#sub!daeron

The air within the inn was hot and close, smelling heavily of watered-down ale. It had a lulling effect. Your eyes were lidded over your cups, sweat beading beneath your unadorned braid. Or perhaps that was the ale.

Your husband sat across from you, limbs sprawled over the hard wooden bench. He was still conscious, you could tell from his lashes, flickering in time with the matron’s clattering pots. His hand was limp atop his drained mug; the latest of many. You did not raise a hand for more, only sloshed your own about, studying his repose.

He was more a mess than you had ever seen, you thought. At the beginning of your marriage, he had made an effort to appear collected around you, and you had appreciated it, until it became clear that appearance was all it was. Now, being wed for more than a year, you thought you knew his worst, but this—leading you chasing from your camp at the hour of the owl—was a new low.

“Daeron,” you said softly. A moment later, his head jerked up, mumbling your name. “Daeron,” you repeated, and his bleary eyes met yours. They were ethereal, whispering of violets and majesty, even as he pitched drunkenly forward to reach for your hand.

“My lady wife,” he mumbled sweetly.

You huffed a small laugh. “Your lady wife has trekked through mud to drink with you in…” You prodded him back against the bench, and he tipped backwards, fingers still tangled with yours. You could not remember the name of the village.

He hummed in response, head tipping as he dozed.

You had been a day’s ride from Ashford when you made camp, you knew, and that was only a short while down the road. You had seen the inn from your carriage window not long before Daeron had declared his exhaustion. There had been only one round of spin-the-sword with Egg before you collapsed together in your tent, and only scant hours of rest before Daeron’s turmoil had awoken you alongside him.

It had been a violent turmoil, this time. You could recall no comparable nightmare of his. He awoke panting beside you, quaking like a leaf in a storm, and unresponsive to your soft words. He had eyes only for the mead bottles the Kingsguard had passed between them at supper, and when they surfaced empty, for his boots and cloak.

The door creaked heavily, and Daeron stirred, face pulling into a frown. Your thumb found the calming notch at his wrist, and he settled.

Arisen from your woolgathering, you drew yourself up, leaning against the rough-carved table as you steadied. You threw back the last of your ale. It was weak, even without the part water you had paid the matron to serve Daeron. 

You had ventured among the smallfolk near Summerhall and your family’s seat of Highgarden, but in such places, even the smallfolk had noble money. Here, the table and chairs had been carved of matching wood, likely felled in the neighboring forest. They served none of your husband’s preferred strongwine or your spiced hippocras, and the matron’s little girl on the stairwell had hands as calloused as any squire’s.

You called Daeron’s name again, low enough for any eavesdroppers to miss it, nudging under his arm. He squinted up at you, and when you nudged again, hauled to his feet with a heavy sigh. His eyes lingered on your face before falling to the empty cups, then freezing beyond you, on the newest visitor.

He was a massive thing, surely twice the height of your father, who was himself a fearful sight to any opposing knight. He carried a battered shield, you noticed, and felt a rush of selfish relief. Perhaps you had acted in error, allowing your husband to flee the tourney-bound camp, but at least you need not watch him be unhorsed by such a beast.

“You,” Daeron growled with sudden ferocity, and you gripped his arm, turning your back against the bench. You rarely knew him to be anything but gentle, and you were startled into fear. You clung to his side, the knife beneath your cloak pressed between his body and yours.

The beast of a knight looked on dumbly, cradling a cup of his own with a loose grip.

Your breathing slowed.

“I dreamed of you.” Your husband’s clumsy hands made for his own blade.

Your jaw tightened. “Daeron—” you muttered, spinning to block him from the threat only he could see. You lay a hand upon his, holding the knife away.

“Stay the fuck away from us,” he flung over your shoulder.

“Stop.” you hissed. He pushed weakly at your stubborn grip. You felt your heart in your throat, and saw Daeron’s pounding.

His knife hand went limp.

You let out a breath. You slowly untangled the blade from his grasp, slipping it back into its sheath. The knight had not moved, that you could hear.

Steadily, you grabbed Daeron’s coin purse—the one thing he had thought of and you had not—and set a gold dragon down behind the mugs. It was the second you had given the matron that night, to pay for her service and her silence.

“Up,” you prompted, pulling Daeron by the arm. You gripped the bannister tightly, and he stumbled against it behind you. “Go on,” you pushed, turning back to glimpse the beast of a knight.

He still appeared lumpish and blank. He was not of any noble house, to be sure, if only for being more caked in dirt than Daeron. His sigil was unfamiliar, too; a hedge knight, in all likelihood. He cast an imposing figure, but you could see nothing remarkable about him but his height.

He met your eyes for a brief moment, brow furrowing, before looking down into his cup.

Shaking your head, you turned to follow your husband up the sloping stairs. You drew him towards the room you had bought, leaning upon him as much as he did you. The place was simple and blessedly warm, although a cool wind made it through a crack in the window. The bed was stuffed with hay. You would complain if you were not so weary.

“Fuck. Egg.” Daeron said suddenly, spinning towards the door and catching himself on the wall as he wavered.

“Asleep,” you replied, waving a hand and tugging him towards the bed.

You had noticed Aegon following you halfway to the inn, too far to turn back without leaving Daeron. You had bought him a room of his own while your husband sat with his first mug, and the boy, exhausted from the hike and six days on horseback besides, had collapsed quickly.

Daeron landed on the bed with a grunt, opening his arms to you. “Gods, you’re perfect,”

You fell into his lap, smiling sleepily in your half-drunken haze, and found his lips against your throat, the roughness of his unshaven jaw scratching against your collarbone.

“Perfect,” you echoed dizzily, leaning away to tilt his face up to yours. You buried your hands in his tangled, yellow hair. His coloring was little more Valyrian than your own, plain Reachling that you were, but he was ethereal. You were drunk on the sight of him as much as the ale you tasted on his breath, and on his lips.

When you broke away, his face had fallen. He watched you with a thoughtful melancholy, hands settling upon your hips.

“Will you tell me now?” you asked. “About that knight, too?”

His gaze dropped.

“My love,” you murmured, tipping his face up again. You pressed your lips to his sweat-beaded brow, and he fell into your touch. “Tell me.” This was more prodding than he usually needed, but you felt his stiff bones relax against you, and you knew he had given in.

“When I saw Mother…” he began softly, and your throat tightened.

You had met Dyanna only once, at the Summerhall tourney when you and Daeron were newly betrothed, exchanging letters but still only acquaintances, though easy ones. She had been lovely and beautiful, and the people had cheered for her renewed health.

It was there that Daeron first spoke to you of his visions. He spoke of you, radiant and white-clad, holding a violet-eyed babe to your breast.

After you returned to Highgarden, his letters ceased, and you were dejected, until you received word of his mother’s death.

When you were reunited for your wedding, you found him a changed man in ways that even his renewed writings had not betrayed: at the Summerhall tourney, you had passed a bottle of mead between the two of you, but at your wedding, he downed the bottle himself.

That evening, you both had been anxious and tipsy, if not more, and in lieu of consummation, Daeron had confessed another vision. They had grown beyond glimpses of light, he told you. He had known of his mother’s death since just after the tourney, and he had watched it creeping upon her—she who appeared radiant, recovered, and full of life—until she was gone.

That had been the sum of his description then, but now he gathered you in his lap and continued, “She was a falling star…”

You recognized the sigil of House Dayne, his mother’s line.

“...igniting the sky. Beautiful.” His voice was low and devastatedly hollow. “Until it fell to the earth, and she along with it.”

You exhaled softly, holding him close, while his arms tightened around your waist. When he spoke again, it was no louder than his breath against your skin.

“Now I have seen a dragon upon the ground.” he whispered. “The Black Dread come again, gushing with blood. And clawing his way out from beneath its breast…” He shook his head suddenly, and you separated, brow creased. “He is an omen of death, or a cause of it. He is here.”

The hedge knight with his battered shield and dumb, blue stare.

Daeron swallowed. “Egg. Where is Aegon?” he muttered vacantly.

“Asleep.” you said again, but he barely noticed.

“The star fell, and so did Mother.” His hands were shaking now, gripping the fabric of your cloak. The golden rose clasp pressed against your throat. “What, then, does a dragon’s fall foretell?”

You hushed him gently, shrugging off your cloak and plucking it from his hands. “We are safe here.”

“He is here.”

“But our babe is not,” you reminded him. “She is not conceived, either.” Bleeding in the carriage had been dreadful, but now you were grateful for the evidence of your empty womb. “Whatever is to come, she will, too.”

Daeron seemed comforted by that. A faint smile came over his face, surely recalling his vision of her. But it dropped quickly.

“So it is all inevitable,” he murmured as you unbuckled his belt, discarding the knife and coin purse onto the floor. Your own blade followed it.

You felt yourself swaying and lay back upon the bed, pulling him down with you. Your legs tangled atop the musty blankets.

“I am but a witness…” he said, looking blankly upwards. “cursed to foresee ruination… and helpless to stop it.”

“Daenys foresaw the ruin of Valyria, and she saved your line.” you countered, trailing kisses across his shoulder, drawing him back into his body, draped half-atop you on the narrow bed. “She saved you… for me.” You had hoped he’d crack a smile at that, at least, but he turned to you with doleful, long-lashed eyes.

“She should not have.” The words were whispered against your cheek, so sweetly you almost missed their meaning.

Your arm across his waist tightened, as if his mutterings were enough to disappear him from your side.

“You do not deserve her cursed spawn,” he continued, tracing idle lines across your cheek. “You should be with a Hightower knight… some mighty Northman… someone whole, who might give you a daughter without this curse in her blood.”

“Perhaps…” You pressed Daeron’s hand to your face. “But the gods gave me you.” Your lips ghosted over his knuckles, bruised red from twisting around the reins of his horse, as he did. “They will give me your daughter, not any other’s.”

He scoffed, eyes shifting closed. “I am a poor excuse for a husband… I shall be the same as a father, I am sure.”

Your head dropped into the crevice between his shoulder and his chin. His heartbeat had slowed, as had yours. Your eyes closed, and you felt him settle against you.

“You are troubled,” you murmured when he had stilled.

His chest bobbed with a low rumble of laughter, and you smiled wryly.

“But you are a good, kind man.” You lifted your face to see his, moon-white in the starlight, as if asleep. “That is what I deserve. You love me, and you will love our child.” A little sandy-haired girl with his purple eyes and easy grin. “That is more than most maidens could hope for.”

His lashes fluttered. Tears slipped into his stringy hair, and you kissed them away. Their salt mixed with his sweat on your tongue.

“I love you.” you whispered. “That is what you deserve.”

His eyes opened then, frayed and gentle as the silken bedcovers you had left behind at your camp. He wet his parted lips, but no words came to him; instead, he pulled you to him and reverently captured your own.

“I love you,” he chanted between kisses, like prayer. “My perfect wife… Gods know why—”

You cut him off, shifting atop him and deepening your touch. “My beautiful husband,” you breathed, and he whined softly into your mouth.

His hands crept downwards, fumbling briefly with the cord of your night robe before shifting to your skirts. You helped him gather them against your chest, moving to straddle him as he braced your thighs, fingers sliding between them, seeking your heat. 

You inhaled sharply as he dipped into your entrance, curling shallowly towards your stomach. “Please…”

“Anything,” Daeron said breathlessly. “Everything. Anything you want.” His fingers, now coated in your wetness, traced upwards and around your sensitive bud in slow circles. You buried your face against his shoulder, nails tearing into his tunic.

His other hand slipped from your thigh, towards your core. until he was up to his knuckles in your searing warmth. You shuddered, aching for his touch, and clenched down around him, hips rolling uncontrollably. He moaned beneath you.

“So tight for me…” He left a bruising kiss on your neck. “Gods, your smell…”

“For you…” you agreed. You bit down on his lip as heat coiled in your belly. “Ah… Daeron…” Your back arched, nose pressed into his cheek, as you felt yourself tumbling, trembling, from your peak.

When you touched ground again, he was carding through your undone braid, lips curved and shining with your slick. You hummed contentedly, thumb swiping across his mouth to taste yourself under his hungry, blown gaze. He did not pull you to his lips or push you lower; only stroked your hair, blinking slowly.

“Sweeter than Arbor gold,” he breathed.

“Perhaps I shall commission my Redwyne cousin for a tasting,” you teased, stretching languidly and reaching for your boots. He pushed himself up, too, but you waved him away, tossing his boots, as well.

The last of your outerwear discarded, you leaned again over your husband, resting your chin atop his chest. You saw his jaw flex as your bodice pressed against his hardness. Drink left him wanting but unready more often than not, but with the taste of your wetness still lingering, he needed little rousing.

Lazily, you dragged yourself up to his lips, pressing your thigh between his. “So patient,” you mumbled. “So good to me…”

He licked into your mouth, and your teeth grazed his tongue. “My love is worth waiting for…” His voice faltered as you pulled back, rocking your hips against his.

He rose to meet you again, and this time you pulled him closer, leaning into his warmth. He moaned at the pressure, the sound muffled in your hair, hands settling upon the curve of your thighs.

“Such pretty sounds,” you breathed against his prickly jaw.

His hips jerked upwards, and he cursed.

You clung to him as a tremor ran through his core. His heart hammered at the dip beneath his Adam’s apple, and you kissed him there. You could feel the heat of him throbbing upon your entrance, just shy of your pearl, and ground harder against him, gasping against his neck as his shivering hands tightened around you, your name tumbling in a sob from his lips.

“So good… so…”

You kissed his throat again, pulling at his hair. “Come, my love,” you breathed, rolling hard against him, and he whimpered, seizing around you, hands vice-like upon your thighs. His head tipped back and you held him still, rocking softly until he fell, slack, against you.

His still-unsteady hands lifted to cradle your face, pressing his forehead to yours, and you breathed in slowly, noses slotting.

“I truly do not know what I have done to deserve you,” he said, voice filled with awe.