore when she was processing information she found annoying. A coffee mug steamed beside her elbow, forgotten. She was already dressed soft grey, elegant, effortlessly so in the way that had always seemed to come naturally to her and she looked exactly as she always looked in the morning, tired by all the corporate bullshit.

CEO of Targaryen Corporation. One of the most influential women in King’s Landing. The most formidable person he had ever known.

His mother.

The word hit him somewhere unsteady. Something twisted painfully in his chest, relief so acute it nearly hurt, threaded through with the dreaming grief of a boy who had watched her face in his mind as the water closed over him, who had spent his last conscious moment believing she was safe, needing her to be safe, and had been right without ever knowing he was right. He crossed the room before he had consciously decided to.

He wrapped his arms around her.

Rhaenyra nearly dropped her coffee.

“Jacaerys-”

She caught herself, setting the mug down with a firm clink on the marble countertop, and then without hesitation, because she had always been this, whatever else she was, she wrapped her arms around him and held him back.

“Sweet boy.” Her voice was softer now. Her fingers found their way into his curls the way they had when he was very small. “What’s the matter?”

Jace swallowed against the tightness in his throat. The dream came rushing back through him like a tide, the war, the weight of a crown his mother should have inherited without blood, the desperate, bone-deep need to protect her. The image of her face as he had walked away from Dragonstone, toward the dragon, toward the battle, toward the Gullet. The way he had looked back.

He shook his head against her shoulder.

“I’m fine.”

“You are clearly not fine.”

Her hand moved in slow, soothing circles against his back. Despite himself, despite everything, Jace felt something in him begin to loosen.

He laughed. A weak, slightly broken sound, but genuine. “I just…” His voice cracked on the nothing he was trying to say.

Rhaenyra pulled back slightly to look at him. Not the way she looked at her board of directors, or at rivals across conference tables, or at the city from thirty floors up. The other way. The private way, that only he and his brothers ever saw.

“What happened?”

He wiped his eyes quickly, hoping she wouldn’t comment on it and took a breath.

“I had the most vivid dream.”

“What kind of dream?”

He hesitated. There was something strange about saying it. As though speaking about it aloud would make it either more real or less, and he wasn’t sure which outcome he wanted.

“I was a prince,” he said.

Rhaenyra blinked. Whatever she had been expecting, it was not that.

“A prince?”

“Yeah.” A small smile found its way onto his face, unwilling, almost involuntary. “You were a queen.” Something passed across her expression something soft, something she would never have allowed in a meeting room. “Oh?”

“I died fighting a battle for you.”

Silence.

She looked at him for a long moment. Then she reached up and brushed a curl from his forehead with the gentleness that had no performance in it, something she reserved for the three of them and no one else.

“Well,” she said finally, her smile warming to something that was almost, almost teasing. “That sounds exhausting.”

Jace stared. “That’s all you’ve got?”

“You are standing in my kitchen wearing yesterday’s hoodie and telling me about dragon wars, Jacaerys.”

He opened his mouth to protest then closed it. “Fair.” She squeezed his shoulder. “It was only a dream.”

“You know,” said a new voice from the doorway, “some families start their mornings with good morning.”

Luke wandered in carrying a cereal box like a trophy, nineteen years old and permanently, professionally smug. He surveyed the scene with the cheerful heartlessness of a younger brother who had found ammunition and intended to use it.

“Did Jace finally lose his mind?”

Behind him, Joffrey, fourteen and grinning with the particular delight of someone who had been waiting for this squeezed past into the kitchen. “About time.” Jace rolled his eyes so hard it was almost an athletic achievement. “There he is.”

“Dreaming about being a prince?” Luke plucked a bowl from the cupboard with casual ease. “That’s because you’re already treated like one.”

The napkin Jace threw hit him square in the face. Luke threw it back. Rhaenyra sighed with the air of a woman who had calculated exactly how many more years of this lay before her and found the number disheartening.

“My sons,” she said, picking up her coffee. “Truly intellectual giants.”

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

Breakfast passed with the comfortable velocity of mornings that had been rehearsed through repetition until they ran themselves. Luke complaining about something, Joffrey eating cereal in quantities that defied his size, Rhaenyra reading from her tablet while simultaneously tracking all three of them with the peripheral attention of someone who had never once been entirely off duty.

Jace was reaching for his coffee when Rhaenyra glanced up.

“Are you still picking up your girlfriend?”

He froze.

The coffee cup remained halfway to his face, arrested in mid-air.

“…My what?”

Luke’s head snapped up. The expression that crossed his face was one of pure, unalloyed joy. He looked like he had been handed a gift.

Rhaenyra stared at her eldest with the patient, faintly incredulous expression of a woman who had not expected to be performing this particular reality check on a Tuesday morning.

“Your girlfriend.”

“Oh.” Jace set the cup down carefully. “Right.”

You.

He had a girlfriend.

A beautiful girlfriend, and she was his girlfriend, and she had been his girlfriend for- he was briefly lost in the arithmetic of it, which was itself a kind of answer and she was wonderful, she was brilliant, she made him laugh, and somehow in the space between waking up with the sea in his lungs and standing in his mother’s kitchen in yesterday’s hoodie, he had momentarily forgotten she existed.

And then, because his brain was apparently in full catastrophic mode this morning: betrothed. Not yet. Not technically. But the word had been sitting in the back of his mind ever since he woke up from his dream.

Heat flooded his face with spectacular completeness. Luke nearly choked on his cereal.

“Oh my God.”

“Shut up.”

“You forgot your girlfriend.”

“Only briefly.”

“Only” Luke dissolved entirely, shoulders shaking. Across the table, Joffrey watched with the dignified appreciation of a connoisseur.

Rhaenyra shook her head slowly. “Honestly, Jace.” “It was a very intense dream,” he said, with as much dignity as one can muster while slowly turning the color of a sunset.

“You forgot your girlfriend.”

“The dream had dragons, Mum.”

She gave him the look. The specific look, the one that had been making him feel twelve years old since he was actually twelve years old. “She’s a lovely girl. I wish you’d bring her home more often.”

Jace stood from the table with the decisive energy of a man drawing a conversation to a close. “I was planning to.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“Today?”

“…Possibly.”

“Good.” Rhaenyra returned to her tablet, the slight smile at the corner of her mouth saying everything she was too dignified to say aloud.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

The underground parking garage was cool and dim, smelling of concrete and oil and the expensive quiet of a building where people took the lift rather than the stairs. Jace’s Porsche sat in its usual spot, Oak Green Metallic, catching the fluorescent light.

Vermax.

He had named the car Vermax which now sounded so ionic to him.

He stood beside the driver’s door for a moment, hand on the handle, the thought arriving fully formed and then sitting there in his chest with an odd weight. He had named his car Vermax years ago. He had thought it was because he liked the sound of it, or because it was the name of a character in a book he’d read, or because of some half-remembered reason that had never quite solidified into anything coherent.

He looked at the car. The deep green of it. The long, low lines of it, built for speed, built for the sky-

Built for the sky.

A strange feeling settled over him, the kind of not-quite-vertigo that comes with recognizing something without being able to name what it is you’re recognizing. Like seeing an old friend across a crowd before you’ve registered their face.

He shook it off. Got in and drove.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

The street outside your house was quiet in the way that Tuesday mornings in King’s Landing occasionally managed to be, with the morning light that made ordinary things seem briefly considered. Jace pulled to the curb and sat for a moment with the engine idling, window down.

Then the front door opened and you stepped out. He got out of the car.

The morning light caught your hair the way it always did, making you look almost angelic in Jace’s eyes in that moment. You were still in the act of adjusting the strap of your bag when you spotted him, and the smile that crossed your face. Happy just to see him.

And for one strange, suspended moment, another image overlapped the morning like a transparency laid over a photograph. A figure standing on the cliffs of Dragonstone. The sea grey below and the wind pulling at dark fabric. Watching him leave. The expression on her face, your face, heartbroken and resolute and trying to be neither.

Waiting for him to come back.

The image dissolved as quickly as it had arrived. The morning reasserted itself. You were walking toward the car, your bag settled on your shoulder now, your smile still in place, and Jace found himself already stepping forward already moving toward with certainty that was less decision than gravity.

Before you could say a word, he took your hand and raised it, and pressed a kiss against your knuckles. Deliberatea and unhurried. Like he’d done it a thousand times before, in other rooms, in other centuries.

“How are you, my beloved?”

You stopped.

Looked at the hand.

Looked at him.

And then, because you were you, you laughed, the bright, surprised sound of someone caught genuinely off guard. “What has gotten into you this morning?” you questioned him.

Jace grinned, and the grin felt more like him than anything else had all morning. “I genuinely have no idea.”

“You’re being sooo weird.” You studied him with the narrowed eyes trying to grasp his words and actions. “How weird is this going to get?”

“I had the wildest dream.”

“Oh?” Already your expression was shifting into the one you wore when you were preparing to be entertained. He leaned forward and kissed you softly quick, warm and certain.

“In it,” he said against your smile, “you were my princess too.”

Your cheeks went pink with entirely gratifying speed. “Oh my God.”

“You asked.”

“I asked what was wrong with you, not-”

“Details.”

“Jacaerys Velaryon, I am going to need you to be normal for the next five minutes-”

“I make no promises.”

He opened the passenger door for you, still grinning, and the morning felt lighter than it had when he’d left the penthouse.

The dream wasn’t entirely terrible, he thought, settling behind the wheel. If nothing else, it had done this, sharpened his vision, made ordinary things brilliant again. Made you more vivid than you’d already been, which was saying something considerable. He found himself smiling the entire drive to university.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

University should have felt normal.

Instead, Jace spent the entire morning convinced he was losing his mind by degrees as new details of his dream would hit him.

The dream lingered with a persistence that ordinary dreams did not have, the kind he usually forgot by the time he reached the kitchen. This one clung. Every corridor he walked reminded him of castle hallways, the echo of footsteps on stone, and the smell of torch smoke. Every crowded lecture hall conjured the geometry of noble courts; the subtle theatre of power performed through proximity. His Strategic Management lecture had an entire section on resource allocation that kept pulling his thoughts sideways, toward councils and war rooms and Dragonstone. He stared at his notebook.

He had written, in the margin: Corlys was right about the Gullet.

He had no idea when.

“You’re disassociating again.”

Jace blinked.

Across the seminar table sat Cregan Stark, regarding him with the expression he used on everything: tall, dark-haired, slow-blinking, fundamentally and constitutionally unimpressed by the world and all its events. He was from Winterfell like genuinely, actually from Winterfell, which Jace had always found slightly funny without ever quite being able to explain why.

They’d been best friends since secondary school, the friendship that had calcified into something so much more. They were like brothers in every sense. Also, he looked almost exactly like the Cregan from the dream.

Same jaw. Same eyes. Same expression, the one that said I am listening to you and I find you exhausting. Same, in other words, as he always looked well except his had slightly shorter hair.

“What?” Jace managed.

Cregan raised one eyebrow. “You’ve been staring at me for ten seconds with an expressionless face.”

“Sorry.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I had a strange dream. I feel like I keep repeating these words over and over again.”

“You texted me at four in the morning.”

Jace went very still.

“I did?”

Cregan reached for his phone with the patience of a man who had long since resigned himself to the chaos of being Jace Velaryon’s closest friend. He scrolled briefly, then began reading aloud in the flat, informational tone of a news anchor delivering a weather report.

“‘Brother, imagine if we were medieval nobles.’”

“Oh, God.”

“‘You would have loved Winterfell.’”

“Cregan-”

“‘You were Lord of the North.’” He glanced up briefly. “I’m from Winterfell, Jace. I grew up in Winterfell. I know what Winterfell is.”

“Please stop-”

‘I miss Vermax.’

Cregan lowered the phone.

“I don’t know what Vermax is, if its not talking about your car.” he said.

Jace buried his face in both hands and made a sound that was less a word than a comprehensive statement. “You were never meant to read those.”

“You sent them to me.”

“I was apparently not fully conscious at four in the morning. I don’t remember doing this at all.”

“That’s concerning.”

“Yes.”

“Are you okay?”

The question arrived without ceremony, Cregan always asked things he actually wanted to know, dropped into a conversation like a stone dropped into water, watching to see what it displaced. Jace hesitated for long enough that the silence became its own answer.

“Yeah,” he said. Then, quietly: “Not entirely.”

Cregan nodded. He didn’t push. This was something Jace had always valued about him, the Stark capacity to hold space without filling it.

“Tell me later,” Cregan said, and turned back to his laptop.

Mostly, Jace thought. He was mostly okay. ┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

You found him outside the business building at noon, materializing from the flow of students and your smile arrived before you did.

Jace felt the thing in his chest that had been clenched since 7 AM ease, slowly, like a hand opening. There was something about you that operated on him this way, had always operated on him this way, since the beginning. A quality of presence that grounded him, that made the world’s coordinates make sense again. He’d never found quite the right words for it. He’d stopped trying.

You slipped your hand into his without ceremony.

“Better than this morning?”

“A little.”

“Still thinking about your prince dream?”

He laughed, the sound freer than he expected. “Unfortunately.”

“You are such a nerd.”

“I was literally fighting a war.”

“You were dreaming about fighting a war.”

“Details.”

“Jacaerys Velaryon, if this dream becomes your entire personality, I want it on the record that I tried to prevent it-”

“Noted and rejected.”

You rolled your eyes with magnificent feeling. “I make no promises about what I tell your mother.”

Together you walked toward the café nearby. A small, overcrowded place called something Jace could never quite remember but it had had excellent coffee and terrible lighting and was perpetually full of students and professors who had clearly rather be somewhere else. The place that existed to absorb the ambient anxiety of a university and convert it, through caffeine, into something marginally more functional.

You had barely settled into your seats when a familiar voice arrived from approximately two tables away, belonging to someone who had apparently been watching for them.

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite nephew.”

Aegon Targaryen dropped into the empty chair beside Jace with the comfortable confidence of a man who owned, and this was literally true, approximately half the building they were sitting in. Twenty-six, blond, expensive, reliably catastrophic. His jacket probably cost more than Jace’s car maintenance for the year, and he wore it with the carelessness never once considering the cost of anything.

He was nothing like the monster from the dream. The dream-Aegon had been something Jace couldn’t fully bring himself to examine yet. Jealous and bitter and capable of terrible things. This Aegon was mostly known for throwing parties that became local legend and mysteriously managing to avoid all professional consequences for anything he did, ever. Jacaerys supposed that has something to do with his mother and his uncle Aemond keeping these things contained.

“To what do we owe the honor?” Jace asked.

Aegon’s attention had already moved to you.

“And how are you?”

“Good,” you said politely.

“Still putting up with him?”

You smiled. “Barely.”

“Excellent answer.”

Jace groaned. Aegon looked absolutely delighted. “You’re blushing,” Aegon observed, with the tone of someone reporting a natural phenomenon.

“I’m not.”

“You absolutely are.”

You leaned over the table, and Jace recognized the look on your face immediately. The collaborative look. The look that meant you had identified an ally.

“He was calling me his beloved this morning.”

Aegon’s chair nearly lost him. He grabbed the table.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“In what context?”

“He kissed my hand. In the street. Before nine in the morning.”

Aegon looked at Jace the way someone looks at an archaeological discovery with facination, slightly appalled, deeply pleased. “This is the greatest thing that has ever happened.”

Jace contemplated his options. Leaving. Changing his name and moving to Braavos. Committing entirely to the persona of someone who had never been caught calling his girlfriend my beloved at eight forty-five on a Tuesday.

None of these were practical.

He reached for his coffee and said nothing, which Aegon correctly interpreted as total defeat.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

After Aegon eventually wandered off, ostensibly to a meeting, credibly to cause chaos somewhere else and so the café settled back into its ordinary rhythms. Students came and went. Espresso machines hissed. The ambient noise absorbed itself.

You and Jace remained at your table, and the laughter faded naturally, the way good laughter does, not dying but simply becoming something quieter.

He was staring into his coffee again.

You watched him for a moment.

“You never told me the whole dream, since it has you in a weird mindset today.” you said quietly.

His fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around the cup. He was aware of you looking at him, with your full attention, which had always been more like listening than looking, patient and genuine and without agenda.

“To put it simply, there was a war,” he said.

You didn’t ask him to explain. You waited.

“A civil war.” He looked up briefly, then back at the table. “A war over who would rule over Westeros. My mother was supposed to inherit as was the rightful heir to the throne but there were those who didn’t accept it. Didn’t accept her.”

“And you fought for her.”

“Of course.”

The images came without invitation, Dragonstone’s grey halls, the council table, the maps spreading the whole kingdom out before them like a wound. The feeling of duty that had lived in his chest since childhood, not as a burden but as a definition. This is who you are. This is what you do.

You reached across the table and took his hand. He continued.

“I flew a dragon. I know this sounds no so scary but-” Despite everything, he heard the ghost of wonder in his own voice. “Vermax. He was- he was mine. Since I was a boy. He knew me.” The wonder curdled, softened into something heavier. “He died with me.”

Your thumb moved in a slow arc across his knuckles. “The last thing I remember,” he said quietly, “was dying. Floating in the sea, after everything.” He paused.

“It was strange. It wasn’t- it wasn’t the way I would have imagined. It wasn’t terrifying.”

“What was it?”

He thought about it honestly.

“It was sad,” he said. “But calm.”

You were quiet for a moment. Then you reached up, and the gesture was so unexpected that he went still, your hand cupping his cheek, steady and warm, thumb tracing a line beneath his eye.

He leaned into it without thinking.

“I’m glad it was only a dream,” you said softly trying to calm his anxieties that he didn’t want to confess out loud.

“I’m glad you’re here.”

The tightness in his chest released, not all at once but in stages, like a knot worked loose over time. He turned his head slightly, pressing his lips briefly to your palm, and you let him, and neither of you made anything of it. She’s right, he thought. Whatever that was. Whatever it meant.

He was here. Alive. With his family, with his best friend, with his girl.

Maybe that was enough. Maybe that was, actually, everything.

The afternoon passed.

Classes ended. The university slowly emptied like it did every day at dusk, students and professors releasing themselves back into the city like a pressure valve opening. The parking lot filled briefly with the usual chaos and then thinned.

“My mother wants you over more often,” Jace mentioned, as they walked toward the Porsche.

“Apparently she likes you.”

You brightened immediately. “Really?”

“She said so unprompted. First thing this morning.”

“Good.” You smiled with satisfaction. “I’m charming.”

Jace looked at you sideways. “You are deeply smug about this.”

“I’m charming,” you repeated, pleasantly. He laughed. “Come over tonight?”

You looked at him, with that look you had, the one he’d never found a word for, the one that made him feel simultaneously seen and unsteady in the best possible way. Made him feel a bit giddy.

“I’d love to,” you said.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

The penthouse was unusually quiet when they arrived. Rhaenyra was visible through the glass of her home office, phone tucked between her ear and shoulder, reading from a document with the focused intensity and it was clear that the woman needed a break from everything. Luke had evaporated somewhere. Joffrey was reportedly studying, a claim no one in the household had ever been successfully able to verify.

You and Jace settled at the dining table with laptops and scattered notes and the collective fiction of productivity.

For forty minutes, it was remarkably functional. Jace had his economics module open. You were working through something, he didn’t ask, didn’t need to and the sound of quiet typing and the occasional turn of a page created a kind of companionable silence that he had always thought of as the specific luxury of being comfortable with someone. presence. You could simply be in it.

He was reading about capital allocation.

“Jace.”

He looked up.

“You’re getting lost in your mind again.”

“I’m not what are you talking about?” he said automatically. Then, because honesty was something he’d apparently committed to today: “I was thinking about- uhhh. Economics?”

“That is not better.”

“You look pretty,” he said simply.

The silence that followed had a distinct texture. You looked at him for a long moment. Then you slowly, deliberately, closed your laptop.

“No,” you said.

“What?”

“You don’t get to say things like that when I’m trying to study.”

“I was simply making an observation.”

“You are impossible.”

He was very pleased with himself. He did not bother hiding it.

An hour later, the economics module had not progressed. The textbooks had been consolidated into a single pile and pushed to the far end of the table, a gesture that meant these exist and will eventually be addressed, which was as much as either of you were willing to commit to. A film had been agreed upon via negotiation.

Blankets appeared.

The overhead lights went off.

And somehow, as these things always somehow managed, you ended up curled against his chest on the enormous sectional, his arm around your waist, the film playing distantly while neither of you particularly watched it. Your breathing slowed first. His heartbeat was steady and familiar beneath your ear.

The city moved quietly outside the windows.

You didn’t remember falling asleep.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

The prince stood before you.

The wind came off the sea like a cold hand, whipping through his dark, curling hair, pressing his black riding coat against his frame. Behind him, Dragonstone rose in its glory against a steel-grey sky, all sharp towers and dark stone, magnificent and terrible, built by people who had never believed in half measures. The sea crashed against the rocks far below. Dark clouds gathered on the horizon with the patient, deliberate advance of something inevitable.

“No.”

Your voice came out broken.

“No, please.”

He looked at you the way he always looked at you as if you were the clearest thing in a world that had lately become very unclear, like looking at you was the one thing he could do without effort in a life that had demanded extraordinary effort from him since the moment he was old enough to understand what he was.

“I have to go.”

“You don’t,” you said, even though you knew it wasn’t true. Even though somewhere beneath the desperate present tense of the argument, the truer, older part of you already knew exactly what was coming. Already knew the shape of this farewell.

His hands found yours.

They were warm. Strong and real, so real that makes their loss so much more brutal than the loss of things you never fully believed in.

“You can stay,” you said. Your voice was steadier than you felt. “You can let someone else-”

“I cannot.” His voice was gentle but stern. He was stubborn and so if he made peace with this decisions, he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Tears burned behind your eyes. The fear inside you was almost unbearable and burning, it was twisted and layered, because you knew. You already knew. This was not a premonition, not a vague presentiment. It was knowledge, carried somewhere beneath language, beneath memory, in whatever part of you had been this person before.

You knew what awaited him at the Gullet.

Fire.

Water.

“You promised.” The words escaped before you could decide to say them.

His expression shifted. Something moved across it, grief, tenderness, the ache of a man who loves something too well to pretend it isn’t breaking. “And I will keep that promise but this is a battle I must fight for both myself and my mother.”

He stepped closer, and you let him, and he pressed a kiss to your forehead so gently it barely qualified as a touch at all.

Then he rested his brow against yours. His eyes never left yours.

“If I do not return- which I intend to,”

The world seemed to hold its breath.

“I will find you.”

A tear escaped. Traced the line of your cheek. He watched it with eyes that were very dark and very steady.

“In every lifetime if not this one. I promise.”

The words landed somewhere deep in you, somewhere wordless, somewhere older than the language you used to think with. A promise that had the weight of truth rather than intention.

You memorized his face. The curls. The strong jaw. The eyes, brown and earnest and alive, so alive.

He smiled.

Then he stepped away.

He turned toward the waiting dragon.

Toward the dark water below.

Toward a destiny that was also a death.

And all you could do was watch him leave. ┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

You woke with a gasp that tore itself from somewhere past your chest.

For several seconds, you could not find the room. Could not find yourself in it. There was only the dream...the cliffs, the wind, his forehead against yours, the sound of his footsteps retreating and the grief of it, which was specific and devastating and nothing at all like the vague emotional residue of ordinary sleep.

Tears burned behind your eyes. Your heart was pounding.

You pushed yourself upright. A blanket tangled around your legs. The room was dim, the film long since ended, the television showing a menu screen. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, King’s Landing glittered in the full dark of night, the city’s lights reflected upward in a warm wash against the low clouds. Jace must have moved you to his room when you fell asleep.

The bedroom door opened.

Jace stepped in carrying two mugs, steam rising from both. He had apparently, at some point during your sleep, been productive.

The moment he saw your face, he froze.

“Hey.”

The concern in his voice was immediate, the shift from normal to careful happening in the space of a single syllable.

“What’s wrong?”

You didn’t answer. The words were somewhere on the way, but in the meantime your body had already decided what it needed, and what it needed was to close the distance between you and him as quickly as possible.

You stood.

Crossed the room.

The mugs barely survived. He caught them against the edge of the side table with an impressive reflex, setting them down quickly before his arms came around your waist, and you buried your face against the side of his neck, and breathed him in.

“Sweetheart?” Low and careful. His chin came to rest on top of your head.

You stayed there for a moment just letting the reality of him replace the dream of him. The warmth of him. The solidness.

Then you pulled back. Not far. Your forehead came to rest against his, which put you close enough to feel his breath and see the small crease of worry between his brows.

“I had a dream,” you said. It seems it was your turn to utter those words.

Something moved across his face. He went very still in the way that meant he was paying every variety of attention he had.

“What kind of dream?”

“I saw a prince.”

His breath caught. You felt it.

“I saw him leaving for a battle. He was going to fight-”

Your voice faltered, then steadied. “He knew he might not come back. And he said-” You stopped.

Jace’s arms tightened around you, almost involuntarily. “He said he would find me,” you continued. “That if he didn’t return-” Your eyes met his, and something in your chest recognized something in his. “He would find me in every lifetime.”

Silence.

Complete, absolute silence.

Jace stared at you.

Because those were the exact words. Not a version of them, not a paraphrase but the exact promise, the exact phrasing, the exact scene, the stone of Dragonstone under grey skies and wind coming off the sea. He had lived it from one side and you had lived it from the other, and here you both were, in a penthouse above a city that did not have dragons, with the memory of them living in your bones.

His throat moved.

You smiled softly with tears still bright at the corners of your eyes. Your hand lifted, your fingers moving gently through his curls, the same gesture that felt simultaneously new and ancient.

“I don’t know what any of that means,” you said.

“Neither do I.”

“But if it was real-”

His forehead pressed more firmly against yours.

“You kept your promise,” you whispered.

He felt his throat close.

And for the first time since he had woken to the sound of an alarm clock and a bedroom that wasn’t the sea, he stopped wondering whether the dream had been real. He stopped wondering whether he was grieving something imagined or something true. He stopped needing to know.

Because you knew.

You had been there.

You rose onto your toes.

Your lips met his.

It was slow and gentle. He kissed you back like someone returning to something, like a navigator finding a landmark in familiar water.

Like he had been waiting centuries and perhaps his soul had waited for this moment. The moment to return to her. ┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

The knock was soft.

They both startled apart with the excellent reflexes of guilty consciences, then immediately demonstrated the dignity of two people pretending they hadn’t. Jace cleared his throat. Rested his forehead against yours for one final second. His breath was unsteady in the best way.

Another knock.

“Jacaerys?”

Rhaenyra’s voice, measured, carrying through the door with the easy authority of a woman who managed board rooms and board members and the shenanigans of three sons as a single uninterrupted professional skill.

“Dinner is ready.” They heard the muffled voice of his mother.

Jace answered at a volume calibrated for normalcy “We’ll be there in a minute!”

A pause that had weight.

“Five minutes,” his mother’s voice returned, drier than a desert, and entirely aware of everything and perhaps making a wrong assumption of you two being alone in his room.

You laughed, pressing your face briefly against his shoulder to muffle it. He was already smiling.

“Your mother doesn’t trust you.”

“She absolutely does not.”

“And honestly?” You poked his chest. “I don’t blame her.”

“You wound me.”

“Good.” You pulled your hand back, but he caught it, quick and easy, and pressed a kiss to your knuckles again. The same gesture as that morning. The echo of it traveled through both of you clearly.

Your cheeks went pink.

He watched it happen with a feeling in his chest that was too large and too simple to require any examination at all.

There she is, he thought. My girl.

My princess.

He took your hand properly, fingers laced and led you toward the dining room.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈ They heard the argument before they reached the dinner table.

Luke and Joffrey, seated across from each other in the arrangement that the family had collectively accepted as a flaw, were conducting a debate with the commitment of two people who had come to win.

“No, because you’re objectively wrong-”

“I’m objectively right-”

“You don’t even know what objectively means.”

“I literally do.”

“You used it wrong.”

Joffrey groaned with his whole body. “I hate this family.”

“You are this family,” Luke pointed out.

Joffrey considered this. “Exactly.”

Rhaenyra, at the head of the table, was pinching the bridge of her nose with annoyance. This was her normal and yet it was tiring.

The moment she saw you, her face entirely changed.

“There she is.”

You smiled. “Hi.”

She stood and pulled you into a hug with a warmth that was, Jace thought privately, rather more enthusiastic than his own homecoming greeting most mornings. “I was beginning to think my son had invented you.”

“Mum.”

“What? He never brings you over.”

“That’s his fault,” you said.

“Traitor,” Jace said.

“You’re literally my boyfriend.”

“Exactly.”

You smiled sweetly. “I’m allowed.”

Rhaenyra looked delighted in the specific way she allowed herself to look delighted when she was genuinely pleased, a rarity outside this apartment. Luke immediately leaned toward you.

“See? This is why she’s my favorite.”

“I’m sitting right here.”

“Unfortunately.”

Jace threw a bread roll at him.

Luke threw one back.

The war began immediately, and lasted approximately five seconds before Rhaenyra’s single sharp look ended it. She had a look for this. It was very effective.

“Sometimes I wonder,” she said, settling back into her chair and accepting a bread roll from the basket with the serenity of someone who had already mentally exited the building, “if I raised wolves.”

“That’s insulting,” Joffrey said.

Everyone looked at him.

The fourteen-year-old shrugged with the composure of someone who had thought this through. “Wolves are smarter.”

The silence held for two seconds before Luke’s expression cracked. Jace looked at the ceiling. Rhaenyra’s attempt at severity collapsed at its foundations.

You sat beside Jace with your hand warm against his under the table, and you were already laughing, and the sound of it filled the room the way laughter does when a room is already full of people who are glad to be there.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

Dinner found its rhythm.

Conversation moved in the easy, overlapping way it does with people who have logged enough hours together that they no longer need to manage it consciously. Luke complained about a group project with the vivid resentment of having decided the problem was everyone else.

Joffrey explained something about a game or a film or a historical period but the audience could not quite keep up, but that seemed to be part of the experience. Rhaenyra complained, with great economy, about company politics, and then told a story about a colleague that had everyone at the table paying full attention (It was Aemond who everytone is afraid of in their company).

You listened to all of it.

Jace, mostly, watched.

He had not expected this. Had woken this morning in the sea, or the memory of it. Had spent the drive to university with the dream still active in his body, had sat through lectures half-present, had carried the weight of Vermax’s last look in his chest all day like a stone.

And now.

He watched his mother smile at something you said. He watched Luke do the thing he did when he was actually amused, which was different from when he is pretending. Watched Joffrey explain something to you directly, having apparently determined that you were worth the effort, and watched your face do the thing it did when you were genuinely interested in something, slightly forward, slightly bright, entirely present.

You fit here. Not as a guest, not as someone being accommodated. As someone who belonged. He thought of the dream again.

Remembered standing at the dragonpit of Dragonstone with his armor on and the dragon saddled and the sea grey behind him, and looking back at everything he was leaving, his mother, his brothers, you, the stone halls and the cold salt wind and the ordinary miracle of a morning that didn’t require a king’s son to die for it.

He had wondered, in those last seconds at Dragonstone, if he would ever see any of them again. He had his answer now.

The realization settled in his chest quietly, without drama. Not a revelation, something more like a confirmation. A peace he hadn’t known he was looking for, finding him here, at a dinner table with a bread roll dent in the tablecloth and Joffrey currently holding forth on something no one else understood.

No war. No dragons. No succession. No battles. Just family. Just love.

Just this.

Halfway through dessert, Joffrey’s phone lit up. “Oh!” He reached for it with the speed of receiving news they’d been waiting for. “Dad’s calling.”

Jace felt himself smile before the screen even showed Laenor’s face.

It appeared a moment later, that face, familiar and warm and slightly tanned by whatever sun was currently shining on whatever harbor on whatever coast he was sailing toward. Behind him, a bright blue sky suggested somewhere in Essos, probably. The man was perpetually in motion, perpetually somewhere else and yet found time for them. He was not their real father, but he might as well have been. After Harwin passed away, Rhaenyra had remarried Laenor as more of a deal since Laenor wasn’t interested in anything but he cared for Rhaenyra platonically and it seemed to have worked out great and that’s all that mattered.

“There are my favorite children.”

Luke snorted. “We’re your only children.”

“And yet somehow still my favorites.” Laenor’s gaze found you across the table, and his face smiled “There she is.”

You laughed. “Hello.”

“Good. Finally, someone sensible has arrived.”

“Hey!” Three voices, simultaneous.

Laenor continued as though he hadn’t heard. “How are you, darling?”

“I’m well, thank you.”

Jace groaned. “Why does everyone in my family like her more than me?”

“Because,” Laenor said, and the timing was beautiful, “she has manners.”

The table erupted. Even Rhaenyra, which was a significant achievement.

Laenor spent twenty minutes on the call, chatting about his route, trading insults with. He heard both Luke and Joffery’s rambling. He asked Rhaenyra about the board meeting she’d complained about, and listened to her answer. He asked you about your studies, and remembered something you’d mentioned three calls ago, and asked a follow-up question about it.

The man had walked into their lives years ago and simply decided, without announcement or conditions, that these were his sons. No performance of it. No documentation. Just- love, extended to fill the available space.

Dream Laenor had disappeared. The thought arrived gently, without bitterness. The dream-Laenor, who had been present mostly in his absence, who Jace had barely known, who had been lost before Jace could understand what losing someone meant. This version was here. This version showed up.

And Jace was, quietly and completely, grateful for that. The call ended. The dessert finished. The evening moved toward its natural conclusion with the comfortable inevitability of all good evenings. Luke vanished in the direction of his room. Joffrey disappeared with a quantity of snacks that could feed a whole army. Rhaenyra retreated to finish what she’d started, she always had something she was finishing, this was simply who she was and the penthouse settled into quiet

Which left you and Jace, alone on the balcony.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

King’s Landing stretched below them without end. The city was all light from up here, not the individual lights, not streets and windows and the moving points of cars, but the collective glow of it, the warmth of a few million people living their lives in proximity, translated upward into something that looked, from this height, almost like its own kind of fire.

A cool breeze moved through the dark, carrying the city’s particular nighttime mixture of warm pavement and distant food and the faint, improbable ghost of something floral from a rooftop garden somewhere below. It found its way into Jace’s curls and did what it wanted with them.

You stood beside him. Close enough that your shoulders touched.

Neither of you spoke. Neither of you needed to. The city was enough, for a while.

Then you broke the silence the way you often did when a thought entered your head.

“Do you think it was real?”

He didn’t ask what you meant.

The dreams. The prince and the princess. The battle. The promise made at the edge of the world on the morning of an ending. The specific weight of standing on Dragonstone and knowing.

“I don’t know,” he said.

You slipped your hand into his. Your fingers were cool from the night air. He closed his hand around yours.

“But it felt real,” you said.

“It did.”

Another silence, this one richer. Weighted, but not heavily, weighted the way a good book is heavy, in a way you want.

“If it was real…”

Jace looked toward you. The city’s light caught you from below, softening the angles, turning you luminous in the warm way of a portrait painted with care. The same thing he’d thought this morning returned, effortlessly, as though it had simply been waiting for the right lighting.

Radiant.

The same as the princess from the dream. The same, and also entirely herself.

“If it was real,” you continued, a smile finding the corner of your mouth, “I think she’d be happy.”

“Who?”

“The princess.”

Your fingers squeezed his.

“Because she got her prince back.”

Something moved in his chest and he felt a giddy sensation.

“And he got his princess,” he said quietly.

The smile you gave him in return was the specific, undone kind that he privately thought was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He doubted this would change.

“You know,” he said, after a moment, “I’ve spent all day thinking about the battle.”

“The Gullet?”

“Yeah.” He looked down at the city. “The part where I died.”

You were quiet beside him.

“And?” you said, finally.

He looked back through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the penthouse.

His mother, visible in her office, signing something. The small movement of her hand showing her actions. Luke in the hallway beyond, typing away at his phone aggressively with determinations of someone looking to win an argument even if he may be wrong.

Joffrey somewhere in his room planning a prank on his mother.

And all of it, all of this life, this ordinary, extraordinary life, glowing warm behind glass thirty floors above a city that had never known a dragon. His family.

“I think that prince would’ve liked this,” he said.

You followed his gaze.

You understood immediately. He could see it in the way your face softened, not with sadness but with tenderness that recognizes grief and holds it carefully.

A life without war. Without the weight of a crown.

Without sacrifice, the kind that swaps one beloved thing for another in an endless, devastating ledger.

Just family.

Just love.

Just peace.

You rested your head on his shoulder.

He turned his head and pressed a kiss to your hair, slow and quiet.

Neither of you saw it.

But just for a moment, a breath, almost a blink, the glass of the balcony door held a reflection that was not quite yours.

Two figures. Side by side. Dressed in black and red, the colours of a house that had once held the world.

Standing exactly as you were standing. Looking out at exactly what you were looking at.

Smiling.

At each other, and at this, and at everything that had managed, against all odds, to survive.

Then the image dissolved.

The glass held only the room behind it, warm and lit and full of the sound of Luke losing the argument.

And Jace, and you.

Exactly where you were always meant to be.

Now, he stood in your chamber, the door closed behind him, turning the pages of your book with the same hands that had wielded Dark Sister for decades. His expression was unreadable.

"This is dangerous knowledge," he said at last. "Where did you find it?"

"Here," you said. "In the library. In the vaults below. Dragonstone is old, father." You swallowed hard. "Tyanna was not the only one who knew these rites. The Valyrians practiced blood magic for thousands of years. They used it to bind their dragons, to shape the very stone of their towers. This is just…another application."

Daemon looked at you, and for a moment you saw something flicker in his gaze. Pride, perhaps, or recognition. You were his daughter, after all, no matter which marriage had produced you. You had his blood in your veins, his fire, his refusal to accept the world as it was when you could bend it to your will instead.

"You want to do this for the boy," he said.

"He is my betrothed," you said, and your voice cracked on the word despite your best efforts. "He has been my betrothed since I was old enough to understand what the word meant. I was meant to marry him, father. I was meant to stand beside him when he took the throne. I was meant to…" You stopped, pressing your lips together, forcing the tears back. You would not weep. Not yet. Not while there was still something you could do.

Daemon was silent for a long moment. Then he closed the book and set it aside.

"The maesters believe he will die," he said. "They will not say it to Rhaenyra's face, they value their heads too much for that, but they have stopped trying to remove the arrow from his neck. They say it is too close to the artery. They say he has lost too much blood. They say even if he wakes, the wound will fester and poison him from within." His jaw tightened. "He is dying, daughter. Slowly but surely. If you do nothing, he will be dead anyway."

"Then I have to try," you said.

"Yes," Daemon agreed, and there was something almost gentle in his voice, something you had not heard from him in a very long time. "You do. And I will help you."

"Rhaenyra..."

"Rhaenyra must not know." Daemon's voice hardened. "She is already half-mad with grief. If she knew what we were attempting, she would forbid it. Or she would hope too much, and the disappointment would destroy her if you failed. No. This stays between us. I will stand guard outside the door. I will make certain no one disturbs you. Whatever you need, candles, herbs, a blade, I shall provide it. The rest is up to you."

You nodded, your heart beating so fast you could feel it in your throat. "Tonight," you said. "It has to be tonight. The maesters say the hour just before dawn is the most dangerous. If he survives until morning, it will be a miracle. I need to act before then."

Daemon reached out and put his firm hand on your shoulder. "You are my daughter," he said. "You have my blood. Whatever you need to do, do it without hesitation. Do it without doubt. The magic will know if your will wavers."

"I won't waver," you said.

He looked at you for a long moment, and then he nodded. "I know you won't."

The hour was late when you made your way to the chamber where Jacaerys lay. The castle was quiet, the servants and guards moving through the corridors like ghosts, their footsteps muffled by the weight of impending tragedy. Everyone knew. Everyone was waiting. The heir to the heir, the bright young prince who had flown to the Gullet with fire in his heart, was slipping away, and there was nothing anyone could do.

Except you. You could do something. You would do something.

Daemon walked beside you, a silent shadow in black and red. When you reached the door to Jace's chamber, he stopped and turned to face you.

"I will be here," he said quietly. "No one will enter until you open this door from the inside. Take as long as you need."

You nodded, not trusting your voice, and pushed open the heavy wooden door.

The room was dim, lit only by a single candle on the bedside table and the faint glow of the hearth fire. The windows were shuttered against the night air, and the scent of medicinal herbs hung thick in the air: poultices and tinctures and the smell of boiling wine used to cleanse wounds. But underneath it all was the smell of blood, old and new, and the sickly-sweet undertone of a body fighting a losing battle against death.

Jacaerys lay on the bed, and the sight of him made your heart clench like a fist.

He was so still. Jacaerys, who had always been in motion, always talking, always planning, always reaching for the next thing, lay utterly motionless beneath the furs. His face was ashen, his cheeks sunken, dark circles bruising the skin beneath his eyes. His lips were cracked and dry, parted slightly, and his breathing was so shallow you had to watch his chest for a long moment to be sure it was still moving. The arrow had been removed from his shoulder and the one from his side had been cut out, the wounds stitched and bandaged. But the third arrow, the one in his neck, was still there. The maesters had cut the shaft short, leaving only a few inches protruding from the swollen, angry flesh, but they had not dared to remove the head. It was lodged against something vital, and any attempt to pull it free would tear the vessel and kill him in moments.

You stood beside the bed for a long time, just looking at him. Remembering.

You remembered the first time you had met him, when you were both children, before you understood what betrothal meant. He had been solemn and serious even then, trying so hard to be worthy of the inheritance that had fallen to him. You had thought him stuffy at first, too concerned with duty and honor to be any fun. But then he had smiled at you, a quick, surprised smile, and you had seen the boy beneath the prince, and something had shifted in your heart.

You remembered the day your dragon died. The Battle of Rook's Rest. The sky had been full of fire and screaming, and you had been on your dragon's back, trying to stay alive, trying to fight, trying to do something, anything, to help. And then Rhaenys had fallen. Meleys had plunged from the sky in a tangle of scarlet wings, and Vhagar had turned. The ancient she-dragon had fixed her terrible eyes on you, and Aemond's voice had echoed across the battlefield, shouting something you could not hear over the roar of wind and flame. He had wanted to take you, you learned later. A prize. A hostage. A trophy to hang on his wall. But your dragon had fled, faster than Vhagar could follow, and had carried you all the way back to Dragonstone before succumbing to her wounds. She had died on the beach, her great head resting on sand, her eyes fixed on you with an apology you could not bear to receive. You had held her until the light went out of her, and then you had stood and walked up to the castle and begun to plan how you would make the Greens pay.

Jace had held you that night. He had not said anything, there was nothing to say, but he had held you, and let you weep into his shoulder, and when you were finished he had kissed your forehead and told you that you were the bravest person he had ever met.

Now he was dying, and you were going to save him, no matter what it cost.

You set down the small bag you had brought with you and began to prepare. From the bag you drew a candle of black wax, a small silver knife, a bowl of beaten copper, and a roll of parchment covered in the symbols and words you had copied from the old texts. You arranged them on the floor beside the bed, your hands steady despite the trembling in your heart. Then you drew back the furs and looked at Jace's wounds.

The bandages on his shoulder and side were fresh, changed that evening by the maesters. But the wound in his neck was the one that mattered. You leaned close, examining it in the dim light. The flesh around the arrow shaft was red and swollen, hot to the touch even from inches away. The skin had begun to take on a greyish tinge at the edges, and when you inhaled carefully, you caught the faint, foul scent of corruption beginning to take hold. The maesters were right. If the arrow was not removed, the infection would spread. It would poison his blood, and he would die in fever and delirium. But if they tried to remove it, the arrowhead would tear the great vessel in his neck, and he would drown in his own blood in moments.

Unless you changed the rules.

You had studied the accounts of the Valyrian blood mages for years. You had devoured every scrap of knowledge you could find about the old sorceries, the fire magic that had raised the Freehold to its terrible glory. And you had learned that blood was the key. Blood was always the key. Blood was life, and life was power, and power, properly channeled, could reshape the world.

The ritual Tyanna of Pentos had used, or something very like it, was described in fragments throughout the texts you had found. It was not healing in the traditional sense. It was something older, darker and more profound. It was the transference of life force, the binding of spirit to flesh, the rekindling of the inner fire that kept the soul tethered to the body. The subject would not simply recover. They would be remade, their body repaired not by natural processes but by the direct application of magical will. And the cost would be paid in blood. Not Jace's blood. Yours.

You knelt beside the bed and lit the black candle. The flame burned with a strange, bluish light, and the air in the room seemed to thicken, growing heavy and still. You picked up the silver knife and positioned the copper bowl on the floor before you.

"I don't know if you can hear me," you said quietly, looking at Jace's still face. "But if you can…hold on. Just a little longer. I'm going to bring you back."

Then you set the blade against the inside of your left forearm and cut.

The pain was immediate. Blood welled up from the wound, you held your arm over the copper bowl, letting it drip down into the metal basin. The candle flame flickered, then steadied, burning brighter than before. You closed your eyes and began to speak.

The words were High Valyrian. They were harsh, full of consonants that scraped against your throat and vowels that burned on your tongue. You had practiced them for hours, mouthing them silently in your chamber, but speaking them aloud was different. They had weight. They had presence. Each syllable seemed to hang in the air, resonating with something deep beneath the world.

We ask the Lord to shine his light, and the debt of blood to be paid.

With fire and blood, the debt shall be paid.

Your blood continued to flow, more than you had expected, more than seemed safe. The copper bowl was filling, the dark liquid swirling in the candlelight, and you felt a strange pulling sensation in your chest, as if something vital was being drawn out of you along with the blood. The candle flame rose higher, no longer blue but a deep, angry red, and the shadows in the room began to move.

You reached out with your bleeding arm and pressed your hand against the wound in Jace's neck, your fingers circling the broken arrow shaft. The moment your blood touched his skin, you felt it: a connection, a bridge, a channel opening between your life and his. You could feel his weak heartbeat, fluttering against your palm like a trapped bird. You could feel the poison spreading through his veins, the infection that was eating away at his flesh. And you could feel the arrowhead, a cold sliver of metal lodged against the pulsing wall of his artery, a hairsbreadth from the arms of the Stranger.

No, you thought, and poured yourself into him.

It was like falling. Like drowning. Like being unmade and remade in the space of a single heartbeat. Your vision went white, then red, then black, and you were somewhere else, somewhere vast and dark and full of fire. You could feel Jace there, a flickering ember in the darkness, barely holding on. And you could feel something else, something vast and hungry, watching you from the shadows. The magic. The old power. It wanted what you were offering. It wanted the blood, the life, the sacrifice. It wanted you.

Take it, you said, or thought, or screamed into the void. Take whatever you need. Just give him back to me.

The darkness surged forward, and you knew nothing more.

You woke in your own bed, with sunlight streaming through the windows and the sound of shouting echoing through the corridors.

For a long, disorienting moment, you had no idea where you were or how you had gotten there. Your body felt strange, heavy and hollow at the same time, as if someone had scooped out your insides and replaced them with lead. Your left arm throbbed with a dull, persistent ache, and when you lifted it to look, you saw that someone had bandaged it. The white linen was spotted with red, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped.

The shouting grew louder. Footsteps pounded past your door. Someone was calling for the maester, and someone else was weeping, and beneath it all was a rising tide of voices, excited and frightened and disbelieving.

And then you remembered.

You sat up so fast the room spun around you. You grabbed the bedpost, steadying yourself, and swung your legs over the side of the bed. Your head pounded, your vision blurring, but you forced yourself to stand, to walk, to open the door and step out into the corridor.

A serving girl was running past, her eyes wide and her face flushed. You caught her arm.

"What's happening?" you demanded, and your voice came out rough and strange, barely recognizable as your own.

"My lady!" The girl's words tumbled over each other in her haste. "It's the prince! Prince Jacaerys! He's awake! He's awake, and the maester says his wounds are healing, and the Queen is with him now..."

You let go of her arm. She kept talking, but you were already moving, pushing past her, walking as fast as your unsteady legs would carry you toward Jace's chamber.

The corridor outside his room was crowded with people, servants and guards and minor lords, all craning their necks and whispering among themselves. They parted when they saw you, their eyes wide with surprise or curiosity or something else you didn't have the presence of mind to identify. You didn't care. You didn't care about any of it. You only cared about the door at the end of the corridor and what lay beyond it.

Daemon was leaning by the door. He saw you coming, and his expression flickered, relief and what might have been pride or might have been concern. He stepped forward to meet you.

"It worked," his voice was pitched low so only you could hear. "The maester examined him this morning. The swelling in his neck has gone down. The corruption is receding. They were able to remove the arrowhead safely an hour ago. He is weak, but he is alive, and he is awake."

You closed your eyes for a moment, swaying on your feet. The relief that flooded through you was so intense it was almost painful. "I need to see him."

"Rhaenyra is with him now. She has been there since they told her. She is…" Daemon paused, searching for the right word. "Overjoyed. She thinks it's a miracle."

"It is a miracle," you said.

Daemon's eyes met yours. "Yes," he agreed. "It is. But not the kind she thinks." He put his hand on your shoulder, steadying you. "You did well, daughter. Better than I dared to hope. But be careful with him, he hasn't quite come back to himself yet."

He opened the door, and you stepped inside.

The first thing you saw was Rhaenyra. The Queen was sitting on the edge of the bed, her silver-gold hair unbound and disheveled, her face wet with tears. She was holding Jace's hand in both of hers, and she was speaking to him in a low, urgent voice, her words tumbling out too fast to follow. She looked exhausted, wrung out, the way a person looks when they have been holding themselves together for so long that the relief of letting go is almost as painful as the fear.

And then you saw Jace.

He was sitting up against the pillows, his dark hair brushed back from his face, his eyes open and alert. The bandage on his neck was fresh and white, and his color was better than it had been in days, still pale, but no longer grey, no longer the ashen hue of a corpse waiting to happen. He was thinner than before, the bones of his face more prominent, but he was alive. He was alive.

He looked up when you entered, your eyes met, and you felt as though your heart would burst.

"Jace," you breathed.

His expression shifted. For a moment, he looked almost confused, as if he didn't quite recognize you. Then his face cleared, and he smiled, a small, tired smile, but a real one, and held out his free hand to you.

"There you are," he said. His voice was hoarse, rough from disuse, but it was his voice. "I was wondering when you would come."

You crossed the room without thinking, barely aware of Rhaenyra moving aside to make space for you. You took his hand, his fingers closed around yours, and he was warm. He was warm. You had been so afraid that he would be cold, that the ritual would have taken something essential from him, that he would be a shell wearing Jace's face. But his hand was warm, and his pulse beat steady in his wrist.

Except.

Except there was something different in his eyes. A gleam. A light that hadn't been there before. When he looked at you, you felt the weight of his attention, focused and intense. There was none of the softness you remembered, none of the gentle uncertainty that had always lurked beneath his princely composure. This was a Jacaerys who had looked into the darkness and come back with something of it still burning behind his eyes.

"Your Grace," you said to Rhaenyra, remembering your courtesies even as your heart hammered against your ribs. "I came as soon as I heard."

"He's going to be all right," Rhaenyra said, and her voice broke on the words. "The maester says he's going to be all right. I don't understand it. None of them understand it. But I don't care. My son is alive." She pressed a hand to her mouth, tears spilling down her cheeks again. "I'm so relieved. I thought I'd lost you. I thought I'd lost both of you."

She meant Luke, you realized. Lucerys, who had died at Storm's End, whose death had started the cascade of violence that had led here. Rhaenyra had lost one son already. She could not bear to lose another.

Jace's expression softened. "I'm here," he said. "I'm not going anywhere. But if I could speak with my betrothed now. Alone, if you don't mind."

Rhaenyra hesitated, looking between the two of you. Then she nodded, pressing a kiss to Jace's forehead before rising from the bed. "I'll be just outside," she said. "I'll send for some broth. You need to eat. You need to regain your strength."

She left the room, and the door closed behind her with a soft click. You and Jace were alone.

For a moment, neither of you spoke. You were still holding his hand, and he was still looking at you with that strange, intense gaze, and you didn't know what to say. What did you say to someone you had pulled back from the edge of death? What did you say to someone who might owe their life to a ritual you barely understood and a power you had no right to wield?

"You did something," Jace said at last.

You opened your mouth to deny it, but the words wouldn't come. His eyes were too sharp, too knowing. He could see right through you.

"Yes," you said quietly. "I did."

"What did you do?"

You told him everything. You were too tired to lie and too frightened to hold it in, and because he deserved to know what had been done to him.

When you finished, he was silent for a long moment. Then he reached up with his free hand and touched the bandage on his neck, his fingers tracing the edge of it with a strange, detached curiosity.

"I died," he said. "Didn't I?"

"No," you denied quickly. "No, you were still alive. The maesters said..."

"The maesters said I was going to die. They said there was nothing they could do." His eyes met yours again. "I remember the water. The cold. I remember Vermax screaming. And then…nothing. Darkness. Just darkness, for a long time. And then something else. Something pulling me back. It felt like fire. Like dragonfire, but inside me. In my blood. In my bones." He paused. "Was that you?"

You swallowed hard. "I don't know. I don't know what I did. The texts said the ritual could transfer life force, could bind spirit to flesh, could rekindle the inner fire. But they didn't say how. They didn't say what the cost would be. I just…I couldn't let you die. I couldn't. Not when there was something I could try."

Jace looked at you for a long moment. Then he pulled you toward him, and before you knew what was happening, his arms were around you and your face was pressed against his shoulder and he was holding you so tightly you could barely breathe.

"You foolish, brave, tricky woman," he murmured into your hair. "You could have died. You could have killed yourself. For me."

"There was no choice," you said, your voice muffled against his chest. "There was never a choice. Don't you understand? Without you, there's no point. There's no point to any of it."

You felt him exhale a shaky breath. His hand came up to stroke your hair, gentle despite the new strength you could feel in his grip. "I understand," he said. "I understand better than you know."

You pulled back slightly, looking up at him. Your eyes were wet, you realized. You had been crying without noticing it. He reached up and wiped the tears from your cheeks with his thumb, his touch warm and achingly familiar.

"When I was pulled from the darkness," he whispered, "I dreamed. I dreamed of fire and blood and a throne made of swords. I dreamed of our enemies burning. I dreamed of Aemond Targaryen dying in the mud, with my hands around his throat. I dreamed of victory, absolute and total, with no mercy and no quarter and no hesitation. I dreamed of everything I was too weak to do before." His voice hardened, and that gleam in his eyes grew brighter, more dangerous. "I'm not weak anymore."

You stared at him. There was something new and terrible and fierce in his voice. The boy you had known was still there, but there was something else now, something that had been forged in the darkness and brought back with him into the light.

"The Greens took my brother," Jace said. "They took my dragon. They took my birthright. They tried to take my life. They tried to take you." His hands tightened on your arms. "They will fail. They will all fail. I am going to recover from this. I am going to get out of this bed, and I am going to be there when my mother takes King's Landing. And then I am going to find Aemond Targaryen, and I am going to make him pay for every drop of blood he has spilled."

"Jace," you said, and you didn't know if it was a warning or a plea or a prayer.

"When I woke up," he continued, as if you hadn't spoken, "I felt different. I feel…more. More alive, more aware. Better, altogether." He laughed without humour. "I feel like someone lit a fire inside me and it's never going to go out. Is that what you did to me? Is that what the magic made me?"

"I don't know," you whispered. "I didn't know what it would do. The texts said…"

"The texts said Maegor came back changed. Crueler. Stronger. Unstoppable." Jace's eyes met yours. "Maybe that's what I am now. Maybe that's what you made me."

"No. You're not Maegor. You're not cruel. You're not..."

"I'm not what I was before." He said it calmly, as if stating a simple fact. "I can feel it. The part of me that hesitated, that second-guessed, that worried about being good enough, worthy enough, it's gone. Burned away. All that's left is the fire." He cupped your face in his hands, his palms were warm against your cheeks. "But I'm still me. I'm still yours. That hasn't changed. That will never change."

He kissed you. It was not like the gentle, tentative kisses you had shared before. It was fierce, demanding, full of that new fire, and you found yourself responding to it despite your fear, despite your uncertainty. His lips were warm, his hands were strong, and he was alive. He was alive, and that was all that mattered.

When he pulled back, his eyes were still burning with that strange, fierce light. "You brought me back," he said. "You gave me a second chance. I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to win this war. I'm going to put my mother on the Iron Throne. I'm going to marry you, and we are going to build a dynasty that will last a thousand years." He smiled, and it was a crazed and beautiful thing. "I swear to you."

You looked at him. Your betrothed, your prince, the boy you had loved since before you understood what love was, and saw the man he had become. The fire in his eyes. The steel in his voice. The fury and the purpose and the unshakeable certainty. The old texts had warned that those brought back by blood magic were never quite the same. They came back changed. They came back wrong. But looking at him now, you couldn't bring yourself to believe it.

He wasn't wrong. He was more.

"Rest now," you said, pressing him back against the pillows. "Regain your strength. The war will still be there when you're healed."

He caught your wrist, his strong grip still surprised you. "Stay," he said. "Stay with me."

"I'm not going anywhere," you promised.

You stayed by his side as the days passed, watching as his strength returned with unnatural speed. The maesters marveled at his recovery, calling it a miracle, a blessing from the Seven, the indomitable will of the dragon blood. They didn't know. They couldn't know. Only you and Daemon knew the truth, and you kept it locked away in your hearts, a secret that bound you together in shared complicity.

a/n: Comment if you'd like to be added to this series' taglist.

Rn I'm tagging those who commented that they'd like me to post this fic: @ilovefoolishknights @mellowpeacequeen @disturbedturtle @pinkypurplez @oh-miniso @brlghtflame

You stand again, taking a few more steps down. Your mind drifts as you fall into a rhythm of checking these nets, pocketing pretty shells and scraps of metal. Wonder pricks at the back of your neck as you imagine the war. As the lone tenant of this pier, you had never had to consider the rites of the Targaryen rulers. Most of your neighbors had already chosen their sides, even if it did not really matter in the scheme of things—neither of those fighting for the throne cared for their subjects, especially not those at the bottom, like you.

Rulers like these bled the common man dry while claiming it to be an act of love.

You move a little rougher with the next net. Nothing but rocks and debris in this one. You imagine it will be a while until you find a worthy treat. The Gods are usually not as generous on solemn days like these. War makes monsters out of men, and the Gods scorn those who partake.

When you stand again, your eyes drift a little further down the bank. At the edge of the shore, a clump of trees catch your gaze. The water is darker there, cloaked in shadow. The shrubbery bends so far, it almost touches the water. You draw closer, eyebrows furrowed.

A dark lump sits entangled by brush, barely concealed by the cluster of foliage. You draw closer, hesitantly. As your eyes adjust, you realize it is not a lump of debris, but a body. Your breaths quicken.

If the person is alive, would it hurt you? Never trust a soldier, your father had once told you.

You bend your knee just as if you are checking a fish net. Your hands unfurl from your sides, reaching out hesitantly. You can only see his body. It is clothed in thick leather, a quality of which you’ve never seen before. Several arrows stick out of his torso. A pool of blood stains the sand maroon beneath him.

You pull back the shrubbery to see his face. You startle at the sight, falling back onto your bum.

His eyes—they were open—albeit, he did not seem to see much of anything. His skin was not grey and placid like the bodies that you had seen before. Worse, you’d heard something when you held yourself over him. A breath, shuddering through his parted lips.

“Alive,” you whisper in awe. To survive so many arrows, then the tumultuous sea… it would take more than just courage. It would take something otherworldly. You know then that your decision has been made.

A huge piece of driftwood sits beneath him in the sand. You push it aside to straddle him. Gently, you grab his arm and sling it around your neck.

The rest of your journey back to the cabin passes in a frenzied blur. You move quickly, trying to spend as little time as possible forcing the grievously hurt man onto his feet. He lets out little grumbles as you move, head lolling this way and that like a puppet cut from its strings. You make it inside and push open the door that your father used to live, laying him onto his back on the bed.

Blood immediately infiltrates the off-white of the duvet, crimson floating before your vision. He groans continuously as you break the ends off of the arrows—serving as a reminder to the heart that still valiantly pumped beneath his ribs. Once they are off, you are able to slide the armor off. 

The tunic comes easily. It seems to be made of a material that deflects water, so when you drop it onto the floor, a puddle of liquid forms in its spot. You struggle a little with his breeches—though, those too come easily with a little pull.

After he is naked, you stare at his body in silence for a moment. You have helped men with injuries before. Arrow injuries just like these, even. But you’d never helped a man with this many. 

You reach out to touch his cold cheek. He is so young—had to be your own age. Too young for the cruel, unflinching hold of war. Gently, you close his eyelids, shutting away the dark brown of his unseeing gaze. He did not need to be witness to this.

You steel your nerves and clench your fists a few times to breathe life back into your numb fingers. Reaching into the bedside table, you grab your supplies—bandages, a bottle of rum, a couple cloths, and several blunt blades.

“I’m sorry, if you are awake,” you tell him, poising the knife along the edge of one of the arrow heads. “This will hurt a lot.”

Hours pass quickly under your blade. Each of the five arrows is cut away, sewn with fishing line, disinfected with rum, and bandaged tightly. Sweat falls into your eyes as you step away triumphantly, and you lift a hand to brush it off. As they are levelled with your eyes, you realize your hands are a bloody mess. Your stomach churns and you force the appendages away.

You hover over him a moment longer. You study the shallow rise and fall of his chest, the fluttering of his eyelids. He had a strong nose and jaw, thick dark eyelashes and a head of water-matted brunet hair. By all appearances, he was quite common-looking. He had the complexion and hair of any man you’d pass on the way to town. But something about him—the quality of his armor, the blemishlessness of his skin, it screamed something ethereal.

But even Gods can be killed. 

Your mystery man is not out of the woods yet. The chances of any of those arrows not nicking anything inside him is next to none. He’s also lost a lot of blood. The sheets are covered in it, not to mention the amount he was sure to have lost at sea.

You draw the hair sea-slicked to his head away from his forehead. Your hand slides to cup his cheek. He might never wake again. Your kind hand may be the last he knows. You wonder how many people missed him—if they were sitting with baited breaths, waiting for him to write. If only you could ease their worries.

You pull away and leave the room before your eyes can fill with traitorous saltwater tears.

There are few certainties in life. Ever since you were but a child, you had recognized this. Life is tumultuous and unfair. It takes and it takes, until you can give no longer. 

The sea is a comfort. She does not take, she gives. Usually, she gives you more valuable things than a body, but you try not to question her motives.

It’s been a day since you patched him and he still has not woken. His chest continues to move despite this disconcerting sign, and that remains your only comfort. You stood near-vigil at his beside for most of the hours following. Anticipatory nerves fill your every waking second, even at night when you lay awake trying to sleep.

You recognize that the danger has not fully passed for him. He had not had water in who knows how long. Eventually, his organs would fail due to dehydration and blood loss. That is, if the internal bleeding didn’t kill him first.

You also cannot help the hope that blooms in your chest as you gaze upon his face. Perhaps it is the fact that his skin seems more alive as of late. The fact that you have seen his eyes move behind his eyelids more and more often. The fact that you were quite insufferably lonely, and therefore latched onto any individual who came your way—alive or barely, as in the case of this man in your cabin.

You want him to survive because you want to know him. It is a thought that scares you as much as it invigorates you.

By his bedside, after a long morrow of scavenging by the tide, you dump your satchel of goodies on the now-clean duvet. (Now that had been annoying to do—having to move his admittedly quite heavy body over to remove the sheets). You begin to sort through them, cataloging them.

The silence is unsettling, so you begin to speak.

“The sea has been kind this morrow,” you say softly. You pick up a smooth rainbow shell, twisting it this way and that in the light. “These will sell for a couple of silvers.”

You put the shell down and then grab your cloth, gently stroking away sand and debris.

“My father taught me to do this,” you tell the man, “he taught me everything I know.”

Satisfied with its shimmer, you trade the shell for a clam. You pop it open forcefully—apologizing profusely to the creature as you did—and stick your fingers into the dark crevice you created.

“No pearl,” you report when your fingers come up empty. You bring the clam up to your eyes, stroking its now-broken shell. “I’m sorry, friend.”

The last piece had been one you were excited for. You grab the shrapnel of metal gently in your palms, categorizing the weight and feel of it with your hands. 

“Probably off a shield,” you decide. “I’m sure a blacksmith would like this.”

You put the metal down and let out a heavy sigh. You stare at the man, worrying your lip between your teeth. Perhaps some foolish part of you had hoped he would wake up to the sound of your voice, like the stories you had read as a girl.

But life is no story, as you had to continually remind yourself. Things like that just didn’t happen.

You go through a few other bits and bobs in silence, mood dampened by reality. A couple of small shells, a nail, and a scrap of maroon fabric. You aren’t sure why you grabbed the fabric—perhaps you’d wanted to try and sew something. It is quite pretty, you decide. It had belonged to someone once.

Once you finish polishing the items, you lift your head up to look at the man. Thoughts and images flash through your mind. What was he like? You wonder. He seems strong, based on his broad shoulders and defined stomach. But he also didn’t have the worn skin of a common man. He didn’t have callouses on his hands or fading scars upon his torso. He had to be a prince, you decide. A prince of a faraway land, hoping to bargain peace between the two feuding Targaryen houses.

You nod, satisfied with that recreation of events. Yes, a prince. A just, altruistic one. Perhaps he knew of the war and wished to come and save the small-folk.

You look down at his pale hand resting lifelessly upon the duvet. You swallow thickly. 

“You must wake soon,” you whisper, “the kingdom needs you.”

He does not stir. You sigh and gather your things into your satchel. If he is still not awake by the morrow, you decide, you will return his body to the sea.

That evening, you sit at the table with a plate of roasted fish and a glass of water. The fish is one of two meals you eat regularly. The other was for special occasions, depending on if you were able to procure bread and potatoes at the markets. 

You always eat the eye of the fish first. You do not like it looking at you as you eat its flesh. It feels wrong. The eye is not very tasty, though. The odd texture always makes you vaguely nauseous–the gooey, chewy ball. Your father had always laughed at you when you ate fish. He was not of an imaginative mind. He did not see the fish as being once alive, like you did. He did not imagine it swimming beneath the tide, with all its other fishy friends–before it was snared by ruthless hands and suffocated by the open air.

You stare at the vacant chair across from you with an empty feeling in your chest. It had been so long since you had a companion at supper time. Your father had not spoken much, but his presence alone was always enough to keep you happy. He is gone now, like with the ebbing of the tide, and all that is left is the shadow of the person he used to be.

His fishing pole, next to the door. His journal, where he kept extensive notes about what he found out on the sea during the day. His bed that now had a new, warm body sleeping in it.

You wonder what your father would have done, had he found the man. You take another bite of the fish, forcing it down with a thick swallow. Would he have left him? You had never thought of him as being cruel, but you also know he loathed unwelcome responsibility. He had enough of an imagination to conjure horrible images of betrayal and hurt, and so you decide he probably wouldn’t have brought him home to you. He had too much to lose to do so. Everyone did.

And so why did you? Perhaps, you think, you have lost everything that matters most to you already.

You stare down at the limp skeleton of the fish on your plate. You had never seen a person die of dehydration. Your father had once told you a story about a man he knew that had, and it sounded awful. 

You pick up your dinner knife, a sharp, clean-edged blade, and hold it in the candlelight. The silver edge catches the light, highlighting the sharp point. Your hand trembles as you study it.

Would it be quick, painless—slitting the sleeping prince’s throat? Or would it be messy and painful? Would it draw him out of sleep and would he gaze upon you with hurting eyes as he clutched the gaping hole in his neck?

Regret gnaws at you. As time draws on, you begin to think that the mercy you had granted your prince had been nothing but a farce. That by saving him for one moment had only just prolonged his suffering.

You put the knife in your satchel and stand. It is cruel, keeping a person alive only to die in a violent manner like this–it is inhumane. 

You take quick steps to the bedroom. 

You have never killed a person before. Your father had plenty. He always said the eyes, you can hear his voice in your mind now, the eyes are always the worst part. 

You can’t eat the prince’s eyes like you can the fish’s. No matter what you did, you would have to see those eyes. And with it, the betrayal. You stand over his prone body now. 

A sliver of moonlight streams in from the open window behind you, casting cool light across the heaving chest. He remains impassive, completely unaware of what you were about to do. You do not realize you are crying until you bring the knife up to your eyes and catch a glimpse of your face in the silver.

“I…I am sorry, friend,” you repeat the same mantra you had told so many clams before as you pried your fingers in their mouths, looking for a pearl. “But this is a mercy.”

Your hands tremble like windblown seagrass as you lift the knife against his skin. A moment of hesitation prevents you from acting. And it is just enough for a pale hand to wrap around your own and for dark eyes to snap open.

“Waaa-ter.”

You let out a sharp gasp and yank your hand away. The man watches you, his visage crumpled with pain.

He repeats himself, voice quieter than the first time. “Water, please…”

You move into action. You dart out of the room, hands fumbling with the metal bucket by your door. You run across the moonlit shore to the well that sits on the edge of the woods. Quickly, you fill the bucket. You curse yourself all the while–mind racing in what-ifs and guilt-ridden condemnations. 

You heave the bucket back into the house and grab the same goblet you had used with your own water. You take a huge scoop and shuffle back into the bedroom like a child caught with their hand on the sweets plate.

The man is still awake when you re-enter, his eyes wide and eyebrows furrowed. You drop next to him on the bed and angle his head and neck up onto the pillows behind him. Finally, you fulfill his request. He drinks like a man in Essos who has wandered the Red Waste for weeks; heavy, desperate gulps of the liquid. Some fall and drip down his side, which you dab away with a nearby cloth.

When he finally drinks it all, he pulls back, his breaths labored and eyes half-lidded.

“W…Where am I?” he finally says once he has caught his breath. You notice him scanning the room as if trying to find the answer written in the stone.

You decide not to answer honestly. You fear what his reaction will be if he forces himself to recall the battle. Instead you say, “you are safe.”

He stares at you as if only just noticing you. His dark eyes are swallowed almost completely by night, exhausted and ridden with heavy bags. He lifts a hand, as if to touch you, but it falls short. His eyes flutter, and then shut.

He falls unconscious. You touch two hands to his chest to confirm his heart still beats steadily. You let out a breath you had not realized you captured when you find his pulse.

Shame hits you like a tidal wave. You were going to… you were going to kill him. You are shocked at the tears that swim in your eyes. You stand in a hurry–not without remembering to pull the duvet back up to his chest–and stumble out of the room. 

The adrenaline has all but worn away now. Tears clog your eyes, slipping down your cheeks. You allow yourself to feel the emotions–all of them. Relief, shame, exhaustion, and fear overwhelm you completely and you can do nothing but sob. On the table in front of you, the skeleton of the fish and the silver knife mock you without having to say a word.

Waking feels like drowning. Fighting against the wave ahead of you, trying to get your head above water. Then when you finally surface, you fall behind the waves again.

Jacaerys wakes to the sun in his eyes and a warmth around his waist. He thinks for a moment, perhaps, he is in a dream. Another barrier between him and wakefulness. Then, the pain hits him. No, dreams don’t feel like this.

The groan stumbles past his lips before he can stop it and his eyes shoot open. Everything is pain. It surrounds him like dragonfire and steals his breath. He trembles as he uses all his strength to cradle his side.

“Gods,” he murmurs. He feels beneath his fingers the familiar texture of a bandage. Someone helped him.

Helped him. Helped him from what? He gasps as memory rolls over him. Drowning. Arrows piercing through skin and muscle. A dragon’s roar of pain. No, not just any dragon—

“Vermax,” he cries out, tears springing to his eyes. No, no, no…

But it was true. His mind had never failed him before. His dragon. His beautiful dragon. Falling to the bottom of the ocean like a ship’s anchor. He tries to move, to jump to his feet, but he can’t. Pain ricochets up his side, and he can literally feel the side of his chest pulling taut. 

He stares at the ceiling above him with tears fogging his eyes and coating his tongue in salt. For one long moment, he despairs. Why? Why would he be punished this way? Forced to live without Vermax? The bond between rider and dragon could not—should not be severed. Not by something as futile as war. He can’t breathe, can’t think. Everything is despair.

He should have died. Living is not a gift in this condition. His knuckles go white against the duvet. Anger sweeps over him—hot, potent fury.

He curses everyone who caused this. Aemond, Alicent, Aegon, even fucking Helaena. He doesn’t care. They’ll all pay.

But not like this. He finally shuffles himself into a seated position, cringing at the pain that shoots from every direction. Every small movement feels like another arrow tearing his skin. 

His feet are unsteady as he finds his footing. For a second, he fears he might not be able to even walk. Then, he finds himself. He grabs his breeches off the table and slowly, painfully, shrugs them on. He leaves his chest bare—unable to even think about having to lift his arms over his head. He keeps one hand on the wall and the other around his waist as he stumbles across the room. 

The place he is in is frighteningly humble. There’s nothing unnecessary here. Everything has a purpose, a function. No gilded armoires, tall candlesticks, or commissioned portraits. Bare, cobblestone walls, sparse furniture (all glaringly handmade and rustic), and cobwebs hanging in every corner. 

Jacaerys moves slowly from the room he started in to the short hallway that opens into a tiny living area. A large fireplace is the only comfort to him. A pot of a molten, unappetizing glob bubbles above the waning fire. 

There are very few personal effects here. Nothing to propose any kind of hint or insight. Out the window of the front of the ramshackle building, he sees amber light flickering across a wide sea.

His breath shudders out of his lips. He doesn't recognize this place at all. He’s hurt. He has no dragon. He’s never felt worse in his entire life.

All of what energy he summoned flees him in that moment. He practically collapses into a nearby chair and it creaks pathetically under his weight. He hangs his head and a soft sob escapes his lips. 

Tears tremble down his cheeks and onto the wood table beneath his hand. His mind races, memory and pain and fury collide in a war of its very own. Vermax, his mind strays. The perfect dragon. Gone. He digs his nails into the grain of the table beneath his hands, trying to recapture something to ground him. Short, hyperventilating breaths escape his lips—his vision fogs.

Then, everything clears. His hands unclench and he leans back in the chair. He stares at the ceiling, measuring his breaths. You are still alive, he tells himself. Therefore you are still useful.

Because perhaps that was his real fear. That he would no longer be of use—that he would no longer be worth fighting for. He’d always measured his worth in terms of what he could provide to his mother. Perhaps the truth is that his worth stretches beyond that.

He hears the sound of crunching footsteps outside. He sits up in the chair, eyes flickering toward the door. Ahead of him, he notices with a jolt, a knife lay discarded on the table. He grabs it before he can think the better of it, brandishing it like he actually could fight his way out of this mess.

He ignores the pain throbbing in his side and pushes himself to stand again. He won’t die now. He can’t.

The door creaks open slowly, and he angles the knife in front of himself protectively. 

But the figure that crosses the threshold isn’t what he’d been expecting. Wide eyes and a mouth fallen open into an oval. Hands clutching a satchel of… is that a seashell? 

She drops the satchel with immediacy, hands flying into the air. Jacaerys thinks he hears something break inside.

He keeps the arm holding the knife up despite the involuntary tremble that has begun in his arm. A cool sweat travels down his temple. His vision wanes. Despite her… figure (she hadn’t brandished a weapon a day in her life, he thinks), he knows looks can be deceiving. 

“You’re up.” She does not immediately acknowledge the weapon in his hand. She’s either brave or simply ignorant. Jace is not sure what he’s more afraid of.

“Who—“ he starts to speak, but he breaks into a coughing fit. His throat feels like it is on fire. She takes a step forward, as if to help or harm him, but he freezes her in place when he turns his gaze back onto her warningly. “Who are you?”

She tells him her name. Then she quickly adds, “you washed up on the beach in front of my cabin. I found you.”

He bends over to clutch his side. He notices her eyes widen.

“Please, I’m not sure you should be up. You sustained massive injuries,” she tells him. “Your body needs rest.”

“I cannot—“ he scoffs, then coughs again. “I cannot simply rest. I must leave. I must…” 

A pang in his side makes him gasp and hunch over. The knife falls with a clatter against the floor but he can’t seem to bring himself to retrieve it. Everything feels like it is in slow motion, out of his reach and control.

She grabs him around the waist before he tips over. He stays conscious long enough for her to lead him back to bed, but he falls within the waves again the second his head hits the pillow.

Consciousness returns to him in fragments. The sound of footsteps by his head. A burning pain spreading up his chest, to which he thinks he shouts, but cannot prevent. The feeling of a wet cloth soaking his tears and sweat. 

When his eyes finally flutter open, it is dark in the room. A candle burns to a nub on the nightstand next to him, wax coating the wood. Sorrow fills his chest again so quickly it nearly steals his breath.

He sees her slip into the room like a wraith come to haunt him. It is ridiculous, he thinks, that she should be the one to stand over him. On any other day, in any other circumstance, she would not put up much of a fight. Now, he is at her mercy.

“You tore one of your stitches.” Her voice is soft, but it reverberates in his ear drums and skull like a dragon’s final roar. He clenches his jaw and turns his head toward the moon that hangs like a silver noose in the sky. “I had to sew it back while you were resting.”

Jace doesn’t reply. He isn’t sure he would know what to say. How does he encompass all his feelings—or even one of them, into a coherent thought? It isn’t possible.

She draws closer and he tenses. She notices. “Are you going to try and hurt me again?” 

He considers her for a moment, then shakes his head.

She pauses, thinking about something, then she settles upon his side of the bed. Jace notices for the first time since she’s entered the room, that she has a bowl of that wretched-looking soup in her hands.

“Here,” she says, outstretching the bowl. He leans back. She pulls away slightly. “Sorry.” She cringes like even she realizes that the soup is nothing to write home about. “It is all I have.”

Jace swallows thickly. He reaches a trembling hand out. She smiles, relieved.

He goes to take the bowl, but his arm feels weak. He pulls back. “Perhaps…” he pauses, clears his throat. “Perhaps you could…”

Asking for help has never come easy to him. Being weak is not something he is accustomed to. His other hand clenches the sheet in his fist.

She nods. He does not have to be explicit. He untenses his hand as she leans forward, a small bit of soup in the wood spoon.

The first bite makes his face twist. She laughs.

“I truly am sorry,” she says. “I know it is probably not what you are used to.”

It takes every bit of his strength to swallow the offending liquid. It is strangely salty. It tastes like the brine that filled his mouth when he— 

He cuts the thought short. No need to ruin his own mood again.

“Something happened to you out there,” she says as if she’d read his mind, and although it should be a question, it is not, “something bad.”

He swallows another gulp of the soup. He does not reply. 

She must realize he does not want to speak on that, for she does not press the matter. She lifts the spoon again and he forces down another sip.

“The soup has fish and some potatoes—oh, and they had carrots at the market today, so I put those in too. Perhaps those are the disgusting parts. I won’t purchase them again.”

Jace does not have the energy, or perhaps the heart, to tell her it is certainly not the vegetables that have made the soup taste like what sea captains scrape off the bottom of their ships.

She scoops another bit of soup and he forces it down. His mouth had begun to retain that saltiness even when he no longer had the soup in his mouth, like a stain one can’t wash away with soap and water.

She does not speak for a long pause, but Jace suddenly feels a bit antsy. It feels too intimate an act to not be speaking.

He swallows another mouthful, then clears his throat to speak. “Did you catch the fish?” he asks, his voice hoarse.

“Oh, no, no,” she replies to him like it is a preposterous suggestion. Like killing fish is below her standards. “I just buy them.”

He frowns around the spoon in his mouth and hurriedly swallows the liquid. “Then why were you on the shore when you found me?”

She stirs the foul soup around for a moment, thinking hard about something, then she looks up at him. “I collect things. Shells, scrap metal, and fabrics. You would be surprised what comes with the morning tide, and even more what people would pay for them.”

An odd business, Jace can’t help but think. It seems like a hard thing to have to rely solely on the Narrow Sea for food and shelter. The Narrow Sea, he remembers with a sudden clarity. That is near where they fought.

“Are you going to tell your name?” Her head is tilted as she asks this, the soup bowl now empty and forgotten upon her folded legs.

He ponders the question for a moment. He could tell her his full name, but it might backfire, especially if she harbors a grudge against his family. He doesn’t think she has it in her to cause him harm, but he knows that many do not until they are cornered.

“Jace,” he finally tells her. “Just Jace.”

She smiles and her entire face lights up like nothing he’s ever seen before. Something twists in his stomach. “Nice to meet you, Jace.”

One, two, three, four. You count the shells noiselessly as you thread them onto the fishing line. They clink together softly as you pull the line taut around your wrist, measuring the width mentally. You remove the bracelet and add a few more of your little shells.

A few days had passed without much event. Jace drifted in and out of consciousness throughout the day and slept soundlessly through the night. He did not complain, but you had seen his thinly-veiled winces and his shuddering breaths. You know that he is suffering more than he lets on. 

It is an odd thing, you think, to be harboring a man in your home that you know next to nothing about, but had inexplicably formed an attachment to. You still know nothing more about Jace than his name and even that had not been an answer easily wrought.

You slide the shells all to one side and swiftly tie a knot at the end of the line, forming a perfect circular bracelet. Putting it to the side, you cut a new piece of fishing line and begin sorting through your shells again.

Just as you go to slide the first shell on, you hear something behind you. The creaking of wood as light footfalls go across.

You turn your head, body tense.

“Jace,” you say, surprised by his appearance. You stand.

He had not been up since he’d ripped that stitch a few days ago, actually heeding your pleas to rest. But a part of you knew even then that the peace would not last long. He is a restless creature, like a bird stuck behind the bars of a cage.

“Do you need something?” You clutch your fingers together across your front, as if doing so could somehow steel your nerves.

He takes a step into the room. You notice his gait seems more steady today. He looks around every bit of the room, his eyes taking in all the pieces that make up your home. You gnaw your lip between your teeth. Did he approve of what he saw?

His voice comes suddenly, a blade cutting through the silence. “What are you doing?” 

It is not accusatory nor standoffish, instead it seems almost curious. You grab the bracelet you just finished and hold it out to him.

“A bracelet.”

Jace steps closer, tilting his head. “For what purpose?”

You let out a short laugh. “It has no purpose. It is just pretty.”

“Hm.” He stares at the offending object like he’s never thought about making something just for the sake of making something before. You smile. He averts his eyes to the other side of the room.

“You said you do not fish,” he says, “and yet you have a fishing rod.”

You follow his eyes to where the thing sits near the door. It sits, forgotten, in the corner of the room—there to haunt you and the person you’d never become, you’re sure.

“My father…” you start to say, but something gets caught in your throat. You forcefully swallow past the blockage. “My father used to fish.”

Jace’s accusatory eyes soften around the edges. He hobbles closer and takes the seat across from you at the table. Your father’s seat.

“And your father—“

“He is dead,” you answer curtly, “he has been for two summers now.”

You pick up the bracelet you had only just starteda nd slide a seashell onto the line. Hurt does not fill your chest like a cavity anymore—now all you feel is numbness as it spreads from your lungs to your heart. 

Jace turns his head to look out the window at the night sky. “My father is gone too.”

Your eyes leap toward his in a flash. He does not look at you, his hand tracing repetitive shapes on the table. The deep circles beneath his eyes have all but faded now, but the weariness to his expression remains. He possesses the gaze of someone who holds more than they can carry–a gaze your father shared.

Your throat bobs as you force yourself to swallow. You feel hollow, but a bit of warmth has reentered your chest. Two children, you think, without a parent—an awful thing, certainly, but not especially rare in Westeros.

You slide another shell onto the bracelet, fingers trembling. “He went mad.” Telling the truth, those three words, stings like betrayal. “He was a knight before I was born. He never… he never forgot what he had to do. The faces of the men he killed… they haunted him.”

Jace goes pale. His dark eyebrows furrow, the line of his mouth pulling down. “I-I’m sorry. That must have been difficult.”

You nod. Put another two shells on the line. Desperately, you search for a way to change the subject. “He always wanted to teach me,” you say, gesturing to the rod, “but he never did.”

He drags a quick hand through his curly brown hair, then pauses as he gets caught in a tangle. He huffs irritably.

“Perhaps,” he says, onyx eyes catching the amber light of the candle flickering on the table, “if I could summon the strength to get dressed and brush my hair, then I could show you how.”

You swallow thickly. “You do not have to—“

“It is the least I can do,” he murmurs. “You saved my life.”

To smile feels inappropriate, so you avert your eyes and begin to tie a knot in another bracelet.

Jace stares at himself in the mirror that stands in the corner of the bedroom with solemn eyes. His eyes glaze over the bandages that wrap around his chest and lower torso, then the unfamiliar slightness to his shoulders and waist. He feels as though he looks at a person he no longer recognizes, like his mind has been transported into the body of someone much weaker than he used to be.

The old house is quiet in the morrow. Every once in a while, a soft breeze will make the house creak. One may occasionally hear a sea bird calling in the distance. Other than that, everything exists as if completely removed from reality; untouched by the war that rages just beyond the sea’s reaches.

His eyes flick back to the mirror and he sees her standing behind him with a deep green doublet wrapped in her arms. 

“It was my father’s,” she says, drawing closer. “It might be a little large on you.”

Jace nods. She hands him the doublet. The material feels like cheap linen, nothing to the quality he had worn before. He does not mind. It would be odd, he thinks, for him to expect anything better.

He lifts the top over his head and she helps guide it over. She seems to be trying not to touch his skin, like she thought he might be made of glass. He clenches his jaw when he feels the familiar tightness in one of his wounds as his arms stretch over his head.

The doublet falls over his body easily, but it does hang on him a bit like the robes a septa might wear.

He hears the sound of muffled laughter from behind him and he turns his head.

“My apologies.” She can barely get it out through her thinly-suppressed amusement. “You do look a bit funny, though.”

Jace feels his lips tug upwards in the first semblance of happiness he’d felt in days. It feels odd and out of place, and so it disappears with his next blink.

“Shall we go?” 

Jace nods. He follows her out of the bedroom and into the living area, watching as she bends to grab the fishing pole. He walks behind her as she leads the way outside, too slow to match her pace.

The brush of a briney mist against his skin feels like flying across the humid air on top of Vermax. His chest pangs and he forces the thought away. His eyes brush the swaying grasses that stand cloistered around the sea’s edge, each one caught up in a current of air drifting by. He watches the woman as she strides ahead of him.

She is quite plain. She does not have the dresses of the courts he is used to, nor the manners of a highborn lady. She moves unhindered by corsets and the plumes of expensive dresses. Her soft legs pump quickly across the sands, barefoot, like she has mapped every inch of the shore to near-perfection and knows without looking where she must go.

Seeing her slip ahead, her hair tangled in the sea’s mist, then as she turns over her shoulder with a jovial grin, it feels so different than anything he’s ever known before.

Baela is beautiful. She is poised, and gentle, but with a rough edge that assures him she could—and would—easily hurt him if pushed to it. But his stomach never flipped when she spoke. He never searched for her eyes from across the room. He never grasped her hand and wished he never had to let it go. He had known her for so long, he assumed she was all he’d ever need, that the feeling of content he felt in her presence was love. Now he isn’t so sure. 

She reaches the shore and stops when her feet hit the tide.

He meets her gaze as she turns to him. His heart pounds in his ears.

“Is it not wonderful?” She sweeps her arm in a half-arc as she speaks, eyes glimmering beneath the high morrow’s sun.

Jace draws his eyes away from her figure to the open waters. It is wonderful, he thinks. If not wrought with pain and regret.

He forces his gaze away. “Yes.”

“So,” she says, shifting on her heels, “how do we begin?”

Jace steps forward and picks up the rod. He retrieves the little scrap of maroon fabric that she had found a few days back and attaches it to the end of the hook. 

“It is always a good idea to have some kind of bait,” he explains, “fish are attracted to movement. If you can find insects or worms, those work even better. But this fabric may do. We will have to see.”

He moves close to the edge of the water and lets the rod scrape the top of the ocean. “Most fish do not swim right by the shore, so you will need to throw the line out a little ways. Make sure that you do not catch your skin with the hook.”

She nods, eyebrows drawn together in deep contemplation. Jace nearly smiles at the way she’s taking this all so seriously, before he catches himself and schools his expression.

Jace steadies his hand and propels the line out into the ocean. One of the wounds on his side complains at the movement, but he ignores it. He watches the line bob in the water with a softened expression. His memory flits between days spent under the sun at Driftmark and Dragonstone, laughing while he chases Lucerys with a wood sword; Laenor showing him how to fish among the tidepools; a fierce burn from the sun that is soothed by his mother’s affectionate hand.

“Who taught you this?” Her voice breaks through the silence that had settled between them. Her eyes keep steady on the line, lashes squinting against the harsh light.

“My father,” he replies after a moment’s hesitation. 

Another pause. 

He feels her shift to look over at the side of his face. “I’m sure he would be quite proud of the man you have become.”

Jace’s breath halts in his throat. Hands suddenly feel clammy. His heart hiccups and thuds against his skin. He had not thought of Laenor in a long time, Harwin even longer. It feels like decades had passed since he had seen either of them, a forgotten moment in his life overshadowed by tragedy after tragedy.

“Oh, look,” she says suddenly from beside him. “A conch shell.” 

She wields the massive thing toward him. Her entire face is bright with delight as she shows him the object that any normal person would completely disregard. She is anything but normal, though.

“These always sell for a few silvers at the markets,” she informs him, “the rich folk think they are good luck.”

He is not able to reply before his arm suddenly jolts and he is pulled a few inches forward. On the end of the line, something stirs in the water. 

“Come,” he orders her urgently. “Something is biting.”

She draws close, her eyes wide. The conch shell drops to the sand. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” he says, “here, you hold the rod.”

“What? I don’t know how to catch a fish!”

He thrusts the rod into her hands. “I am too weak to reel it in. You have to.” It is a lie, but she does not seem to recognize it.

Her hands slip all over the rod as she tries to fight the beast at the end of the line. Jace, pitying her struggle, slides behind her and steadies her hands by placing his on top of hers. She freezes for a moment, then begins to pull. Jace clutches her hands gently within his own and he notices that they tremble like seagrass beneath his own. 

“Hold it steady,” he says against the shell of her ear, “pull only when you feel it stop fighting. You do not want–”

Suddenly, the pressure is removed from the end of the line and they are both sent stumbling backwards onto the sand. Jace lands on his bum, but she is able to catch herself as she tumbles beside him. The line must have broken. The fish is long gone now.

“Oh Jace, are you okay?” He looks over at her as she crouches beside him. “You did not reopen your wounds, did you?”

The laugh that tumbles out of his lips makes her jolt back. Distantly, he is not sure why he is laughing. The fish got away, he landed on back on the sand, and now one of his cuts hurts. But he had just felt so alive. So unburdened by responsibility, like any man of ten and eight without the entirety of their mother’s empire resting upon their shoulders ought to feel. 

The laughter eventually abates, and all that is left is the open sky atop him and the sun beating down on his skin.

“Do you think that the fish I cooked last night was spoiled?” she asks in response to his exuberant mood. “Once, my father caught ill from bad potatoes…”

Jace feels another chuckle escape his lips. “Sorry,” he tells her. “I have… not felt that free in a long time.”

She lets out a soft ‘oh’ and moves to lay next to him in the sand. Far enough away that there is no chance that they will touch, but close enough that Jace can smell the lavender on her skin.

Jace stares at the clear sky ahead of him until he begins to feel his body ache with exhaustion. He pulls himself into a seated position, but she does not move immediately. She looks at him with soft eyes from where she lays against the sand, a small, affectionate smile upon her lips. Her chest rises and falls slowly, hand absentmindedly drawing pictures in the sand.

His stomach churns as he turns away. He stares out at the rippling current with half-lidded eyes. 

“How far is the nearest town?” His words are nearly carried away with the next tide that pulls up the shore. She hears him all the same, sliding to sit up next to him.

“Not far,” she replies, a toothy grin on her breath, “would you like to come and help me pick out a fish for dinner tomorrow?”

Jace does not reply. The hope tinged in her words makes something inside him feel rotten. Like he is corrupting the world wherein she lives. As he takes longer and longer to reply, he notices something settle upon her face. A realization that fades into melancholy.

“Oh.” She looks to the sea in an attempt to hide the dewiness in her eyes, but Jace notices all the same. “You wish to leave.”

“My mother,” he says, “she will be looking for me. She will not stop until she finds me.”

She nods.

Something compels him to continue. “I would stay. I would, truly,” he says, “but this is bigger than me. Bigger than this–”

“I understand, Jace.” But Jace is not sure she does. Her lips purse, her eyebrows drawn to form a small wrinkle between them. 

“I would at least stay a couple more days,” he tells her, “I need to make sure I do not simply hurt myself again by leaving too soon.”

She pulls her knees to her chest and rests her head upon them. “It sounds like a good plan,” she agrees quietly. “Perhaps… Perhaps I could pack you some food as well.”

“Yes,” he says this far too enthusiastically, but he notices her brighten at the joy in his voice and so he continues to smile. “That would be wonderful.”

She nods, pulling at a frayed edge of her dress. “Then it will be done.”

The two of them watch for a few more moments as the red sun burns a hole against the sky and as the water ripples with wrath.

“I will leave on the morrow”--That is what he had told you over dinner the previous evening. 

In the morrow, the sky opens and floods them with her tears. 

You stand by the window of the cabin looking out at the frightful weather. Rain falls like daggers against the darkened, tumultuous sea. Waves crash against the shore. A crack of lightning makes you flinch.

“The Gods are angry,” you say to the still air of the cabin. 

Jace sits halfway over his plate of roasted fish as you say this. Then he straightens, his eyes flickering briefly outside. The dark brown of his irises reflect the grey of the clouds swirling above. “Or they do not grant me leave.”

You force yourself to pull away from the window. Turning your head, another flash of brilliant light comes across the floor, painting everything white. You fall into a silence as you step carefully across the cabin.

You knew that from the moment you found him, that it would not be permanent. Just like the rains that fall from above now, this momentary storm in your life will too pass. You had not even wished for him to stay, initially. You recall that first night, sewing his wounds with fishing line, as your eyes stretched across his alien visage. You had told yourself that his presence would be temporary as a comfort then, now you tell it to ground yourself in reality.

Jace had become more friendly in the past few days. Conversation came easily to him and made the thought of him leaving that much harder. Now you were the one that deflated at the sound of his voice across the hall, the one that shrunk from revealing the parts of yourself that had not seen the light in years.

You are selfish. It is a quality that had always lurked behind your eyes, but had sharpened since your father’s death. It is a survival tactic. Every animal, even humans, wish to hold onto the things they hold dear. It does not matter if it is not much. Everything you have is in some way worth keeping–including Jace.

But you could not fight logic. His mother, his family–they had a higher claim to him than you did. You could not keep him like a bird with clipped wings. It is cruel to even think it. 

You scrub the dish in your hands until your hands feel raw and achy. The only light comes from behind you in the smoldering fireplace and the flash of light that illuminates the sky. You hear the clatter of the bowl from behind you as Jace finds his footing–the screech of the chair as it rubs harshly against the floor.

You feel his warmth as he comes to stand beside you. He reaches a hand into the soapy mess over the wood bucket and fetches your hand from the fray. 

“You have made yourself bleed,” he observes quietly, a finger stroking over the cuts. 

You feel your throat bob under the weight of his probing stare. You slip your hand away from his and turn your back to dip the bowl in the bucket of soapless water.

“Have I done something to upset you?” he murmurs. His words are echoed by a rumble of thunder in the distance.

You still your movements for just a second before continuing. Your cuts throb at the feeling of the cool water cleansing the blood from your hands. “No,” you reply simply.

“Then why have you been so quiet as of late?”

You drop the bowl onto the wood surface in front of you and turn, drying your hands with a near cloth. “I just haven’t had much to say, I suppose.”

Another flash of light. Rain as it beats ceaselessly against the metal roof. You face him, clenching the towel in your fist.

“Shall we remove your stitches?” It had been suggested a few days ago as the first thing he would do before departing, so he would not have to bother with finding someone to do it for him on the road. 

Jace looks like he might say something. Then he shakes his head. “On the bed?”

You nod. “That would be easiest.” 

You slip behind him as he moves toward the bedroom. On your way, you light the spill near the fireplace and bring it with you. Your eyes find his figure as it slinks through the darkness. He’s healed so much better than you had ever expected he might. He should not have survived his injuries—should not have been able to heal so quickly. You think the Gods must favor his survival much more than they favored the own laws they stipulated.

He slides off his doublet and lounges back into the bed. You let the flame on the end of the spill touch the end of the wick of the candlestick and the room is bathed in a soft glow. You suffocate the flame and put the spill onto the table next to the bed.

Jace watches you as you do this quietly. When your eyes move up to his face, you notice his eyes are lidded, the tips of his ears red. You feel a warmth catch hold of your skin at his gaze and you avert your eyes to his chest.

You begin your work in silence. You lift the knot of each stitch and easily slice through it with the sharp edge of your knife. At the end of your first removal, you are happy to see that the wound has faded to a pinkish stripe.

“Who taught you this?” 

You startle at the sound of his voice after several long minutes of silence. It is a deep baritone, rough around the edges. Its unexpected richness has you shifting in your place on the edge of the bed. A flash of white light from out the window bathes his face in color. 

“My father.” You do not elaborate further. You think it self explanatory. Your father taught you everything.

“Was he hurt often?” 

You cut another knot. “There are no maesters in the far reaches,” you tell him. A hint of bitter frustration lines your words. “I have assisted several people who have needed help in the village.”

“I did not know,” he replies softly, “that is quite kind of you.”

“We all share responsibility here, no one is without duty.” You put another piece of the fishing line to the side. “It is how things function when you do not have the entire Seven Kingdoms at your disposal.”

You notice Jace’s eyebrows furrow. His stomach tenses beneath your hand. “How did you…”

“It is obvious,” you say, “your voice, your cadence, the way you were dressed when I found you… you have no scars, no callouses. You did not offer your house’s name, so I can only assume—“

“Jacaerys Velaryon,” he says, “that is my name.”

You still. Your eyes dart to his, alarm filling your chest and stealing your breath. “Velaryon,” you echo, heart racing. “That is the name of…”

“Perhaps you know of Corlys Velaryon,” he offers, “the Sea Snake. He is my grandfather. Or Rhaenyra Targaryen, my mother—“

You stand, breathing panicked. “You must leave,” you say, “why did you stay so long? The realm… your mother… the Seven Kingdoms need you.”

Jace leans forward to grasp your arm. You allow him only because you fear you may topple over without the stability.

“I am of no use to them in this condition,” he scoffs. You notice a faraway look in his eyes. The same look he sometimes got when he stared upon the ocean or recalled stories of his father to you. “My dragon is dead, my body a wreck. There is nothing left of me for them to scavenge.”

“T-That is not true,” you stutter. “You must at least find out if they are safe. You have been healed for days… you could have left—“

“I stayed for you.” You fall silent at the sincerity in his voice. His hand drifts down the bare skin of your wrist to thread between your fingers. He cups your hand between his own.

“You cannot stay,” you tell him.

“It does not matter if I stay one more day. The realm will not fall today,” he replies, “we cannot travel in this ruinous weather, anyway.”

Your eyes drift to the window, where the wind throws its tears against the pane. You nod slowly and find your seat again.

You grasp the knife from where you sat it on the duvet. You slide the other to rest upon his warm stomach. His breaths quicken beneath your hand as you drag it up to the next wound.

“I almost killed you the day after I found you,” you whisper, “I thought it would be a mercy. The fact that you are here at all… alive, breathing. It is a gift from the Gods.”

He leans forward. “What stopped you?”

Your movements pause from where you had started to cut away another knot. “You did.”

His throat bobs. His hand moves from where it clutches the sheets to where your hand rests upon his sternum. He strokes the skin of your hand gently.

You lean forward without realizing what you are doing. He does not allow you to back away. He brings his other hand to the nape of your neck and leans forward to seal your lips with his.

The kiss is languid. His tongue probes the seal of your lips and you allow it to slip inside. You bring your hand up to cup his jaw and he drags the hand cupping your neck to your hair. You let out a soft moan against his lips and he responds to the noise by pulling you forward onto his chest.

You do not lean your weight onto him in fear of hurting him, but you feel his hands crawl to settle upon your heaving ribs. You gently settle your lower half onto his hips, settling your hand down on a part of his chest that had no injuries.

You and Jace continue to kiss for what feels like hours. It is exhilarating. It feels like flying. Your stomach feels warm and fluttery, and your lips are throbbing.

You shift your hips and Jace lets out a groan. You pull away from the kiss, concerned. His hand moves to grab the flesh of your hip, sliding you back some. There is a hardness beneath you that makes a pleasant chill slide down your spine.

“Are you alright, Jace?” 

“Unless you wish for us to have sex,” he grumbles, “you should move off my hips.”

You swallow thickly at the insinuation. Sex. A novel thing. A thing that should be saved for marriage. But marriage seems so far from your mind now, drifting away like a current.

“And what do you wish for us to do?” you murmur. You slide forward an inch and he throws his head back onto the pillows. His chest heaves.

“You know what I wish,” he groans. “Is it not obvious?”

You lean forward so that your lips barely brush his own. “Then take it.”

Sunlight streams through the window ahead of you, branding the side of your face with heat, and your eyelids flutter against the intrusion. You fist your fingers in the sheets and twist your legs close to your body. As you shift, you feel an arm pulling you backwards.

You grasp the hand splayed across your stomach between your trembling fingers.

“Stay,” he murmurs against the shell of your ear. Tears bead in your eyes, but you keep them at bay.

Your thumb finds the pulse that thrums beneath his skin and you count his heart beats. The Gods are cruel, you think. They had kept Jace here long enough for you to miss him when he leaves.

You turn your body over to face him. You are not surprised to see him already staring back at you. His dark curls are a mess on the pillow beneath him. His lips pull upwards at the corners, but do not reach his eyes. He brings his hand up to stroke your cheek.

Your chin wobbles and he blinks away a frown.

“It will not be forever,” he tells you softly, reverently,

“I will return to you one day.”

You bring a hand up to wipe away the stubborn tears. “I suppose you do not know when that will be.”

He leans forward to give you a kiss and you know that is the only way he can possibly tell you no. 

Pulling away from the kiss feels like saying good-bye.

You stay in bed as he stands, sluggishly dressing himself as if he was still looking for reasons not to leave. You do not think he finds one. He turns his head to look back at you and his expression falters. 

A small smile curls at your lips as you mouth the word—go.

He heeds your instruction and leaves your cabin with a satchel of roasted fish, a map to the nearest town, and a bracelet strung with seashells.

ONE YEAR LATER…

The nets are full this morrow. The tide ebbs and flows, slinking across the silver sands. Birds let out cries of rejoice overhead for the plentiful bounty gifted by the sea. 

You bend the knee to heave the first net out of the water. You clutch your chest protectively as you search through the things with the other hand. 

“Hm,” you murmur, “a rainbow shell.” 

You bring the shell up to the light and small reflections bounce across your vision. Tucking it into your satchel, you search some more. A piece of metal, two scraps of fabric, and a clam.

You pocket the metal and one of the ratty pieces of fabric, but allow the clam to slide back under the tide. You bring your dry hand to rest upon the head of the babe swaddled against your breast.

“Shh,” you whisper to him as he begins to stir. “It is alright, my prince.”

He brings his head up slowly to peer at you. A splatter of sea foam settles on the side of his face, but he does not seem to mind. He gives you a gummy smile and you return it lovingly.

He watches with bleary eyes as you sort through the next net of things. You show him each individual item as you retrieve it. Your heart skips when you feel a familiar shape and weight in the palm of your hand.

“A conch shell,” you inform him with a giddy grin, “these sell for several silvers at the market.”

He stares at the shell with wide eyes. The pattern, a dark brown and white mottling, you think, must confuse or enrapture him by the way he looks at it.

The small of your back has begun to hurt. You straighten up and lift a supportive hand to rest underneath the baby’s bum.

“This will be enough for today,” you decide. “The sea has gifted us more than we need.”

The little boy smacks his lips as if agreeing with the statement. You nod and carry your satchel and the boy up the familiar path to the cabin.

However, your footsteps slow as you grow closer until you stop right before the door. Something is not right. You protectively cradle the back of your son’s head as you touch a hand to the door.

It pushes open with little resistance. You slide the knife you kept on you at all times to your hand in one swift movement as you step inside.

You take not but two steps beyond the threshold before you freeze. The knife clatters to the ground and a gasp shudders from your lips at the sight in front of you.

He stands across from you like he never left. He’s dressed in black gilded leathers, his body a tad leaner and steadier. His face looks older, more mature and shaped by circumstance, just as you imagine yours must too. His mop of dark hair curls around his ears, longer than when you saw him last.

His lips with awe. He stares at you and your face as if trying to map something with his mind. 

“Jace,” you say breathlessly. “How…”

“I saw you by the shore as I rode in from town,” he murmurs, taking a hesitant step forward. He lets out a soft laugh that sends your stomach aflutter. “I thought I might surprise you. I guess I am lucky to not have received a knife in my throat.”

Your throat bobs. Mistiness clouds your vision. “You came back for us.”

“For us?” Jace echoes, eyebrows furrowed. He comes so close he can reach out to you with his arm and you know that he has seen him then, by the shock that melts his features.

The boy turns his head to the best of his ability in your swaddle, his eyes searching for the unfamiliar voice. Jace’s mouth comes nearly unhinged, a trembling hand lifting as if to stroke his head, but it falls short.

He forces his eyes to look at you. “He… he’s mine?”

You bite your lip to suppress your smile as you nod. You reach around your neck with one arm while the other supports the baby’s bum. You unravel the swaddle easily, and the chubby baby flails his arms with relief. Never one to like a cage.

You outstretch him toward Jace and he takes him eagerly. He holds him with practiced ease. He supports the baby’s head and bum as he gazes down at him, tracing his forehead to the slope of his nose to the flutter of his lashes with only his eyes.

Jace finally breaks away from the baby long enough to look up at you. “And I just… I just left you. You and my son.”

Your heart skips a beat at the name. Son. You bite the inside of your cheek to keep from grinning like a fool.

“You had to,” you say, stepping forward to lay a gentle hand upon his upper arm. “Your family needed you.”

He clenches his jaw. “Nothing we did… nothing we accomplished… equals this.”

He strokes a featherlight touch against the boy’s cheek and he wrinkles his nose.

“Will you…” you pause. You try to steel yourself for the rejection that may very well follow, hands clammy by your sides. “Will you be staying long?”

Jace’s eyes rush to meet yours. He steps forward. The baby whimpers in his arms at the movement. 

“I would stay forever if you would have me.”

You feel your heart skip a beat. “What? What of the throne? Of your family?”

He shakes his head. Your stomach drops.

“My brother Aegon will be the next ruler. Wed to his cousin.”

“And you?”

His dark eyes soften as they consider this question carefully. He clutches the lost prince to his chest protectively.

“I am right where I want to be.”

You wonder whether it is chance or divine intervention that a Targaryen prince washes ashore beside your cottage.

By the time you get to the edge of the sea after catching a glimpse of the corpse from your porch, it is half buried in the wet sand, lying limp at your feet, and there is a lump in your throat that you cannot seem to swallow away. 

You do not know how you didn’t notice the sigil sooner.

It should have been the first thing that caught your eye, considering it was only a fortnight past that the Prince Aemond brought the great dragon Vhagar over the town you were raised in and razed it to the ground. The green and gold banners have been flying over the area since, and soldiers from the Reach have been constantly patrolling the roads, seeking out rebels and sympathizers.

You know better than to involve yourself in the affairs of any man that dons the three-headed dragon, you tell yourself, trying to will yourself to walk away from the corpse before anyone can catch you standing near it.

Red or gold, black or green—it does not matter to you, the wars of nobles are graves for common folk, and you have no desire to meet an early one. You have done well enough for yourself since your father passed. You refuse to squander the life you’ve built because a prince washed up on the shore near your home.

The boy at your feet is young, you cannot help but notice—your age, perhaps—dark of hair and fair of skin. At a distance, he had looked like any other body the sea had decided to return, and your first instinct had been to rush toward him rather than avert your gaze and pretend you had seen nothing.

Your hands tremble at your sides, and you have to forcibly still them as you take in a deep breath.

This is war, you recall the soldiers saying when the survivors demanded to know the reason for the tragedy that took place at Sharp Point—mothers with tears in their eyes and no bodies to bury, fathers who had lost their livelihood and the children for whom they built it, your neighbors, your friends. They say Lord Bar Emmon sits on the usurper’s council, so all of the commonfolk who were unfortunate enough to be born beneath his banners have been made to pay the price of his loyalties, allies of a queen they have never seen and casualties of a war they never chose.

This is war, they will tell you the same as they cut off your head if they see you kneeling beside this corpse and call mercy treason. Because it is always the burden of the commonfolk, paying the price of noble quarrels. Princes speak of honor and succession, of rights and oaths and stolen crowns, and it is fishermen and farmers who have to bury their dead. They will not care to hear what you have to say if they think you're affiliated with the Black queen and her supporters, just as the Prince Aemond did not care whether the people of Sharp Point had declared for the Blacks or merely happened to be born beneath the wrong lord.

But now, a prince lies dead upon your shore, and you wonder if this is how it begins again. 

You should leave him.

The thought comes immediately, sensible in light of the circumstances, even if it does make your stomach flip. You should turn around and go home, bolt your door, and tell no one what you saw. The sea will reclaim him, or the crabs will pick his bones clean; maybe the patrol will stumble upon the body before the tide rises, and they can parade it through the streets the same way you heard they did to Princess Rhaenys’s dragon.

By the morning, he will be gone one way or another, and you can move on with your life as though you never saw him at all. He will be somebody else’s misfortune, or more hopefully, no one else’s at all. 

It is a corpse, anyway. The boy has not moved since you arrived, and his chest does not seem to be rising and falling. There are two arrows through his shoulder, and a blueness to his lips that you’ve only seen in the dead, so—

As though to mock you, he lets out a wet, ragged cough, water bubbling at his lips, lashes fluttering just enough for you to catch sight of dark, hazy eyes that slip over you once before they slide shut again.

You feel sick to your stomach.

He does not stir again. One side of his face is bruised an ugly purple, his dark hair plastered to his brow with seawater and blood. He cannot be much older than you—the traitorous thought crosses your mind again. There is something terribly young about him, lying there half-drowned in the surf, one hand curled weakly into the sand as though, even unconscious, he is still trying to cling to something.

He does not look like a prince, you think miserably. He looks like a boy who is going to die.

The sea foams around your boots, and his body twitches as it threatens to reclaim him—the only feeble resistance he’s capable of in his state. You do not know how he still breathes—the fires might still burn on the Gullet, but the fighting ended days past. How long has he been floating about, dragged around by vicious currents and tossed by waves? It doesn’t even seem as though it should be possible, as though the Seven themselves intervened and—

—and dropped him on your shore, in your hands, and you are contemplating leaving him to die.

The thought is unpleasant, a heavy stone in your chest in place of your heart.

You are not a cruel person. You have cared for gulls with broken wings, and you leave scraps outside your door for the old orange cat that wanders the area. During the winter three years prior, you spent a fortnight nursing a lamb that did not even belong to you because you could not bear the sound of it crying.

And now there is a boy at your feet—bleeding, drowned, scarcely clinging to life—and because there is a dragon sewn onto his chest, you are trying to convince yourself to let the sea finish what arrows and war could not. 

His lashes are dark against his cheek. Young, you think again, even more traitorous than the last, no older than ten and nine, if even. There is salt crusted at the corners of his mouth and blood soaking through his tunic in sluggish, rusty streams that stain the pale sand beneath him.

He looks cold—traitor, traitor, traitor.

He looks like a prince, you try to insist. A dragon prince, fire and blood and ruin, dangerous. 

Cold. Hurt. Dying.

You need to walk away, you tell yourself again, desperate this time, because the longer you stand there staring at him, the more you fail to convince yourself of the correct path. 

A prince's life is worth more than yours, more than your cottage and your little patch of land and the fishing boat your father left you. It is worth armies and dragons and castles and men willing to kill for a name. 

If this boy lives, others will come looking for him. 

And if the soldiers discover him in your home, they will not ask questions. They will not care that you found him by chance or that you never bent the knee to Queen Rhaenyra—that you could not even tell anyone why one half of House Targaryen wishes the other dead. They will see the three-headed dragon on his breast and the roof over his head, and that will be enough to condemn you.

Worse, the Prince Aemond and the dragon Vhagar could return. You think of Tom, the miller’s son, pulled from the boiling river after dragonfire reached the gristmill. You think of little Grace’s face as she searched the ashes for her mother. You think of all of your neighbors, all of your friends, who hardly survived the first time fire rained from the sky, and you think of all of those who didn’t. 

He is not worth it. He is not worth the risk. A prince is only a man born with a special name, there’s no reason you should save him and condemn countless others—he bleeds the same, he dies the same, and when the Stranger comes for him, he is no more spared than any other man.

Except, he didn’t, did he? 

He should be dead—any other man would be dead.

Two arrows through the shoulder, half-drowned, tossed upon the sea for days on end—there is no surviving that. Yet he breathes still, ragged and shallow though it may be, his fingers twitching every now and then.

The Stranger came for him and left empty-handed.

The Stranger came for him and left him with you. 

Why?

There are no prophecies in your life, no gods whispering in your ear. You are a fisherman's daughter with a cottage by the sea and enough coin to keep yourself fed through winter if the catch is good. You know little of the gods save for the prayers your father taught you as a child and the candles you light for him on his nameday. The Seven did not save your father or your town; they did not save Tom or Grace’s mother or any of the others who screamed as dragonfire turned their homes to ash.

So why? Why this boy? Why this prince? Why should the gods spare a dragon's son when they had not spared children and fishermen and mothers? Why have they left him for you?

You do not have an answer. The only answer before you is a body on the sand, breathing when it ought not to be.

You stare down at him, furious and distressed and so, so unsure. He looks dead again—still as driftwood, cold and pale, stiff. His lips are blue like the dead, and his chest hardly rises and falls. You wonder if you imagined what you saw before. If your guilt conjured a cough where there had been none, if your conscience simply could not bear the thought of walking away even from a corpse.

Slowly, you sink to your knees beside him, damp sand clinging to your knees, the sea foam wetting your trousers. Your hand is still trembling in spite of all efforts to still it. You lift it to his throat, hesitating only for a moment. 

If there is life, you will do what you must.

If there is not, you will turn and walk away. 

You have never prayed for someone to be dead before. 

Please, you think now miserably. Please.

Your fingers brush the skin of his throat—it is cold. He must be cold. So cold, that for a brief, terrible moment, hope flares in your chest, and then—

There is a flutter—it is weak and uneven, so faint that you almost miss it, but it is there.

Your head hangs forward, and you blink away the tears that prick in your eyes, because you know this action will have consequences. You know that there is no going back once you have entangled yourself with dragons. You know that every story told of House Targaryen ends in blood and fire and ruin for everyone foolish enough to stand too close them.

You know that this boy could be the death of you.

The soldiers could discover him. Your neighbors could discover him—as much as they care for you, they fear Vhagar more. If word spreads that a prince of the black faction lives and is hidden beneath your roof, you could hang for it. They could burn your cottage to the ground. They could drag you through the streets and call you traitor.

Worse still, he could recover.

Because then he would not be a half-dead boy on the sand. He would be a prince again. A son of the house of the dragon. He would leave, and the war would continue, and perhaps one day you would hear his name in some tavern and learn that he had mounted a dragon and burned a town much like your own.

The sea rushes forward again, cold water washing over your boots and his legs alike. He does not move. He is so cold.

“Why did you have to wash up here?” you breathe out—frustrated, angry, resigned, because you have never been one to turn your back on someone in need. 

His pulse flutters once more against your fingers, and he does not stir. 

Then, because the gods have a cruel sense of humor and because your heart has always been softer than your head, you slide your arms beneath the prince’s shoulders and knees.

With a soft curse and the sea at your heels, you gather the dragon prince into your arms and carry home your ruin.

—————————

He is Jacaerys Velaryon, son of Queen Rhaenyra, Prince of Dragonstone, Heir to the Iron Throne. 

Three days have passed since you found him on the shore, and he has hardly stirred since you dragged him into your cottage. You have been riddled with anxiety since, jumping at every sound and fearing the worst when someone addresses you. It is only a matter of time—whenever a rider passes on the road beyond the trees or the patrol sweeps down your shore, you think they care coming for him. Coming for you. 

You spend the first day trying to keep him alive. 

You drag him home, soaked to the bone and half-frozen, laying him atop your bed as you get a fire going and wrap him in your blankets. For a while, you can only stand there staring at him, because it is one thing to decide not to leave a boy to die and another entirely to realize you have no idea how to save him.

You have to cut away his tunic to remove it, and it makes it easier to breathe once the three-headed dragon is out of sight, but then you have to address the monstrosity beneath it—bruises darkening one side of his ribs, yellow and purple and black, cuts everywhere, salt crusting his skin and body a ruin of blood. 

You wonder how many rocks the currents slammed him into before he finally washed to shore. The sea around Sharp Point is, well, sharp. Jagged rocks and narrow inlets line the coast, and more than one fisherman has vanished into the sea after his boat drifted too close to reefs beneath the tide.

It is a cruel stretch of sea—crueler still to a boy half-dead and alone. 

And then there were the arrows. 

The shafts protrude from his shoulders at awful angles, the flesh around them angry and swollen. You cry while removing them, because you have never done something like it before, and your hands cannot stop shaking. A part of you wonders if the gods left him for you so that his blood could be on your hands instead, and you cannot fathom what you’ve done to deserve this.

You expect him to wake once you start removing them. At the very least, you expect him to scream. The first shaft pierced cleanly through his shoulder and is easy enough to ease out, but the second lodged itself deep in the flesh, refusing to budge until you brace your foot against the bedframe and pull with both hands. 

It should have been agony—any man would have cried out. 

The prince does not so much as flinch.

You remember staring at him afterward, the arrow clutched in your hand and your own cheeks wet with tears, wondering if he had died while you were removing it. You press your fingers to his throat with a panic that borders on hysteria, and you aren’t sure if you’re relieved or disappointed when you feel the fluttering pulse still there. 

A traitorous part of you wishes that he had died. 

A corpse is a tragedy, but a tragedy can be dumped in the sea and abandoned. A tragedy will not bring more war to your ravaged home.

A living prince, on the other hand, is a catastrophe that you do not know what to do with. Your home has already faced ruin once, and the longer he remains in your care, the more at risk you will be of bringing it upon you all again, because if he is captured in your care, then that means war and blood and fire and more dragons. The whole town, all of the survivors, everyone will be branded traitors to the crown.

But the prince lived, so you can only hope that he will heal quick enough and be gone before you have the chance to regret helping him.

The fever comes on the second day, and the corpse in your bed finally gives to life. 

You notice it when you are wiping the blood from his face, and your hand brushes his forehead. It’s as though all of the cold of the sea had fled his body at once and left only fire behind. It’s what you expect of a Targaryen prince, really—the burning heat, closer to dragon than man— it feels more natural than the cold, but you are scared anyway. 

You do not know much about treating battle wounds, but you do know about fever. 

Your younger brother died of it during a long winter a decade past—no matter how hard your mother worked to keep it at bay, he was dead by nightfall. Your mother passed in the same moon, to the same sickness, as did half of the children in Sharp Point, because fever does not care whether you are young or old, rich or poor, prince or peasant.

His skin is flushed, sweat beading along his brow and soaking the dark hair at his temples as he twists in the sheets violently, threatening to reopen the wounds you just stitched close. His breathing changes too—no longer the slow drags of air, shallow and erratic, like he had spent days at sea only to begin suffocating on dry land.

You fetch water from the well until your shoulders ache. You lay cloths upon his brow and change them whenever they grow warm. You feed the fire, then fear you have made him too hot and let it die down, only to panic that he would grow cold again and build it back up.

Every few minutes, you find yourself pressing your hand to his forehead or his throat, checking for fever and pulse alike. There is never a change—still alive and burning, and you don’t know whether to be grateful or terrified. 

At one point, he begins muttering. You cannot make out most of it—the words are slurred, little more than broken sounds spilling from fevered lips. Names, you think. Places, maybe. Some do not seem to be spoken in the common tongue.

Once, very clearly, he whispers, "Mother.”

You have to change the cloth on his forehead afterward and pretend your eyes are not stinging with tears. You curse the gods throughout that second day—you wish that you’d never left the cottage at all the morning you found him, you wish you’d left him to die, you wish, you wish, you wish, as though any of it matters anymore. 

You sleep little that night, sitting beside your bed and watching him breathe. Terrified every time his breathing slowed, and equally terrified every time it quickened. You count the moments between each breath until dawn creeps through your shutters, and by morning, you feel like you have lived a lifetime in a single night.

The third day—today—you have to make the trek into town.

You have used the last of your willow bark, and there is only a heel of stale bread left, a few onions, and enough drinking water to last another day if you’re careful. You need fruit and vegetables, more barley, and you have a catch that you never got the chance to bring to the market to trade the morning you found the prince. 

You cannot put it off any longer, much as you may wish—the prince needs supplies, and unfortunately, so do you.

You do not like going into town. You have never liked going into town—you have always been fond of your neighbors and your friends, but you were not fond of the way they circle and crowd you whenever you make your weekly appearance for trade. You got overwhelmed too quickly, and you didn’t know how to make an exit without seeming rude, so you ended up staying there for hours when there were many chores you had to get done at home.

Now, it is like a graveyard. The destruction following the Prince Aemond’s attack on Sharp Point has yet to be cleared. The soldiers are too busy with war and patrols, and the survivors are too busy trying to salvage what they can of their ruined lives. 

When you enter the town, you can still smell charred flesh and death. 

The children usually run to you when you arrive, chattering about the games they’ve played and the rumors they’ve heard, if you saw the wild dragon Grey Ghost while you were out on your boat this week, and you smile and nod along with them. But all of the children are dead now, and you are not crowded by friends and neighbors eager to make conversation with you, because most of them are dead now too.

It is in the market when you overhear green-cloaked soldiers talking about the battle that took place in the Gullet, and you finally put a name to the face of the prince in your home. You try to pretend that you’re not eavesdropping, fingers shaking terribly as you sort through the fruits and vegetables that Wylem carted in from his farm, because you need to know if they have figured out what you’ve done, if they know the prince is in your care, under your roof.

But they only laugh as they speak of dead dragons and a mourning pretender queen. They say the Blacks have lost two dragons, and the bastard prince, Jacaerys Velaryon, is dead. Any man who can find his body washed up on the shore to deliver to the King will see unfathomable riches. 

Momentarily, you are angry at yourself because the royals brought this war and have caused all of this suffering, but when your lashes flutter shut, for a split second, you can only picture the haunted look on your mother’s face as she held your dead brother in her arms. You think of Miss Ellyn, who tossed herself into the sea when she found out her son had been killed on the Kingsroad. You think of your friend, Marie, who you found screaming, fisting her infant daughter’s ashes after the burning of the town. You think of them, and then you think of the black queen on her throne, and you feel the same lump in your throat.

Then you remind yourself that this is her doing. 

Her doing, her half-brother’s doing, the other nobles’ doing. They brought this war to Westeros, they brought death and destruction, fire and blood, and you force yourself to shake your head and push it all away, trading some of the fish you caught for fruits and vegetables and barley with a watery smile that you’re sure Wylem took notice of. 

There are more important things to worry about: if there is a bounty on the prince’s body, everybody will be searching for him. Not just soldiers, the people too—your friends, your neighbors, everyone. Many starve, more struggle, so if there is an opportunity for gold, they will all be on the hunt. You need to burn his cloak and tunic when you get back to the cottage, anything that associates him with House Targaryen. 

You nearly trip over your own feet racing back to the cottage, second-guessing every conversation you had in the town. Wylem asked you why you were getting twice as much food as you usually get—you do not remember how you responded. 

Did you imply that you had a visitor? Why can’t you remember? What excuse did you give? Did the soldiers overhear? Are they following you? Do they know? Why can’t you remember? You’re scared—you do not think you’ve ever been so scared in your entire life. 

You look over your shoulder every five steps, worried that they’re going to come charging after you, demanding you to bring them to the Prince Jacaerys before taking your head. You’re not cut out for this—you’re the daughter of a fisherman. There’s no world where you should be worrying whether soldiers are going to hunt you down for saving a prince. 

There are tears in your eyes when you make it back to the cottage, and your fingers are trembling around the bags Wylem packed for you. You shut the door behind you, and it takes you three tries to bolt it properly. When you finally do, you rest your forehead against the wood and let out a trembling sigh.

You—

“Who are you?”

There is a knife to your throat.

You stare at the crack in the wood of your door, breath catching, desperately trying not to move lest you risk the knife slicing through your skin. The crack appeared last winter, you remind yourself, trying not to focus too much on the fact that you can feel the cool edge of the blade. Your friend, Evander, was meant to fix before the next, but Evander is dead now, and you may well be too, if the knife at your throat presses any deeper. 

“Answer me, who are you? Where am I? Wh—” the prince—Jacaerys Velaryon, Prince of Dragonstone, Heir to the Iron Throne—falters suddenly, and you can only breathe again when the knife drops from your neck, and you feel the presence at your back disappear. “You—you are a woman.”

You do not turn to look at him immediately, eyes sliding shut as you fight to steady the frantic beating of your heart, drawing one slow breath after another until your shaking eases enough to trust your legs. Your fingers tighten on the bags cradled in your arms before you force yourself to turn around.

Prince Jacaerys Velaryon stands three paces behind you, one hand braced against the edge of your table, pained, pale, barely conscious. He is bare from the waist up, and the stitches you painstakingly worked through his torn skin have pulled loose, fresh blood soaking the bandages and dripping down his chest and back. 

You see more clearly in the light of the afternoon sun just how ruined his body is, bruises and cuts—you think his ribs must be broken, you did not notice just how bad off he was when you had him lying in the dim corner where you keep your bed. 

For a moment, you forget that you are face-to-face with a Targaryen prince—it is only the boy you dragged in from the sea and spent hours trying to keep alive. 

Your lips curve down into a deep frown, brows knitting together. You exhale as you say, “You reopened your wounds. It took me an hour to get them properly closed.”

The prince stares at you. 

As soon as the words fly from your mouth, you remember who it is before you. The son of a queen. The heir to the Iron Throne, if one listens to his mother. A pretender's heir and bastard, if one listens to her enemies. You do not know which of them is right, nor do you particularly care. Such questions belong to lords and knights and people with far too much time to argue over crowns. 

To the likes of you, prince is title enough for you to keep your mouth shut and your head bowed.

He does not immediately respond, gaze flicking around your cottage uncertainly. Your bed, stained with his blood. The dying hearth. The table where you left out the last bits of the bread, just in case he awoke while you were gone and was hungry. The bandages you left at his bedside. The basin of pink water you forgot to empty before leaving for town.

His lips, dry and cracked, part as he stares at you and murmurs more to himself than to you, “You tended my wounds.”

You hesitate, then nod, swallowing once. “I found you on the shore a few days past, my prince—” Your Grace? What is the proper way to address a prince? My Lord does not seem grand enough for the heir to a queen. Prince feels the safest—whatever he may be, no one seems inclined to dispute that part. “—I… you should probably be resting.”

“I need to know what happened,” he says instead, stepping closer to you. He is too pale, sweat beads at his forehead, dark curls matted to his skin. His eyes are wide and wild, pupils dilated the same way you’ve seen in men mad with grief or fear or fury, moments before lashing out at the nearest person. You find yourself tensing instinctively. “What do you know of the battle that took place on the Gullet? Did Baela make it back to Dragonstone? And Rhaena—she was on that wild dragon, and—my brothers, did my brothers make it back? How long has it been? Where are we? How far is it to Dragonstone? I must return immediately, I—”

The prince only just seems to realize how you’ve drawn away, back pressed against the door to your own home, arms tightening around the sack in your arms whenever he comes closer. His tongue darts out to wet his cracked lips, gaze flicking to the knife he dropped onto the floor and the fear in your face. 

Shame crosses his expression instantly.

“I—” His expression twists as he puts space between the two of you again. You wonder whether it’s from pain or from struggling to force out an apology. Both, likely. He continues, “You have helped me—saved my life, most like—and here I am frightening you. I… I thought I’d been captured. I woke in an unfamiliar place. I didn't know where I was. I didn't know if I was a prisoner or if the battle had been lost. I heard the door open and…”

He trails off, and you stand there awkwardly, tension easing slowly from your shoulders. He is still on guard, but he does not seem so inclined to pull a blade on you again. Your lips part to tell him where he is, what little you know of the battle on the Gullet. 

Instead, you ask, “Do most enemy strongholds look like a fisherman’s cottage, my prince?” 

You are mortified the moment the question spills from your lips—he is a Targaryen prince, they are known for blood and fire and madness, dragons and crowns, and you speak to him as though he’s one of your peers. 

Prince Jacaerys stares at you for a long moment, and then, to your astonishment, his gaze flicks around the inside of your home again, and something suspiciously like embarrassment crosses his face. 

“I suppose not.”

The corner of your mouth twitches despite yourself, and you let out a soft puff of air through your nose before making your way across the room to place the sack you’ve carried from town onto the table. You will have to sort all of what you’ve got later; for now, you need to get the prince resettled before he opens up any more of his wounds.

You turn to look at him again, faltering when you see the pained expression that crosses his face, so sudden that it steals all the color from his cheeks. His hand shoots to his side, fingers digging into the bandages wrapped around his ribs.

“My prince?” you ask hesitantly, taking half a step forward, arm only slightly extended. It is one thing to carry him to your cottage and treat his wounds while he’s unconscious; it is different now that he’s awake.

Prince Jacaerys inhales sharply through his teeth. He is swaying on his feet, breath gone shallow—he looks as though he’s moments from collapsing hard onto your wooden floor. Still, his jaw clenches and the muscles in his neck tighten as he draws himself upright through sheer stubbornness.

“I am fine,” he insists.

“You should sit, my prince.”

“I am standing,” he replies with a tight smile, as though a bead of sweat isn’t rolling down his temple from strain to remain upright and his lips aren’t trembling with pain.

“Barely.”

The prince blinks as though caught off guard by the response, casting a look that is partially confused, and mostly offended in your direction. Your lashes flutter shut as you brace yourself for a volatile reaction, because he is a prince and you are a fisherman’s daughter, and you are arguing with him as though he is an equal and not one of those dragon-riding royals people compose songs about. You think you must have lost your wits entirely these past few days. 

Instead, he shoots back, with all the dignity he can muster while visibly swaying, "I have endured worse."

You stare at the blood soaking through the bandages wrapped around his shoulder, uncertain if you believe him. You say with less heat, "That is not the same as being well, my prince."

His jaw tightens, and you fight a sigh. Gods, he actually looks as though he is preparing an argument. 

You wonder, briefly, what your life has become. Three weeks ago, your greatest concern had been whether the currents would ease up enough for you to take the boat out of the shallows to catch some fish. Now, Sharp Point has burned and you are standing in your cottage, arguing with a dragon prince about his injuries. 

The absurdity of it nearly makes you laugh, wondering if perhaps this entire ordeal is some fever dream brought on by bad fish and Leila’s uncle’s dubious ale. 

Then, Prince Jacaerys’s left leg buckles. 

He reaches for the table and misses, injured shoulder slamming into the edge hard enough to wrench a strangled cry from him, and before you can think better of it, you're moving.

You let go of the sack of fruits and vegetables and barley you were keeping steady on your table; it topples over, and all of your pristine apples go rolling across the floor of your cottage, but you barely notice, panicked when you realize that he careening right toward the hardwood floor.  

You catch the prince around the waist just as he starts to fall, but he is heavier than you expect.

You brace yourself, convinced that he is going to take you down with him, but you manage to steer him sideways toward the chair beside the table. He collapses into it heavily, breath hissing through clenched teeth as pain flashes across his face.

Momentum carries you forward with him—far, far too forward.

One hand lands against the uninjured side of his chest to steady yourself, the other gripping the arm of the chair. For a horrifying second, you are practically sprawled across the heir to the Iron Throne’s lap. You jerk away so quickly you nearly trip over one of the escaped apples, face burning and hands shaking.

"Sorry," you blurt, mortified. “Sorry. Sorry, I did not mean—”

“I believe,” Prince Jacaerys begins with a grimace, “that was my fault.”

You do not respond, flustered, trying to put more distance between you to calm yourself down. Your gaze flicks back over to him, but he is too busy grinding his teeth as he glances down at his wounds to pay you any mind. You let out a soft puff of air through your nose before you look at the apples rolling about your floor, and then reach for one still on your table—you might have lost some sense over the past three days with the little sleep you’ve gotten, but you are not about to feed a prince food off your floor.

You make your way back over to him and hold the apple out to him. He blinks once at it before his gaze lifts to yours questioningly.

“I do not know when last you ate—a while, certainly,” you tell him quietly. “You should get something in you while I redress the bandages. I’ll cook some stew once I’m certain you’re not going to bleed out.”

Prince Jacaerys exhales through his nose before he takes the apple from you, rolling it between his fingers. You step past him so that you can move the basin of water closer to where he’s sitting, grabbing a clean rag and the bandages that you left next to your bed. 

You come to stand in front of him again, hesitating before you motion to the wounds on his shoulder. You ask, “May I?”

His dark gaze flicks up to yours briefly before he nods, and your throat tightens as you shift closer, fingers fumbling a bit as you grab for the edge of the bandages to unwind them from around him. It is much more intimidating doing this while he’s awake, inches away from you, and eyes tracking your every move.

“I found you three days ago, my prince,” you tell him at last, trying to remember all of the questions he asked earlier so that you can busy your mind with something other than the fact that you can feel his skin hot against yours. “Before that, the fighting died another three. In truth, my prince, I do not know how you survived so long at sea.”

Prince Jacaerys says nothing in response. His attention remains fixed somewhere beyond the wall behind you, expression distant. You suspect he is counting the days since the battle, the hours his family has believed he is dead, the minutes his mother has spent mourning him. You keep your gaze trained on his shoulder as you unwind the last of the bandages and set them down on the table. 

You press your lips together when you see that the stitches have loosened at the back of his shoulder—where one of the arrows had dug deep, but not deep enough to pass cleanly through. Pulling it free had torn through muscle and flesh alike, leaving a ragged injury that had taken you nearly an hour to clean, stitch, and stop bleeding.

You exhale as you run the pad of your finger briefly over the stitches, trying to figure out if you can salvage what effort you already put in or if you would have to pull them out and redo them entirely. 

“And my family? My younger brothers? Baela and Rhaena? Have you heard what has become of them?” the prince asks, and you glance up just enough to see how his jaw tightens when your finger brushes over the wound. “Did we win the battle?”

“I do not know if anyone can be said to have won that battle, my prince,” you answer quietly, tongue darting out to wet your lips as you finally start to get to work at reclosing the wound. Your gaze slips to the side when he finally starts to eat the apple you passed to him. He makes a noise in the back of his throat, as though he’s only just realized how hungry he is. “Both fleets were decimated. The dead still wash up on the northern shore.”

How did Prince Jacaerys make it to your shore, then? 

Not for the first time, you have to wonder if the gods themselves placed him directly into your hands. 

Most of the rest of the dead have washed up on the northern and western shores of Sharp Point, as it is where the currents run strongest, but the prince somehow made it to where your cottage sits on the eastern shore. If he had washed up anywhere else, the patrol would have certainly found him by now. You've heard they have spent the last several days combing the beaches, hauling bloated corpses from the tide and turning them over with the tips of their spears, searching for the dragon prince they are certain the sea claimed.

Prince Jacaerys’s breath hitches when you tug lightly at the stitches holding the skin of his shoulder together. Already, he’s finished the apple you handed him, absentmindedly turning the core between his fingers while his thoughts remain leagues away. 

It is only when the last bite is gone that he seems to notice, and his gaze drifts toward the table. He hesitates, and you think it is almost comical—this is the heir to the Iron Throne, a dragonrider, a prince who has flown into battle, and he looks as though asking for another apple might be an imposition too great to make when he’s been floating at sea for at least a week. 

You hold the stitches carefully with your right hand so that you can lean forward and grab another apple from your table to pass to him. His cheeks color slightly when he realizes that you noticed.

“I did not mean to stare,” he murmurs, taking the apple from you and cradling it carefully between his hands. He asks again, “Have you heard what has become of my family?” 

You shake your head, focusing on tending to his wounds again. You think that you’ll be able to salvage your work. It is good, you think—you can get him resting and then cook some stew for the two of you. You didn’t eat much yesterday, frazzled by the fever and trying to keep him comfortable, and you’re starting to feel a lightness in your head. 

“I’ve only heard what the soldiers say in town, my prince,” you murmur, trying to figure out how to go about speaking the news he certainly won’t take well. The last thing you need is for grief to send him bolting for Dragonstone before he can so much as walk across your cottage without collapsing. If he does not kill himself by straining his body when it is not ready, then the patrols will certainly catch him and have his head—and then yours. 

You let out a soft sigh as you tie off the stitches on his shoulder blade and lean down to wet the clean rag before lifting it to his bloody skin. You’re careful around the edges of the wound, trying not to disturb the stitches, working slowly at the dried and wet blood from the curve of his shoulder, over the collarbone, down the length of his back. 

You try not to think too hard about what you’re doing. 

If you do, it begins to feel far too intimate. 

It is one thing to drag an unconscious stranger from the sea. It is another to stand so close that you can feel the warmth radiating from his skin, to brush your fingers across the line of his shoulders. You have spent three days tending him without much thought, because there had been no room for embarrassment while the Stranger lingered at his bedside.

Now he is awake and watching you, and every accidental brush of your knuckles against his skin seems to linger a heartbeat too long. He is a prince of the realm, and you are a fisherman’s daughter—people like you are not supposed to touch people like him, and yet—

You exhale through your nose harshly. You busy yourself with the rag, scrubbing a little harder than necessary at a streak of dried blood along his collarbone simply to distract yourself, and his jaw pinches.

“Sorry,” you say quietly.

“It does not hurt,” he replies—a lie, surely, any man would be in agonizing pain. But maybe not; any man also would have died in the sea. Maybe the rumors are true: the Targaryens are closer to god than man; they do not feel pain or have to fear the Stranger the same way people like you ought to. “What have you heard from the soldiers in town? Where are we?”

“Half a league from Sharp Point, my prince,” you answer, still evading the question, which he seems to realize from the way he glances at you over his shoulder, gaze sharp and accusing. He knows you are withholding something. You exhale lightly through your nose and then say hesitantly, “They say two dragons fell over the Gullet. I could not tell you which.”

“Two?!” Prince Jacaerys demands, immediately rising to his feet, so quickly that the chair scrapes against the floor, and you fear he might rip back open the stitches. He whirls on you, eyes wide, pupils large as coins, and you almost flinch. “Two dragons?”

You swallow thickly as you nod. “My prince—”

“One must be—” His voice catches. He cannot finish the thought. For the first time since he awoke, real grief overtakes him completely. It drains his face of what little color had returned, leaves him staring at nothing as though he can already see the answer waiting for him. “I need to know the second. Whose was it? Which dragon fell?”

It unsettles you how close he sounds to pleading when moments before, you had been wondering whether the stories of the Targaryens’ deism held some weight, because gods do not look like this. They do not stand in a stranger’s cottage with fear plain on their face, hands trembling as they wait for an answer they already dread. 

The same lump forms in your throat now that did when you heard the soldiers mocking a grieving queen and couldn’t help your thoughts from turning to your own mother, to Miss Ellyn, to your friend, Marie. For a moment, he is not a Targaryen prince or a dragonlord; you see a son and an older brother. A boy your age who knows there are only a handful of dragons flying over the Gullet, and every one of them belongs to someone he loves.

“I do not—”

“I need to return home,” he says immediately, as though his face isn’t white with pain and his stitches don’t strain every time he moves. His eyes glaze over you as though you’re not even there, and he takes a step toward the door to your small cottage. “Sharp Point—there must be passage to Dragonstone, there—”

Panic flares in your chest when he makes as though to leave. It is noon, and the patrols have become more frequent along the shores outside your cottage. They’ve spent a week carding through the western and northern shores, and they’ve been sending more and more men to the east—you worry they’re becoming desperate. The longer they go without finding a corpse, the more they may fear that there isn’t one.

If they have an inkling that Prince Jacaerys is still alive, they’ll start kicking down doors, and if they start kicking down doors, they will find him, and your life will be forfeit for harboring him. 

“You cannot,” you say before you can think better of it, lunging forward as though to grab his wrist, but you stop yourself before you can make a terrible mistake, stopping a hairsbreadth from brushing his skin. 

What is wrong with you? you think furiously. You need to rest tonight before you do something you cannot take back. Already you have gotten snide with and you have argued with a prince of the realm—now you have commanded him and nearly tried to seize him. You would have been lucky to only lose your hand in any other circumstance. Had he been standing in a hall instead of your cottage, surrounded by knights instead of rough-hewn furniture, you might have lost your head. 

“I cannot?” Prince Jacaerys turns to you, bafflement momentarily eclipsing the fear that had consumed him only seconds before, as though he cannot quite fathom that someone has just told him no. 

“My prince, you can scarcely stand,” you say. His gaze drops to where your hand is still hovering near his arm, head cocking to the side and brows lifting, and you snap it back to your chest immediately, heat flooding your face. “You have lost a lot of blood, you have barely eaten in a week, your wounds have only just been stitched again, and there are patrols searching for you every road between here and the sea.”

He continues to stare at you, disbelief riddling his expression. You have the distinct impression that no one has ever spoken to him this way before—certainly not a fisherman’s daughter. You force yourself to press on while he’s silent, hoping to make your point and rid him of this futile endeavor before he gets you both killed. 

“The Prince Aemond burned Sharp Point’s harbor. There are no ships capable of navigating the currents of the Gullet, and the water still burns besides. I do not have a horse for you to ride to Stonedance. You could not get to Dragonstone even if you were not hurt,” you insist. “I will return to town tomorrow to try to get more information, but please, my prince, you mustn’t leave. You will only be putting us both at risk.”

For a long moment, you think that he will invoke his title or duty and insist upon leaving anyway, or maybe he will simply walk out the door despite everything you have said, and there is nothing you could do to stop him. 

Then, his expression changes, twisting into something pained as he looks away, a shuddered breath escaping his lips. His shoulders, held tense since the moment you uttered the word two, sink ever so slightly. The panic that had driven him to his feet has nowhere left to go, draining from him all at once, leaving only exhaustion behind. 

One hand drops back down to his ribs, pain crossing his face. Whatever strength carried him to his feet abandons him just as quickly as the panic, leaving him swaying where he stands. He closes his eyes for a moment, and when he reopens them, the panic has been replaced by a type of defeat that is infinitely more difficult to look at.

You step forward cautiously when you see how his body is trembling, hand hovering uncertainly between the two of you, silently asking permission to help him. Prince Jacaerys stares at your outstretched hand, then at the bed on the far side of the room; you think, for a second, that he will attempt to cross on his own, but then his nostrils flare as he exhales, inclining his head just enough to grant you the permission his pride refuses to voice aloud.

Carefully, you slip beneath his uninjured arm, taking care to avoid the fresh bandages. He is warm—still warmer than he ought to be—and you can’t help but wonder if his fever has returned or if this is just how hot dragon prince’s typically run. 

He leans into you only slightly, weight settling lightly against your shoulder—you suspect he is trying very hard not to. The journey from the door to your bed is scarcely a dozen paces, but it feels much longer. 

“We were supposed to win this victory for her,” Prince Jacaerys says after a moment, voice breaking, the words slip free before he can stop it. You do not think the admission is meant for you, so you stay quiet. His throat works as he swallows. “We were supposed to—”

He cuts himself off, looking away again as you help him ease back down into your bed. As soon as he is seated, something close to relief crosses his face, lashes fluttering; the pain is still there, but not quite as terrible as it was when he was straining on his feet.

“The fact that you are alive at all is a victory, my prince,” you say quietly, even though you do not think the words will be of any reassurance. “You should rest. The sooner you are well, the sooner we can figure out a way to get you home. I’ll cook up a stew and wake you when it’s finished.”

He exhales again, jaw tightening as he looks away with a resigned expression. You turn your back on him to deal with the mess you made of the kitchen area, grimacing slightly at everything spilled across your floorboards and the table. 

“What is your name?” Prince Jacaerys asks you suddenly. “I think I ought to know the name of the woman who saved my life.”

You let a soft breath, glancing over your shoulder at him. He is pained still, but there is an earnest look in his eyes that makes you falter—you remember how close you were to leaving him to his fate, and you have to look away again before he can catch the guilt that crosses over your face.

With a shaky exhale, you give the prince your name, and you cannot help but feel as though your life has irrevocably changed, and you do not think for the better. 

————————————

The sea is on fire.

Jace cannot tell where the flames end and the water begins. Ships burn around him, masts collapsing into the waves with deafening cracks; men scream as they’re consumed by the fire, and dragons let out terrible shrieks as they dive low to bring down another ship full of Myrish mercenaries. 

He tries to focus.

He chases after the rogue dragon, hoping to kill the rider before the dragon can burn any more of the Velayron fleet—or worse, catch Baela and Moondancer. But there is panic clawing at his chest, and smoke and salt clogging his throat and stinging his eyes. He’s screaming at Vermax to fly faster, to kill the rider, and then—then he sees Rhaena. 

He sees Rhaena atop the wild dragon, and she is screaming, crying, desperately trying to get it under control, and Jace is confused, reeling as he yells at Vermax to stop at the last second. He and dragon both diving down away from the chase before Vermax could breathe fire on his cousin.

Rhaena does not have a dragon, he thinks, trying to figure out what is happening, and Rhaena is supposed to be with his brothers, and his brothers are captured by the enemy, and he isn’t sure if Stormcloud and Aegon made it to shore, and there is too much going on, and—

—and Vermax is falling. 

Vermax is banking hard, being dragged down into the sea, and Jace’s stomach lurches. He’s yelling—begging—Vermax to fly, and Vermax is trying, he’s trying so hard, wings beating smoke through the air. He shrieks as another bolt catches him in the wing, and Jace feels the pain himself—he feels the pain, the primal fear, everything that Vermax does, because Vermax is his, and he is Vermax’s, and they are bonded, and Vermax is drowning, and the water is so cold, and Jace cannot feel his legs or his hands or his face.

He fumbles as he tries to unhook himself from the saddle, choking on water and air, maybe a sob, as Vermax sinks into the sea, a stream of bubbles rising to the surface as he cries for Jace, slowly disappearing into the dark waters. Jace desperately tries to dive after him, as if he has the strength to hold them both above the sea, because Jace has already lost Luke, and he—he cannot lose Vermax. 

Not the dragon who had slept beside his cradle before he was old enough to walk, the hatchling he had grown up alongside, whose neck had once fit beneath his arm, whose first uncertain flights had ended with both of them tumbling into the sandy shore of Dragonstone while his mother laughed herself breathless.

Jace does not know a life without him—he does not want to know a life without him. His earliest recollections are not of nursery songs or wooden swords, but of warm green scales beneath tiny hands and the deep, rumbling croon that had lulled him to sleep when he was scarcely more than a babe. 

When Jace learned to walk, Vermax learned to fly; when Jace’s voice deepened, Vermax’s roar had too. 

There has never been a Jacaerys without Vermax.

But Jace’s lungs are burning, and he cannot see the familiar green scales anymore, and his body is reacting, seizing and spasming because there is no air left in him and water all around. He does not know which way is up and which way is down, the water is too dark and too cold, and he cannot think, but—but he sees the bubbles. He sees the bubbles, and he follows them, and even as Vermax sinks to the bottom of the sea, he saves his rider one final time. 

He reaches the surface with a gasp, gulping the smoky air, and everything hurts. His arms ache, his chest is too tight, his eyes burn, and he cannot breathe, because Vermax is gone. He can feel that Vermax is gone; there is a gaping hole in his chest where his dragon used to be, and Jace does not know what to do, he does not know how to live anymore, and he wants—

He wants his mother.

He just wants his mother. 

He hears the cheers before he feels the first arrow, gaze lifting to the sky as he searches for Baela and Moondancer—they are not too far, he thinks, she'll come for him.

And then, there’s a dull throb in his shoulder blade as he pulls himself over a floating piece of driftwood, but he hardly takes note of the pain, because everywhere hurts, because Vermax is gone, because he wants his mother. He turns when he hears the cheering, and he sees the men on the ship, and he sees the crossbows and the bows and the Myrish banners, but he does not see anything at all, really, blinking once, staring.

The second arrow catches him closer to the chest.

And then—then all he remembers is sea. 

White foam and bubbles, vicious currents and sharp rocks. He thinks he is dead more than he thinks he is alive, but there is so much pain. There is pain and emptiness, and Jace just wants—

“... prince, the stew is ready.”

Jace startles awake, breath hitching in the back of his throat. His body tenses immediately, because he does not remember where he is—he remembers the sea and the waves and rocks and pain and Vermax, but he does not remember…

The cottage. Waking up alone. The door opening, the fear—was he captured? Where is he? Where are his brothers? Where is Baela? What was Rhaena doing on the wild dragon? Mother, mother, mother—

You avert your eyes suddenly, an awkward expression on your face, and Jace suddenly remembers. He remembers you, the apple you passed him as you tended to his wounds; how he held a knife to the throat of a woman who is risking her own life to save his. He remembers that he is stuck bedridden in the bed of a commoner while his mother thinks he’s dead and fights for her throne alone.

He opens his mouth to apologize—to tell you that he will leave as soon as he is able, that he will ensure you’re properly compensated for saving his life—but he falters when he feels something hot and wet drip down his face.

He lifts his hand to his cheek and wipes at his face, looking down at the wetness smeared on his fingertips. For a long moment, he does not understand—seawater, maybe? But he is no longer being tossed around by the sea. He is warm in your cottage, the hearth burns low and your blankets are tangled around him. He blinks once, and another fat droplet of water rolls from his eye down his cheek.

Is he crying?

Heat rushes to his face so quickly he thinks it rivals the fever. He wipes away furiously, not sure if it’s more or less humiliating that you’re pretending not to notice for his sake, turning your back to him to ready the table. 

Jace has wept before, more than most ought to—for the father who taught him fishing and sea shanties, and the other who passed before either of them could speak the truth out loud, for the grandfather he never truly knew, for the brother who felt less like a brother and more like his other half—but never, never in front of a stranger. 

Jace promptly clears his throat and pulls himself together. He glances at you, praying that his face does not betray him, an excuse on his lips as takes a deep breath. Then he falters, mouth watering instantly, gaze cutting to the side where you are busy ladling stew into two chipped wooden bowls, back politely turned, as though you never noticed anything at all.

Jace doesn't think he’s ever been this hungry. He has dined in castles all his life—roasted swan, lemon cakes, arbor wines. He has consumed the finest meals Westeros has to offer and found them lacking, but he almost feels dizzy with need and pleasure at the scent of the stew you made.

“It—” Jace’s voice is hoarse from sleep. Embarrassed, he clears his throat again to try to even it out. “It smells good.”

You look at him over your shoulder with a small smile and murmur demurely, “I’m sure nothing compared to what you’re used to, my prince.”

“I do not know that,” he says lightly as he forces himself to his feet, grimacing as pain immediately shoots through his body. 

Everything aches—his chest, his shoulders, his legs, his arms, his head. In truth, all he wants to do is curl up and sleep more; he cannot bear to keep going. Not now. Not after Vermax, after Luke, after making such a terrible mistake that he might have cost his mother her throne. His stomach flips at the thought, and he fights a shuddered breath.

He needs to keep going—there is no other choice. He needs to get back to Dragonstone as soon as possible.

You pause in the middle of setting the bowls on the table at his words to give him a questioning look. “My prince?”

“I have not tasted it yet,” he tells you, forcing levity into his tone, because you have saved his life, tended to his wounds, and now stand over a pot of stew you cooked for him, worrying that it is not good enough to satisfy a prince. The least he can do is ease your mind. "It would seem unfair to compare a meal I have not eaten yet.”

You blink at him once, and then you smile slightly—it’s a genuine one, not like the small one you forced in his direction just before—and Jace tries his best to return it as he crosses the small room. He shuffles the last few steps toward the table with considerably less grace than he would have liked.

“Perhaps” you reply softly, waiting for him to take a seat at the table before you do as well. 

You do not immediately lift your spoon, and Jace hesitates—for a brief moment, an old childhood lesson surfaces. Do not eat until someone else has tasted it. Feasts at King’s Landing and supper at Dragonstone had been meticulous about such things—cups were poured and tasted before his mother, and plates were sampled before any of them took a bite of their food. The paranoia claws at him and disappears as quickly as it comes.

You had dragged him half-dead from the sea, spent days stitching his wounds and breaking his fever, and gave up your bed so he could sleep comfortably. If you wished him dead, you need only have left him on the shore. 

“I never thanked you for what you’ve done for me,” he says at last, fingers grazing the wooden spoon dipped into the broth. “When I return to Dragonstone, I shall speak with my mother. She will see you properly rewarded.”

“There is no need,” you murmur, finally taking a sip of the stew when Jace lifts the spoon to his lips. 

The broth is hot enough to sting his tongue, but he scarcely notices. It is a simple meal—carrots and celery, chunks of what he thinks is rabbit. It is the plainest thing he has eaten in years, and yet somehow, the best meal he can remember.

His stomach twists painfully as warmth settles into it, and before he can stop himself, he takes another spoonful, then another, the hunger of the past week overwhelming whatever restraint court etiquette had once led him. It is only when half the bowl is gone that he realizes how quickly he is eating.

Embarrassed, he forces himself to slow, lowering the spoon.

“My apologies,” he says, clearing his throat. “I fear I may have forgotten my manners.”

“You haven’t had a meal in over a week, my prince. You’re allowed to be hungry,” you say with a faint smile.

Jace lets out a half-hearted huff of amusement through his nose, though his smile fades as quickly as it came, returning to conversation to try to force himself to slow down and show a modicum of etiquette before he embarrasses himself further. 

“There is every need for reward,” he disagrees, leaning forward slightly to look at you. For the first time since he woke in your cottage, he actually observes you—you cannot be much older than he is, beautiful certainly, but there’s a weariness in your expression that Jace cannot help but feel as though is his fault. “You saved the life of the heir to the Iron Throne. You surrendered your bed, tended wounds that would have killed most men, and risked the wrath of the Greens simply by allowing me beneath your roof. I cannot allow that debt to go unanswered.”

You stare at him for a moment, a conflicted expression on your face, and Jace shakes his head slightly as he presses.

“I do not possess enough coin to repay such a debt myself—” nor, he suspects, does anyone “—but my mother will. You needn't live here any longer if you do not wish to. We could see your cottage rebuilt if the fighting has damaged it, or grant you land elsewhere, if that is what you'd prefer. Whatever you ask, so long as it is within my power, I will see it done.”

You are quiet for a long while as Jace finishes off the stew, but he expects hesitation as you mull over what to ask for: gold, land, a better ship, perhaps. Your gaze drifts off to the side, and Jace’s follows it, faltering when he realizes that you’re looking in the direction of what remains of Sharp Point.

That’s right, he remembers—you mentioned your cottage was less than a league away. 

From where he sits, he can just see the destruction through the small window. The town is little more than scorched foundations and splintered timbers now, dragonfire having reduced generations of work to ash in the span of a single afternoon. He cannot look at it for long, stomach twisting so unpleasantly that he fears the stew you just cooked him might come right up. 

You stay silent for so long that Jace wonders if you have not heard him, and his lips part to repeat himself futilely. 

“We used to think they were beautiful, you know?” you say, voice barely over a breath. “We would watch your family fly from King’s Landing and Dragonstone. The children would cheer and call out the names of whatever dragon and royal was passing overhead, even though they knew you could not hear them.” A wistful smile tugs briefly at your lips, and Jace suddenly feels a rock in his stomach, a heaviness that he cannot seem to push away. “There is a wild dragon in these parts—we call him Grey Ghost. He hunts fish along the eastern shore. I see him frequently when I take my father’s boat out. We lived alongside him for years—sometimes he swoops down close when we have a big catch, but he never bothers us. My father always said he was curious—shy, but curious.”

You exhale suddenly as you rise to your feet; Jace wonders if he should ignore the unshed tears in your eyes the same way you politely did for him.

“Then the Prince Aemond and Vhagar came,” you say at last. “The only thing I want, my prince, is for this war to end, but I know you cannot give me that. If you don't mind, I should see to my father's boat before the tide turns. There is more stew in the pot if you would have it. Then you ought to rest. You'll not heal by arguing with your own body.”

Jace opens his mouth.

He does not know what he intends to say, caught between guilt and indignation, because everybody wants the fighting to end—he does, his mother does. Maybe not Daemon, but why do you say it as though he stands opposed to peace? He did not choose this, nor did his mother. It is not his fault that the Greens usurped his mother's throne.  

He desperately tries to formulate an answer, but how is he supposed to respond to that? What were they meant to do? Yield to the usurpers? Stand aside while his mother’s birthright was stolen? Let Luke die for nothing? Should he say that he is sorry for your loss? That his mother would never have done this? That Vermax would never have burned a fishing village? That this was all the Greens? That they fight to avenge what happened here? 

That dragons are not cruel creatures, he feels the need to tell you when he sees the disdain on your face—it is the people who ride them. It is the Greens. It is Aegon and Aemond, Alicent Hightower and her father.

His lips are parted as though to respond, but he only finds himself staring at you helplessly. 

You incline your head politely before slipping out the door, the cool air rushing briefly into the cottage before it shuts behind you once more. Jace remains where he is, staring into the last of his stew until the steam no longer rises from it, the reality of his situation settling over him—Vermax is dead, Luke is dead, and his mother believes them both lost. He does not know whether his brothers and cousins are safe, if his mother still fights for her crown. He is useless, wounded in a fisherman's cottage, alive only because a woman from a town his family failed to protect chose mercy over sense.

'Oh, come on Y/N, you haven't even looked at it yet.'

'I don't need to.'

'That's a very closed-minded approach.'

'It's a very experienced approach.'

The restaurant had begun filling up during the past half hour, the steady murmur of conversations blending with the occasional clatter of dishes from the kitchen. Y/N had been looking forward to a quiet brunch all week. Instead, she had arrived to find both of her best friends wearing identical expressions of poorly concealed excitement, which should have been enough warning on its own.

Christine had never been capable of hiding her enthusiasm for anything, particularly when she believed she was about to improve someone else's life.

Unfortunately, her definition of improvement and Y/N's rarely aligned.

The envelope remained untouched between them while Christine continued eating as though she hadn't just interrupted a perfectly pleasant morning with whatever scheme she had been plotting. It was impossible not to notice it. The thick paper, the embossed gold lettering, the sort of presentation that immediately suggested the contents were either extremely important or determined to appear that way.

Y/N eventually reached for it less out of curiosity than self preservation. Experience had taught her that Christine would not abandon the subject until she had at least read the invitation.

The card inside was no less elaborate.

A charity gala.

Formal attire.

Private estate.

An extensive list of sponsors whose names meant very little to her.

Her attention drifted lazily over most of it until she reached the description of the evening itself. The event would take place under a masquerade theme. Guests would remain masked throughout the night. Photography would be prohibited. Phones would be restricted. Attendees were encouraged not to exchange names, occupations or personal information until the event concluded.

That last detail caught her attention more than she cared to admit.

'Well…?'

Christine's question arrived before Y/N had finished reading.

She lowered the invitation slightly.

'Sounds expensive.'

'Thats your takeaway?'

'It's a reasonable takeaway.'

'Read the rest.'

'I did.'

'Properly.'

Y/N ignored her and continued scanning the page. The estate hosting the event was apparently known for its architecture and private art collection. There would be a live orchestra performing throughout the evening, access to several wings of the property that remained closed to the public for most of the year, and a formal dinner held beneath a restored glass conservatory.

It sounded absurdly extravagant. It also sounded considerably more interesting than the networking event she had initially imagined.

Christine noticed the shift immediately.

After years of friendship, there was little chance of hiding it.

'You're thinking about it.'

'I'm reading .'

'You're thinking while reading.'

'Good job, you just found out how reading works.'

Mia laughed into her coffee.

'Shes got you there.'

Christine waved her hand dismissively. 'The point is she's considering it.'

Y/N folded the invitation and placed it back inside the envelope. Through the window behind Christine, pedestrians moved along the street, carrying on with entirely normal Saturdays that did not involve masquerade balls or private estates or invitations printed on cardstock thick enough to survive a natural disaster.

A masquerade.

The concept lingered in her mind despite her best efforts to dismiss it. There was something strangely appealing about the anonymity of it all. Most social events demanded introductions before anything else. Names. Careers. Explanations. An endless exchange of carefully curated facts designed to make strangers feel less strange. The invitation seemed intent on removing all of that.

For one evening, everyone would simply be whoever they happened to be beneath a mask.

No expectations.

No obligations.

No need to summarize herself for anyone.

She hated how appealing that sounded.

Across the table, Christine was watching her with the patience of someone who already knew how the conversation would end.

'Fine.'

The word left Y/N's mouth before she had fully committed to saying it.

Christine blinked.

'Fine?'

'Yeah, yeah, don’t make me regret it.'

A grin spread across her friend's face.

'You're coming?'

'Apparently.'

Mia laughed, shaking her head as Christine immediately launched into discussions of dresses, shoes, masks, hairstyles and a dozen other details Y/N had not yet considered. She listened with only half her attention, her gaze drifting briefly toward the envelope resting beside her plate.

The subject of the masquerade followed Y/N home whether she wanted it to or not. Not because Christine refused to stop talking about it, although that certainly didn't help. Her phone had barely remained untouched for an hour before photographs began appearing in their group chat. Dresses. Masks. Shoes. Accessories. More dresses.

By the third day, Y/N had muted the conversation.

By the fourth, Christine had started sending everything directly to her instead.

The invitation remained tucked beneath a stack of books on her dining table throughout the week. Every now and then she would notice the corner of the envelope peeking out from beneath the pile and find herself rereading portions of it while eating breakfast or waiting for the kettle to boil.

By the time Saturday arrived, she found herself standing outside a boutique she could never normally justify entering, staring through the front windows while Christine enthusiastically waved at her from inside.

'You look terrified,' Mia informed her as soon as she stepped through the door.

'That's because I am.'

'It's dress shopping, not a hostage negotiation.'

'Those things feel surprisingly similar.'

The boutique occupied a restored corner building downtown, all marble floors and towering mirrors framed by gold detailing. Rows of formal gowns stretched throughout the showroom in carefully organized displays, each one somehow appearing more expensive than the last.

Y/N already regretted being there.

Christine, meanwhile, looked as though she had entered heaven. 'I have ideas.'

'That's usually what worries me.'

'Trust the process.'

'I don't trust your process.'

An employee approached before Christine could continue her dramatics, and within minutes Y/N found herself being guided through racks of evening gowns while her friends offered entirely unsolicited opinions.

The first dress lasted less than five minutes.

The second lasted three.

The third made her look, according to Mia, like the wealthy widow in a murder mystery.

By the fourth, everyone involved was beginning to lose patience.

Y/N emerged from the fitting room adjusting the sleeve of yet another dress while Christine studied her with increasing frustration.

'No.'

'Fine. No.'

'Thank you.'

She disappeared behind the curtain again.

The dress she tried on next was chosen entirely by accident.

At least, that was what she would later tell herself.

The garment had been tucked toward the back of a rack she hadn't intended to browse, partially hidden between several dramatically embellished gowns that immediately drew attention away from it. Compared to the others, it appeared almost understated.

Almost.

The fabric was a soft ivory that caught the light with every movement, embroidered with intricate gold detailing that wound across the bodice and down the skirt like delicate vines. The sleeves fell loosely around her arms, while the neckline remained elegant without feeling overly formal.

It simply looked beautiful.

Y/N studied her reflection for several moments before finally stepping out of the fitting room.

The silence that greeted her was immediate.

Christine lowered the dress she had been examining and Mia looked up from her phone.

'What?'

Christine blinked. 'That's definitely the one.'

'You said that about the last three.'

'No, I said those had potential.'

'And this one?'

A smile slowly appeared on Christine's face. 'This one is the reason we came.'

Y/N glanced back toward the mirror. The gold embroidery caught beneath the overhead lights, weaving through the ivory fabric in intricate patterns that reminded her vaguely of constellations.

She hated how much she liked it.

'You're smiling,' Mia observed.

Y/N looked away from the mirror before they could become any more unbearable.

The dress came home with her and so did the mask.

That decision took considerably less time. While Christine searched for something dramatic involving feathers and unnecessary amounts of gold, Y/N found herself drawn toward a simpler design. Ivory and gold, matching the dress almost perfectly. Delicate detailing framed the edges, while tiny golden stars had been worked subtly into the design. It felt elegant without becoming costume-like.

More importantly, it felt like something she would actually wear.

The final addition arrived several days later while she was searching for earrings. Christine was helping organize accessories across her dining table when her attention landed on Y/N's wrist.

'You're wearing that?'

Y/N looked down.

A gold bracelet encircled her wrist, decorated with small charms she had collected over the years. Tiny stars. Crescent moons. A telescope. Several pieces carried memories attached to them, gifts from friends and family accumulated gradually rather than purchased all at once.

She rarely took it off.

'Why wouldn't I?'

'Because it doesn't technically match.'

'It absolutely matches.'

Christine considered it.

'Actually, it kind of does.'

The bracelet glimmered beneath the light as Y/N adjusted it absentmindedly. Astronomy had fascinated her for as long as she could remember. Not in any professional sense. She simply loved it. The endlessness of it. The beauty of something existing so far beyond human concerns.

The bracelet had become a reflection of that fascination over time. A collection of small reminders she carried with her and without realizing it, her fingers lingered briefly against one particular charm.

A small crescent moon.

The evening arrived sooner than expected.

The estate revealed itself at the end of a winding private road lined with ancient oak trees illuminated by soft golden lights. Even from the car, Y/N understood why the invitation had dedicated an entire paragraph to the building itself.

The property looked as though it had been transported directly from another century. Warm light spilled from enormous windows. Stone staircases curved elegantly toward a grand entrance framed by towering columns. Beyond them, music drifted faintly through the evening air.

An actual orchestra.

Christine was practically vibrating with excitement by the time they stepped from the car but Y/N barely heard her, her attention remained fixed on the estate. For the first time since agreeing to attend, she began to understand why people spent so much money preserving places like this. The building wasn't simply beautiful, it felt alive.

As though every room contained a hundred stories waiting to be discovered.

And somewhere inside, entirely unaware of her existence, a man named Jaafar was arriving for reasons remarkably similar to her own.

Jaafar had been inside the estate for less than twenty minutes and was already regretting agreeing to come.

Not because there was anything particularly wrong with the event itself. On the contrary, everything had been executed with a level of precision and elegance that was difficult not to admire. The orchestra played from a raised platform overlooking the ballroom, their music carrying effortlessly through the space. Crystal chandeliers suspended from ceilings that seemed impossibly high scattered warm light across polished marble floors, while guests drifted from room to room in elaborate masks and formal attire.

The problem was that none of it felt like his world.

He stood near one of the bars with a drink he hadn't touched, only half-listening as his friend spoke about someone he'd met near the entrance. Around them, conversations overlapped beneath the music, creating a constant hum of voices that seemed to follow him no matter where he moved.

The anonymity of the event had produced an unusual atmosphere. People appeared more relaxed than they normally would at functions like these. Without names, occupations, or reputations entering the conversation, everyone seemed slightly lighter somehow. Less concerned with impressing each other.

It was interesting but not interesting enough to justify spending an entire evening there.

'You look like you're serving a prison sentence.' Jaafar glanced toward his friend.

'I don't look like that.'

'You absolutely do.'

'I'm just..standing.'

'You're suffering while standing.'

A laugh escaped him despite himself. 'I'm fine.'

The conversation continued around him while his attention drifted elsewhere. Through one of the archways, he could see guests moving through adjoining galleries where paintings lined the walls beneath carefully positioned lighting. Beyond that, another corridor disappeared toward sections of the estate he hadn't explored yet.

The building itself was impressive.

Perhaps that was why he eventually excused himself.

The further he moved from the ballroom, the quieter everything became. The music still followed him through the estate, though softened now by distance and stone walls, blending with the low murmur of conversations drifting from adjoining rooms. He wandered without any particular destination in mind, occasionally pausing before a painting or architectural detail that caught his attention. The estate deserved its reputation. 

Every room seemed to reveal something new, from intricately carved moldings stretching across ceilings high overhead to enormous windows overlooking gardens illuminated by hundreds of carefully placed lights. Decorative details revealed themselves gradually from one room to the next, rewarding anyone willing to slow down enough to notice them.

Most guests, however, appeared far more interested in one another than in the building itself, drifting between conversations with glasses of champagne in hand and paying little attention to the estate surrounding them.

Jaafar might have done the same had a flash of ivory and gold not caught his attention from across one of the adjoining galleries.

At first, it was simply the dress that stood out among the movement of the crowd. Elegant without being overly ornate, it seemed perfectly suited to the evening, the gold embroidery catching the light whenever its wearer moved. Yet it wasn't the dress that held his attention for long. It was the woman wearing it.

While everyone else appeared occupied with conversation, she seemed entirely absorbed by the estate itself. 

The first time he noticed her, she was standing beneath one of the vaulted ceilings with her head tilted slightly upward, studying details most people would have walked past without a second glance. 

Several minutes later, he spotted her again in front of a painting, lingering long enough to read the accompanying plaque and examine the artwork with genuine interest. When he saw her for a third time, she had gravitated toward the orchestra, standing quietly among the crowd as though the musicians were performing for an audience of one.

The more frequently their paths crossed, the more curious he became.

Events like these were rarely short on beautiful people. The ballroom alone contained enough designer gowns and tailored suits to fill the pages of a magazine. Beauty was expected. What felt unusual was how completely indifferent she seemed to the attention surrounding her. She wasn't attempting to attract it, nor did she appear particularly aware of it. She moved through the estate with the quiet focus of someone who had arrived with an entirely different purpose than everyone else, pausing wherever something genuinely interested her and lingering there without concern for who might be watching.

For a while he lost sight of her among the guests. The estate was enormous, its galleries and corridors sprawling across multiple wings, making it easy to disappear into another room without being noticed. By the time he abandoned yet another conversation he had no interest in finishing and wandered toward one of the quieter sections of the property, he had almost forgotten about her altogether.

Then he stepped into a corridor overlooking the gardens and immediately recognized the ivory-and-gold dress near the far end of the hall.

The space was nearly empty compared to the rest of the estate. A towering window stretched almost two stories high, offering a view of the illuminated grounds below, while moonlight filtered through the glass and spilled across portions of the marble floor. She stood beside the railing with her attention fixed somewhere above, her gaze following the curve of an archway that framed the ceiling overhead.

For several moments, Jaafar found himself looking up as well, trying to determine what exactly had captured her interest so completely. The architecture was beautiful, certainly, but her concentration suggested she was seeing something beyond what was immediately obvious. There was a quiet intensity to it that he found unexpectedly endearing, the kind that belonged to people who became genuinely fascinated by things most others barely noticed.

Eventually curiosity won.

He crossed the remaining distance between them, his footsteps echoing softly through the corridor. She didn't appear to notice his approach until he stopped a few feet away, the slight surprise in her expression suggesting she had been far more absorbed in her observations than aware of her surroundings.

'I have to ask.'

Her eyebrows lifted slightly. 'Ask what?'

He glanced upward toward the archway before looking back at her.

'What is it about that ceiling that's managed to keep your attention for so long?'

A smile touched her lips as she followed his gaze. 'The craftsmanship.'

The answer arrived so quickly that he laughed.

'That's your answer?'

'It's a perfectly reasonable answer.'

'Most people would've said they were admiring the view.'

The smile lingered.

'Most people aren't paying attention.'

Something about the response made him smile. Perhaps it was the confidence with which she'd said it, or perhaps it was the fact that she seemed entirely sincere. Either way, he found himself glancing back up at the ceiling as though seeing it properly for the first time.

'So what exactly am I missing?'

She turned toward the archway again, and before answering, took a moment to study it once more.

'The restoration work, mostly. You can tell which sections are original and which parts have been repaired over the years if you look closely enough. Whoever handled it did a remarkable job preserving the details.'

Jaafar followed the direction of her gaze. To his eyes, it still looked like a ceiling, a very expensive ceiling. But a ceiling nonetheless.

When he looked back at her, however, he discovered she was smiling, amused by him, as though she already knew exactly what he was thinking.

'You don't see it, do you?'

The amusement in her voice was impossible to miss.

Jaafar glanced back toward the archway, studying the intricate carvings stretching across the ceiling before looking at her again.

'I feel like that's a dangerous question.'

A laugh escaped her, soft enough that it barely disturbed the quiet surrounding them.

'Why?'

'Because no matter how I answer it, I'm going to sound stupid.'

'Not necessarily.'

'not very reassuring.'

The smile lingering on her lips widened slightly before her attention drifted back toward the architecture overhead. For a few moments, they stood side by side in comfortable silence, listening to the distant orchestra drifting through the estate. Beyond the enormous windows lining the corridor, the gardens glowed beneath carefully placed lights, while guests wandered along stone pathways below. The entire property seemed suspended somewhere between reality and performance, transformed by candlelight, music, and the anonymity the evening encouraged.

When she finally gestured toward a section of the archway, Jaafar followed the movement of her hand.

'See those carvings? The pattern repeats all the way down the corridor, but there are small differences every few feet. Most people probably wouldn't notice them unless they were looking for them.'

He narrowed his eyes and made a genuine effort to identify whatever details she had discovered. Unfortunately, the ceiling continued to look very much like a ceiling.

She watched him for a moment before laughing again. 'You still don't see it.'

'I'm trying, I really am.'

'You look concerned.'

'I am concerned. You've spent half the evening discovering things that apparently only you can see.'

'That's not true.'

'Then point them out.'

The challenge earned another smile. She stepped closer to the railing and began explaining the details she had noticed, drawing his attention toward subtle differences in the carvings and decorative flourishes that ran throughout the corridor. The more she spoke, the more animated she became, and Jaafar found himself paying less attention to the architecture and more attention to her.

It wasn't simply the enthusiasm, it was the sincerity of it.

Most conversations at events like these followed familiar patterns. People spoke because they were expected to speak. They shared stories because silence felt awkward. Every exchange carried an invisible awareness of how one appeared to the person standing opposite them.

She seemed completely free of that.

By the time they eventually moved away from the corridor, the conversation had already shifted from architecture to art, then from art to travel, and later to books. The restrictions imposed by the masquerade should have made getting to know someone more difficult, yet the opposite seemed true. Without names, occupations, or public identities entering the conversation, neither of them had much choice except to focus on who the other person actually was.

He learned that she could spend hours wandering through museums without becoming bored. That she read every information plaque she encountered. That she possessed strong opinions about paintings despite insisting she knew very little about art. She admitted to visiting observatories whenever she travelled somewhere new and confessed to carrying a fascination with astronomy that had followed her since childhood.

In return, she learned that he was considerably funnier than his first impression suggested.

The discovery appeared to surprise her.

More than once he caught her looking at him as though trying to reconcile the man standing beside her with the version she'd initially imagined.

The realization amused him far more than it should have.

Dinner interrupted them before either seemed particularly aware of how much time had passed.

A voice echoed through the estate, politely directing guests toward the conservatory, and the hallways gradually filled with movement as people emerged from adjoining rooms and began making their way across the property. Until that moment, Y/N hadn't given much thought to the passing hours. The evening had unfolded with such unexpected ease that she could hardly believe how long they had been talking.

As they followed the flow of guests toward the western wing, an unfamiliar sense of reluctance settled somewhere in the back of her mind. It was ridiculous, really. She knew nothing about him. Not his name. Not his profession. Not even where he was from. Yet parting ways, even temporarily, felt strangely disappointing.

The conservatory was every bit as breathtaking as the invitation had promised. Glass walls overlooked the illuminated gardens, while hundreds of candles flickered between elaborate floral arrangements stretching across the length of the room. The atmosphere felt almost unreal, the reflections dancing across the windows making the entire space appear suspended beneath a sea of light.

Their assigned seats placed them at different tables.

Not far enough apart to lose sight of one another completely but far enough that conversation was impossible.

Y/N noticed it immediately.

So, apparently, did he.

Whenever laughter erupted from his side of the room, her attention drifted instinctively in that direction. More than once she caught herself searching for the familiar black mask among the guests before immediately pretending she had been looking elsewhere. Judging by the frequency with which their eyes met across the conservatory, she suspected she wasn't the only one failing to concentrate entirely on dinner.

By the time dessert arrived, Christine had begun noticing.

That, unfortunately, represented a problem because Christine missed very little.

'You seem distracted.'

Y/N nearly dropped her fork.

'I'm not distracted.'

'Of course not.'

'I'm not.'

'You keep looking toward table fourteen.'

Y/N's eyes widened.

'You've numbered the tables?'

'I've been bored for forty-five minutes.'

The answer was so perfectly Christine that Y/N couldn't even argue with it.

The conservatory emptied gradually once dinner concluded, guests lingering over coffee and conversation before drifting back toward the ballroom in small groups. Through the towering glass walls, the gardens glowed beneath hundreds of carefully placed lights, their reflections dancing across the windows and blending with the candlelight scattered throughout the room. The entire estate seemed transformed after dark. What had impressed Y/N upon arrival now felt almost unreal, as though the building belonged more comfortably to another century than to the modern world beyond its gates.

By the time she followed Christine and Mia into the hallway, the orchestra had already begun playing again somewhere deeper within the estate. The music carried easily through the corridors, weaving between conversations and footsteps as guests made their way from room to room.

Christine, fortunately, seemed more interested in finding champagne than conducting an interrogation.

For now.

The ballroom felt different when she stepped back inside. Earlier in the evening, the room had carried the energy of an arrival, guests still exploring the estate, introducing themselves through carefully guarded conversations, settling into the peculiar rules imposed by the masquerade. Now the atmosphere had softened. People seemed more comfortable beneath their masks. Conversations flowed more easily. Couples occupied much of the dance floor while others lingered around the edges of the room, watching the orchestra perform beneath the glow of the chandeliers.

Mia disappeared in search of another drink while Christine was quickly distracted by someone she recognized from a previous charity event, leaving Y/N to wander toward a quieter corner of the ballroom where she could observe the dancers without risking participation herself.

The orchestra held her attention almost immediately.

She had always loved watching musicians perform. There was something fascinating about the silent communication that passed between them, the subtle glances and movements that kept dozens of individual performers moving together as though they shared the same thoughts. She stood there for several minutes, listening more than watching, allowing the music to wash over her while conversations blurred into the background.

'Hi again.'

The familiar voice drew her attention away from the orchestra. When she turned, she found him standing beside her and the sight of him shouldn't have felt as reassuring as it did.

They were complete strangers. She still knew almost nothing about him beyond the handful of conversations they'd shared throughout the evening. Yet somewhere between discussing architecture in a quiet corridor and arguing about art in one of the galleries, his presence had become strangely familiar.

'Hi again,' she replied smiling at him.

Around them, dancers moved across the ballroom floor in slow, elegant patterns. The orchestra had settled into something gentler than the lively compositions performed earlier in the evening, and the shift seemed to ripple through the room itself. Conversations softened. Movement slowed. Even the lighting appeared warmer somehow, reflecting off crystal and gold in a way that blurred the edges of everything it touched.

For a while, they simply stood there watching.

The silence felt remarkably natural.

Earlier in the evening, Y/N might have expected awkwardness from a pause like this. Instead, it settled comfortably between them, accompanied by the distant sound of strings and piano. She found herself wondering whether he noticed it too, this strange ease that seemed to emerge whenever they found themselves in the same room.

When she glanced toward him, she discovered he was already looking at her. Simply looking. As though he had been about to say something and hadn't yet decided whether he should.

'What?'

His attention drifted briefly toward the dance floor before returning to her.

'I was going to ask whether you dance.'

Y/N laughed. 'Not particularly well.'

'That's not the same thing as no.'

'It's close enough.'

'I disagree.'

Around them, another group joined the dance floor while the music continued uninterrupted. The ballroom had become a sea of movement and candlelight, couples gliding beneath the chandeliers while conversations carried on along the edges of the room. It felt almost impossible to remember that the world outside still existed.

When he finally extended his hand, the gesture felt less like a surprise and more like the inevitable conclusion to a conversation that had been heading in this direction for some time.

He didn't pressure her.

He simply waited.

For a moment, Y/N looked at the offered hand before lifting her gaze to meet his.

The sensible decision would have been to decline. She wasn't a particularly confident dancer, and she generally preferred observing events like these rather than participating in them. Yet the evening had already carried her considerably further outside her comfort zone than she would have believed possible only a few hours earlier.

Perhaps that was why she found herself placing her hand in his.

His fingers closed gently around hers as he guided her toward the ballroom floor, and for the first time since arriving at the estate, Y/N became acutely aware of just how many people surrounded them.

The moment the orchestra swelled around them, the rest of the room seemed to recede into the background, leaving behind only music, candlelight, and the stranger she still knew almost nothing about.

The dance itself proved considerably less intimidating than Y/N had anticipated.

Perhaps it was because neither of them appeared especially concerned with perfection. Around them, couples moved with varying degrees of grace, some clearly experienced, others relying more heavily on enthusiasm than technical skill. The masquerade had stripped away many of the expectations that usually accompanied formal events. Beneath the masks, mistakes seemed less important. Nobody was watching closely enough to care.

Or perhaps she simply found it difficult to remain nervous while talking to him.

The conversation continued almost immediately, slipping back into the same easy rhythm they had established throughout the evening. Topics appeared and disappeared without much thought. One moment they were debating whether modern architecture lacked personality, the next they were discussing cities they hoped to visit someday. Neither shared enough details to violate the rules of the masquerade, yet somehow the restrictions only seemed to make the conversations more interesting. Instead of exchanging facts, they exchanged opinions. Instead of biographies, they shared pieces of themselves.

At some point, Y/N realized she had stopped paying attention to the dance entirely. The discovery came when she glanced down and noticed that her feet were moving correctly without conscious effort. He seemed to notice the same thing.

'Look at that.'

She followed his gaze. 'What?'

'You're dancing.'

A reluctant smile appeared.

'You're welcome.'

'For what?'

'For my excellent instruction.'

The expression she gave him made him laugh. The sound had become familiar throughout the evening. She had heard it in quiet corridors, art galleries, and beneath ceilings she had spent far too much time examining. Somehow it never failed to draw her attention.

By now, she should have grown accustomed to his presence.

Instead, she seemed increasingly aware of it.

Aware of the hand resting lightly at her waist. Aware of the warmth of his fingers against hers. Aware of the way his smile arrived slightly before his laughter did, as though amusement always reached him first.

The music eventually shifted, giving way to another piece while couples remained on the dance floor. Around them, conversations resumed along the edges of the ballroom, blending with the orchestra and creating a pleasant hum that filled the room without overwhelming it.

Y/N wasn't entirely certain how much time had passed when they finally drifted away from the crowd.

The transition happened naturally.

A conversation led them toward one of the balconies overlooking the gardensand neither suggested returning immediately.

Outside, the night air felt pleasantly cool after hours spent inside the crowded ballroom.

The balcony stretched across a significant portion of the estate's southern façade, offering a view of the illuminated grounds below. Stone pathways wound through carefully maintained gardens while fountains reflected fragments of moonlight from their surfaces. In the distance, the orchestra remained faintly audible through the open doors, the music softened by distance until it blended almost seamlessly with the sounds of the evening.

For several moments, they stood side by side near the railing.

Y/N rested her forearms lightly against the stone railing and looked out across the grounds.

'This might be my favorite part of the entire estate.'

'The balcony?'

'The fact that you can still hear the orchestra from here.'

His gaze followed hers toward the gardens. 'I think my favorite part is that you're still evaluating the architecture.'

A laugh escaped her.

The longer the evening continued, the easier it became to forget how unusual the situation actually was. Hours earlier, they had been complete strangers passing one another in a crowded ballroom. Even now they remained strangers in the technical sense. She still didn't know his name. He didn't know hers. Neither possessed the information people usually considered essential when getting to know someone.

Yet standing there beside him felt remarkably natural.

Y/N looked away from the gardens but his attention was already on her, then his gaze drifted downward.

'I've been meaning to ask about that.'

She followed the direction of his attention.

Her bracelet.

The gold charms caught the balcony lights whenever she moved, tiny stars and moons glimmering against her wrist.

'The bracelet?'

He nodded. 'There has to be a story behind it.'

Y/N lifted her wrist slightly, studying the collection of charms. Most had been there for years, some longer than others.

'Not a particularly exciting one.'

'I don't believe you.'

She shook her head, though she couldn't stop smiling.

'Judt...astronomy.'

His expression softened with understanding.

'Astronomy?'

'I was obsessed with it growing up. Not in a scientist sort of way. I just loved it. The stars, planets, observatories. Anything related to space, really.'

As she spoke, her fingers brushed lightly across the charms.

A telescope.

Several stars.

A crescent moon.

The bracelet shifted softly against her skin when she moved, the tiny gold pieces catching the balcony lights with each gesture.

He listened with the same attentiveness he seemed to bring to every conversation, his gaze occasionally shifting between her face and the bracelet itself. At some point, without either of them fully acknowledging it, he reached for her wrist.

The movement was unhurried, soft, natural.

His fingers settled lightly beneath her wrist, turning it just enough to examine the charms more closely. The contrast was immediately noticeable. Her hand looked impossibly small in his, the delicate chain disappearing almost entirely against the span of his fingers.

Y/N's breath caught slightly.

'A telescope,' he said, brushing his thumb lightly against the tiny charm.

'That one was a gift.'

His attention moved to one of the stars.

'And these?'

'Different trips.'

The gold charms shifted quietly beneath his touch as he followed the bracelet around her wrist, examining each piece with a level of concentration that suggested he was genuinely interested in the answer. The orchestra drifted faintly from the ballroom behind them, accompanied by the distant murmur of voices, but Y/N found herself paying very little attention to any of it.

Instead, she was acutely aware of his hand around her wrist.

Aware of the warmth of his skin.

Aware of the way his fingers occasionally brushed hers whenever he moved from one charm to the next.

His attention eventually settled on the small crescent moon hanging among the collection. It swayed slightly when he touched it, catching the light before disappearing once more among the surrounding stars and keepsakes.

For a brief moment, he held it between his fingers.

Then he released it.

Neither of them paid particular attention to the gesture.

Much later, both of them would remember it perfectly.

For now, however, it remained exactly what it had always been: just another charm on a bracelet, another small detail in an evening that neither of them yet realized would stay with them long after the masks came off.

When they eventually returned to the ballroom, the atmosphere had shifted almost imperceptibly.

The orchestra continued playing beneath the chandeliers, conversations still filled the room and guests still drifted between the galleries and hallways. Glasses stood abandoned on cocktail tables. Attendants moved discreetly through the estate collecting coats and preparing for departures. The masquerade was far from over, but everyone seemed aware that it soon would be.

Y/N noticed the time while crossing one of the galleries. The glance was prompted by habit rather than concern, but the sight of the hour was enough to stop her momentarily. She had promised Christine and Mia she would meet them at the entrance before they left.

The realization felt strangely unwelcome.

Throughout the evening she had managed to lose track of time completely, something that happened so rarely she could barely remember the last occasion. The estate had absorbed her attention from the moment she arrived, and somewhere between the architecture, the orchestra, and the stranger walking beside her, the outside world had gradually faded into the background.

'Everything alright?'

She nodded. 'Yeah. I just realized my friends are probably waiting for me.'

His expression softened with understanding. 'The ride home?'

'The ride home.'

A small smile appeared as they continued walking through the estate.

Neither of them hurried.

There was no reason not to take the longer route back toward the entrance and neither seemed interested in pointing that out. Their conversation drifted comfortably from one subject to another as they crossed familiar hallways and galleries, passing paintings they had discussed hours earlier and rooms that had seemed far larger at the beginning of the evening. The estate felt different now, not because anything had changed, but because it no longer felt unfamiliar. It had become a place attached to memories rather than impressions.

By the time the grand entrance came into view, Y/N found herself slowing almost unconsciously.

The staircase stretched toward the driveway below, illuminated by warm golden light spilling from the chandeliers overhead. Guests continued arriving and departing through the enormous front doors, their masks and formal attire blending into a constant movement of color and conversation. Beyond the entrance, luxury cars waited beneath the night sky while attendants guided departing guests toward the curb.

Standing near the bottom of the staircase were two figures she recognized immediately.

Christine had already spotted her. Even from across the hall, Y/N could see the expression forming. Curiosity and satisfaction.

She almost laughed.

For the first time all evening, neither seemed particularly sure what to say next. The silence wasn't uncomfortable, it simply carried a different weight than before.

Hours earlier, they had been strangers meeting beneath a vaulted ceiling. Since then, conversations had flowed with almost embarrassing ease. They had discussed architecture, music, books, travel, astronomy, artt and a hundred other subjects neither of them would fully remember later. The details would blur eventually. Certain moments would remain.

The way he laughed.

The way she studied everything around her.

The orchestra.

The dance.

The balcony.

The feeling of time disappearing whenever they spoke.

Y/N found herself studying him for a moment.

The mask still concealed portions of his face, preserving the strange anonymity that had defined the entire evening, yet she realized she could recognize him almost instantly now. Not because of the mask. Because of everything else. The way he carried himself. The sound of his voice. His smile.

She wondered, briefly, what would happen if she asked.

A name.

A number.

Some small piece of information capable of extending the evening beyond the estate gates.

Perhaps it was foolish.

Perhaps she would regret it later.

Yet standing there beneath the chandeliers, she found herself reluctant to alter what the evening had been. The masquerade had given them something unexpectedly simple. For a few hours they had existed entirely outside the usual expectations people carried into first meetings. No introductions. No assumptions. No carefully constructed versions of themselves.

'I had a really nice time tonight,' she said. 'I’m glad I ended up coming here.' 

The words felt honest in a way few things had throughout the evening.

His smile softened. 'So did I.'

Neither looked away immediately.

The noise of the entrance hall continued around them, fading slightly beneath the awareness that this was the last conversation they were likely to have.

Y/N smiled first.

'Goodbye.'

'Goodbye.'

The word followed her as she stepped back.

The distance between them widened gradually rather than all at once. She turned toward the staircase, descended several steps, and glanced over her shoulder before she could stop herself.

He was still standing there, exactly where she had left him, watching.

Christine was already waving impatiently from below. Mia looked equally unconvinced by Y/N's attempt to pretend nothing had happened. Laughing softly to herself, Y/N descended the remaining steps and allowed her friends to guide her toward the waiting car.

The estate remained visible through the window as they pulled away. Warm light spilled from every window, illuminating the stone façade against the darkness beyond. She continued looking at it until the trees lining the driveway gradually obscured the view, swallowing the building from sight piece by piece.

Only then did she settle back into her seat.

Behind her, the masquerade continued for a little while longer.

Back at the entrance, Jaafar remained beneath the chandeliers after she left. Guests continued moving around him while attendants escorted arrivals and departures through the estate. Somewhere deeper inside the building, the orchestra played the final pieces of the evening.

As he adjusted the sleeve of his jacket, something caught briefly against the fabric.

A glimmer of gold.

Frowning slightly, he reached for it and discovered a tiny crescent moon resting in his palm and for several moments he simply looked at it. Then his gaze lifted toward the driveway beyond the entrance.

Empty now.

By the time he reached them, she was already gone.

The two weeks following the masquerade passed exactly as they should have.

Life resumed its usual rhythm with an almost irritating efficiency. Work demanded attention. Schedules filled themselves. Messages accumulated. Entire days disappeared beneath obligations that had existed long before a charity gala and would continue existing long after it.

And yet, every now and then, Y/N would find herself thinking about a particular conversation while making coffee in the morning. A joke would return unexpectedly while she sat in traffic. A piece of music would remind her of the orchestra. Sometimes it was something larger. More often, it was something insignificant.

A smile.

A laugh.

The sound of his voice saying something she couldn't quite remember anymore.

The details blurred gradually, the feeling did not.

Christine noticed almost immediately.

Of course she did.

Y/N endured two weeks of increasingly creative attempts to extract information she refused to provide, a task made significantly easier by the fact that she possessed absolutely no information to give. She didn't know his name. Didn't know where he worked. Didn't know where he lived. Didn't know whether she would ever see him again.

Eventually, even Christine seemed forced to admit defeat.

Meanwhile, several miles away, Jaafar discovered that forgetting someone proved considerably more difficult than anticipated.

The small crescent moon charm found a permanent place inside his wallet.

Not because he consciously decided to keep it, because every attempt to throw it away felt vaguely ridiculous, every time he saw it, he found himself thinking about the woman who had worn it.

The woman who had spent an entire evening examining architecture most people never noticed.

The woman who loved astronomy enough to carry it around her wrist.

The woman whose name he still didn't know.

The practical part of his brain pointed out the obvious.

The masquerade had hosted hundreds of guests, Los Angeles contained millions of people so the likelihood of seeing her again bordered on nonexistent.

By the second week, he had accepted that the masquerade was probably destined to remain exactly what it had been.

A beautiful evening.

Which was precisely why he wasn't thinking about her when he stepped into the coffee shop that Saturday afternoon.

The café occupied a corner building flooded with sunlight from enormous front windows overlooking the street. It was busy enough to feel lively without becoming crowded, the sort of place where people settled for hours with laptops, books, and half-finished conversations. The scent of coffee lingered comfortably in the air while music played quietly overhead, nearly drowned out by the steady hum of voices.

Jaafar collected his order and scanned the room for somewhere to sit.

Most of the tables were occupied.

A few remained partially available.

He crossed the room without giving it much thought, his attention divided between his phone and the coffee balanced in his hand. By the time he reached the table, he was already halfway through reading a message about a scheduling conflict he had absolutely no interest in dealing with.

He lowered himself into the empty booth. For several moments, his focus remained entirely elsewhere, then something caught his eye.

A brief flash of gold.

The movement was small enough that he almost ignored it.

Almost.

The woman turned a page, sunlight caught the bracelet circling her wrist and the gold charms shifted softly against one another.

Jaafar's attention lingered, one of the charms looked familiar.

The bracelet moved again.

A telescope.

Several stars.

And a crescent moon.

His breath caught.

The noise of the café continued around him. Coffee machines hissed near the counter. Someone laughed several tables away. A barista called out another order. Yet for a moment, all of it seemed strangely distant.

His gaze remained fixed on the bracelet.

The same bracelet he had held on the balcony.

The same bracelet that had lost a charm somewhere between the entrance hall and the estate gates.

The same bracelet whose missing crescent moon currently rested inside his wallet.

Slowly, almost cautiously, his attention lifted. At first, he only saw her profile.

The masquerade had hidden so much. That night, he'd been forced to piece together an image of her from fragments. A smile glimpsed beneath candlelight. Eyes visible above a mask. The shape of her mouth whenever she laughed.

Now there was no mask.

No anonymity.

No ballroom lights softening the details.

Only a woman sitting quietly in a coffee shop, completely unaware she was dismantling two weeks' worth of certainty. A loose strand of hair had escaped and fallen across her cheek. She absently tucked it behind her ear without looking away from her book. Sunlight spilled across the table in front of her, illuminating the pages she was reading and casting a warm glow against her skin.

She looked comfortable.

Comfortable in the way people only do when they believe nobody is paying attention to them.

One leg was crossed beneath the table. Her coffee sat forgotten beside the book. Every now and then her eyebrows would pull together slightly while reading before relaxing again a few moments later.

The more he looked, the more impossible it became to deny.

He recognized the quiet concentration.

Recognized the thoughtful expressions that crossed her face while she read.

Recognized the same curiosity that had carried her through galleries and corridors and conversations that somehow lasted an entire evening.

It was her.

For several moments, he simply watched. After spending two weeks convincing himself he would never see her again, he found himself struggling to reconcile memory with reality.

The woman from the masquerade had begun to feel almost fictional yet here she was. Real. Three feet away. Turning another page as though she hadn't spent the last two weeks occupying an embarrassing amount of space inside his thoughts.

A smile appeared before he could stop it.

His hand drifted toward his wallet.

The crescent moon was exactly where he had left it.

For the first time since finding it, he knew exactly where it belonged.

Across the table, Y/N turned another page.

Still oblivious.

Still completely unaware that the stranger from the masquerade was sitting only a few feet away staring at her like she'd stepped out of one of his own memories.

Then, before he could think better of it, he slipped the moon charm from his wallet, stood from his chair and crossed the short distance separating them.

Only when he sat down directly opposite her did she finally look up.

Her eyes landed on the charm first.

Then on his hand.

Then on him.

For a moment, she simply stared.

And Jaafar watched the exact second recognition appeared.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

The café continued around them uninterrupted. Conversations drifted between tables, cups clinked against saucers, and sunlight spilled through the windows in warm golden patches across the floor. None of it seemed particularly important. Y/N's attention remained fixed on the tiny crescent moon resting on the table between them, while Jaafar found himself watching the exact sequence of emotions cross her face as recognition settled in.

Surprise came first.

Then disbelief.

Then a smile.

'Hi again.'

The laugh that escaped her was instant.

Not because the greeting was particularly funny, but because she recognized it. The same words. The same smile. The same impossible feeling of finding him unexpectedly standing in front of her.

'Hi again,' she replied.

For a second, neither seemed entirely sure what came next. The masquerade had given them hours of conversation, yet somehow this felt different. Simpler. More real.

Jaafar glanced down at the bracelet before looking back at her.

'I figured I should probably return this.'

Y/N accepted the charm from his hand, her fingers brushing his briefly as she clipped the moon back into its place among the stars and telescope. The bracelet looked complete again.

'Thank you.'

'You're very welcome.'

Another silence settled between them, then Jaafar smiled.

'Since we're not at a masquerade anymore, I should probably introduce myself.'

Something about hearing that made her smile widen.

Finally.

After weeks of wondering.

Finally.

'I'm Jaafar.'

His name settled between them as naturally as every conversation they'd shared before it. Y/N repeated it softly, almost testing it.

'Hi, Jaafar, i’m Y/N.'

There were only a handful of people capable of generating this level of unnecessary chaos before nine in the morning and Jermajesty sat comfortably at the top of that list.

The moment she unlocked her screen, she immediately understood why her phone had nearly vibrated itself off the counter.

Jermajesty 🥳 created "victims of my genius"

Jermajesty 🥳 added Unknown number

Jermajesty 🥳 added Y/N

For several seconds she simply stared.

It felt so entirely like something Jermajesty would do that she could practically picture the sequence of events unfolding in real time. He'd had the idea. Congratulated himself on the idea. Executed the idea without consulting anybody involved. Then sat back expecting gratitude for services nobody had requested.

The line moved forward without her noticing.

It wasn't until somebody behind her cleared their throat politely that Y/N realized she'd been standing perfectly still in the middle of a busy coffee shop, staring at her phone while the rest of the world continued functioning around her.

Muttering an apology, she stepped forward.

Another notification appeared before she reached the counter.

Jermajesty 🥳 now you have each other's numbers you're welcome

The audacity of it actually made her laugh.

Of course he would phrase it like that. Of course he would act as though he'd single handedly solved an international crisis rather than create a group chat. There was something almost admirable about the confidence. Completely undeserved confidence, but confidence nonetheless.

She ordered her coffee and by the time she reached the end of the counter, a final notification had appeared.

Jermajesty 🥳 left the conversation.

Y/N stopped walking again.

The man truly possessed no survival instincts whatsoever.

For a moment she simply stood there holding her receipt, looking at the screen while the reality of the situation settled around her. The chat remained open. Jermajesty's dramatic exit sat near the top. Beneath it rested a phone number she didn't have saved.

She didn't need to ask who it belonged to, there was nobody else it could be. The realization arrived immediately and it was followed almost instantly by another one.

Expectation.

Small enough to miss if she wasn't paying attention, brief enough to disappear the second she noticed it.

Some part of her found herself looking at the screen and wondering whether he was going to say anything. The awareness irritated her on principle and before she could examine it further, the typing bubble appeared.

Y/N hated how quickly her attention locked onto it.

For several seconds it lingered there. Then disappeared. Then returned.

Finally:

Unknown Number i think we just got abandoned

The smile arrived before she could stop it.

Y/N cowardly behaviour honestly

The response arrived almost immediately.

Unknown Number he's probably very proud of himself

Y/N laughed quietly as she collected her coffee.

Y/N that's the worst part he definitely is

Unknown Number he's probably waiting for us to thank him

Y/N he'll be waiting a long time

Unknown Number good

The conversation should have ended there.

Logically speaking, it made perfect sense.

The group chat existed solely because Jermajesty possessed too much free time and not nearly enough shame. The issue had been acknowledged. The culprit had been identified. Justice, while unlikely, had at least been discussed.

Instead, the typing bubble appeared again.

Jaafar it's jaafar btw just in case jer forgot that detail too

The laugh escaped before she could stop it.

Y/N honestly i'm impressed he remembered our names

Jaafar 😂

The exchange lasted less than five minutes. The entire conversation probably contained fewer than thirty words. By all reasonable standards, it should have been forgettable yet somehow, throughout the rest of the day, Y/N found herself thinking about it more than once.

Not the messages themselves but the feeling of them. The strange simplicity of opening her phone and finding him there.

The thought surfaced unexpectedly while she ate lunch. Again while she waited at a traffic light after work. Later still while brushing her teeth before bed.

Each time she ignored it because there wasn't really anything to think about. They'd exchanged a handful of messages adn that was all.

The problem was that Wednesday arrived. Then Thursday and somehow the conversation never entirely stopped. Not continuously, neither of them spent hours glued to their phones. Entire stretches of the day passed without messages. Sometimes one replied hours later and sometimes neither responded until the next morning.

Yet the conversation remained alive.

A tiktok would appear.

A photograph.

A random observation.

Something Abu Bakr had apparently done.

Something Jermajesty had apparently said.

The subjects themselves barely mattered the point was that they kept finding reasons to reach for the conversation again.

By Thursday afternoon, Y/N was standing in the pasta aisle of a supermarket trying to remember which brand she'd bought last time when her phone vibrated in her pocket.

The reaction happened before she could stop it.

Her attention shifted instantly.

Jaafar are you coming saturday?

Y/N frowned.

Y/N where?

The response arrived so quickly she almost suspected he'd been waiting.

Jaafar the family bbq pool day apparently attendance is mandatory

A laugh escaped immediately.

Y/N says who?

This time the typing bubble appeared almost instantly.

Jaafar me of course

The smile arrived before she could stop it, again, for the hundredth time that week. And, for reasons she still couldn't properly explain, it remained there long after she'd put her phone away.

Saturday arrived wrapped in sunlight and the kind of heat that seemed determined to settle over the city before noon.

By the time Y/N was standing in front of her mirror, the barbecue was still several hours away and yet she had already changed twice. The realization irritated her almost immediately. Not because she couldn't find something to wear. Her wardrobe was full of perfectly acceptable options and the occasion itself hardly demanded extensive preparation. The Jackson family hosted some variation of a barbecue, pool day, birthday celebration or spontaneous gathering often enough that she'd stopped considering them events years ago. Most of the time she showed up wearing whatever happened to be clean, spent several hours getting dragged into activities she hadn't agreed to participate in, and went home later wondering how an afternoon had somehow disappeared so quickly.

Today should have felt exactly the same.

Instead, she found herself standing motionless in front of her wardrobe holding a red bikini she hadn't worn in months while engaging in an internal debate she had absolutely no interest in having.

The argument itself was ridiculous.

People wore bikinis to pool parties, that was the entire purpose of pool parties.

The logic seemed perfectly sound until she actually put it on and found herself staring at her reflection for a moment longer than necessary before immediately becoming annoyed with herself for doing so. The irritation only deepened when she realized she was now considering outfit choices for the walk between the house and the pool as though anyone would care.

Nobody would.

The thought should have settled the matter but it didn't because somewhere beneath the practical considerations and increasingly unconvincing excuses sat a realization she was trying very hard not to examine too closely.

She was looking forward to today.

The realization hovered at the edge of her thoughts while she brushed her hair quiclly and reached for her bag. Every attempt to ignore it seemed to make it more noticeable. The problem wasn't that she didn't understand why she was excited. The problem was that she understood perfectly well and preferred not to acknowledge it.

The drive to the Jackson house provided entirely too much time to think.

Traffic moved steadily. Music played softly through the speakers. Outside, the city drifted past in familiar fragments of sunlight and weekend activity. Yet her thoughts kept wandering elsewhere, returning repeatedly to the same place they'd been returning all week.

The messages. They had started with the group chat then somehow it hadn't stopped.

The conversations themselves weren't particularly remarkable when examined individually. Most of them were ridiculous, if anything. Photographs of dogs that looked suspiciously similar to Jaafar's infamous painting. Arguments regarding films neither of them had actually finished watching. An increasingly passionate disagreement about whether pineapple belonged on pizza. The subjects changed constantly. The point was that they kept finding reasons to continue talking.

One day she'd found herself checking her phone during lunch because she'd remembered something funny and wanted to send it to him.

The next she'd caught herself smiling at a notification before she'd even opened the message.

Then Thursday had become Friday and suddenly texting him no longer felt like a deliberate action. It had simply become part of her day.

The awareness followed her all the way to the driveway.

The familiar sounds of a Jackson gathering greeted her almost immediately. The entire house seemed alive with movement, carrying the familiar energy she'd come to associate with family gatherings over the years.

By the time she reached the backyard gate, she found herself smiling because some places possessed the ability to make people feel welcome before they even arrived.

The moment she stepped through, Jermajesty appeared.

'Aha, look who finally decided to show up.'

The grin arrived before the greeting had even finished leaving his mouth.

Y/N narrowed her eyes immediately looking at the time on her phone.

'I am literally on time.'

'According to who?'

'According to clocks.' She points her phone.

Jermajesty looked unconvinced.

The resulting hug interrupted whatever argument she was preparing next, and within moments they had fallen back into the familiar rhythm established through years of friendship. Conversations with Jermajesty rarely followed any recognizable structure. One topic flowed into another. Stories interrupted each other halfway through. By the time he'd finished explaining some ongoing disagreement with Randy Jr., Y/N had already forgotten how the conversation had started.

The backyard was busy enough that Y/N should have had plenty of things competing for her attention. Somebody had claimed responsibility for the grill and was treating it with the seriousness of a military operation. Music drifted lazily from a speaker hidden somewhere near the patio. Several younger cousins were already in the pool despite the fact that most of the adults hadn't even settled into their chairs yet. The entire afternoon carried the familiar energy of a Jackson gathering, the kind she'd spent enough years around to navigate almost instinctively. Usually, arriving meant stepping directly into whatever conversation happened to be nearest and allowing the day to unfold from there.

Instead, the moment Jaafar stepped through the patio doors, everything else seemed to blur slightly around the edges.

Jermajesty was still talking. Y/N was vaguely aware of that. Something about the last episode of The Rookie, she thought. Or maybe basketball. The details slipped past her before she could properly register them. Her attention had already moved elsewhere, pulled toward the figure crossing the patio with sunglasses pushed down his nose and a baseball cap shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun.

An entire week of messages had made seeing him today feel inevitable. Somewhere between arguments about pizza toppings and photographs exchanged at random hours of the day, he'd stopped feeling like someone she occasionally ran into through Jermajesty and started feeling like a person who occupied an actual place in her routine. Not a large one. Not enough to justify the amount of attention she seemed determined to give him. Yet present enough that she'd caught herself wondering more than once what he was doing before he'd eventually appeared on her screen to answer the question himself.

Now he was here and somehow that felt different. The distance between texting somebody and standing in front of them turned out to be larger than she'd expected because messages didn't smile at her from across a backyard. Messages didn't walk toward her looking unfairly comfortable in the afternoon heat. Messages certainly didn't make it impossible to remember whatever Jermajesty had been saying for the last thirty seconds.

'There she is.'

The grin arrived before she could answer. Predictably. Instantly. As though he'd spent the entire walk across the yard deciding that would be the first thing he said.

'There I am.'

'You came.'

The statement was simple enough. Casual. Yet something about it lodged itself stubbornly beneath her ribs.

He sounded pleased.

As though her being there had been the expected outcome all along.

As though there had never been a version of the afternoon where she didn't show up.

'Apparently attendance was mandatory.' She repeated what he texted her the other day.

His laugh escaped immediately. 'Says who?'

'You.'

Conversation slipped into place almost immediately after that. Not because either of them made an effort to keep it moving, but because talking to one another had somehow become easy. The transition happened so smoothly she couldn't identify where one topic ended and another began. 

The afternoon settled into its own rhythm after that, the kind that seemed unique to large family gatherings where nobody was entirely sure who had arrived, who was cooking, or how many people were actually staying for dinner. 

She spent most of it talking.

That wasn't unusual. The Jackson family had always possessed a remarkable ability to absorb people into conversations whether they intended to participate or not. One moment she was helping Alejandra carry drinks outside, the next she was listening to an aunt she hadn't seen in months recount a story from fifteen years ago as though Y/N had been there to witness it herself. Somewhere in between, Randy Jr. appeared and attempted to convince three separate people that a film he'd watched recently deserved a second chance. Judging by the reactions around him, the campaign was not going particularly well.

Yet through all of it, her attention kept catching on the same thing, or rather, the same person.

Not continuously, like she wasn't standing around staring at Jaafar from across the backyard. The thought alone was enough to make her cringe. It happened in smaller moments than that. She'd be halfway through a conversation and hear his laugh from somewhere nearby. She'd glance up while reaching for a drink and find him talking to one of his cousins near the pool. At one point she looked over because somebody had mentioned his name only to discover he was already looking in her direction, the brief smile that followed arriving so easily it felt less like a greeting and more like the continuation of a conversation they'd temporarily paused.

The familiarity of it sat strangely with her.

Only a few weeks ago, Jaafar had occupied the same category as countless other people she'd heard about through Jermajesty over the years. Somebody she knew of rather than somebody she knew. Now she could identify the sound of his laugh from across a crowded backyard. She knew which topics would make him argue purely for the sake of arguing. She knew he replied to messages surprisingly quickly when he was bored and suspiciously slowly when he was trying to seem busy. She knew that whenever Abu Bakr started explaining something, Jaafar listened with complete seriousness no matter how ridiculous the explanation became. The knowledge had accumulated gradually enough that she hadn't noticed it happening until now.

Perhaps that was why Jermajesty's announcement felt less like the beginning of something and more like an interruption.

The conversation nearest the pool stopped first. Then another. A few heads turned. Whatever idea had taken hold of him was already visible on his face, that familiar expression of somebody entirely too pleased with himself. Years of friendship had taught Y/N to be wary whenever he looked like that. Experience suggested that the more satisfied he appeared, the more likely everybody else was about to suffer.

'Pool volleyball.'

The declaration was met with exactly the level of enthusiasm she'd expected. Far too much.

Within minutes people were moving toward the water with the kind of commitment usually reserved for genuinely important activities. Somebody started arguing about rules before teams had even been decided. Randy Jr. immediately volunteered himself. A cousin protested a decision nobody had made yet. Another cousin attempted to establish scoring regulations despite the fact that nobody seemed entirely sure whether there would even be scoring. The entire thing unfolded with such inevitability that Y/N found herself laughing before she'd even agreed to participate.

Not that agreement seemed particularly relevant.

By the time she reached the edge of the pool, Jermajesty had apparently appointed himself organizer, referee and commissioner of whatever sporting event he believed he was running. The role suited him far too well. The authority was entirely imaginary, yet he carried it with enough confidence that people kept listening anyway.

'Me and Randy.'

Nobody objected.

His gaze shifted toward the opposite side of the pool where Jaafar was standing with his arms folded across his chest, already looking more invested in the outcome than anyone reasonably should have.

'You and Y/N.'

For a moment, the noise around them continued uninterrupted. People kept talking. Somebody splashed water. A younger cousin cannonballed into the deep end despite immediate protests from three different adults. Randy Jr. was already complaining about the teams before the game had even started. Yet Y/N became aware of Jaafar glancing in her direction at almost the exact same time she looked at him, amusement already pulling at the corner of his mouth as though the outcome pleased him far more than he intended to admit.

The smile that appeared on her own face arrived before she could stop it.

Jaafar simply stepped past Jermajesty and stopped beside her, close enough that she caught the faint scent of sunscreen and chlorine lingering from the pool.

The conversation dissolved beneath a chorus of objections from everybody else. Randy wanted different teams. One of the cousins wanted to know why nobody had picked him. Somebody else was still arguing about rules. Through all of it, Jaafar simply stepped past Jermajesty and stopped beside her.

'Ready to lose?'

The confidence in his voice was astonishing.

Y/N looked at him. Then laughed.

'That's bold considering we haven't even started.'

'I'm speaking it into existence, manifesting as they call it.'

'That's not how winning works.'

'Mh, we’ll see.'

The ease of the exchange settled over her before she had time to think about it. It felt strangely natural now, slipping into conversation with him. The effortlessness still caught her off guard occasionally. Most people required time. Friendships developed gradually. Familiarity arrived in layers yet every interaction with Jaafar seemed to pick up exactly where the previous one had left off, as though some invisible conversation had been running continuously in the background ever since they met.

Around them, the backyard continued slipping gradually toward chaos. Somebody had produced a volleyball. Somebody else was insisting it wasn't the right kind of volleyball despite the fact that nobody present seemed particularly qualified to make that distinction. Randy had become involved in an argument he was unlikely to win. Jermajesty, meanwhile, looked entirely too pleased with himself, which usually meant everybody else was about to suffer. The entire afternoon had taken on the familiar shape of a Jackson gathering, where plans emerged organically, acquired participants before anyone officially agreed to them, and somehow became mandatory within minutes.

Jaafar should have been paying attention.

Instead, his attention drifted elsewhere.

Later, if somebody asked, he probably wouldn't have been able to identify the exact moment it happened. One second he was half-listening to Randy complain about the teams. The next, Y/N reached for the tie at the waist of her pool dress and everything after that became significantly more complicated.

The movement itself was completely ordinary. There wasn't anything particularly noteworthy about it. People had been arriving at the pool all afternoon, shedding oversized shirts, cover-ups and summer layers as naturally as breathing. Y/N seemed entirely unconcerned with the action, more interested in whatever Randy was currently saying than in the lightweight fabric she was pulling over her head. If anything, the absence of self-consciousness made it worse. There was no awareness behind it. No attempt to draw attention to herself. She simply stepped out of the dress the same way everyone else around the pool had stepped out of theirs.

Yet somehow, Jaafar's attention caught immediately.

The red suited her.

That was the first coherent thought that surfaced.

The color stood out against the bright blue water behind her, vivid enough to draw the eye without trying. Sunlight reflected across the pool in shifting patterns, catching briefly against her skin before disappearing again beneath the movement of the water. For a moment, all he could really do was look. Not in the exaggerated way Randy or Jermajesty would inevitably accuse him of later. Just long enough for the image to settle. Long enough to register the fact that seeing her through a phone screen and seeing her standing a few feet away were apparently two very different experiences.

The frustrating part was that his brain refused to stop there because once he'd noticed her, he started noticing everything else.

The sunglasses she'd pushed onto the top of her head.

The way the afternoon heat had left a few loose strands of hair escaping around her face.

The way she laughed when Randy said something ridiculous, tipping her head back slightly before immediately arguing with him again.

The ease with which she moved through the backyard, stopping to talk to cousins, helping his mother with the drinks, slipping naturally into conversations as though she'd belonged there forever.

The red bikini happened to be standing at the center of his thoughts, that was all, at least that was what he told himself. Unfortunately, the explanation felt increasingly unconvincing the longer he looked at her.

Because the truth was that she looked beautiful as the kind that made it difficult to focus on conversations happening around him. The kind that made a perfectly ordinary Saturday afternoon suddenly feel far less ordinary than it had a few minutes earlier.

The backyard rushed back into focus. Music. Conversations. Water splashing against the side of the pool. Somebody calling for the ball. Jermajesty shouting instructions nobody intended to follow.

Across the patio, Y/N happened to glance up at exactly the wrong moment. Their eyes met almost instantly. The smile that appeared on her face was easy, familiar and entirely unguarded, the same smile she'd been giving him all afternoon.

A whistle interrupted whatever thought he was having.

Nobody knew where the whistle had come from, nobody knew who owned it. Jermajesty was holding it anyway.

The game, apparently, had begun.

The transformation in Jaafar was almost immediate.

His attention sharpened. His focus narrowed. Whatever easygoing energy he'd been carrying through the afternoon shifted subtly toward something more competitive. The change reminded her of athletes before matches or performers before stepping onstage, that small adjustment that happened when somebody became fully invested in what they were doing.

It was pool volleyball.

He looked ready for war.

'Okay.'

Y/N turned toward him as they stepped into the shallow end.

The seriousness in his voice already made her suspicious. 'Why do you sound like a coach?'

'Because we need a strategy.'

For a moment she simply stared at him, pressed her lips together.

The laugh escaped anyway.

'You cannot be serious.'

'I am.'

'Jaafar.'

'Y/N.'

'It's pool volleyball.'

'Exactly.'

The answer came so quickly she almost laughed again.

As though pool volleyball deserved preparation. As though there were tactical advantages to consider. As though the outcome of the afternoon somehow depended on their performance.

'Okay,' she said, folding her arms. 'Go on then.'

His eyebrows lifted slightly. 'Go on what?'

'The strategy.'

The smile that appeared immediately told her she had made a mistake.

For the next several minutes, Y/N found herself listening to Jaafar explain the strengths and weaknesses of their opponents with a level of commitment usually reserved for professional athletes. Randy, according to him, got distracted easily. Jermajesty became overconfident whenever he started winning. Communication would be important. Positioning mattered. Momentum mattered.

By the time he started discussing momentum, Y/N had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself from laughing.

Sunlight reflected across the water between them, shifting and breaking apart every time somebody moved nearby. The pool reached just above her waist here. Every now and then a small wave rolled through from the deeper end from the others' movement, nudging them slightly closer before drifting away again. Neither seemed to notice.

'You're making fun of me.'

The accusation arrived midway through his explanation.

Y/N blinked. 'What?'

'You're smiling.'

The fact that he sounded genuinely offended only made things worse.

'I'm not smiling.'

'You are. You want to laugh.'

'I am not.'

'You absolutely are.'

Now she was laughing again, the sound slipped out before she could stop it, carrying easily across the water.

Jaafar shook his head. 'This is why people underestimate us.'

'There's an us now?'

'There has to be. We're a team.'

Across from them, Jermajesty finally blew the whistle he'd somehow acquired.

'GAME TIME!'

The shout echoed across the backyard, immediately followed by Randy complaining about the whistle.

Y/N laughed.

Jaafar rolled his eyes and then, with all the seriousness of a man preparing for battle, he looked back at her.

'Ready?'

The smile tugging at the corner of his mouth ruined the effect entirely.

Y/N grinned.

'Let's win this thing.'

The game itself became a blur almost immediately.

Y/N would remember fragments rather than a coherent sequence of events. Jermajesty complaining about a point he'd absolutely lost. Randy insisting the rules had changed midway through the game. Somebody keeping score and then immediately forgetting what the score actually was. The details blurred together beneath sunlight, splashing water and the constant noise of half a dozen conversations happening at once.

What she remembered clearly was Jaafar, not because he was particularly good at pool volleyball, though, annoyingly enough, he was, but because somewhere during the first few minutes, he seemed to forget the concept of personal space entirely.

The first time it happened, she barely thought about it.

The ball had drifted farther than expected. Both of them moved at the same time. Before she could adjust, a hand landed lightly against her waist, steering her a few inches to the side.

'I've got it.'

The words arrived at the same time the ball did.

A second later it was gone again.

The touch lasted barely a moment.

The pool forced everyone closer together than they would've been on land. Movement required balance. Balance occasionally required help. Every explanation felt perfectly reasonable.

Yet somehow, Jaafar always seemed to be nearby.

A hand at the small of her back while maneuvering around her in the water. Fingers wrapping briefly around her wrist when she nearly drifted directly into his path. His arm brushing hers every time they celebrated a point.

At one point, Y/N managed a surprisingly decent save that sent the ball back into play. The reaction from Jaafar was immediate.

'LET'S GO!'

Before she could react, his hands were on her shoulders.

A second later he was grinning at her like she'd just won them a championship. The enthusiasm was so genuine that she couldn't help laughing.

By the time the game finally approached its end, Y/N couldn't have told anyone what the score was.

Only that they were winning.

Only that Jaafar seemed very pleased about it.

Only that every time she looked up, he was already looking at her.

The game ended the same way it had unfolded: loudly, chaotically and with absolutely no consensus regarding what had actually happened.

Jermajesty was still arguing about the final point by the time Y/N climbed out of the pool. Randy was arguing back. Several cousins had inserted themselves into the debate despite not having participated. The volleyball had already been abandoned somewhere near the patio and nobody seemed particularly interested in retrieving it. Around them, the backyard was beginning its slow transition back into smaller conversations and scattered groups, the brief collective focus dissolving as people returned to food, drinks and whatever they had been doing before the game took over the afternoon.

Y/N barely paid attention.

The exertion had left her pleasantly tired, her skin still warm from the sun and the water dripping steadily from the ends of her hair as she crossed toward the lounge chairs. She grabbed the towel she'd left earlier, pressing the fabric briefly against her face before beginning the familiar process of trying to dry hair that was far too thick to cooperate. The noise of the barbecue continued around her unchanged. 

It should have felt like every other summer afternoon she'd spent there.

Instead, she found herself glancing up.

Jaafar was standing a few yards away doing exactly the same thing.

His hair was damp and slightly flattened from the water, curls falling across his forehead while he worked a towel through them with one hand. He appeared to be listening to Randy Jr., who was still passionately defending whatever version of events he believed had occurred, but the attention wasn't entirely convincing.

Mostly because the moment Y/N looked over, he looked over too.

Neither of them looked away immediately. There was nothing deliberate in the glance. No performance. No awareness that anyone else might be watching. Just a brief, ordinary moment that somehow lasted a fraction longer than it should have before reality reasserted itself and both of them remembered there were other people in the backyard.

Y/N looked down first, enough to break whatever invisible thread had stretched unexpectedly between them.

The problem was that it happened again.

A few minutes later she glanced up while squeezing water from the ends of her hair and found him looking in her direction. Not directly this time. Not quite. The sort of glance that suggested his attention had wandered naturally before getting caught somewhere it hadn't intended to stay. She looked away. Then looked back a minute later and discovered she wasn't the only one apparently failing at the task.

The entire situation felt absurd. Like there were probably thirty people in the backyard, conversations happening everywhere, music food, children running through the house.

Yet somehow she kept becoming aware of him.

The towel hanging around his neck.

The way he laughed at something Jermajesty said.

The way his smile seemed to arrive gradually rather than all at once.

Details that should have been insignificant.

Details that would've been insignificant a month ago.

That was perhaps the most frustrating part.

A month ago she wouldn't have noticed any of this.

A month ago Jaafar existed mostly as a name attached to stories. Somebody she'd heard about often enough to form an impression without ever really knowing him. Now she could identify his laugh from across a crowded backyard. Now she knew exactly what expression appeared whenever he thought he was winning an argument. Now she found herself noticing when he walked into a room and, even more annoyingly, when he wasn't there.

When Jaafar finally wandered over, it felt less like somebody approaching and more like the inevitable conclusion to a conversation neither of them had actually been having.

'You know,' he said, stopping beside her, the remains of victory still lingering somewhere in his smile, 'I think we carried that team.'

Y/N laughed immediately.

'We carried the team?'

'Absolutely.'

'Jaafar, nobody even knows what the score was.'

'The score is irrelevant. That's how victory works.'

The confidence in his voice made her shake her head.

At some point they found themselves sitting on the edge of the pool, feet dangling in the water while the afternoon gradually softened around them. The sun hung lower now, painting everything in shades of gold that turned the surface of the pool into rippling sheets of light. The backyard remained busy, but the energy had changed. The frantic excitement of the game had faded into something slower. More comfortable.

The conversation between them wandered just as aimlessly.

Several times, Y/N found herself laughing so hard she nearly lost her balance.

Several times, Jaafar looked suspiciously pleased with himself afterward.

Beside her, Jaafar skimmed his fingers absentmindedly through the surface of the water while listening to whatever story she was currently telling. Every now and then he laughed. Every now and then she caught him smiling before she'd even reached the punchline.

The familiarity of it should have felt strange but instead, it felt natural enough to be dangerous.

Eventually, people started leaving and before long, Y/N found herself standing beside her car while saying goodbye to people one by one.

The farewell with Jaafar should have felt ordinary. It didn't.

Just a smile. A quick 'see you.' A promise to continue an argument they'd started earlier. The kind of goodbye friends exchanged every day.

Once she got home, she got directly into the shower to wash the chlorine away. She couldn’t stop thinking about the day, she had lots of fun and she ate amazing food but her thoughts kept circling around the same person.

By the time she finally climbed into bed, the afternoon existed mostly as a pleasant blur of sunlight and laughter, the sort of day that left behind a feeling rather than a sequence of memories.

Her phone buzzed.

Jermajesty.

Y/N opened the message without thinking.

The photograph loaded immediately.

For a second she simply stared.

She and Jaafar sat side by side on the edge of the pool, feet in the water. Neither was looking at the camera. In fact, neither seemed remotely aware it existed. Y/N was halfway through saying something. Jaafar was looking at her while she spoke, smiling at whatever story she'd been telling.

The image carried the effortless intimacy of a moment that hadn't known it was being observed.

A second message appeared beneath it.

Jermajesty🥳 disgustingly cute btw

Y/N immediately laughed.

Then another notification appeared.

Different conversation.

Different name.

Her smile faded.

Only because surprise arrived first.

Jaafar.

For one ridiculous second, her pulse actually sped up.

Jaafar Are you free tomorrow?