#found strength

✨ Summary

After everything—after blood, whispers, and survival—Emma finally finds something she never expected: peace. But peace is fragile… and the Crown is watching.

⚠️ Warnings

light suggestive content

mentions of past violence / trial

political tension

emotional vulnerability

💌 Author’s Note

i really loved writing this chapter—getting to slow things down and let emma breathe for a moment meant a lot to me 🤍

“in another lifetime we will be brave enough to love each other out loud.” — j.b

Emilia McKenna is the kind of woman who walks into a room and makes it stand up straighter—not out of fear, but out of respect.

She’s bossy, yes. Sharp-tongued when she needs to be, and often when she doesn’t. But it’s not the kind of bossy that grates—it’s the kind that keeps people alive. It’s the kind that yanks a soldier out of a downward spiral by the collar and says, “Nope, not today.” And then hands him a cup of coffee, just sweet enough to mean she still gives a damn.

Born and raised in Beverly Hills, California—the glamorous part, with glittering windows, sprawling estates, and dinner parties filled with names you’d recognise from silver screens. But for Emilia, it never felt like a dream. It felt hollow. All that luxury, all that beauty, and still, she felt like the quietest person in every room. Her parents were more acquainted with martinis and masquerades than bedtime stories. And in the spaces between their glittering lives, Emilia was left to raise herself—and later, her younger brothers, Paul and Alan. Behind the polished gates and manicured lawns, she learned that loneliness doesn't always come from absence—sometimes, it lives in the silence between chandeliers.

Her mother, a soft-voiced German woman who braided Emilia’s hair with lullabies, passed away when Emilia was barely out of childhood. After that, the house grew quiet. Then bitter. Her father, an American with grief hardening in his chest, drowned himself in liquor and silence until he had nothing left to give but rage. Emilia learned early how to survive storms—and how to keep other people warm in the rain.

She became a teacher. Because it made sense. Because people listened to her. Because it felt like control in a world that kept taking. But when the war came, and her brothers left, and more names started filling the papers than birthdays ever could—she traded chalk for bandages.

Joining the Red Cross wasn’t about adventure. It was about usefulness. About being the hands that held broken bodies and kept them from slipping through the cracks. About giving soldiers what no one gave her father: comfort without shame.

And then there was Brady.

John Brady—the pilot with too much grief behind his grin and too much fire in his heart. Emilia met him in the worst possible place and the best possible moment. She didn’t fall in love with him all at once. She rolled her eyes at him. She told him to sit still and shut up more times than she could count. But beneath the jokes and the temper and the scowl, she saw something familiar: someone who’d lost too much too young and didn’t know how to put the pieces down.

He didn’t change her. She was never someone who needed changing. But he cracked something open in her—a tenderness she’d boarded up for years. With Brady, she remembered what it felt like to laugh without bracing for impact. To smile without calculating the cost. To be cared for, not just needed.

⚠️ Warnings

This fic contains themes of emotional abuse and toxic family dynamics, references to physical abuse, heavy angst and grief, forced marriage dynamics, power imbalance, and discussions of autonomy, consent, and identity, with emotionally intense scenes of separation and vulnerability.

Summary

The rain does not stop the day Emma leaves Ashford.

She walks away from the home that shaped her, from the siblings she loves, and from a father who would never stop breaking her.

In the quiet of a sept with no celebration, she binds her life to Prince Maekar—not as a prize, not as a shadow, but as something new. Something unyielding.

A marriage forged not in love, but in choice.

And in the silence of their first night, something unexpected begins to take root—

Not possession.

Not fear.

But the fragile, dangerous possibility of becoming.

The rain had not stopped.

It fell in a thin, endless curtain over Ashford, blurring the towers into gray shapes and turning the courtyard stones slick and shining. The banners hung heavy, their colors dulled.

Emma stood beneath the archway outside the inner ward, her wedding cloak clasped at her throat.

She had faced princes. Faced her father’s hand. Faced the weight of a kingdom watching her breathe.

This was worse.

Elinor stood several paces away, arms wrapped around herself as if bracing against cold that was not there. Their brother lingered behind her, jaw tight, eyes too bright.

No one spoke at first.

If they did, it would become real.

Finally, Elinor crossed the distance in three uneven steps and seized Emma’s hands.

“You cannot go,” she said — not dramatic, not hysterical. Just broken.

Emma’s composure faltered instantly.

“I have to.”

“He will be worse,” Elinor whispered. “Without you here to stand in front of him.”

The truth of it struck like a blade.

Emma swallowed. “Then stand beside each other.”

Elinor shook her head fiercely. “You do not understand.”

“I understand perfectly.”

“No,” Elinor said, tears spilling now. “You leave. I stay.”

The words landed.

Emma had endured cruelty so long she had almost forgotten what it meant to be chosen.

Now she was choosing to leave them in it.

She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around her sister.

Elinor collapsed into her, sobbing — not delicately, not prettily — but with the raw grief of someone losing the only shield she had ever known. Edmund ran behind her coming into their embrace grasping at both of her siblings. 

Emma held them tighter than she ever had before.

“You are not small,” Emma whispered against her hair. “Do you hear me? He wants you to believe you are small. You are not.”

“I am not you,” Elinor choked.

Emma pulled back just enough to cup her sister’s face.

“Good,” she said through tears. “Be something better. Be softer where I was hard. Be clever where I was reckless. But do not bend.Have a life fall in love make your own families your one life sweet ones”

Elinor’s hands trembled as she touched Emma’s cheek — brushing the faint mark that had not fully faded.

“He hit you.”

“Yes.”

“And you are still leaving.”

Emma closed her eyes briefly.

“I am not leaving because he struck me,” she said quietly. “I am leaving because he will never stop.”

That silenced them both.

“I will be lord one day,” he said, voice strained drying his eyes. “When I am, I will not be like him.”

Emma dropped to her knees in front of him.

“You must not be,” she said fiercely.

“I am afraid,” he whispered.

Emma pressed her face into his shoulder and wept.

Not the silent tears of endurance.

But grief — loud and ugly and unguarded.

“I know,” she breathed. “So am I.”

She pulled back and gripped his shoulders.

“You protect each other."

“I will.”

“You listen more than you speak.”

He nodded.

“And if he ever turns on you—”

“He won’t.”

“If he ever does,” she pressed, “you send word. I do not care how. I will come.”

Elinor let out a soft, shattered sound.

Emma stood slowly, feeling as though she were tearing something vital from her own chest.

She looked at Ashford one last time.

The stone walls.

The narrow windows.

The place that had shaped her.

The place that had hurt her.

“I love you,” she said.

It was the first time she had ever said it aloud to them.

Elinor broke completely.

Their brother did too.

When Emma finally stepped away, it felt like walking through fire.

She did not look back again.

If she did, she would not leave.

Prince Baelor received her in a quiet chamber near the sept, seated despite the stiffness in his bound shoulder. He rose when she entered anyway.

“You need not stand,” Emma said.

“I would,” he replied gently, “for my future goodsister.”

There was warmth in it. Not mockery.

He studied her face — and saw everything.

“You  said your goodbyes.”

“Yes.”

“The worst battle of them all.”

She gave a faint, humorless breath of a laugh.

“I think I would have preferred another trial.”

Baelor’s expression softened.

Baelor's good hand rested on her shoulder. 

Her dress was simple; her mothers wedding dress and maiden cloak had been taken out of storage for the occasion. 

“May I offer you a word of advice” 

Emma stilled. 

“Do not let my brother push you away.”

“I have seen him do it,” Baelor continued quietly. “When he cares, he withdraws. He believes distance is protection. That if he hardens himself first, he cannot be wounded.”

“And you believe he cares?” she asked carefully.

Baelor’s mouth curved faintly. “I know he does.”

Emma looked away.

“He will try,” Baelor went on. “In memory of what he has lost. In memory of Dyanna.”

The name lingered between them.

Emma did not ask who she had been. She did not need to.

Everyone knew of Prince Maekar first wife sweet Dyanna gentle Dyanna dying of an unknown heart problem.

“A kindness he could not save,” Baelor replied.

Emma absorbed that.

“He will compare you,” Baelor said gently. “Not aloud. Not cruelly. But in silence. And when he feels himself caring for you differently, he may retreat. He may pretend to be indifferent. He may grow cold.”

Emma’s throat tightened.

“What am I meant to do with that?”

“Offer him something better,” Baelor said.

She looked at him.

“Not a replacement,” he clarified. “Not a memory rewritten. Something new. Something he has never had.”

“And what is that?”

Baelor’s gaze was perceptive — almost amused.

“Someone who does not need him to be invulnerable.”

Silence stretched.

“He has always been duty first,” Baelor said. “Sword before self. If you show him that he may be both… you will give him something no crown ever could.”

Emma considered that carefully.

“And if I fail?”

Baelor smiled softly.

“You survived your father. I suspect my brother stands little chance against you.”

For the first time that morning, Emma felt something steadier than grief.

“Thank you,” she said.

Baelor inclined his head.

“Do not let him push you away,” he repeated. “And do not allow yourself to disappear either.”

It was small — but it was not simple.

The Sept of Ashford smelled of wax and cold stone, of incense burned too long into the walls. Rain tapped faintly against the narrow colored glass. The Seven watched from their carved alcoves — Father stern, Mother merciful, Warrior unyielding.

No grand court filled the pews.

No cheering crowds.

But it was not empty.

Her father stood rigid near the front, hands clasped behind his back, expression carved from granite. He wore mourning black, though no one had died.

Not yet.

Elinor stood beside him, pale but composed, fingers laced so tightly together her knuckles blanched white. Their brother stood straight as a spear, chin lifted in fierce determination not to show weakness.

And before the altar waited Prince Baelor, solemn and observant, bearing witness with the quiet gravity of a man who understood the weight of what was being forged.

At the center stood Maekar.

Black and deep red — House Targaryen woven in silk and shadow. His silver hair was bound back from his face, his injured arm supported beneath dark leather, but he stood unbowed.

Emma walked the length of the sept alone.

She wore ivory silk, unembellished but for the maiden cloak fastened at her shoulders — her mother’s cloak. Ashford colors. Ashford sigil. The fabric felt heavier than it should have, as though it carried every memory stitched into it.

She did not look at her father as she passed him.

She did look at Elinor.

Their eyes locked.

Hold.

The septon’s voice rose, echoing softly through the stone chamber.

“We are gathered before the eyes of gods and men…”

Emma stood before Maekar at last.

The candles burned steadily between them.

The septon took her maiden cloak in his hands first.

“Who comes to claim this woman?”

The question hung like a blade.

Lord Ashford stepped forward.

“My daughter stands here of her own will,” he said.

The words were correct.

The tone was not.

Emma felt it — the final assertion of possession before relinquishment.

Maekar did not look at her father.

He looked only at her.

The septon lifted the maiden cloak from her shoulders.

The absence of its weight was sudden.

Sharp.

Ashford colors fell away.

Maekar took up the bride’s cloak — Targaryen red and black, the three-headed dragon worked in dark thread along its hem.

For a moment, his hands hovered.

Not assuming.

Asking.

Emma inclined her head.

He draped the cloak around her shoulders carefully — reverently — fastening it over her heart.

“With this kiss,” the septon intoned, “I pledge my love. With this cloak, I pledge my protection. With this ring, I pledge my life.”

The words settled like stones in water.

Maekar’s voice was firm when he spoke.

“I will stand beside you. In storm and flame. In honor and in ruin. I will guard your name as fiercely as my own. I will not silence your voice, nor diminish your fire. Before gods and men, I bind my fate to yours.”

Beside.

Not above.

Not over.

Emma felt something inside her steady.

When it was her turn, she did not lower her gaze.

“I will not bow in fear,” she said clearly, her voice carrying through the sept. “I will not yield in silence. I will not be broken into something smaller to ease a man’s pride.”

A faint tightening flickered across her father’s jaw.

She did not look at him.

“I will stand with you in truth,” she continued, eyes locked on Maekar’s. “Not as a shadow. Not as an ornament. But as an equal flame. I give you my loyalty freely — and I will expect yours the same.”

The septon bound their hands together with silken cord.

The knot was intricate, ceremonial.

But it felt heavier than iron.

Emma felt the warmth of Maekar’s skin against hers — solid, steady, real.

The septon called upon the Father to judge, the Mother to bless, the Warrior to strengthen, the Smith to forge, the Maiden to protect, the Crone to guide, the Stranger to witness.

Seven blessings.

Seven vows.

Seven witnesses in stone.

When the binding was complete, the septon stepped back.

“You are one flesh, one heart, one soul. Cursed be he who would seek to tear you asunder.”

Silence filled the sept.

No roar of approval.

No drunken cheer.

Just the quiet weight of inevitability.

Maekar did not seize her in triumph.

Did not perform for the room.

He lifted their bound hands slightly — just enough to press his forehead briefly against hers.

A private gesture in a public space.

Then he untied the cord and did something far quieter.

He kept her hand.

Not as possession.

Not as proof.

But as promise.

Across the sept, Elinor’s eyes shone with tears.

Their brother stood straighter still.

And Lord Ashford watched in silence as his daughter stepped fully beneath another house’s banner — and did not once look back for his approval.

There was no bedding ceremony.

Maekar had ended any suggestion of it with a look alone.

“She is not to be handled like spoils,” he had said.

No one argued.

Their chambers were quiet that night.

Emma stood near the hearth, tension coiled in her spine.

Maekar removed his sword belt and set it aside.

Then he poured two cups of wine.

“I will not touch you,” he said.

She looked at him.

“I will wait,” he continued. “Until you want me to.”

The words settled into her slowly.

No one had ever offered her patience before.

“You are my wife,” he said quietly. “Not my conquest.”

Emotion rose sharply and suddenly.

“I do not know how to be this,” she admitted.

“You do not need to know tonight.”

He handed her the wine.

They sat near the fire — not in the bed — facing one another like uncertain allies.

“I am afraid,” she said after a long silence.

“Of me?”

“No.” She swallowed. “Of losing myself.”

Maekar considered that carefully.

“Then do not,” he said simply. “If I ever make you feel small, you tell me.”

“You are a prince.”

“And you are now a  princess.”

She studied him over the rim of her cup.

“Your brother warned me,” she said softly.

Maekar’s brow lifted slightly. “About?”

“That you might try to push me away.”

A flicker — there and gone.

“He sees too much.”

“Will you?”

Silence.

“I do not know how to be both,” he admitted at last. “Duty. And… this.”

Emma set her cup down.

“Then we will learn,” she said. “Not in memory. Not in comparison. Something new.”

His eyes searched her face.

“Something new,” he repeated.

The fire cracked softly.

After a moment, he moved to the bed — but lay on the far side, leaving space between them.

True to his word.

Emma lay awake for a long time, staring at the dark ceiling.

She had left her sister.

Left her brother.

Left the only home she had ever known.

But she had not left herself.

And for the first time in her life —