#one-shot

King’s Landing had never smelled like peace.

It smelled of smoke, hot stone, old fish, horse sweat, rotten fruit, scented oil, dragon musk, and the stink of too many men pretending that silk made them less mortal. From above, upon the saddle of Velyrax, the city looked almost worthy of songs: the Blackwater glittering under the pale morning sun, the Red Keep rising red and severe above Aegon’s High Hill, the Dragonpit crouched like a half-buried crown upon Rhaenys’s Hill, its great bronze doors swallowing beasts that had once made kings kneel. From closer, the illusion always curdled. Streets narrowed into veins. Flea Bottom steamed. Sept bells rang. Somewhere below, someone was being born, someone was dying, and someone was selling watered wine to a fool who deserved worse. It was the same city your kin had ruled, the same city your father had mocked, the same city King Viserys still tried to hold together with feasts, marriages, smiles, and the rotting remnants of his own flesh.

Velyrax descended in a long, smooth spiral, his wings catching the wind over the Blackwater before folding close to his body as he dropped toward the Dragonpit. He was not the largest dragon in the world, not while Vhagar yet lived and not while Caraxes still coiled around towers and cliffs like a red nightmare made obedient by will alone, but he was no hatchling either. Your mother had chosen his egg herself, a dark sea-green thing veined in dull silver, warm beneath her hand before you had even been named. Laena Velaryon had told Daemon Targaryen that the egg looked as if the sea had swallowed moonlight and refused to give it back. Daemon, never one to allow poetry to go unchallenged, had called it ugly. Three moons later it hatched in your cradle, snapping at the wet nurse and curling its tail around your ankle as if deciding the matter of ownership before gods or men could interfere. You had named him Velyrax when you were still young enough to think names were simple things. A Velaryon sound for your mother’s blood, a hard Valyrian ending for your father’s. A dragon fit for a son born between salt and fire.

His scales had deepened with age, green as storm-dark water across the back, fading to pale silver along the throat and belly. In sunlight his wings showed threads of bronze, and when angered, the membranes flushed almost black. His eyes were amber, bright and mean, with an old intelligence that made stableboys cross themselves and dragonkeepers mutter to each other in High Valyrian when they thought you were not listening. His flame burned pale at the center and green at the edges, beautiful in the way wildfire was beautiful, which meant no sane man wished to admire it for long.

He landed with a shudder that rattled through the stones. Dust leapt around his claws. Dragonkeepers came forward with chains, hooks, and low voices, careful as priests serving a god they knew would gladly eat them. You slid from the saddle, one gloved hand still against Velyrax’s neck until he lowered his great head beside you. His breath washed over your shoulder, hot and metallic.

“Rȳbās,” you murmured, and his rumble vibrated through your bones.

The dragonkeepers bowed. One old man, scarred from brow to chin by some beast’s past displeasure, looked past you toward the great doors. “Prince Y/N,” he said. “The queen’s daughter waits within the yard.”

You did not correct him. No one did, not anymore. Helaena was Princess Helaena by birth, your wife by law, beloved of the smallfolk by some miracle of gentle manners and maternal softness. Yet in King’s Landing, titles clung to people like cobwebs, and men spoke them wrong whenever fear made their tongues stupid. Queen Alicent’s daughter. Daemon’s good-daughter. Viserys’s peace offering. Your wife. Your Helaena, though even thinking it so plainly would have made half the court itch with offense, as if love were vulgar when not first approved by a council table.

You found her waiting beneath the inner archway of the Dragonpit, not close enough for Velyrax to take insult and not far enough to seem afraid. She wore pale blue silk today, soft as washed sky, with a mantle embroidered in silver thread over her shoulders. Her hair, silver-gold and heavy, had been braided simply and bound with small pearls. She had never had your father’s taste for display, nor your stepmother’s regal severity, nor Alicent’s careful pageantry. Helaena always seemed dressed for herself first and the realm second, a quiet rebellion so harmless in appearance that no lord knew where to place his disapproval.

At her side stood your son, Jaehaerys, three years old, solemn as a maester and clutching a carved wooden dragon in one fist. His hair was pale like hers, curling slightly at the ends, and his eyes were yours, dark violet with a ring of blue around the iris. Viserys had wept when the babe was named, because Viserys could weep at a song, a memory, a wound, or a plate of honeyed figs if it came garnished with enough sentiment. Your father had scoffed. Alicent had prayed. Otto Hightower had smiled the way men smiled when counting future coins. Helaena had only looked at the child against her breast and said the name suited him, which had ended the argument more cleanly than any royal command.

Jaehaerys saw you and broke from his nurse with all the dignity of a charging puppy. “Father!”

You went down on one knee before he reached you, catching him against your chest. His little arms locked around your neck. He smelled of milk, soap, and the lavender sachets Helaena tucked among his linens. For a moment, the city vanished. The court vanished. Blood claims, succession, gossip, bastardy, councils, Driftmark, Dragonstone, Oldtown, all of it shrank into nothing beside the warm weight of your son in your arms.

“You have grown taller since dawn,” you told him gravely.

He leaned back and frowned as if weighing the truth of this. “No.”

“No? Then heavier.”

“Maybe.”

“Helaena, the boy admits to maybe. We are raising a cautious prince.”

Helaena’s mouth curved. She came toward you, her gaze moving briefly past your shoulder to Velyrax, who watched her with one narrowed amber eye. Unlike many in the Red Keep, Helaena had never hated dragons merely because they were dangerous. Dreamfyre was her own, after all, old and pale and strange, with blue wings and a roar like tearing silk. But Velyrax was your father’s son in spirit, ill-tempered, proud, and fond of frightening men who had not yet earned the courtesy.

“Caution is rare enough in this family,” she said. “We should treasure it before someone teaches him glory.”

You rose with Jaehaerys still in your arms. “Someone will try by supper.”

“Your father arrived last night.”

There it was, spoken softly, as though the words were a cup placed near the edge of a table. Daemon Targaryen had returned to King’s Landing with Princess Rhaenyra and their children, as commanded by the king for the matter of Driftmark, for Lord Corlys lay wounded and fevered after war in the Stepstones, and men had begun gathering like flies wherever inheritance bled. Vaemond Velaryon had come to press his claim. Your alleged cousins, Jacaerys and Lucerys, had come because their names were always the knife men reached for when striking at Rhaenyra. Your sisters, Baela and Rhaena, had come because they were Laena’s daughters and could not be kept from a question of their mother’s house. And you had been summoned because you were the oldest child and only son of Daemon Targaryen and Laena Velaryon, which made you inconvenient in every possible direction.

The realm called Jacaerys and Lucerys Velaryon because the realm had been told to do so. Songs could lie prettily. Heralds could lie loudly. Septons could sanctify a lie until men knelt before it. But blood had eyes, hair, mouths, gestures, and the court had never stopped looking. You had grown beside Baela and Rhaena knowing that truth could be a blade even when left sheathed. Laena had never taught you cruelty. Daemon had taught you that mercy was often a luxury purchased by someone else’s weakness. Between them, you had learned to keep your own counsel.

Helaena reached out and brushed a loose strand of hair from Jaehaerys’s brow. “Vaemond has asked to speak with you before the petition.”

“Has he?”

“He asked my mother where you were housed. She said she did not know.”

That meant Alicent knew precisely where you were housed and had chosen not to give Vaemond the satisfaction. A small mercy, or a calculation. With Alicent, it was often both.

“You should not see him alone,” Helaena added.

You studied her face. She did not look frightened. Helaena was seldom as fragile as those who wished to use her believed. She had a softness to her, yes, and a tenderness that had somehow survived the Red Keep, which was a rarer thing than dragon eggs. But softness was not stupidity. Silk could cover mail. A gentle voice could refuse more cleanly than a shout.

“Do you think he means to threaten me?”

“I think men say honor when they want something bloody done by another hand.”

You kissed Jaehaerys on the temple and gave him back to his nurse. “Stay with your mother.”

The boy looked at Velyrax. “Can I see him?”

“From far away.”

“I am brave.”

“You are three.”

“I am brave three.”

Helaena laughed then, low and warm, and the sound loosened something in your chest. She took Jaehaerys’s hand. “Brave three-year-old princes stand with their mothers and do not become breakfast.”

Velyrax snorted, smoke curling from his nostrils as if offended by the suggestion that he would stoop to eating something so small. Jaehaerys stared in awe. The dragonkeepers tightened their hands around their chains and pretended not to be afraid, which was a fine summary of Targaryen rule.

You walked with Helaena from the Dragonpit toward the covered way where litters and guards waited to return you to the Red Keep. Your sworn sword, Ser Corwyn, fell in behind at a respectful distance, and two of Helaena’s ladies followed with the nurse and child. The city moved around you in a blur of faces and bowed heads. Some called blessings for Princess Helaena. A woman with a basket of onions lifted a hand and shouted that the gods keep the sweet princess and her boy. Helaena smiled to her, not the empty court smile of someone acknowledging furniture that had learned to speak, but a real expression, brief and kind. The woman nearly wept.

“You do that too easily,” you said.

“What?”

“Make them love you.”

She gave you a sidelong look. “It is not difficult to be kind to people who have done me no harm.”

“That philosophy would kill my father.”

“Your father survives many things out of spite. He would survive kindness too, though he would resent it.”

You almost smiled. “He did when he learned I was to marry you.”

Helaena’s gaze lowered for a moment. The old wound had long scarred over, but scars were still proof that something had been cut.

You remembered it too well. The king had still been stronger then, though already swollen in places and missing two fingers. Viserys had summoned Daemon to the council chamber, where Otto Hightower sat with his hands folded, Lord Beesbury blinking over accounts, Grand Maester Mellos smelling faintly of herbs and old cloth, and Alicent standing beside the king’s chair in green velvet. You had been young, not yet wise enough to hide all your feelings and no longer young enough to be excused from the consequences of them. Helaena had stood across the chamber with her mother’s hand upon her shoulder, eyes down, cheeks pale, her hair pinned beneath a net of pearls. The king had spoken of healing divisions, of binding branches, of old hurts soothed by new vows. He had called you his blood twice and Helaena his dearest girl three times. Then he had announced the betrothal.

Daemon’s laughter had been worse than rage at first. A brief, bright sound without mirth. “No.”

Viserys had winced. “Brother.”

“No,” Daemon said again, and this time the word had teeth. “You do not get to heal your house by selling my son across the table like a cup of Arbor gold.”

Alicent’s face tightened. “Princess Helaena is not a cup to be sold.”

“Then take your father’s fingers from the bargain.”

Otto’s expression did not change. That was one of the things you had hated first about him, that stillness. It was not calm. It was practice.

Viserys had pushed himself upright, breathing hard. “This is not a punishment.”

“It is not a kindness.”

“It is a marriage,” the king said, voice cracking with effort. “A marriage between kin, between dragonriders, between the blood of my brother and the blood of my daughter. You think I do not know what is said in this castle? You think I do not hear the whispers? My house is splitting before my eyes. Let this be one knot tied before the rope frays beyond repair.”

Daemon had stepped closer to the table. Every guard in the room had become more aware of his sword. “You want peace? Name Rhaenyra plainly again. Send your leeches in green back to Oldtown. Stop letting these carrion birds pick at your heir’s children. That would make peace.”

“Enough,” Viserys snapped, and for a heartbeat he looked like the young king he had once been, angry, flushed, and certain the world should obey because he wished it so. Then pain took him, and he sank back.

Helaena had looked at you then. Not pleading. Not pleased. Only looking, as if trying to see whether you would become another man deciding the shape of her life while speaking over her head. You had hated the match because it was a chain, because it was Viserys trying to stitch a wound with living thread, because Daemon’s fury moved in your blood as naturally as breath. But you had hated more the way everyone spoke as if Helaena were a chair to be moved from one side of the hall to another.

So you had asked, “Does the princess consent?”

The chamber had gone silent.

Alicent’s hand tightened on Helaena’s shoulder. Daemon’s eyes cut to you, unreadable. Viserys looked startled, and then ashamed. Helaena had lifted her chin.

“I will do what is required,” she had said.

“That was not the question,” you replied.

Something changed in her face then. Not much. Enough.

“I would rather marry someone who asks than someone who does not,” Helaena said.

Not love. Not joy. Not even hope. But it had been the first honest stone laid between you. Years later, it remained the one that mattered most.

Now, walking through King’s Landing with your son behind you and your wife at your side, you wondered whether Viserys had ever understood what he had made. He had wanted a bridge. The court had wanted a hostage shaped like a husband. Daemon had seen a theft. Alicent had seen a risk and a safeguard woven together. Otto had seen numbers moving across a board. Helaena had seen a stranger who asked. You had seen a girl given no room to refuse, and perhaps that was where affection began: not with desire, not with songs, but with the simple act of not turning another person into a thing.

The Red Keep received you with its usual appetite. Servants moved through corridors carrying linen, wine, rushes, polished trays, and secrets. Guards stood beside doors trying not to overhear what their wages depended on them hearing. Courtiers bowed, murmured, retreated. Everywhere there were colors. Black and red. Green and gold. Seahorse silver. Hightower flame. Dragons on breasts, dragons on cloaks, dragons carved into lintels, dragons painted on shields. A dead dynasty could not have decorated its own tomb better.

Vaemond Velaryon found you before the hour of petition.

He waited in a small gallery overlooking the outer ward, a proud man with a hard mouth and silver hair bound at the nape of his neck. His cloak was sea-blue, clasped with a silver seahorse. He bowed, correctly but without warmth.

“Prince Y/N.”

“Ser Vaemond.”

“I thank you for granting me this moment.”

“I did not grant it. You stood in my path.”

His nostrils flared. “You have your father’s courtesy.”

“And my mother’s patience. Spend it carefully.”

Vaemond’s gaze shifted past you, perhaps seeking listeners. Ser Corwyn remained by the archway with one hand resting near his sword. Not near enough to insult. Near enough to remind.

“I come for justice,” Vaemond said.

“Most men who say that come for advancement.”

“Driftmark is not an advancement. It is my blood.”

“It is Lord Corlys’s seat.”

“Lord Corlys lies near death.”

“Then pray for him.”

Vaemond stepped closer. “Do not play the fool. You are Laena’s son. Her firstborn. A dragonrider. The blood of the sea snake runs in you, as it does not run in the boy they mean to seat upon the Driftwood Throne.”

There it was, naked at last. Men dressed ambition in law the way corpses were dressed for burial, but rot always found air.

“You mean Lucerys,” you said.

“I mean the truth.”

“You mean treason, if spoken too loudly.”

“I mean to prevent a theft. If you will not support my claim, press your own. Many would follow you.”

You watched him. “Would you?”

Vaemond’s mouth closed.

“No,” you said. “You would use my name to break his, then call me ungrateful when I did not kneel to your counsel afterward.”

“You dishonor your mother by allowing her house to pass to a bastard.”

Your hand moved before thought completed itself, closing around the front of his cloak and driving him back into the carved stone beside the window. Ser Corwyn shifted, but you did not draw steel. Not yet. Vaemond’s eyes widened, less with fear than surprise. Men who called themselves truth-tellers were often shocked when their truth earned fingers at their throat.

“My mother,” you said quietly, “rode Vhagar before you ever thought yourself brave. She crossed seas, defied comfort, and laughed at men who mistook lineage for worth. Do not place her name in your mouth to sweeten your hunger.”

Vaemond’s face darkened. “You know what those boys are.”

“I know what they have been named.”

“Names do not change blood.”

“No,” you said. “But men have drowned in less than what you are stirring.”

He stared at you for a long moment, then gave a thin smile. “Your marriage has softened you.”

Your grip tightened once, enough to pull cloth against his windpipe. “My marriage has taught me that men who speak of family often mean possession.”

You released him. Vaemond smoothed his cloak with stiff, furious hands.

“When the king dies,” he said, voice low, “all these pretty arrangements will die with him.”

“Then be careful you do not join them first.”

The petition was heard in the throne room beneath the blades of dead kings.

He left you there, his footsteps hard on stone. You watched him go without satisfaction. There were men at court who could be dismissed as fools, which made life easier. Vaemond was not a fool. That was worse. He had measured the weakness in the realm and found the seam. If he had not been so proud, he might have been truly dangerous. As it was, pride would put a sword or an axe through him soon enough. Westeros loved nothing so much as a man loudly carrying kindling into a room full of candles.

You stood with Helaena near the side of the hall, Jaehaerys kept away with his nurse, thank the gods. Rhaenyra stood tall in black and red, heavy with pregnancy, her face controlled but pale around the mouth. Beside her were Jacaerys and Lucerys, trying to look older than they were. Poor Luke looked as if the weight of Driftmark might crush him before he ever saw its tides again. Your sisters stood nearby, Baela fierce-eyed, Rhaena quieter but no less watchful. Daemon leaned with one hand on Dark Sister’s pommel, boredom draped over him so elegantly that only those who knew him saw the violence beneath it.

Alicent sat in green beside the Hand. Otto Hightower held court with the calm of a man who had already written three endings and was waiting to see which fool chose which road. The king was absent at first, too ill, it was said, and the Hand began in his name. The air tasted of dust and iron. Men whispered. Women watched. Vaemond spoke boldly, his voice carrying through the hall, laying out bloodlines, claims, rights. He did not press your name. Not after the gallery. But he let it hover. Laena’s son, unspoken. Laena’s blood, available in the room. A better claim than the boy’s, if one wished to pretend this was all about law and not about gutting Rhaenyra before witnesses.

Rhaenyra answered. Her words were careful, her anger hidden beneath royal composure. She spoke of Lord Corlys’s wish, of betrothals, of the king’s declared will. Then the doors opened.

Viserys came in wearing the crown of the Conciliator.

No one forgot that sight. Not afterward. Not even those who hated him. He was half a corpse and yet still the king, leaning on his cane, face masked in gold where disease had taken him, breath harsh enough to carry in the silence. Every step looked like punishment. Every inch forward was a commandment. He crossed the throne room because Rhaenyra had asked, because his brother watched, because his house was tearing itself apart and some ruined stubbornness in him still believed a father might forbid the storm.

No one helped him at first. Pride would not let them, or shock. Then Daemon moved. He went to his brother and lifted the fallen crown, placing it back upon Viserys’s head with a tenderness so brief it almost seemed imagined. Your throat tightened despite yourself. Daemon was many things, few of them safe, but he had loved his brother in the bitter, furious way dragons loved anything: possessively, destructively, beyond reason.

Viserys climbed the Iron Throne and bled for it.

When he spoke, his voice was weak, but the throne room bent to hear. Lucerys was heir to Driftmark. Lord Corlys’s wishes stood. The matter was settled.

It should have ended there. In a better realm, it might have. In this one, Vaemond Velaryon decided that pride was worth more than survival.

He denounced the boys. He called them what half the court whispered and no one with a functioning neck spoke before the king. Rhaenyra’s face went white. Alicent rose. Otto’s eyes closed for the briefest moment, as if he had seen the abyss and found even his appetite overmatched. Viserys dragged himself upright in a fury that seemed to tear the last strength from his bones.

“I will have your tongue for that,” the king rasped.

Daemon was already moving.

Dark Sister flashed once.

Vaemond’s head did not fall cleanly as songs would later claim. No death was as clean as singers made it. Blood struck the stone. Someone screamed. Helaena flinched, not dramatically, not like a maiden in a mummer’s farce, but as a woman startled by the sudden arrival of death in a room where men had been pretending words were not weapons. You stepped half in front of her on instinct. Daemon looked down at the corpse and said something low enough that only those nearest heard it.

“He can keep his tongue.”

The throne room erupted into noise.

Helaena’s hand found your sleeve. Her fingers pressed into the black fabric. You looked at her, expecting horror, disgust, perhaps the quiet condemnation of someone who had grown up among Hightowers and septons and still hoped men might solve things without spilling blood beneath the king’s eyes.

Instead she said, very softly, “He should have stopped.”

It was not approval. It was worse, perhaps. It was understanding.

Your father cleaned Dark Sister as though removing rainwater. Rhaenyra did not look at the body. Alicent did. Otto began issuing orders. Viserys sagged upon the throne, and for one moment you saw what this had cost him. Not the petition. Not Vaemond. The knowledge. He knew. Gods help him, he had always known. He had simply chosen love, or denial, or both, and called it law because kings had the privilege of naming their grief.

By evening, the Red Keep had done what it always did with blood. It scrubbed the stone, changed the rushes, lit candles, roasted meat, poured wine, and pretended the smell had gone.

The king commanded a supper.

That was Viserys all over. A man could lose half his face, a brother could behead a lord in open court, succession could sit at the table like a starving dog, and Viserys would still ask for music, cups, and reconciliation. He had built his reign out of avoidance and affection, and now, near its end, he reached for the same tools with trembling hands.

The feast was held in the queen’s apartments, smaller than a great hall banquet but no less heavy with performance. Viserys was carried in and set among cushions, the gold mask removed for part of the meal at his own insistence. The sight of him made many look away. Helaena did not. She rose, went to him, kissed his remaining cheek, and asked whether the pain was less after milk of the poppy. He patted her hand and called her his sweet girl.

You sat beside her with Jaehaerys on your knee for the first part of the meal. The boy behaved with grave dignity until offered sugared almonds, at which point he became a traitor to all discipline. Helaena took the dish away after his fifth, and he accepted this injustice with a wounded silence clearly inherited from no one in your family.

Rhaenyra sat across from Alicent. They exchanged courtesies that sounded almost real if one had never heard sincerity before. Jacaerys spoke politely to Baela. Rhaena smiled at Luke, perhaps to comfort him. Aegon drank too much and watched everything with that unpleasant mixture of boredom and resentment found in men who had been given every privilege except purpose. Aemond sat straight-backed, one eye covered by a sapphire beneath his patch, his mouth still as a carved line. Daeron was away in Oldtown, which may have made him the cleverest of Alicent’s sons by simple geography.

Daemon watched you more than he watched his wife’s enemies.

You felt it across the table. A father’s claim. A prince’s assessment. A dragon’s irritation that one of his own had chosen to roost in another wing of the castle. He had not forgiven the marriage. He had tolerated it because Helaena had given him no cause to despise her personally, because Jaehaerys was his grandson no matter whose daughter birthed him, and because Daemon, for all his violence, was not stupid enough to mistake your affection for weakness. But he had never stopped seeing the marriage as Viserys’s chain.

Viserys called for silence after the first courses. The room obeyed.

He spoke of family. Of old wounds. Of his love for them all. He asked, not as king but as a dying man, that they set aside grievances. It was painful because it was useless, and more painful because he meant it. Rhaenyra lifted her cup to Alicent, praising her care for the king. Alicent answered with grace and something like emotion. For one frail moment, peace entered the room and sat among you. Not strong peace. Not honest peace. But enough to make Viserys smile.

Helaena leaned closer to you. “He believes it while it is happening.”

You looked at the king. “That may be the kindest thing anyone can say of him.”

“He wanted us to be happy.”

“He wanted us to be useful.”

“Both can be true.”

You looked at her then, at the candlelight touching her cheek, at the calm intelligence in her eyes. “Are you?”

“Hm?”

“Happy.”

The question was too bare for the table, too intimate for a room full of enemies wearing kinship like borrowed cloaks. Helaena did not blush. She looked down at Jaehaerys, who had fallen asleep against your chest with one fist twisted in your sleeve.

“Yes,” she said. “Not always safely. But yes.”

A strange answer. A true one.

Aegon, already flushed with wine, leaned toward Jacaerys and muttered something that made Baela’s eyes flash. Jace went rigid. You did not hear the words, but you recognized the shape of them. Aegon had the gift of making even silence feel soiled. Helaena heard enough. She lifted her cup and said lightly, “Brother, if wine has made you clever, perhaps you should drink water before the miracle fades.”

Baela choked on a laugh. Rhaena hid her smile behind her cup. Aegon blinked, then smirked as if he had chosen to be amused rather than embarrassed. Alicent’s mouth tightened, but Viserys chuckled weakly, delighted by any sound that resembled family mirth.

Jace rose not long after and asked Helaena to dance, perhaps in courtesy, perhaps to prove himself unmoved, perhaps because kindness still lived in him despite all the men sharpening him for future war. In another life, in another arrangement, that moment might have belonged to different rumors. Here, Jace bowed to your wife as a prince to a princess, and then turned to you as well.

“With your permission, cousin?”

The word cousin hung between you. Legal cousin. Alleged cousin. Beloved cousin, if affection could decide what blood did not. You shifted Jaehaerys carefully to his nurse, then inclined your head.

“Helaena grants herself where she wishes. But if she treads on your foot, suffer nobly.”

“I do not tread,” Helaena said, rising.

“You do if distracted.”

“You speak as if you dance well enough to judge.”

“I survive.”

“You endure music until it ends and call that dancing.”

Jace laughed, and even Luke smiled. Helaena went with him, blue skirts moving softly over the floor. She danced well, not with Rhaenyra’s command or Baela’s fire, but with lightness, listening to the music rather than trying to conquer it. You watched her because you were her husband and because half the room watched who watched whom. That was marriage in the Red Keep. Even tenderness became evidence.

Daemon moved beside your chair while the musicians played.

“You refused Vaemond,” he said without preamble.

You did not look away from Helaena. “He asked for refusal.”

“He asked you to claim Driftmark?”

“He suggested justice might look improved with my face on it.”

Daemon laughed through his nose. “Fool.”

“Ambitious men often are when forced to speak plainly.”

“He insulted Laena.”

“He did.”

Daemon’s amusement thinned. “And yet he left that gallery with his head.”

“He was not worth making Helaena step over blood twice in one day.”

At that, your father looked at you fully. Daemon Targaryen’s eyes were pale and hard, and in certain moods they made men remember that dragons had never been domesticated, only negotiated with.

“You think like a husband.”

“I am one.”

“You were my son first.”

“I remain your son.”

“Do you?” His voice stayed soft. “When the king dies, there will be no more suppers like this. No more tears into wine. No more of Viserys holding a blanket over a pit and calling the floor mended. You know what comes.”

Across the room, Helaena turned under Jace’s hand, smiling faintly at something he said. Alicent watched them, not displeased, but not easy. Rhaenyra watched Alicent. Otto watched everyone.

“I know what men want to come,” you said.

Daemon leaned closer. “Then know where you stand before the ground cracks.”

“I stand with my wife and son.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the only answer that is not filth.”

His jaw worked. For a heartbeat you were a boy again, desperate for his approval and furious that you wanted it. Daemon had loved you fiercely after Laena died, but not gently. He taught by blade, by silence, by expectation. He had taken Baela’s wildness in stride, Rhaena’s quieter hurt with less ease, and your grief with the brutal confidence that sons should bleed standing. You had adored him. You had hated him. Often in the same breath.

“Do not let them make you their shield,” he said.

“Do not ask me to become your sword against them.”

Daemon’s eyes flicked to Helaena again. “She is Alicent’s blood.”

“She is my wife.”

“She is Aegon’s sister. Aemond’s. Otto’s granddaughter.”

“And Jaehaerys is your grandson. Shall we keep tally until everyone at this table is reduced to a threat?”

His smile came then, slight and dangerous. “You have Laena’s tongue when angered.”

“Better than yours. Mine has not been promised to the king for removal.”

Daemon looked almost proud. That hurt more than anger would have. “You are wasted in this place.”

“Most people are.”

“Come to Dragonstone after this. Bring the boy.”

You did look at him then. “And Helaena?”

His silence was answer enough.

“No,” you said.

“She would be treated with honor.”

“She is not a banner to capture politely.”

“Honor matters.”

“So does being asked.”

His face hardened. “You think I would force you?”

“I think you would call it rescue and expect gratitude.”

The music ended. Applause rose, brittle and relieved. Helaena curtsied to Jace and returned toward you. Daemon stepped back, the conversation folding itself away behind his eyes.

“Think on what I said,” he murmured.

“I have thought on little else for years.”

Then Aemond rose.

The toast that followed would later be retold in a dozen ways, each uglier than the last. He praised his nephews in a voice clean enough to cut meat, calling them strong, and the word landed as intended. Jace struck him. Luke shouted. Aegon laughed. Baela stood so quickly her chair scraped stone. Guards shifted. Alicent cried Aemond’s name. Rhaenyra called for her sons. For one brief, absurd moment, Viserys seemed not to understand why the word had wounded, and that was the saddest thing in the room.

Daemon moved like a drawn blade, placing himself before Aemond. You stood too, not toward Aemond, not toward Jace, but beside Helaena, whose face had gone still. Jaehaerys woke and began to cry in the nurse’s arms, startled by the noise. That sound cut through your restraint more cleanly than Aemond’s insult. Helaena took the child at once, murmuring to him, her hand steady against his back.

Aemond met Daemon’s stare and, to his credit or stupidity, did not look away. The room held its breath. If war had begun there, no one who knew that family would have been surprised. But Daemon smiled, slow and cold, and Aemond stepped back first.

The supper ended soon after.

So did Viserys’s peace.

Later, when the corridors had emptied and the castle settled into its midnight murmurs, you stood in the chamber assigned to you and listened to rain begin against the shutters. King’s Landing rain always sounded unclean, as if even the sky regretted touching the city. A fire burned low in the hearth. Two candles remained lit beside the bed. Jaehaerys slept in the adjoining nursery with his nurse nearby, guarded by men you trusted because trust, in the Red Keep, was not a feeling but an arrangement backed by wages, fear, and repeated testing.

Helaena stood at the table, unpinning her hair. Pearl after pearl clicked softly into a shallow dish. Her gown had been loosened at the back by her maid before the woman withdrew, leaving the fabric held at her shoulders by habit more than fastening. The exposed line of her neck looked pale in the candlelight. There was a faint red mark near her collarbone where Jaehaerys had clutched her too hard when frightened.

You closed the door bar.

She heard it and turned. “Is your father angry?”

“My father wakes angry. The day merely gives it shape.”

“That sounds tiring.”

“For everyone near him.”

“Did he ask you to leave with him?”

You crossed the room slowly. “He asked me to come to Dragonstone.”

“And me?”

You did not answer. Helaena nodded once, unsurprised.

“My mother asked me to remain in the queen’s apartments after you leave,” she said. “She said the child should stay close. She did not say close to what.”

“Otto?”

“Power. Fear. The king’s bedchamber. All of them, perhaps.”

You stopped before her. “I am not leaving you here as hostage to anyone’s courage or cowardice.”

“And I am not leaving my father to die among strangers.”

“He will not be among strangers.”

“He will be among people waiting.” Her voice remained calm, but pain lived under it. “Waiting for his breath to stop. Waiting to count ravens. Waiting to lock doors. Waiting to say what they have rehearsed in private for years.”

You touched her arms, lightly at first. “Helaena.”

She looked up at you. “Everyone thinks because I do not shout, I do not see. My mother sees danger and calls it duty. Your father sees insult and calls it truth. Rhaenyra sees birthright and calls it law. Aegon sees chains because no one taught him the difference between being denied and being unloved. Aemond sees every slight ever given to him and feeds them until they bite. My father sees what he wants to save and not what he has neglected. And you...”

“And I?”

“You stand in the middle and think that if you are strong enough, no one will make you choose.”

The words struck harder because she spoke them without accusation. You looked at her face, at the woman Viserys had handed to you as a treaty, the woman who had become the one person in the Keep before whom you had no appetite for disguise.

“I chose,” you said. “I chose you.”

Her breath caught. Only slightly. Enough.

“You choose me in this room.”

“I chose you before Vaemond. Before my father. Before every man who has mistaken our marriage for a road into my obedience.”

Helaena’s eyes shone, though she did not cry. “Do you ever hate it? What was done to us?”

“Yes.”

It would have been easy to soften the truth. A worse husband might have. “I hate that you were offered to me by men who had not earned the right to decide the hour you woke. I hate that my father looked at you and saw your mother’s blood before he saw your face. I hate that your grandfather counted the dragons our children might ride before he cared whether you smiled at supper. I hate that the king made a bridge of us and then wondered why everyone marched across it with boots.”

Helaena’s mouth trembled. “And us?”

“No.” You cupped her face. “Never us.”

The rain thickened, tapping against the shutters like small fingers. She leaned into your palm, eyes closing for a moment. When she opened them again, something had changed. Not abruptly. Helaena was not a storm. She was slower than that, more deliberate. She stepped closer and set her hands against your chest, fingers curling in the dark fabric of your tunic.

“I do not want to be peace tonight,” she said.

The words went through you with a heat that had nothing to do with the fire.

“What do you want to be?”

“Your wife.”

You bent and kissed her.

At first it was gentle because grief had filled the day, because blood had been spilled in front of her, because your son had cried against her breast while grown men played at honor with knives behind their teeth. Then her hands tightened, pulling you closer, and the kiss deepened into something less careful. Helaena made a small sound into your mouth, not fragile, not uncertain, but hungry in a way she rarely allowed herself outside the privacy of locked doors. You answered it with your own restraint fraying, one hand sliding into her loosened hair, the other settling at her waist where silk had gone slack beneath your fingers.

Her gown slipped lower. You drew back just enough to look at her, asking without making the moment small with words. She held your gaze and let the sleeves fall.

The blue silk whispered down her body and pooled at her feet.

Candlelight loved her. There was no other way to think it. It touched the curve of her shoulders, the fullness of her breasts, the soft strength of her belly, the pale marks motherhood had left low on her body, silvered and faint as old lightning beneath the skin. The first time you had seen those marks after Jaehaerys was born, she had watched you with wary eyes, as if expecting disappointment. You had kissed every one of them until she laughed and told you that you were being absurdly solemn over something half the women in the realm carried. But they were not half the women in the realm to you. They were hers. Proof of pain survived, life made, body changed and still desired.

You touched her now with the same reverence, though reverence did not remain clean for long. Your mouth found her throat, then the place below her ear where she always inhaled sharply. Her fingers moved to the ties of your tunic, impatient when one caught, and you laughed against her skin.

“Careful,” you murmured. “This is fine work.”

“I have seen you tear a man’s sleeve because he annoyed you.”

“That sleeve was offensive.”

“So is this knot.”

She pulled again, and the knot surrendered. You helped her strip the tunic from your shoulders, then your undershirt, then stood bare to the waist as she set her hands upon you. Helaena had a way of touching that undid you more thoroughly than boldness would have. Her palms moved over your chest, your ribs, the old scar near your left side from a tourney lance you had been too proud to avoid properly. Her mouth followed, pressing warmth to skin, and when her teeth grazed lightly near your collarbone, your hand clenched in her hair.

“Helaena.”

She looked up, and there was no court in her eyes, no council, no queen’s daughter, no reluctant treaty. Only a woman who knew exactly what her name sounded like when it became need in your mouth.

You lifted her onto the edge of the table because the bed was too far, and she laughed softly, breathless, as a cup nearly tipped beside her. You caught it and set it aside without looking. She parted her knees for you to stand between them. Your hands moved along her thighs, pushing the last layer of linen upward until there was no barrier left but your own remaining clothes and the final shreds of patience. She kissed you again, slower this time, open-mouthed and deep, her fingers working at your belt with increasing frustration.

“Now who is cautious?” you asked.

She bit your lower lip, not hard enough to hurt, hard enough to silence. “Do not become pleased with yourself. It makes you resemble your father.”

“That is cruel.”

“It worked.”

Your belt hit the floor. Then the rest. Her amusement faded when you touched her between her legs, replaced by a soft, unguarded gasp that you felt against your mouth. You stroked her with the care you had learned over years, not from instruction, not from brothel boasting, but from listening to her breath, her hands, the way her body tilted toward pleasure when her mind finally stopped carrying the realm like a basket of stones. She was warm and slick beneath your fingers, opening for you in increments, one hand braced behind her on the table, the other gripping your shoulder.

Outside, thunder rolled over the Blackwater.

Inside, Helaena whispered your name.

You kissed her breast, drew one nipple into your mouth, and felt her legs tighten around your hips. Her head tipped back. Her hair fell loose down her spine, pale as moonlit water. You worked her until her composure fractured, until her breath came unevenly and the quiet sounds she tried to swallow began escaping anyway. You loved that most perhaps, not the sounds themselves, though gods knew they could ruin you, but the trust of them. The knowledge that she could be unguarded here. With you. In a castle that had made every softness dangerous.

When she reached for you, you did not make her ask.

You entered her slowly, forehead pressed to hers, one hand at her back and the other on her thigh. Her eyes closed. Her lips parted. The first tight heat of her nearly broke what restraint you had left, but you held still until her body eased around you, until she pulled you closer with a small, deliberate movement that was permission and command together.

“Please,” she breathed.

So you moved.

Not as Daemon’s son. Not as Laena’s heir, not as Rhaenyra’s kin, not as Alicent’s good-son, not as a name to be counted by grasping men. You moved as her husband, flesh to flesh, breath mingling, her arms around your neck and your mouth at her jaw. The table creaked beneath her. The candles trembled. Rain blurred the windows. Her legs locked around your waist, drawing you deeper, and you felt the shiver move through her before it fully took hold.

You knew her body well enough to follow. Your hand slipped between you again, thumb circling where she needed it, and she broke against you with a soft cry muffled into your shoulder. Her inner muscles tightened around your cock, pleasure pulsing through her in waves, and you held her through it, thrusting slower, then harder when she whispered yes against your skin.

It did not take long after that. You buried yourself deep, shaking with the force of holding back until there was no holding. Release tore through you, hot and consuming, your mouth finding hers as you spent inside her. For several moments there was nothing but breath, rain, skin, the dying fire, the aftershocks of her body around yours.

Helaena rested her forehead against your chest. You held her there, still joined, one hand spread over her back. Her heartbeat gradually slowed beneath your palm.

After a while, she said, “The table was a poor choice.”

You laughed before you could stop yourself. It came out low and rough, startling in the quiet room. “You did not complain.”

“I was distracted by your fine arguments.”

“My fine arguments?”

She leaned back enough to look at you. Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes were bright. “You are more persuasive without a tunic.”

“That should be placed in the histories.”

“No. Maesters would ruin it.”

You kissed her again, softer now. Then you lifted her carefully and carried her to the bed, both of you cleaning yourselves with warmed water from the basin before slipping beneath the covers. The intimacy afterward had always mattered to her. Perhaps to you too, though you had taken longer to understand that staying was its own language. You drew her against your side, and she came willingly, one leg over yours, cheek resting on your chest.

For a long time, neither of you spoke.

Then Helaena said, “When Jaehaerys was born, my mother told me sons belong first to the realm.”

Your fingers moved through her hair. “Your mother says many bleak things when frightened.”

“She was not wrong.”

“She was not entirely right.”

“The realm will want him.”

“The realm wants everything.”

“And your father?”

“He wants loyalty.”

“Rhaenyra?”

“Recognition.”

“Otto?”

“Leverage.”

“Aegon?”

You paused. “Escape, though he would not call it that.”

“Aemond?”

“Vindication.”

“And you?”

You looked down at her. “A morning where no one asks me who I would kill for.”

She was quiet for a moment. “That may be too much to ask of this family.”

“Yes.”

Her hand rested over your heart. “Promise me something that is not foolish.”

“Name it.”

“Do not promise there will be no war. Do not promise my brothers will become better men by dawn or your father will learn restraint or the king will live to see another winter. Do not promise me safety if safety must be purchased with lies.”

You waited.

“Promise me,” she said, “that whatever comes, you will remember Jaehaerys is not a claim first. He is a child.”

Your chest hurt. You turned onto your side, facing her fully. “I promise.”

“And that I am not a side.”

“You are not.”

“Say it plainly.”

“You are not a side,” you said. “You are Helaena.”

Her eyes searched yours. Then she nodded, satisfied not because words could save anyone, but because some vows mattered even when doomed men laughed at them.

Near dawn, the rain stopped.

You woke to grey light and an empty space beside you. For one cold instant, the old fear of the Red Keep moved through you, irrational and immediate. Then you heard voices from the adjoining nursery. Helaena’s low murmur. Jaehaerys answering with sleepy seriousness. The nurse laughing softly.

You dressed before the fire had been stirred back to life. Outside, the castle was beginning to move. Servants with ash buckets. Guards changing posts. Ravens being fed. Somewhere below, a lord was likely composing a letter that would help ruin thousands of lives. Dawn made men no less stupid, only better lit.

Helaena entered with Jaehaerys in her arms. The boy had one cheek creased from sleep and his wooden dragon tucked beneath his chin.

“He wants the Dragonpit,” she said.

“He always wants the Dragonpit.”

“He says brave three must inspect Velyrax.”

“Brave three may inspect Velyrax from a distance approved by sane adults.”

Jaehaerys lifted his head. “Dreamfyre too.”

Helaena kissed his hair. “Dreamfyre does not like loud boys before breakfast.”

“I am quiet.”

“You are not.”

“I can be.”

You exchanged a look with Helaena, and for a moment the ordinary absurdity of parenthood stood between you and the coming abyss. It was almost enough.

Almost.

The king asked to see you before the court gathered again.

Viserys lay in his bedchamber surrounded by the smells of medicine, incense, old linen, and decay. The curtains had been drawn back to allow in morning light, but it did him few favors. Without the crown, without the mask, he seemed less a king than a man already halfway claimed by whatever waited beyond breath. Alicent sat beside him, reading softly from a book of prayers, though she stopped when you entered. Her eyes moved from you to Helaena, then to Jaehaerys, whom Helaena held by the hand.

The king brightened when he saw the boy. Pain could not keep the love from his face. That was the best and worst of Viserys. He had loved so much, so poorly, so selectively, so sincerely, and the realm would pay for every contradiction.

“Jaehaerys,” he rasped. “Come here, lad.”

The boy looked at you first. You nodded. He went to the bed, careful in the way children became careful around sickness when they did not understand it but understood enough. Viserys touched his hair with shaking fingers.

“My brave prince.”

“I saw Velyrax yesterday,” Jaehaerys said.

“Did you? And was he fearsome?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Viserys gave a faint smile. “A dragon should be.”

Alicent’s expression tightened. She loved her father’s gods but had married into a house where children were praised for admiring monsters. A cruel arrangement, though not the cruelest she had endured.

Viserys looked to you. “Leave us a moment. Not Helaena. You.”

Alicent hesitated.

“Please,” the king said.

That word moved people more effectively than command in that room. Alicent rose, kissed his brow, and withdrew with Helaena and Jaehaerys. Helaena gave you one glance before leaving. Not fearful. Present.

When the door closed, Viserys breathed for some time before speaking. “You look like her.”

You knew he meant Laena. People usually did when they softened around the eyes.

“So I am told.”

“She was very brave.”

“She was.”

“Daemon loved her.”

“I know.”

Viserys’s mouth twisted. “He loves like a dragon guards meat.”

Despite yourself, you huffed a laugh. “He would call that complimentary.”

“He would.” The king stared toward the ceiling. “He hated me for the marriage.”

“Yes.”

“Did you?”

You considered lying. Then did not. “Yes.”

His eyes closed. “But not now.”

“No. Not now.”

“I wanted peace.”

“I know.”

“I thought if I joined the lines, gave each side blood in the other, they would hesitate.” His breath caught, wet and painful. “Men hesitate before kin.”

You thought of Vaemond’s blood on stone, of Aemond’s toast, of Daemon’s offer to bring you to Dragonstone without your wife. “Some do.”

Viserys opened his eyes again. “Not enough?”

“No.”

A tear slipped from the corner of his eye into the ruined hollow of his face. He did not seem to notice. “I have failed them.”

There was no answer that was both kind and true. You stood beside the bed and listened to the king breathe.

At last he reached for your hand. His grip was weak, fingers swollen, skin hot with fever. “Protect her.”

“Helaena?”

“All of them,” Viserys whispered. “If you can. Her. Rhaenyra. The children. My sons. Gods help me, my sons too. Do not let them devour each other.”

There it was, the final command of a dying king: stop dragons from being dragons.

You bowed your head. “I will do what I can.”

Viserys looked at you with sudden, terrible clarity. “That is an honest oath. I have heard too few.”

When you left the bedchamber, Alicent was waiting in the outer room. Helaena stood near the window with Jaehaerys, showing him the pale line of Blackwater Bay beyond the walls. Alicent looked tired in a way paint and jewels could not hide.

“What did he ask of you?” she said.

“To do the impossible.”

Alicent’s laugh was short and humorless. “Then he remains himself.”

You studied her. She had never been cruel to you in the simple ways that would have made hating her easy. She had been wary, devout, proud, frightened, political, sometimes cold, sometimes unexpectedly gentle with Jaehaerys when she thought no one saw. She loved Helaena. That did not absolve her of anything. It made everything more difficult, which was generally how families arranged their worst disasters.

“My daughter should not be made to suffer for your father’s ambitions,” Alicent said quietly.

“No.”

That answer seemed to catch her off guard.

“Nor for yours,” you added.

There. Less caught off guard now.

Her eyes hardened. “You think me ambitious.”

“I think you are afraid, and afraid people often hire ambition to guard the door.”

“You speak like Daemon.”

“I was trying to be less insulting.”

Alicent looked toward Helaena. “She loves you.”

“Yes.”

“If that is true, do not take her where she will be hated.”

“If you mean Dragonstone, say Dragonstone.”

“Would she be welcomed there?” Alicent asked. “Truly? By your father? By Rhaenyra? By those who see my children as obstacles born from my womb?”

You said nothing.

Alicent stepped closer, lowering her voice. “You think staying here makes her a pawn. You may be right. But leaving may make her a prisoner of another color.”

The worst part was that she was not wrong. People were exhausting enough when stupid. When they had a point, they became nearly intolerable.

“Helaena will not be moved without her consent,” you said.

Alicent’s mouth pressed flat. “Consent. Men in this house discover that word when it suits them.”

“I discovered it before I married her.”

For a moment, grief passed over her face. Old grief. Young grief. The kind that began in a girl and hardened around a queen. Then it was gone.

“Then remember it,” she said.

By midday, Rhaenyra and Daemon prepared to return to Dragonstone. The court assembled in the yard with all the affection of rival armies forced to share a well. Horses stamped. Wheelhouses waited. Servants carried chests. Princes exchanged farewells stiff enough to stand unsupported. Luke kept his eyes away from Aemond. Aemond watched him anyway. Aegon complained of the light. Baela embraced you hard and whispered that the Keep made her want to bite someone. Rhaena hugged Helaena, which surprised some watchers and pleased you more than was safe to show.

Rhaenyra came to you last. Her pregnancy made her movements slower, but her gaze remained steady.

“You will not come,” she said.

“Not today.”

Her eyes flicked to Helaena, then Jaehaerys. “You would be welcome.”

“Would we?”

A pause.

Rhaenyra’s answer, when it came, was careful. “You are my blood.”

“Helaena is my wife.”

“Yes.”

That single word held weariness, regret, and calculation. Rhaenyra was not unkind. She had held you as a child after Laena’s funeral when Daemon had vanished into his grief and your sisters had cried themselves sick. She had taught Baela to command a room with silence. She had once told you that being born royal meant strangers would build cages and call them duties. You had loved her for that. You still did. Love, unfortunately, did not make people safe.

“I will not raise my son among people waiting to decide which part of him they can use,” you said.

Rhaenyra’s expression softened. “Then where will you raise him? Such a place does not exist for us.”

No answer came. None worth giving.

Daemon approached behind her, already gloved for riding, Dark Sister at his hip. Caraxes screamed somewhere beyond the walls, shrill and savage. Velyrax answered from the Dragonpit with a lower roar, less piercing but no less hostile. The yard fell silent around the sound. Dragons conversing over human heads. A fair image for the realm.

Daemon looked at Helaena. To his credit, he inclined his head. “Princess.”

“Prince Daemon,” she replied.

Then he looked at Jaehaerys. The boy stared back with solemn interest. Daemon crouched before him, which startled nearly everyone present.

“You have been inspecting dragons, I hear.”

“Yes,” Jaehaerys said.

“Good. Inspect men too. They are more treacherous and less impressive.”

“Daemon,” Rhaenyra murmured.

“What? It is sound advice.”

Jaehaerys considered this. “Are you treacherous?”

Baela made a strangled sound. Rhaena turned away, shoulders shaking. Helaena pressed her lips together. Even Rhaenyra looked briefly defeated by amusement.

Daemon smiled at his grandson. Not his court smile, not his killing smile. A real one, small and unexpected. “Very.”

“Are you impressive?”

“Extremely.”

Jaehaerys nodded, accepting the answer as one accepts weather.

Daemon rose. His gaze met yours. “Stay, then.”

“I will.”

“But when the fire starts, do not pretend smoke surprised you.”

“I never have.”

He clasped your shoulder. Hard. Affection, warning, farewell. With Daemon they were often the same gesture. Then he turned and went to Rhaenyra.

You watched them leave through the gate, black and red moving away from green walls, children following, guards around them, dragons waiting beyond the city like judgments with wings. The yard emptied slowly afterward. Alicent withdrew to the king. Otto to the council. Aegon to whatever cup had missed him most. Aemond lingered just long enough to look at you, at Helaena, at your son. His one eye was unreadable.

“Brother,” Helaena said to him.

Aemond bowed. “Sister.”

Then to you, “Good-brother.”

“Aemond.”

His mouth curved. “A rare thing, to be wanted by both sides.”

“A rarer thing to enjoy it.”

“Do you not?”

“No.”

“Then you lack imagination.”

“I lack your appetite for grievance.”

His smile vanished. For a heartbeat the boy he had been showed through, wounded, furious, half-blind and never allowed to stop proving he had become dangerous. Then the man he had made himself returned.

“Careful,” he said. “Men standing between doors are crushed when both open.”

You stepped closer. “Men kicking at doors should first ask what waits behind them.”

Aemond held your gaze, then gave a slight bow to Helaena and walked away.

Jaehaerys tugged at your sleeve. “Is he treacherous too?”

Helaena sighed. “We will not make that your new word.”

You lifted him into your arms. “Your uncle is complicated.”

“Like knots?”

“Like knots tied by angry people in the dark.”

“Can we see Velyrax now?”

Helaena looked at you. The yard was nearly empty. The road to Dragonstone had swallowed your father and Rhaenyra. The Red Keep rose around you, full of listeners, prayers, plots, sickbeds, swords, and doors that would soon close or open or break. Above the city, clouds moved apart, revealing a hard, bright strip of sky.

“Yes,” she said before you could answer. “Let us see the dragons.”

So you went together: Helaena, Jaehaerys, and you, with guards behind and the city below. Not Black. Not Green. Not peace, not war, not yet. Only a husband, a wife, and a child walking toward the Dragonpit while the realm held its breath and pretended it was not already burning.

Velyrax heard you before you entered.

His roar rolled through the stone like thunder beneath the earth. Dreamfyre answered from the shadows, old and pale and restless. Jaehaerys buried his face in your neck, brave three overcome for the moment by scale and sound. Helaena set her hand on your arm.

You looked at her.

She smiled, small but real. “He is still brave.”

You kissed your son’s hair. “The bravest.”

His childhood friend, you were the only person he could actually rely on outside of school. As children of two good business partners, you’d both found friendship amongst the fancy business dinners his parents and yours would host. It was safe to say you’d known each other long enough for him to call you up whenever he had the urge to, which was as often as he could.

You lived nearby and attended Henley Hall so of course he’d find any reason to bother you, asking you to sneak into his school, calling you up, or hanging out on weekends. Now three weeks into the new school semester, he needed to see you in person to have someone on the outside of Hell-ton to talk to. You were busier this year, and he hadn’t seen you much since the summer in which you’d spent the majority of your time together. He was getting withdrawals.

But of course, you almost always put up with his antics. His ways of finding rebellion in conformity was the small taste of rebellion you needed in your otherwise mundane life.

So here you were, skipping through the Welton corridors trying your best not to get caught by a Professor- or worse Mr. Nolan himself. Your casual clothing, that was definitely not up to the Welton dress code for males, was covered with Charlie’s Welton coat. It wasn’t cold enough yet to wear, but it’d have to do with helping you blend in when there were still boys roaming the school, settling in to start the weekend after a long week of rigorous classes.

Finally walking past the recognizable row of doors that made up the dormitories, you take a chance to more swiftly enter a familiar door. You let out a sigh of relief over making it safely, you lean back against it looking at the boy in question, who simply smirked up at you.

“Look what the cat dragged in” He greets, a cigarette hanging from his lips like an old pirate would with a pipe.

You blow a raspberry, taking off and tossing his coat at the end of his bed. All the walking mixed with the adrenaline of sneaking into his school made you warm.

“The cat being you, Charlie Dalton…Though I’d say you remind me more of a puppy dog.” You greet back, getting comfortable in the room you’d been in many times. Tapping his leg with your fingers, he moves his legs for you to sit before laying them casually over your lap.

“A puppy dog?? Ouch…you wound me, darling.” He says, pretending to be hurt as he holds his hand to his heart. But his lips were curled in amusement, inciting a small laugh from you. You pat his leg again, seeming to be quite settled in.

“Okay, okay…so what was the emergency you were calling me about, huh? Cameron irking you again or what?” 

“He usually is. Latin class is too. But,” He lets out a sigh as he puts out the cigarette on the metal headboard of his bed,“Can’t a guy just wanna see a pretty gal?” 

He leans over to ruffle your hair and you respond with a soft giggle, smoothing your hair back down.

“You see me far too often, Charlie…” You almost blush a little at him calling you a pretty gal, almost. “You know, my mother is actually starting to worry about your influence on me.”

It seemed you’d unintentionally spent the majority of the summer hanging out with Charlie, sometimes just a little bit past curfew. It was something your mother was not exactly keen about since it was often just you and him alone. Not proper for a young lady, she’d said.

Now it’s Charlie’s time to blow a raspberry, it seemed to be something he picked up from you and your reactions to him.

“I am a perfectly good influence on you, missy. Maybe your mother should worry about your influence on me.” He crosses his arms over his chest as he looks at you, a dramatically serious expression on his face. 

You both knew you had little influence on the free thinking, go-with-the-flow soul Charlie naturally was.

“Sure she should worry…who knows what I could put you on next. Today it’s cigarettes and pipes, tomorrow marijuana.” You act guilty, shaking your head slowly while holding back an amused smile.

“Do you actually know where to get marij-” 

“Charlie!” You playfully smack his arm and he laughs, raising his hands in defense. 

“Kidding, kidding…” Knowing him, you weren’t entirely sure how true that was.

“On a good note,” He starts, his cocky smirk coming back to his face. He seemed to even puff out his chest a little as he shares, “I know your father really likes me. He says nicer things to me than even my own father does to my face.”

I find yourself snickering as he seems to be extremely proud of his reputation with your dad. You had to admit, he was right. Much to your mother’s dismay, your father was constantly bringing him up at dinnertime, “how’s the Dalton boy”, “I heard this from his father”, “such a bright boy that Dalton”. You already heard from Charlie himself a lot, your years of friendship had him invading your life even when he wasn’t there. Your father loved him, and Charlie used it to the best of his advantage. It was really the only reason your father didn’t scold you for your summer shenanigans.

“I’ve heard, Charlie. Trust me” You chuckle to yourself just thinking about it, but you both knew exactly why. “I’m sure he thinks that the more he hypes you up to me, the more likely I’ll be to swoon for you.”  

Charlie lets out a chuckle with that, but anything relating to swooning had him back to his cocky act quite rapidly.

“Like I need him to hype me up, I know you swoon for me everyday darling. Who can resist all of this.” He puts his hands behind his head as he leans against his headboard, lifting a brow and smirking. 

The smirk was an ever present characteristic of him, since the moment he’d turned 15, he seemed to have mastered it. It amused you, probably his most charming characteristic.

“Oh, I’m swooning right now.” You roll your eyes before pretending to swoon, lifting a hand to fan yourself from his swoon-yness. That gets him laughing, the way you’d play along with him. He realized a long time ago that you didn’t realize how charming you were, but it was fine with him, only because that meant he got to appreciate how natural you were at it in secret. 

His laugh fades out, instead staring right at you. His smirk appears on his face yet again, an air smugness in it. 

“I guess your father’s plan worked after all then.”

The plan, both your father’s plans actually. They’d been scheming since they realized how close you’d gotten, which for fathers was actually not too long ago. Probably a year now.

“Ah, yes…turning you into an eligible bachelor in my eyes.” You snort amusedly, your eyes diverting from his own before the butterflies begin fluttering in your tummy.

It had become no secret to you and Charlie that your dad’s had been planning for a “union of families”, when you’d eavesdropped on them talking after a dinner party. They were good business partners, and longtime friends. With their children already being so akin to each other, it seemed the light bulb had gone on in their heads. 

But you knew Charlie. 

While he went along with what his father wanted, he only did it because he had to. Wellton, an ivy league future, business school. You knew that deep down, he wished to do something he wanted to do. Figure himself out, be a teen. Seize the day, as his new teacher had told him on the first day of his class. 

While you played around with the idea of being future Mrs. Dalton in your head, a thought formed from a crush that had been deeply stuffed away in your heart since you’d found out about your fathers plans. The inkling of anxiety over that plan told you that he secretly hated the idea of being pushed onto you. Maybe not because of yourself, but because it was yet another thing written into his future by his dad.

The last thing you wanted was to continue denying him a chance to write his future for himself, even if it meant pretending you weren’t on board with the expectation you’d both wed each other. Allowing it to continue being something you joked around about.

“Well, babe, I already am an eligible bachelor.” Giving his signature smirk, he puffs out his chest again and runs his hands through his hair dramatically, looking suave. 

This makes you laugh softly, but quickly your smile falters as you keep thinking about it. Charlie, being more perceptive than one would expect, notices this and nudges you softly on the shoulder.

“What? Am I that terrible of a possible husband?” He says jokingly, trying to keep up the playful atmosphere.

You chuckle lightly in response, trying not to ruin the mood. “No. You’re not…you’re a good friend, Charlie.” 

The atmosphere still seemed to change at your genuine compliment, Charlie’s own heart seemed to bloom, and he didn’t know what to do with that. He had never known what to do with it, pushing down his own feelings with the same idea that you didn’t want to be with him. 

Funny, since he was the one to flirt with you first, constantly trying to get your attention. He loved having your eyes on him, and only him.

He mustered a playfully toned comment.

“You make me blush.” He says, giving a much more authentic smile to you with a hand to his heart. Truly, it had skipped a beat. Knowing you saw him as a good friend was good, even if he wished it was more.

Silence seemed to fall between you, a comfortable one it seems as you lean your head back on the wall. Both of you seem to ponder it, the thing. But none of you knew what to say.

Finally, you’re the one that speaks up, “How would you feel if our dads plan worked?”

Another beat of silence.

“I know you don’t like doing what your father wants you to do, what he plans for you.”

Your eyes dart Charlie’s face, searching for an answer. He was looking at you pretty intensely, seeming to ponder the idea more deeply.

This is the first time you’ve seen Charlie seem so serious, and he was with reason. He knew what you meant to say, and it’s something he had thought about since the summer you two had shared ended.

Would he mind if you had fallen for each other, outside of your fathers pressure? 

Charlie grabbed the pack of cigarettes laying beside him and opened it, and placed one in his mouth. Though he didn’t light it up, it was more of a comfort thing. He was never one to be so serious, and this was both your feelings you were talking about. The last thing he wanted to do was say the wrong thing. 

And honestly, he adored you. More than he could ever say. Why else would he want your presence so constantly?

He hummed for a moment before speaking.

“I don’t like doing what my dad wants…” He admitted, his voice seeming quieter than usual as he takes the unlit cigarette out of his mouth. “But honestly…this is the first time I feel like I wouldn’t mind. Honestly, it’d be more of a personal decision”

His smirk returns, this was his way of seizing the day. He didn’t want to waste time going around the topic any longer when he knew deep down that you were the only girl he’d ever thought about, as flirty as he was generally. His gaze returned to you, And he was happy he did, because his answer had made your cheeks turn pink. You seemed almost flabbergasted by his answer. 

He’d willingly be with you.

“You wouldn’t mind?” You seem almost confused, but he seemed all too casual about it now that he’d seen how adorable you looked at his honest answer. 

He was choosing honesty today.

“I wouldn’t…I’m eligible, your father likes me, you’re a pretty girl.” He lists off, seeming sure of himself. He adjusts himself, removing his legs from your lap to scooch closer to you. His hand reaches up to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear and your heart seems to flutter out of your chest. His heart did as well, but he was much too suave to let it show. 

“Seems like a winning hand to me.” 

It seemed…like his actions left you speechless. You were able to speak eventually, cracking a small smile.

“Seems like the winning hand was our father’s, in the end.” You say in a jokingly sardonic way, chuckling softly. 

“And the losing hand of your mothers.” He snorts right back. “Point is, I win in some way or another.”

He couldn’t help himself, he really couldn’t when it seemed like the perfect moment. 

Damn it Charlie, just do it, he thought before leaning in to steal a soft kiss from you. He’d always wondered if the gloss you wore was flavored. It smelled of cherries, and as he learned- it tasted like it, too.  The kiss was surprisingly tender, his hand still on your cheek. You eventually collect yourself enough to kiss back, your heart soaring. It was too early for a full blown make-out session though, so you both pulled away after a few moments. 

Dalton felt way too smug with himself about it, very proud of his ability to be assertive for once, after almost two years of crushing on you. You, on the other hand, could only give him a shy smile and looked away.

“I did not know this was how this evening would go…” You admit meekly, unable to meet his eyes after the kiss you shared. 

“That we’d seal the deal of you becoming Mrs. Dalton? Honestly, me neither, but…” He shrugged, his hand going to your chin to force you to look at him, “Carpe diem.” 

He leaned in again, but this time almost full blown tackled you into yet another kiss. Albeit, it was much more passionate than the first time. You couldn’t help but get lost in it, wrapping your arms over his shoulders, letting his hands into your hair to hold you in place. 

You’d have to find a way to thank Mr. Keating for this moment of carpe diem sometime, but you didn’t have a chance to process the pondering on that at the moment.

It was the most magnificent moment.

“Dalton- everyone is asking why you- oh!”

Pulling away with eyes wide and cheeks red, you look to the doorway to see someone who was equally as red-faced as his hair.

“Damn it, Cameron!” Charlie tossed his pillow at him, standing up to push his back out of the door, “We’re having a moment in here, please!”

He closes the door behind him, looking back at you, you were still in complete shock over being caught. 

“I think that’s my queue to head home, Charlie.” You say sheepishly, chuckling in embarrassment as you get up and begin putting his coat back on. The sun could be seen as it was beginning to set outside the small dorm window anyways. 

Charlie’s little heart almost stopped beating, he wished to spend more time with you after this new development of your relationship. And his want was a lot, with how clingy he already was. But you were right, Cameron had ruined the mood enough. He mentally cursed Cameron even more.

“Fine.” He let out an exasperated sigh, but then quickly put on a satisfied smirk on his face, grabbing you by your sides, “But we’ll finish this another time, future wife.” 

That made you laugh, leaning up to give him a kiss on the cheek. You’d done it once or twice before, and after the kisses of today, they still felt extra special. 

“I’ll see you later, Charlie.” Putting the hood of the coat on, you slipped out of his room ready to sneak your way back out of Wellton...the things you did for this boy. 

Charlie was sure you’d taken his heart with you… and for once, he was happy his dad had already pre-approved of you as part of his future. He’ll take business school if it means he’ll get to take care of you comfortably.

🐇 . *. ⋆·˚ ༘ *༄ 

“I went in- and they were all over eachother- and…!”

Charlie Dalton was determined to strangle his roommate as he walked into the dormitory lounge. 

“Cameron.” He said through grit teeth as he walked up to the group. Apparently, Cameron was already spilling about what he’d seen in their dorm to the rest of their friends. Way to keep his business private.

Everyone was already teasing him about it, making smoochy noises, and holding him back from an expulsion waiting to happen. 

“Oh shut up Knox, like you don’t want to make-out with that Chris girl.” The boys all laughed at this, Knox seemed to shut up real quick though (it was true).

“So, what did happen with her Charlie?” Asked Neil, who patted him on the shoulder in a proud manner. He of all people had seen the development of this crush over the years.

“Heh…” Charlie couldn’t help the smugness to come back, the feeling of her lips still lingered on his and it made him feel like a real man.

“What can I say boys…I siezed the day.”

The boys gave him sounds of cheer and pats on the back, impressed by him taking Mr. Keating’s message so deeply into his heart. 

“Are we still studying trig-?”

“-You don’t get it, do you Cameron?” Charlie rolled his eyes.

Michael had been injured - very badly. The worst he ever had been and the worst you had ever known of someone so far in your life. You cried when you were told he had been badly burned during the commercial shoot. You waited with his family in the waiting room for hours and hours, hoping for some sort of miracle or positive outcome. When the doctor finally arrived, he said Michael was in stable condition but there would be a long road to recovery ahead. You breathed out a shaky sigh of relief.

“He does not want visitors yet,” The doctor said. 

Two days later, you received a phone call from Michael’s mother, Katherine. She tells you that he is in a lot of pain but he wants to see you. 

“You always know how to cheer him up. Could you come, please?” she asked.

“Of course, Mrs. Jackson,” you replied.

That night, you entered the hospital through a special door for visitors of those higher in status in the hospital. They checked you in and gave you a special badge and lanyard that you were to wear around your neck. You slipped it over your head carefully.

“He’s in room 403,” the nurse said. You gulped and nodded. You turned to your left and walked down the darkened hall. As you approached his corridor, you saw Bill resting out front of his room. Your footsteps were quiet, but not quiet enough. Bill opened his eyes and sat up straight. When he saw you, he smiled.

“Hey, (Y/N),” he said. 

“Hello,” You said with a rattled voice. Bill nodded.

“I know. This is…messed up to say the least. That boy don’t deserve this…,” he said. You shook your head.

“No. He doesn’t,” you say. Bill stood up.

“Go on ahead in. I know he’s been asking for you,” he said. You nod. 

You hesitate for a moment as you approach the door. You grab the door handle. As you peered into the window of the door, your chest dropped into your stomach as you viewed the state Michael was in. You held your breath as you pushed the door open. You walked in and looked around the door. Michael seemed to be sleeping. You then closed the door behind you as you walked over towards the bed. You stood back a few feet as you looked down at him. The top-back portion of his head was wrapped in white bandages and he had an IV with pain medicine drip…drip…dripping down. You cover your mouth with your fingers as tears welled into your eyes. 

“Jesus…,” you uttered. This was a bit louder than you anticipated as Michael’s eyes opened. He blinked and moved very slowly. He sniffed as his eyes focused. Then - he saw you. A very small smile broke out on his face.

“(Y/N),” he said groggily.

“Michael…oh, my fucking god,” you said.

“Hey…don’t cuss, please?” he asked.

“I am so sorry. I just…I have been worried sick. And seeing you like this…oh…,” you wiped your eyes. You walked to the side of the bed near the guest chair. You looked down at him.

“What on earth are they giving you?” you asked as you looked at the IV.

“Probably morphine,” he mumbled. You exhaled softly. You didn’t really like the sound of that. But you nodded and sat down on the chair next to him. He had enough strength to turn his body and look over at you.

“You don’t need to be here. I know it’s hard. But, I wanted to see you,” he said.

“Don’t worry about me. I’m here. I’m always going to be here. I told you that before,” you say. Tears now welled in Michael’s eyes. He sniffled and nodded.

Then, he reached his hand out for yours. You leaned over and took it gently.

“Do you need anything right now?” you ask.

“Yes,” he said.

“Can you…can you read me some stories?” he asked. Your heart nearly melted at the child-like nature of his question.

“Of course, honey,” you replied. You looked up and around, seeing a stack of books on the table in the corner. You stood up and walked over to it.

“What are you in the mood for?” you ask.

“Anything,” Michael said.

“How about old reliable?” you ask, lifting up his beloved Peter Pan book. The corner of Michael’s mouth turned into a smile. He nodded. You smiled in return and walked back over to the chair. You sat down, made sure he was ready, and then read him his all time favorite story. After you finished, you saw Michael’s eyes were nearly closed again. You smiled faintly and stood up. You leaned over and kissed his forehead with a small peck as to not hurt his head.

“Get some rest,” you say.

“I will. And (Y/N)?” he asked in a sleepy tone.

“Hmm?” you reply.

“Stay the night? Please? I don’t want to be alone,” he said, trying not to cry. You took his head gently and nodded.

Days 1-4 went by easily. Work and other responsibilities kept him distracted, and even though he couldn’t fuck you, cuddles and kisses were still on the menu and he took great advantage of that. The only thing that reminded him there was a ban in place was having to actually wear the PJs he had in his dresser, instead of letting himself fall asleep in the nude after making love to you like he used to.  

Maybe he could’ve kept a few more days of that peaceful scenario before the reality of it came crashing onto him, but a misplaced bragging comment on his part during a conversation about how you’d probably give up on the ban before he did dialed the difficulty up to eleven. That was the only way he could justify the amount of teasing that you’d decided to bring forth in the following days.

From Day 4 onwards, you appeared to have taken a liking to roaming the house in nothing but oversized T-shirts, giving him glimpses of your ass whenever you bent down and letting him know you weren’t keen on panties these days, either. Those damn athletic skirts for the gym that always had him paying too much attention to your squats and too little to his own sets were equally back in fashion. All that while you also became more touchy-feely than usual -  constantly pressing your body against his and tracing any exposed patch of his skin with your hands, whispering in his ear, keeping him close just enough for your scent to make his mind stop working for a second before you’d go do something else and he’d be left standing there with a hard-on that wouldn’t go down and an itch in his palms from wanting to touch you back.

It was unfair and you both knew it. No matter how much Kyle tried to avoid or focus on something else, you were always there, the need for you swirling around him like a snake with its prey. The urge to call the whole thing off gnawed at his brain with every kiss of yours that landed just shy of his mouth, and he was using so much of his own energy in holding back from ravishing you that it left him incapable of doing much else out of life. No celebration on his part when he completed a whole week - he was a zombie amongst men, denied the peace your warmth provided.

Night 9 was when you brought out the big guns. And why he never made it to Day 10.

The sounds of your little moans attracted him like blood would a shark. He’d expected you to already be asleep when he came home from hanging out with his work colleagues, considering you were deliberately depriving you both of what you’d want to do that late at night. He was stealthy as could be passing by the door of your shared bedroom, not wanting to make any sound lest you wake up - so there was no mistaking for anything else the soft sounds he heard, loud enough even through the door, exactly like one would if they either knew they were alone or wanted someone to be made aware of them.

Rational thought didn’t even have time to grace his mind and give him the option of walking away to let you have your moment. The door was open in a millisecond, his eyes already wide in preparation of the view he’d catch.

And what a view. You were comfortably spread on the center of the bed over the covers, fully naked, legs bent and wide apart. The lamp turned on at the nightstand was your own personal spotlight, drawing attention to your full form in that dark room in the most erotic chiaroscuro imaginable. His cock was already twitching in his pants at the forbidden sight, almost warning him to walk away before he’d be too aroused to walk away smoothly from that, but there was no recovering the moment his gaze drifted to what was really happening between your legs.

You had both hands there. The fingers on your dominant one worked your clit steadily, your hips bucking towards it to give yourself further friction. The non-dominant hand was lower, holding the base of what could only be a toy and pumping it in and out of your cunt in slow movements. Kyle zeroed in on that, ignoring the trail of drool that was trickling down the side of his agape mouth, trying to gauge which one of your favorite toys was getting the luck he didn’t have tonight.

The answer, in the form of a pale beige colored dildo with a vibrator inside of it, the device’s end peeking out from the middle of the silicone, made him freeze in shock.

He didn’t have to look at the rest of it to know what it was. A true to size replica of his cock, homemade from a kit he bought and perfect down to every single vein.

One too many drinks could always lead a man to places he wouldn’t go with a gun, and Kyle was no exception. Whatever it was that he’d discussed with his friends during game night at Kenny’s place he would never know. What he did vaguely remember was heading towards his computer after returning home, credit card in hand and an idea in his mind - but he’d hoped the idea would’ve been tickets to Tahiti or something of that nature, instead of the much cheaper and much more risqué alternative that arrived at your house about a week later in an extremely discreet plain brown cardboard box. 

Returning it and getting his money back was an option, but when you saw the thing and your eyes shone with excitement, he figured it would at least be a funny experience that you could joke about someday. You two followed the tutorial with some laughter throughout, had fun with it when it was done, then cleaned it and promptly chucked it somewhere Kyle didn't care to remember. Having the real thing constantly at your disposal meant you didn't really feel the need for a fake, or so he thought.

Except, he quickly realized, you didn't constantly have it at your disposal now.

When you took notice of his presence and lifted your head to look at him, it was damn near irritatingly calmly. The movement of your hands slowed, but it never stopped; and so, while your gaze was unwavering as it focused on his eyes, his own had to fight to not be distracted by the hypnotic motions happening between your legs. The ease of someone who had no shame at being caught.

You didn’t recognize his arrival with words, and he was grateful for that: his knowledge of the English language had forsaken him, and the babbles he would have let out in lieu of it would’ve dug him an even deeper grave. He approached the bed just as quietly as he’d walked to the bedroom just minutes earlier, which now felt like a whole lifetime ago, that’s how intense the whirlwind he was thrown in at the situation was. Your gaze burned into him, following his every shift, but it was nothing compared to the blaze building in his lower abdomen. 

In the short distance between the door and the bed, he’d already forgotten there was a sex ban in place to begin with. His hand reached toward your body while the mattress dipped under his weight, and he wasn't even expecting you to move, since in his fuzzy mind he’d be on top of you in an instant. As such, the slap you gave his wrist right in mid-air was like a bucket of ice water straight to his face, with the slow shake of your head only adding salt to a wound that had been bleeding on him for over a week. 

Had Kyle been sound of mind, he would’ve complained, and the sizzling in the back of his throat definitely told him he should do so. Have you hear how much of an asshole you were being. Yet, hypnotized as he still was by your naked form, all he could do was slowly stand back up, keeping as little distance as possible from the bed: a good puppy waiting for a command so that he could perform it and win a treat.

Said treat came in the form of you giving him a small smile before closing your eyes and lending your mind to the mist of pleasure again, your lips parting with small breaths coming through them - a hint of a smile curled them at the corners, carrying just enough wickedness to be excusable. The wetness of your cunt glistened with the lamp’s light, yet it was in how it cried to his ears that true sensuality laid. Each squelch it made with the movement of your hands was a plea for him to take matters into his own, and each long second he spent watching made it more difficult to remain inactive. By now his pants felt absurdly tight, and he gave himself the excuse of ‘just having to change anyway’ as he undid them, his very soul emitting a groan of relief when his erection was granted slightly more space as the buttons came undone.

That relief was momentary, though. Knowing that you were using a clone of his cock to get yourself off, maintaining him as the master of your pleasure, made him so hard he could burst. That piece of silicone modeled after him seemed to have a direct line to his own member, as every single movement of it inside you made him throb aggressively inside his boxers, memories of the sensation of your tight walls driving him batshit with the need to feel it again. Clenching around his full length, like it was probably doing to the cursed thing, milking everything that he had. It didn’t help that you were vocal about it, either; those moans he adored were his personal torture as you let them out like he wasn’t in the room at all, lost in your own little world.

“Mmh… Oh God, yes…” The breathy words ignored distance and reached him clearly, sincere desire in each syllable. “Fuck, Kyle, just like that… Fuck me just like that.”

Oh, go to hell.

That’s when he understood. What you had wasn’t the ease of someone who hadn’t been caught. To be caught would imply there was no intention of him seeing what was happening. The moaning, the position, that specific dildo… It was all expertly designed to drive him fucking nuts.

With a loud growl, Kyle gave up pretending. Just observing and being ‘grateful’ he could do so wasn’t enough. His pants and boxers were pulled down so fast he could’ve ripped them, and there was another hiss when his cock sprang free, so angrily hard and sensitive even the bedroom air felt like a blessing when it hit him. More lewd, slick sounds joined the ones coming from between your legs - he wasted no time before wrapping a hand around himself, pumping at a vicious speed.

Your eyes met his again, drawn by the noise from his direction, and this time he held them steady. You’d wanted to mess him up in the head? Well, you got it. Every muscle in his body carried the hunger he’d harbored inside, passing its heat along as you, too, became even more earnest in your touches upon seeing it. No smile anywhere to be found; what your face now had for him were parted lips and eyelids that, similarly to his, struggled to stay open, wanting to shut you off to the world and let delight take the reins.

The motions on your non-dominant hand picked up, trying to synchronize the thrusting of the dildo with the tempo of his own strokes, yet he was too out of it to make any smart remark as he figured how much of a pale imitation it was for the feeling of getting fucked that roughly by him. How your dainty fingers couldn’t drive yourself mad with stimulation like his digits did. How the cloned dildo, perfect as it may be, would never throb and make you scream as it filled you up. And sure, his own fist was a poor replacement for your tight cunt too; but his imagination, the view of your desperate face and the whimpers of his name were doing an efficient job of filling in the blanks those last nine days had forced on his brain.

Feeling his balls drawing tight, he didn’t bother delaying the inevitable. He roars once more as it crashes over him, continuing to jerk himself off along the throbbing onslaught of pleasure while thick ropes of cum splatter onto the carpet. A bitch to clean later, yet never has a thought been furthest from his mind. He remains entranced as you don’t take too long to fall apart yourself, burning the image of it in his mind: the beige dildo being shoved as deep as it’d go into your cunt one final time as you cried out Kyle’s name and arched your back off the bed, bliss etched in all lines of your features. You collapse onto the bed afterwards, panting heavily, and he almost topples as well, held upright only by need… and fury.

That whole ‘ban’, from the beginning, had been foul play. Bets were off.

When both your harsh breathings stabilized into something not quite natural but close enough, Kyle spoke first. The foggy distraction in your mind prevented it from noticing the dangerous undertone in his voice, mistaking it for lingering lust. “... Had your fun there, huh?” 

You grinned lazily, pleased with yourself in more ways than one. “Mmm… Yeah…” 

A blur pounced on top of you, and whatever complaint you had to voice at the emptiness you felt when he reached for the dildo between your legs and pulled it out died in a choked sound. Your lips instinctively wrapped around the large silicone sculpture that had been shoved between them, and Kyle’s fully darkened eyes briefly rolled back inside his head, nearly tasting your arousal on his own tongue as you came in contact with it instead.