Thelcia

the servants and castle keep are far enough as not to disturb your time of privacy, but not daring to stray too far. it was almost like there were always at least one set of eyes on you at all times ever since stepping into kings landing; truly foreign territory. 

as cunning and arrogant as aerion targaryen could possibly be seen, he was nothing short of a powerful ruler. it was seen as the highest honour to be bestowed and offered marriage to anyone of the targaryen house. your husband put almost this facade of impeccable courtesy in front of his father, maekar, almost sure to win the court's favor. yet his dark streak and lack of empathy bled between the lines rather often.

but he was not all cruel. especially not towards his bride.

the red keep gardens had become quietest place at court for a nearly-wedded lady, allowing you to be surrounded with blossoming flora and fauna, seemingly the only pure thing left behind under the mid-day sun. 

as you were becoming almost lost in a loop of thoughts about family and marriage contracts, the very frame of aerion became to approach your peripheral. it was not by any means that you did not wish to look him in the eye or unacknowledge his presence.. his gaze was simply far more intense than that of any other potential suitors of your past. the pallor of his significantly targaryen visage and the snow-white hair was enough to spot him. 

although, you were not fooling the wisest of men by pretending you were not interested in his whereabouts. 

a slight turn of your head gave view to a conversation between him and a servant, which could have been rooted with anything of the sort. you were unable to make out the words leaving either of their mouths, but it seemed aerion was beginning to scold the young servant rather harshly. perhaps it was over spilled wine, or a dropped sword. 

with a wave of his hand, the servant was turned away and scurried off without a halt, leaving a rather frustrated targaryen alone with his wife.

there was about a few moments until he joined you within your walk along this quaint area of the gardens, but everything was nothing but peaceful. 

with a gentle purse to your lips, which may have been brought by your slight agitation with his behaviour, you began to pierce the silence.

“was that necessary?”

your small words of questioning caused him a quick narrowing of his eyes at you. “what was?”

“frightening him.” 

but, of course, aerion had grown up royal and had the world at his fingertips since he was a small boy. 

“i simply corrected him,” he started, his tone coming off as almost dismissive, like he was well aware no one could tell him how to treat his servants. “you’ve such a tender heart.”

you allowed him a beat of silence. it was always apparent, even when on his best behaviour, that his narcissistic nature would peek through.

“i fail to see the insult.” you quipped back, making it known that his words were not wounding. 

“it wasn’t one. it simply explains why we disagree.” 

there was a slight furrow of your brows, your gaze narrowing by a hair, “does it?” 

“because you concern yourself with the feelings of a servant.” he says, words bitter as ever. 

that strikes you in a way that makes you realize: this is the man my father has promised me to. 

the gentle stroll you two had started up while talking had come to a sudden halt, stopping in your tracks as you refused to tolerate this any longer. his attitude, that is. 

“and you concern yourself with no ones, aerion.” 

your voice was hushed, yet still fiery, given you were albeit the slightest bit afraid to express your rebuttal. 

he let out a sharp, quick scoff, subtly rolling his eyes with a tight, dismissive jerk to the side. it was clear he was used to being challenged by your words, but this time, there was a bit of a lingering sting to his ego. 

“aren’t you ever satisfied? must everything become a quarrel with you?” aerion hissed in mock questioning, followed by a slight cock of his brow. his viper-like nature became more apparent with every passing moment. with any ounce of gentleness that he was capable of, his fingers wrapped around your forearm, in attempts to keep you from straying away from him or rushing to your private quarters. 

“a contract signed by our fathers does not grant you my affection. you barely keep my compliance, at best, my lord.” you spat those last two words much slower than the rest of your admission, working in your favor to remind him that he did not possess the entirety of his power over you. 

a quick huff came from his nostrils, showing his obvious disdain for your suddenly brazen mouth. aerion’s gaze upon you contracted, using the strong grip upon your silk-clad arm to almost jerk you closer. 

“you’ll begin to know your place, i assure you.” his voice became lower, quieter, like he was almost threatening you. very on-brand for the likes of a targaryen. “i haven’t asked you to love me.”

consequently, you could only look down at your feet, avoiding any direct eye-contact altogether. this relationship had been built on the very empty, unwillful promise of an heir, and nothing more. and now you had to concern yourself with the likes of his unempathetic nature. 

a breath left you, speaking much softer now, accepting that you’ve lost this battle of wits end. 

“you’ve asked me to marry you.”

“you should know those are rather different things, my lady.” he turned, beginning to leave you to reside with nothing else besides yourself, returning to court. “i shall tend to you later.”

with those last harsh words of his, a promise hung within the air. 

when he was aware his words had pierced you, he let go in satisfaction. aerion had no problem putting anyone in their place, especially you. 

as the mid-day began to settle in, just teetering on the edge of sunset, you found yourself tucked away in one of the much quieter rooms of the palace, a leather-backed book placed absentmindedly in your lap. you were not fully registering nor reading the words on the page, per se, just letting the words and vivid imagery cloud your head as the afternoon warmth began to shine in through the stained glass window just beside you. 

a content, almost sleepy sigh came from you, and just as you were beginning to drift off to that of a catnap, a soft yet urgent knock on the library doors awoke you back into reality. 

“my lady? may i come in?” 

the words of your handmaiden were never rushed, as nothing at the castle ever was. time was so valuable, and it seemed a person was granted so little of it. 

“you may.” you did not look up immediately, gentle hands closing the reading and mentally noting to return to those pages later–the sound of a small creak as the door opened. although, there was something different about her mannerisms today. almost as if there had been some sort of shift in the air. 

her hands were folded neatly in front of her, lingering just longer than usual in her spot a few feet away from you, as if she was trying to find the correct words to speak. 

that alone made you look up, paying her the respect of your gaze, noticing the rather serious expression on your face. 

“have you been searching for me?” you asked lightly, eyebrows gently furrowed as you tried to place the mood of the conversation. your handmaidens were usually always cheery and you hoped they had not grown afraid to speak with you about serious matters.

just as the silence hung in the air for a beat longer, she began to speak; “your father requests your presence, my lady.” 

your fingers gently curled around the edge of that now seemingly uninteresting book laid in your lap, attention sharpening at the nature of her words. what on earth was so urgent? “..does he?” 

another pause followed your speech, looking over to the side with a small sigh, thoughts beginning to race within your head. 

“he says it is rather important, your highness.” 

that was new, because “important” things did not reach you here. at least, not in the way the reached the rest of the world; you’ve grown accustomed to rather dull days. 

then, you stood up slowly, smoothing out the silken fabric to your gown, which was more of a habitual gesture than something attempting to fix your appearance. 

“i suppose i shall not keep the king waiting,” you said, a small smile on your face, trying to almost ease whatever sort of tension that was in the air. beginning to tress outside of the room, you passed her, flashing her a quick smile, hoping to falsely convey that you were not nervous by any means. 

she watched you for half a second longer than normal, as if she already was aware of what was to come. and, if it had caused the castle to shift even the slightest bit; perhaps that meant good news. something was about to change. 

as you began to tress throughout what seemed like endless hallways, you noticed things that had simply never been there before. and, those things were not hard to miss in the slightest, given these walls are the only thing you had grown to remember without fault. 

looking to your right, you paused in your tracks to take a quick glance outside of a large window in the foyer, and to your surprise.. there seemed to be what looked like dozens of castle servants handling banners, trimming rosebushes, tending to things that had been long overgrown. 

you silently reminded yourself what you had even been meaning to do in the first place, picking up the fabric to your gown, footsteps much quicker now–almost like a small run, which was uncharacteristic for you. especially in these halls. 

finally drawing upon the large door to your fathers chambers, your hands were softly placed palm-flat against the carved wood, pushing it open with an almost child-like curiosity. before you spoke, you stepped one foot into his quarters, beginning to speak as you closed the door behind you. 

“father? you wished to see me,” you softly began, gaze down at the ground for a moment as you smoothed out your dress, before your head tilted up to see your father across the room. his hands were clasped behind his back, curtains drawn fully open to let the sunlight in, which was so strange. any other time he would have had those curtains drawn closed tightly, collecting dust and waiting for the next time to be used. 

it seemed he was watching the same thing you had been so perplexed about on your way here, paying close attention to the servants who were currently at work, which was quite earnestly the first time they had tended to any vines that tressed up the cobblestone walls or paid any attention to the flora and fauna in years. 

he seemed rather calm, but almost too collected. as if he were trying to contain his nerves. a heavy sigh came from his lungs, head dipping to look at the ground for a split second, before he halfway-turned his body to look at you, even though he had avoided making any eye contact at first.

you made soft yet cautious footsteps towards him, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder, as if touch alone could somehow change the lamentable mood he was currently in. “what troubles you, father?” you said softly, head slightly tilted as you looked up at him with an almost worried expression. 

“my daughter,” he started, his voice taking upon a tone of what seemed like he was reminiscing on something. “you deserve much more than the isolation of these walls.” he continued, emphasis on those last few words that left his mouth. you gave him a small nod, communicating understanding of his words. 

“we cannot remain something of a legend forever,” he started, only the slightest bit of shakiness in his voice. a tone that only you would even begin to understand. “it is time the gates opened again.” 

for a moment, you were dumbfounded. the gates? open? ..for all of westeros? such a thing was almost unheard of. your eyes narrowed for a moment, looking over at the busy servants just outside, and then returning your gaze to your dear father. 

“now is not the time to jest, father..” something in you began to play it off as some strange joke, but not because you did not believe him. it was simply because it was the only rational way to react after spending years alone, taking the same pathways, reading the same novels repeatedly. 

“jest?” a warm, deep laugh came from his chest, almost husky due to his age. “dear child, the invitations have already begun to be drafted.” his words caught you off guard–there really was to be a gathering. a grand one. “this is a need for visibility. our alliances have weakened, and we must regain our house reputation.”

the thought of it was simply unfathomable. you began to imagine platters upon platters filled with exotic foods, chandeliers coming out of the dungeon, and the old ballroom you loved so dearly to become restored. 

you began to become overjoyed, an unmistakable smile crossing your face, an almost excited laugh coming from you. “oh, it shall be simply grand!” you exclaimed, suddenly lunging slightly forward to watch antique glassware and blossomed flowers being transported throughout the castle. your father began to speak, opening his mouth, yet your curious mind had already started racing. 

“will there be music? oh, and dancing?” it sounds almost captivating, but alas, he knew you needed to realize you were not exactly familiar with what you were rushing to step into. “and what of the guests; who shall be attending? how many people?” 

he gently paused your excitement with a soft tone, reminding you that this was only the preparation. “my dearest, you must be patient. i shall not bore you with any details.” he said, placing a hand on your shoulder. “the seamstresses and dressmakers will be arriving shortly. there will be no further questioning.”

a small, defeated sigh came from you, but the smile on your face could fool your father any day of your true emotions. “yes, father.. i understand.” you said gently, recollecting your thoughts and dimming your excitement. yet, that was only for a moment. 

you began to realize he was not forcing change upon you. he was allowing you to accept it, and by the nature of your response, he knew he had made the right decision. 

it was only a moment longer before you quickly gave your father a tight embrace, incredibly grateful for the opportunity he has granted you with, even if it was for reasons other than simply allowing you to experience what life has withheld from you. “thank you, father. i shall be on my best behaviour, i’m sure of it.” you let go after a moment, flashing him a quick smile, before being on your way out of his chambers. 

as you made your way towards the foyer, you were careful to pick your dress up, pacing down a flight of marble stairs–caucious not to slip. on your path down the stairs, you passed multiple servants and handmaidens, all busied with some sort of task that entailed decorating the palace to its entirety. 

after making a turn towards the entrance of your private quarters, a group of at least five women were already sorting through fabrics and threads, a quarter of the expanse of your rather large room occupied by seamstresses. “ah, there she is. your majesty, come forth, will you?” 

one of the older women motioned with a hand for you to come closer, taking a step back to allow you to stand in front of a large, multi-framed mirror that covered almost the entirety of the wall. you flashed her a quick smile, allowing her to take whatever measurements she needed from you. “did you have any ideas in mind, my lady?” she said to you, granting you creative liberty to some extent.

you took a moment to think, unsure of what you would be expected or even want to wear to such an event where royals were expected to attend. 

“perhaps.. white. a beautiful, pure white gown.” you said softly, looking at yourself in the mirror in front of you in attempts to take into account your features. although, the answer was subtly shocking to the older woman. “white, your majesty? won’t you want to reserve that for your day of wed?” 

you shook your head slightly, a smile crossing your face. “well, i do not assume i shall be married soon, or ever, for that matter. especially not in these.. circumstances.” your thought process was simple; it would most certainly not be easy for any man of high status to marry a princess who has never made any court appearances or even been seen by outsiders. 

your remark had gained the interest of two younger seamstresses who were currently pinning fabric together, beginning to form the underskirt to your gown near the back of the room, “i beg to differ, i heard lords from the capital are attending,” one of them started, her tone rather matter-of-fact, assuming you’d be potentially courted by many suitors. 

a small laugh came from the other. “i heard this is to be the largest gathering since the tourney at ashford meadow,” she said with a grin, seemingly feeding on quick court-gossip. this earned a shock from the other seamstress, beginning to sew ornate stones onto a section of fabric. “one of the dragon princes are attending.. the house targaryen rarely travels west.”

that remark in particular had caught you off guard. you simply had to know more.

“the dragon prince?” you questioned, looking over at them over your shoulder. you had only heard brief mention of any house relating to dragons from your father, when you would eavesdrop on meeting as a little girl. the same dressmaker who had been adding little crystals to the gown came closer, holding up fabrics next to you, seeing what would look best.

“you’ll know him when you see him. snow-white hair.. like that of an old valyrian painting.” she whispered, making this prince sound more like a rumour than a royal. you hadn’t thought that the realm was nearly this complicated. she began to speak once more; “he is–”

the older seamstress gave them a scorning look, reminding them that it was not by any means in good taste to gossip about seemingly one of the most influential house names. “girls. i shall remind you we did not come here to speak in poor taste.” after that warning, the room went quiet aside from the sound of pins occasionally dropping, or the sound of heavy fabric.

softly, you turn back to the mirror, not a sound leaving your mouth, silently thinking to yourself. what was such a matter with this family name, and why on earth were they so important? it seemed you would have to wait for the day to come. 

attempting to break the silence, you speak softly, an innocent question leaving your mouth.

“..what silhouettes are they wearing this season?”

and so, over the course of weeks, the castle changed in ways you could not even begin to fathom prior to the engagement. the change was not all at once, or loud, or gaudy.. it began to change in pieces. 

you had been awake for hours, currently sat at your vanity, simply awaiting the unveiling of the dress you waited weeks for. the conversation you had with those two nosy seamstresses still never failed to cloud your mind, with all the talk of high-ranking lords and ladies, making you much more nervous than excited for a court appearance after many years in solitude. 

the hour was growing late, and the sun had set hours ago, the castle now illuminated with golden candelabras and blown glass lanterns. it was something you only could have imagined in a painted memory. below you, you could hear the faint clanking of metal trays and silverware, paced footsteps moving with an unfamiliar purpose. 

you had been awake since dawn, simply listening to the sounds coming from outside your door. 

a soft knock came upon your door, waking you out of a sort of subconscious daydream. “your evening gown is finished, my lady.”

excitement began to take over the feelings of nervousness, turning slightly towards your door. years of wearing the same light, simply tailored gowns had made you look forward to the arrival of such a grand dress.

you stood slowly as the door opened to many familiar faces–then another, and another. not just your usual handmaidens that always greeted you in the morning time, but others too. the women carried what seemed like never-ending fabrics, boxes tied with ribbon, and a small tray of what looked like pale feathers. 

the dress was not unveiled all at once; first came the fabric. “oh, it is divine.. they’ve outdone themselves.” you said, as your fingers brushed along the satin fabric. “careful,” one of the handmaidens said, earning a soft laugh from you. was it improper to touch the dress you were soon to be wearing?

“is it fragile?” you said, with a slight smile. 

“no, your majesty. just important.”

and with that, they helped you dress slowly, as they always did, but today there was a difference in their movements. there was more attention and much more precision. as if every aspect mattered in a way it hadn’t before, like you were not simply getting dressed, but prepared. 

the fabric settled over you, the gown having an undeniable weight to it. the laces of the corset-style waist were tightened and tied with care, little white plumes intricately placed upon the bodice. 

just as you were beginning to take a longing look at yourself in the mirror, a servant rushed in, pausing at the doorframe. 

“my lady, you must make haste. guests are beginning to arrive.”

you could already hear the strum of violins and the chatter of royal guests downstairs. before leaving the quiet familiarity of your room, you take one last look, allowing yourself to smooth out the silk fabric of your dress and adjust the boned bodice holding the structure together. 

and with that, pushing aside any nervousness or uncertainty, you begin to make hurried footsteps to the ballroom. along your path, you passed many servants carrying refreshments and trays, the heightened smell of rosebuds wafting throughout the halls, and the sound of music getting increasingly easier to hear as you get closer and closer.

before entering what seemed like something out of a storybook, you turned your quick footsteps into slower, more purposeful ones. there was booming laughter and glasses clinking, just behind massive wooden doors; to which were already propped open. 

stepping inside the warmly-lit gathering, your presence does not go unnoticed. 

the volume of some nearby conversations begin to falter, some heads turning to feast upon what exactly the reach had been keeping locked away for so long. out of the corner of your eye, you see another nudge the lord beside him, though you decide to ignore it. many women smiled at you, though, some filled with envy. 

you gravitated towards the end of the room, taking hold of a stem of wine, swishing it within the glass before taking a quick sip. for someone who had such a lavish party in their honour, you didn’t quite see any familiar faces. 

your footsteps were slow, simply listening to conversations happening near you.. talk of alliances, how horrible the last tourney was, an arranged marriage. all things very common for court. while your eyes drifted over the grand floral arrangements, something caught your eye. silver hair. and not the old, aging kind of silver. pure white. 

suddenly a thought from weeks before rang into your ears, almost as if you began to remember something crucial, when that seamstress had mentioned “snow-white hair.” your memories began to fall into place, taking a long and good look at the figure across the room. if your eyes were not deceiving you, he looked around to be twenty years old. perhaps the dragon prince was not all myth. 

and perhaps you had been looking a bit too long, which granted you a cock of his eyebrow, narrowing his eyes as if looking you over. setting his wine down on the table next to him, within a blink of the eye he was beginning to move. 

you turned around, in attempts to walk around the crowd rather than through it–your father right behind you. “she looks just like her mother.” he was standing with a few other lords; all in jewel tones of red, yellow, and green. one of them began to whisper to the other next to him, another speaking; “ah, here she is. she’s been hiding from us all night.”

his remark gained boastful laughter from the men with him, all smiles, to which you cannot place were genuine or if they had ulterior motives. you silently cursed him within your head, given you had completely lost track of a certain white-haired prince. 

“why, yes… yes. i do suppose i’ve been in hiding.” you said with a forced smile, eyes darting around as you endlessly searched a crowd full of individuals for one. and yet, it was as if he had vanished within thin air. how hard was it to misplace someone so striking? 

your father began to speak again. about what, you had no idea. your mind was certainly elsewhere. without taking a second thought to think of what he was speaking of, you agreed by nodding your head. 

after a moment, you excused yourself–there were much bigger things at hand here. “excuse me.” you said, beginning to pace your way through the crowd, pardoning yourself for being in someone's way more times than you could count. 

soon enough, you found yourself on the other side of the room. standing just quite in front of the “elusive” figure you’d been trying to track down all night. 

your first mistake was thinking he would make attempts to introduce himself first. he simply.. leaned against the wall, eyebrows furrowed as he studied you, deciding if you were worthwhile.

he seemed beautiful and charismatic, yet there was most certainly something off, shown within the way he exuded a harsh sort of stillness while the gala around him was soft and warm.

breaking the silence, you began to speak–before he got to it first.

“you’re not what i expected,” he said, his tone rather matter-of-fact, taking a small sip of wine whilst his eyes never let up from your complexion. 

your hands remained folded together in front of you, resting on the fabric of your gown. whatever did he mean by that?

“and what is it that you were supposed to expect?” you added, your head slightly lifting to actually make attempts to make eye contact, your question coming off as charming. 

“someone timid.” he said, before allowing a beat of silence, looking down into his glass filled with crimson liquid. “though you interest me in conversation.”

your eyes narrowed for a moment, beginning to experience a feeling you couldn’t quite place. perhaps a bit of excitement was misplaced as nervousness. 

“..would you rather me hadn’t, your grace?” you replied, a bit of playfulness in your tone, clearly, you weren’t intimidated. 

there was a long pause, before he spoke once more.

“no.” the prince quipped back, rather quickly, like he knew what he wanted to say before you were finished with your sentence. like he didn’t have to think about it. 

alas, you wanted to know more, the result of the conversation was not quite satisfactory. 

you began to speak, though it was hard to ignore you were being almost studied with every movement of your mouth. “may i ask you something?” 

“you already have,” he said, gaining a very subtle roll of your eyes at him. were all princes so persistently irksome? 

he noticed your little face of irritation, almost smiling to himself. “another question, then. go on.” it seemed he strictly carried the conversation, not the other way around. 

you tilted your head to the side, your gaze looking off in a different direction as you spoke. “have you always enjoyed making strangers uncomfortable, my lord?” after those last few words, you returned your focus of sight onto his face. 

undoubtedly, there was an unmistakable smirk painted upon his pale complexion. the tiniest smirk, like he somehow found it humorous.

he didn’t look away when he spoke, not even for a moment, like the act of watching you was part of the conversation itself.

“you speak as though discomfort is always an insult,” he said at last, voice low enough that it barely had to compete with the noise behind him. “it is not.”

your fingers had begun to adjust the fabric of your gown, finding something else to occupy your racing mind with. you allowed the moment of silence to stretch just long enough so it felt more intentional.. and less like you were at a loss for words.

“then.. what is it?” you asked him. his eyes briefly flickered down your hands, watching the movement of gentle fingers, as if he was mentally noting something that other people would ignore. 

“testimony,” he started, his tone stating his words rather simply. “of truth. or, lack of it.” 

his words made you pause. whatever was he hinting at? your expression shifted, quite obviously, before you could begin to control it. a hint of a laugh came from you, followed by an exhale. because, honestly, how else were you supposed to react?

“so.. you go around looking for truths to collect?” you said, your tone was rather light in the way that was careful, “how very devoted of you.” 

at your remark, something changed within his expression. it wasn’t anything of warmth or amusement, at least in any familiar sense.. it was more like recognition. like what you said had very closely met the mark than you intended it to. 

“only the ones worth listening to.” he began, that same unchanging tone of his in those words. your gaze had stayed on him much longer than etiquette would have most likely advised you, as well as the fact that you did not exactly know where boundaries sat in a conversation like this. 

“and what makes mine listening to, my lord?” you asked, a small smile on your face as the corners of your mouth curled up. and, for the first time, he looked away from you. 

it wasn’t a retreat for the conversation by far, much more like a deliberate pause. he looked down into his goblet of wine, as if the answers he was searching for would be found within the reflection of the red liquid. it was almost as if the conversation had ended in being strictly theoretical. 

then, without lifting his head, he spoke. “you assume the question was meant to flatter you.” with a movement of his jaw, his tongue flicked within the inside of his mouth, as if tasting the remnants of the blood-red wine left upon his gums. strangely enough, the mannerism akin to a reptile. 

it was so faint, that if you were not watching closely enough, it would have gone unnoticed. unfortunately, you were. and it did not feel like an entirely human gesture. your mind traced back to prior conversations, remembering how the dressmaker had referred to him as the “dragon prince.” it was true that his peculiar movements did strike you as dragon-like. 

“i found the remark to be quite flattering,” you said, your words coming easily. it was curious in a way that betrayed any thought wondering if curiosity was permitted. 

for a moment, he did not respond. it was as if the question had not offended him or caught him off guard in any way, it was simply as if what you had said was able to redirect his thoughts on the conversation–and, undoubtedly, you as well. 

his gaze lifted once more, studying you with a different sort of interest. he was not simply registering your emotions, or picking apart what you were replying, there was a quiet interest in the way he was taking in every feature about you.

now, that should have made you uncomfortable. but, it made you far less sensible, making you much more curious in return. 

your smile shifted slightly, no longer just polite, but with an air of self-assurance, given the fact you had potentially caught his eye. “you are looking at me as though i’ve said something interesting,” you said.

though, it was not quite a question. he did not look away from you once, yet, his eyes had become focused on each individual feature, like he was trying to piece something together. 

“you have.” he replied, his words simple yet immediate. there was no hesitation laced within his words, which only heightened your curiosity. 

you exhaled through your nose, a faint laugh forming without any bit of resistance. “that is not something i hear often,” you admitted, tilting your head slightly as your gaze now stayed firmly on him. “usually i am told the opposite.”

there was a very small pause from him at your words. “the opposite,” he repeated, unsure of what may be his motives at this rate. 

you lightly nodded, once, as though your admission was something unremarkable. “that i am.. expected to be quieter,” you said, trying to briefly find the correct phrasing, though now tone suggested you were not particularly concerned with perfecting your speech. “less noticeable, perhaps.”

you watched him carefully as you spoke; but not out of fear of his reply or the nature of what he may be thinking. (thought, the potential of his thoughts did interest you.) it was merely because he had begun to react in ways that other noble suitors would not. if he could even be considered a “suitor.”

he absorbed your notion as if it mattered. “and do you try to be?” he questioned, yet the words had landed differently than any previous statement, it was directly giving you a choice as to how you planned to answer. 

‘well, no,” you said, rather honestly. “i think i simply have not had much reason to be otherwise.” your words fell more freely after you spoke, shoulders shrugging for a moment, a breath leaving your lungs that you were not exactly aware you were holding in. 

that gained you silence from him. though, short-lived silence.

not exactly the bad kind, but his attention had shifted much closer to you, even though neither of you had moved any closer–or any further, for that matter. “you’d be mistaken.” he said, gaining a quick quip of your brow. 

“would i?” you questioned, words coming out more inquisitive than you intended. 

he held your gaze, eyes narrowed by a hair, as if he was studying your features once more. beginning to take a quick sip of his wine, those eyes of his hadn’t left you for a moment. 

“you are noticeable regardless,” he said. it should have sounded flat, but it was anything but. his words sounded definitive, like he already had made a decision about you long before you were aware of what it entailed. 

for a moment, you did not respond. but out of hesitation or anything trivial, but because his admission made you suddenly aware of yourself in a way you had not been before. because there was a simple fact; he was looking at you like you were distinct. 

your gaze matched his own more steadily, head tilted slightly to the side, beginning to feel your curiosity shift into something much more deliberate. “that could mean many things, my lord.” you replied.

“it does.” he agreed, his attention not shifting within the slightest. 

you kept your posture rather composed, yet something within you had shifted, beginning to realize that this was becoming something much more than casual banter. your fingers had started to adjust faintly against your gown. 

“you were not meant to be seen often,” he said, as if continuing a thought he had already deemed true. “or you would not react like this.”

you blinked a few times, almost as if batting your eyes–minus the flirtatiousness. you were not used to a man, or a prince for that matter, reading you so well. 

his eyes lowered; but not to your fidgeting hands. he began to focus on the change of your expression, almost silently triumphant in his head that he had managed to have any sort of upper hand over the conversation.

very subtly, he took a step forward. it was not yet invading any personal space, but it was rather close to being deemed intimate. when he spoke again, his voice was quieter;

“who keeps you hidden?” 

your lips parted, almost at a loss for words. “my father," you said at last, though the words felt strange to say out loud. "he believed it.. safer."

the prince regarded your response for a moment, at first, saying nothing. his features conveyed something of no surprise. “i thought as much.” 

he paused for a moment, granting a beat of silence, which could have been for emphasis on his statement. his eyes narrowed for a split second, thoughtfully tracing the inner ridge of his teeth with his tongue. 

“it is a shame.” he stated, the nature of his words catching you off-guard. you were not sure how to react. 

your brows gently knitted together, deciding to dig a hint deeper, your inquisitiveness rather apparent. “..what is?” 

for what felt like the first time during the conversation since you’ve begun to speak.. he did not have an immediate answer. uncharacteristically, he began to search for the correct words, though it seemed several possibilities had crossed his mind before one seemed worthy of being spoken.

“that something so..” he began, head tilting just slightly to the side, almost as if he was studying you intently. “remarkable..” 

there was another short pause before he spoke again.

“..has been hidden behind stone walls for so long.” 

"fuck, hear at that?" he mutters, watching his fingers disappear inside you. "already fuckin' dripping for me, huh?" he pumps them in and out, the wet, filthy sounds filling the room. his thumb finds your clit, rubbing it in tight, punishing circles. "go on n’make a mess. cum all over my fuckin' fingers."

so you do, your back arching as your orgasm rips through you. you gush all over his fingers, coating them in your slick. he pulls them out, brings them to his mouth, and licks them clean with a low groan. "such a sweet girl" he says, his eyes dark and hungry. “don’t get fucked out on me- we didn’even fuck yet.”

he hauls you up, throwing you over his shoulder and walks into the kitchen. he dumps you onto the wooden table, the cold surface making you gasp. he kicks your legs apart and slams into you from behind, one hand gripping your hip, the other tangled in your hair, yanking your head back.

"this what you wanted?" he snarls, his hips pistoning into you. "wanted me to fuck you like a dirty girl?” smack! his hand comes down hard on your ass, the sharp sting making you cry out.

“m’not dirty!”

"such a dirty girl, dirty rich girl-" he's fucking you raw, no condom, just his long, veiny dick stretching you wide. you can feel every ridge, every pulse of him as he drives into you, and you scream as you cum again, your walls clamping down on him.

"shit," he grunts, burying himself deep as he unloads, painting your insides with his hot cum. but he doesn't stop. he pulls out, flips you over onto your back on the table, and scoops you up again. "bedroom. now."

he throws you onto the bed, spreading your legs and settling between them. this time, it's slower. he's watching your face, his eyes intense as he sinks back into your cum-filled pussy. "look at me," he commands, his voice rough. "eyes on me baby." he rolls his hips, grinding against your g-spot, the pressure building until you can't stand it. "yeahhh thats it there you go. fuckin' soak me."

you squirt all over his cock and stomach, the wetness spraying everywhere. "holy shit," he breathes, and that's all it takes for him to cum again, his hips stuttering as he fills you up a second time.

The cuts on their palms were more troublesome. The wounds had clotted during the night but the scabs were thin and fragile, threatening to crack at the edges with any sustained pressure. He tore strips from the hem of his linen undershirt, the fabric fraying in long, even threads that he wound around her palm first, binding the cut in a tight compress that would hold the wound closed and absorb any seepage. Her gown was long-sleeved, the grey wool extending past her wrists to the base of her fingers. When she pulled the cuff down over the binding, the linen was almost entirely concealed. A careful observer might notice the slight unevenness beneath the fabric. A casual glance would see nothing.

He bound his own hand with the remaining strip and pulled his riding glove over it. The leather was tight across the compress and the pressure produced a dull, persistent ache that he found welcome. The pain was a tether. It connected everything in this grey morning to everything that had happened by firelight, and prevented the whole of it from acquiring the insubstantial quality of a dream. But it was not a dream. The circle of scorched grass confirmed this. The heap of white ash and blackened driftwood, the smell of spent kindling still hanging in the still air. The flattened stalks bearing the impression of two bodies, the scarlet lining of his cloak still spread across the ground, darkened in one place by a stain that was not dew. Valaena noticed it at the same moment he did. Her cheeks coloured with a flush that spread from her jaw to her temples. She looked away. He folded the cloak so that the stain was hidden in the interior of the fold and fastened it around his shoulders without comment.

They mounted their dragons. The process of harnessing was slower than usual, their hands stiff from the cold and the wounds and the deep fatigue that follows a night without sleep. Silverwing accepted the harness with her usual patience, the ancient eyes watching her rider with a steady, knowing regard that suggested the dragon understood, in whatever way dragons understood such things, that something had changed. Vermithor was less accommodating. The Bronze Fury was irritable in the mornings, always had been, and submitted to the harness with a series of low, grinding rumbles that vibrated through the saddle and into Aerion's legs, the complaints of a creature roused from rest and not yet ready to forgive the imposition.

They launched together. Silverwing first, the silver dragon stepping to the lake's edge and spreading her wings in a slow, majestic unfurling that caught the first light of the rising sun and blazed with it, the pale scales throwing back cascades of silver and white and ice-blue. Then the wings beat downward and the dragon was airborne, the massive body lifting from the shore with a grace that belied its enormous mass. Vermithor followed, his launch characteristically more violent, a surge of raw power that tore divots from the grass and sent a blast of displaced air across the shore that flattened the reeds and scattered the dead fire's ash in a grey cloud.

They flew side by side. The two dragons found their formation without direction from their riders, Silverwing on the left, Vermithor on the right, separated by perhaps fifty yards of open air, their wingbeats falling into a synchronised rhythm that felt like a conversation conducted in a language older than sound. The God's Eye fell away beneath them. The lake shrank from a vast dark mirror to a dark disc set in the green patchwork of the Riverlands, then to a coin, then to a point, then to nothing. Harrenhal was visible for a long time, its shattered towers catching the early light, the melted stone glistening. He watched it diminish with a detachment that surprised him. On other occasions the ruined castle had produced a cold, clinical satisfaction in him, the evidence of dragonfire's supremacy written in slag and rubble. Today he felt none of it. He looked at Harrenhal and felt only what it was; old, broken, with nothing left to teach anyone who already knew what fire could do.

He watched Valaena on Silverwing. She flew well. She leaned into the turns and adjusted her weight for the banking and rode the rough air with a loose, confident posture that absorbed the turbulence through her hips and thighs. Her hair streamed behind her, dark and wild, the silver streak vivid against the brown. In the morning light, on dragonback, a thousand feet above the earth, the Valyrian beauty showed through the Strong blood like fire through thin cloth, undeniable.

She was his now. The thought carried a deep, proprietary satisfaction that vibrated in his chest. He had wanted it, worked for it, burned for it since he was thirteen years old. The rite was done. The blood had been given, the words spoken, the fire lit. By the reckoning of the old faith, by the traditions of the culture he claimed as his sole inheritance, they were married. One flesh, one fire, one blood. The rite was permanent and irrevocable. No septon's blessing, no lord's decree, no king's command could dissolve what had been sealed in blood before the gods of the Freehold. And yet the triumph was alloyed with something else. Something he had not anticipated. The reaching had stopped. The obsession that had driven him for years, the ceaseless forward-leaning urgency of wanting Valaena, had been satisfied. The hunger had been fed. And in its wake was a stillness that felt, to a man who had never been still in his life, like a species of vertigo.

The Crownlands appeared on the horizon. Beyond them, across the grey expanse of Blackwater Bay, Dragonstone rose from the sea like a fist of black stone.

They had discussed the lie at the lake's edge. No one could know. The rite would be a secret between them that must remain so until a moment could be found, if such a moment existed, when disclosure served their purposes. The story was simple because simple stories were hardest to disprove. She had flown to the God's Eye in distress over the prolonged confinement following the events of the tourney. He had found her there. They had rested, separately, and flown back at first light. Nothing more. She was a poor liar. He knew this about her the way he knew the pattern of her breathing. She lied the way honest people lie, with a stiffness in the voice and an evasiveness in the eyes that was itself a confession. He had told her, firmly, to say as little as possible and let him handle the interrogation. She was to let him speak. If they pressed her, she was to say she was upset and that she had needed to be alone. He had told her to speak as little as she could and to look appropriately contrite. She had met his gaze and nodded. 

The island grew before them. The dragonmont, the castle, the harbour. The familiar, confining geography of home.

---

They landed on the eastern ledge of the dragonmont. Vermithor first, the impact sending a tremor through the stone, then Silverwing beside him, her claws finding their purchase on the basalt with the delicacy of a creature that had been landing on this same ledge for decades. The old queen's dragon had taken up residence on Dragonstone immediately after Alysanne's death, as though waiting for Valaena to find her way to her. Aerion believed this, that all of bonds between dragons and their riders were fated, predetermined. Aerion dismounted his own dragon and stood on the stone flexing his knees while the blood returned to his feet. Valaena was climbing down from Silverwing's harness with the careful, deliberate movements of someone whose body had been pushed past its limits and was now operating on residual will alone. Her face was pale. The grey gown was creased and salt-stained and there was still grass in her hair, small brown fragments that she had missed in her cleaning.

They did not have to go far to find the household. The household came to them. Jace reached them first, coming up the dragonmont path at a run, his dark hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, his doublet unlaced at the throat. He saw Valaena and stopped. Something moved across his face. A collapsing of tension, relief pivoting almost instantly to anger.

"You're alive," he said. Flat.

"I am," she confirmed, her voice small.

"You have been gone since yesterday afternoon. What were you thinking? Disappearing without a word. Without anyone with you." Jace's brown eyes were hot with a fury that was entirely distinct from their mother's, less political, more personal. He looked at Aerion. The look held a question he did not voice.

"I found her at the God's Eye," Aerion said. Measured. Helpful. "She was upset. She needed time. I brought her back."

Jace's eyes moved between them. They lingered on Valaena's dishevelled dress, the grass in her hair, the quality of her silence. Aerion saw him register these details and file them in the orderly cabinet of his mind, evidence to be assembled later into a pattern he had perhaps not yet identified but might, given time, begin to construct.

"Mother has been awake all night," Jace said to Valaena, his voice softening. "She wants to see you, immediately."

---

They descended together, the three of them. At the base of the dragonmont, Luke was waiting. He stood in the castle's eastern gate with his arms at his sides and his face bloodless, and when he saw Valaena he took two steps forward and stopped, uncertain whether to embrace her or shout at her. He settled for neither, simply standing there with his jaw working and his brown eyes bright with unshed tears. Luke was fourteen and trying very hard to be older than he was in front of his brothers. The night had stripped his capacity for performance away, leaving the boy beneath.

Valaena went to him and pulled him into her arms. His voice came muffled from where his face was buried in her shoulder. "I was so worried. Don't ever do that again." Aerion watched and felt the ache of exclusion. The circle of their embrace was closed to him and always would be. The bond between Valaena and her Velaryon brothers belonged to a category of love that predated him and would outlast him and that he could neither replicate nor replace.

Rhaena appeared in the corridor behind Luke. She said nothing. She took Valaena's hand when the embrace ended and squeezed it once, hard, and the look that passed between them was brief and laden with the understanding that existed between two girls who shared a household and the restrictions that came with it and knew the weight of the forces pressing upon them.

"She is in the solar," Rhaena said quietly. "She has been there since you left."

---

Rhaenyra's solar was warm. The fire had been built up high, casting a shifting, orange-gold light across the room. Rhaenyra stood at the centre of it. Not at the window, not at the desk, not in any of the positions of composed authority that Aerion had seen her assume during the household's various crises. She stood at the centre because she was past the point of arranging herself for effect and had arrived at the place where nothing mattered except the reality of the situation before her.

She looked terrible. The word was seldom applicable to Rhaenyra Targaryen, whose beauty was structural and therefore resistant to the erosions of fatigue. But the night had marked her. Her silver-gold hair was pulled back in a hasty, loosening knot. Her face was drawn, the fine bones more prominent than usual, the skin beneath her eyes dark with exhaustion. Her violet eyes were red-rimmed and bright with a concern so raw it was indistinguishable from fury.

Daemon occupied a chair near the hearth, angled so he could observe the entire room while giving the impression of simply sitting by the fire. He wore the same clothing he had worn the previous day. Dark Sister leaned against the wall beside him within arm's reach. He did not rise when they entered. His pale eyes moved from Valaena to Aerion and lingered on his son for perhaps a heartbeat longer than a casual glance required, a moment in which Aerion felt the weight of his father's attention settle on him like a testing hand placed flat on a surface to assess for warmth.

Valaena entered first. Aerion followed. The door closed behind them. Jace and Luke remained in the corridor. Rhaena retreated to her chambers. The solar contracted to the four of them: the mother, the daughter, the husband, the stepson. The fire crackled.

Rhaenyra looked at her daughter with the look of a mother who had spent her night believing that her child was dead and was now reconciling the imagined loss with the girl standing before her, alive, whole, and infuriatingly, incomprehensibly present. He could see the successive waves of emotion crossing her face: relief, gratitude, tenderness, and then, rising from beneath all of these, anger.

"Sit down," Rhaenyra said. Quiet. Too quiet.

Valaena sat. She took the chair nearest the door, folded her hands in her lap, and looked at them. She did not meet her mother's eyes.

"You vanished." Rhaenyra's voice was controlled, each word laid with the precision of a mason laying courses. "Without a word. Without a note. You took your dragon and you flew off this island, alone, into the sky, and you did not come back."

Valaena said nothing.

"Do you understand what I have been through tonight?" The voice cracked. Thin and brief, a fissure that opened and closed in the space of a syllable. To crack Rhaenyra's composure the fear must have been immense. "You are a princess of the realm. You are my daughter, my only daughter, and you are known across the Seven Kingdoms. You could have been come upon by bandits, thieves, any number of people who would do you harm for no reason other than the blood you carry. Do you understand?"

Valaena nodded. 

"Have you lost the capacity for speech? Words, Valaena."

Valaena's knuckles whitened. "Yes, Mother. I understand."

Aerion spoke into the pause. "She flew to the God's Eye. I found her on the southern shore. Alone. She was unharmed."

Rhaenyra's eyes turned to him. The weight of her attention shifted like a searchlight sweeping across a dark field. He received it without visible reaction.

"How did you know where to find her?"

"Jace flew to Driftmark and King's Landing, along the coast. There are only a limited number of places Valaena has actually been on dragonback. We flew to the God's Eye together once, years ago. Valaena, Baela, Jace and I. You might remember. I decided to fly to the Riverlands while Jace took the Crownlands. To broaden the search. When I crossed the Blackwater Rush and came within sight of the lake, I spotted Silverwing on the shore."

Rhaenyra's eyes did not leave his face. She was reading him with the comprehensive attention of a woman who had survived the most treacherous court in the known world by learning to detect the difference between what people said and what they meant. He gave her nothing to find. The lie was buried deep enough beneath the truth that the surface was honest in every particular.

"And the hours between finding her and returning here? You were gone all night."

"She was tired, and cold. She had flown two hours in a gown with no riding leathers. I judged it safer to wait until morning and fly back in daylight rather than attempt the return in darkness."

Silence. Rhaenyra thinking. Assessing. Weighing what she had been told against what she felt, which was that she was being deceived.

He could feel Daemon watching him, too. His father's gaze carried an attention different in kind from Rhaenyra's. She was searching for lies. Daemon was watching, with certainty, the liar. He was studying the technique and assessing the performance. Both of which he was in the process of concluding to be lacking. He had spent a lifetime engaging in deceit, he would not be so easily fooled.

"Valaena," Rhaenyra said, and her voice had changed. The fury was joined by something quieter and more probing. "Is this the truth of it?"

Valaena raised her eyes. Aerion saw her fight the instinct to confess, to offer the truth the way she always offered it when cornered, because truth was her natural currency and lying cost her in ways visible on her face. He watched her fight and win, narrowly, the victory achieved through the sheer terror of what the truth would produce. She had weighed up her options like a merchant in trade, calculating the cost of the truth against the cost of the lie, and had reached the conclusion that the former far outspent the latter.

"Yes," she said. "It is the truth."

Rhaenyra studied her daughter for a long moment, her eyes narrowed.

"Very well. Go to your chambers. Send Elinda to draw you a bath. You look half dead." The anger drained on the last sentence, replaced by something raw and tired. Relief and love surfacing clearly beneath the complicated anger and fear. "Go."

Valaena crossed the room without looking at Aerion, without looking at Daemon, and passed through the door. Her footsteps receded. The room was left with three people instead of four, and the chemistry shifted immediately, as it always shifts when the subject departs and those who remain are freed to speak.

Rhaenyra went to the window. She pressed her hands into the stone ledge and closed her eyes and breathed. When she turned back her face was calmer. Harder. The mask resettled, imperfectly.

"Thank you for finding her," she said to Aerion. Formal. The tone occupied the narrow ground between gratitude and suspicion.

"She is my sister. We are all relieved for her safe return," Aerion said. The word sister was a small, precise lie nested inside a larger truth, positioning him in the role of dutiful family member.

Rhaenyra nodded. She looked at Daemon. Something passed between them, one of the wordless exchanges that constituted the deepest layer of their marriage. Daemon inclined his head a fraction of a degree. An assent, though to what, Aerion could not determine.

Rhaenyra left the solar. The door closed behind her. Aerion was alone with his father.

---

Daemon did not move from his chair. He sat by the fire with one boot propped on the low table, his body arranged in a way that told the story of a man at ease. A man who was content, and therefore safe to be in close quarters with. The story was a lie made of muscle and bone. Daemon at ease was Daemon at his most dangerous, because it was a deliberate lowering of visible defences designed to make the other person careless. Aerion knew this. He had grown up watching his father disarm rooms full of hostile lords without raising his voice. He had studied the technique the way a journeyman studies a master's method. He knew every element. And just as a smith's apprentice might develop calluses from repeated exposure to hard metal, Aerion had developed calluses of his own to blunt his father's methods of discernment.

Daemon let the silence hold. Which was what he always did when he wanted information and did not wish to reveal how much he already possessed. Other men interrogated with questions. Daemon understood that silence was a weapon of extraordinary precision, that most people could not endure it in a room where speech was expected, and that the discomfort would drive them to fill it with words they had not intended to offer.

Aerion waited. He would not fill it. His tolerance for his father's methods, through years of exposure, was almost complete immunity. He felt the pressure of it nonetheless.

Daemon began. The transition from silence to speech was seamless, the words arriving without preamble.

"There is quite a considerable distance between here and the God's Eye."

"It can be flown in two hours, give or take."

"And you arrived at the conclusion that she would be there almost immediately, it would seem."

"I came to it through logical thought. As I described."

"Logical thought." Daemon repeated the words without inflection. Tasting it. "Tell me about this logical thought. You learned the princess had taken flight. You consulted with Jace. You decided upon the God's Eye. And then you flew there. Alone."

"Yes."

"Without informing anyone else of your theory."

"Jace was already in the air."

"And the maester? The castellan? Myself and Rhaenyra? We were here, in this room, coordinating the search and would have found your theory of considerable interest."

The question found the seam in the story with unerring accuracy. Aerion had prepared for it, had readied his response in the minutes before landing.

"I acted on instinct. Every hour of delay increased the risk, which was already considerable, as Rhaenyra said. Pursuing immediately was more productive than communicating my thoughts."

"Instinct." Another word assessed. "Instinct regarding Valaena's whereabouts that proved to be stronger than Jace's, who has known her since she first drew breath."

The observation sat in the air, quiet and precise.

"How did she seem," Daemon continued, "when you found her?"

"She was cold. Melancholy. I found her sitting on the shore by herself. Silverwing was resting on the sand nearby."

"And you arrived. You comforted her." Daemon nodded his head with each word, as though coaxing the first words out of a babe's mouth. Daemon did not believe him, but he was allowing him to go through the motions. His father was letting him tell his story, knowing that each detail was a further knot in the web Aerion was entangling himself in. And Daemon was waiting like a spider that had caught itself a fly, certain it would be eating well very soon. It need only let the fly entangle itself fully, and then the fly would be at its mercy and free for the taking. 

Aerion remained cool, and persisted. "I built a fire. Gave her my cloak. Waited until she had rested and it was light for the flight back."

"Yes, you waited for several hours," Daemon nodded again. "On the shore of a lake. In the dark. Alone. Did she say anything to you? As to why?"

"No, we did not speak."

"But you were able to deduce that she was melancholy? And cold. And too tired to return. Without speaking."

"She is my sister. It is not difficult to tell."

"You have said that twice now." Daemon smiled, a small sharp smile that did not reach his eyes. "She is not."

"We were raised together. We share blood."

"It does not matter. She is Rhaenyra's daughter, not mine."

The correction stripped the relationship to its political anatomy. Rhaenyra's daughter and therefore under Rhaenyra's authority. And under Rhaenyra's authority, Valaena was currency to be spent in pursuit of the succession her mother had been promised. The asset whose value was ultimately measured not in affection but in the alliances her marriage could secure. An asset whose value could not be allowed to be diminished. 

The fire crackled. A log shifted. Daemon watched his son through the sparks and his expression hardened. He was no longer the spider playing a game with the fly. 

"Did anything occur," he said, and his voice dropped to the register that lived beneath conversation, the register of fathers speaking to sons about things that cannot be unsaid, "at the God's Eye, between you and the princess, that I should know about?"

Aerion's answer came calm, his voice steady. "No."

Daemon's eyes held his. The fire burned. The sea murmured beyond the windows.

Then Daemon rose from his chair. Fluid and unhurried, the lean, hard frame unfolding to its full height. He crossed the space between them in three strides and stopped in front of his son. He was close enough that Aerion could smell the leather and the oil from Dark Sister's sheath and the faint scent of dragonsmoke that clung to every rider on Dragonstone.

Daemon took Aerion's left hand. The grip was sudden. Not violent but sudden, the fingers closing around the wrist with an economical precision, a manoeuvre already decided upon. He lifted the hand and turned it palm-upward. He pulled the glove off. The leather peeled back, revealing the binding beneath. The blood that had seeped through the fabric was visible as a dark, irregular stain against the white linen.

Daemon unwound the binding. His fingers were deft. The strips fell away and the cut was exposed. The thin, clean, deliberate line where Valyrian steel had parted the skin, the edges dark with clotted blood. Too precise, too uniform, too intentionally placed to be anything but what it was. Not a wound of accident or combat. A wound of purpose.

Daemon looked at the cut. He turned the hand slightly in the light, examining it from different angles, with the dispassionate attention of a maester examining a lesion. His face was very still. He lifted the hand and brought it to Aerion's face, bringing the cut to his eye line. As though presenting him with an incorporeal object rather than a part of his own body.

"What, then," he said, his voice quiet and flat, "is this?"

Aerion met his father's eyes. He held the gaze without allowing his breathing to change or his expression to shift.

"I do not believe it is news to you that I practise the old rites. By their nature, they require blood."

The silence that followed was harder than any that had come before. Compressed. The air in the room seemed to thicken, difficult to breathe. Daemon's eyes narrowed. A minimal contraction of the eyelids that transformed his gaze from the broad sweep of general assessment into something focused and piercing.

"Tell me," he said, and his voice had left the conversational entirely, each word placed with the finality of a headsman's blade striking the block, "that I will not find Valaena to be in possession of the same."

The hiss came through clenched teeth. The sound of a man containing something vast and volatile behind a barrier of discipline that was holding, just, but whose capacity was being tested.

Aerion did not flinch. "The princess was alone for several hours before I found her. I cannot account for any injuries she may have acquired in that time."

Daemon released his wrist. The fingers opened and the hand fell and the contact was severed. Daemon stepped back. Two paces. The withdrawal was less physical than psychological, the retreat of a man who needs to recalibrate.

He turned and walked to the window. For a long moment he stood with his back to his son, looking out at the grey sea and the dragonmont and its plume of steam. His hands were clasped behind his back. When he turned from the window, his face had changed. The fury was still there. But it had been joined by something colder and more disciplined. Fury harnessed and directed, converted from heat into force. The face Daemon wore when he had made a decision.

"Do not play the fool with me, Aerion."

The words were quiet. Without emphasis. Without any of the theatrical intensity that lesser men employed to disguise the thinness of their authority. Daemon needed none of that.

He crossed back to the centre of the room.

"I have been watching you," he said, "since you were old enough to hold a blade. I have known what you are before you knew yourself." Each sentence was laid with the unhurried precision of a mason, each one supporting the next, the rising structure carrying a weight of inevitability that precluded interruption. "I have allowed all manner of your behaviours, despite their costs, because I understood them. Because I carry the same fire in my blood. Because a man does not punish his son for inheriting his nature."

He paused. Not strategically. A pause of careful handling, a thought that was true and dangerous and could not be recalled once spoken.

"You are my blood, the blood of the dragon. I have never once told you to deny your natural impulses, where reasonable. Burn what you wish, lay waste to some goat farm in Essos, bed half the whores in Lys. These are acts of little consequence and in these matters, you are free. But know this, Aerion, there is a limit. You do not exist in a world free from all consequence, no matter what you believe."

He looked at Aerion. What was in his eyes was not the fury of a father confronting a disobedient son, though that was part of it. It was something larger and more complicated. The look of a man recognising in his child the same fatal flaw that had shaped his own life. The belief that everything he wanted was his by right, that taking what was not freely given should be as natural as breathing, and that anyone who stood in his way needed to be cut down, swiftly and without thought. Aerion was not sure if this fatal flaw had been inherited from his father through blood, or ingrained in him through instruction. Either way, his father had given it to him. And now he wished for him to excise it within the span of a single conversation.

"Whatever occurred at the God's Eye between you and Valaena." Daemon's voice dropped lower, quieter, each word separated from the next by a deliberate interval. "Whatever you have done. You will not speak of it to Rhaenyra. You will speak of it to no one. Do you understand me?"

Aerion stood still. The words went deep, past the surface, past the mask, finding the thing beneath. His father knew. Not everything. Perhaps not the nature of the rite itself, not the words spoken, not the fire that had thrown sparks into the sky when the blood hit the flame. But the essential thing. He knew, or had guessed with sufficient confidence that his son and his wife's daughter were entangled in something that had progressed from infatuation to consummation.

And he had known for longer than tonight. The realisation settled into Aerion with a cold certainty. Daemon had watched. Had observed the glances and the silences and the taut, invisible wire that hummed between them. He had known, and he had allowed it. Not from approval but from calculation. Exposing the affair would damage Rhaenyra more than its continuation. A scandal exposed would hand the Hightowers a weapon of devastating potency, whereas a quiet, contained, deniable arrangement was a problem that could be ignored. Daemon had been managing this problem. Silently. From a distance. He was intervening now only because the secrecy had been threatened.

The God's Eye had threatened it. A night together, unaccounted for. The discretion had frayed, and Daemon's capacity to ignore was contingent on discretion.

"I understand," Aerion said.

"Repeat it."

"I will not speak of it."

Daemon held his gaze. In the firelight the resemblance between them was stark. The same jaw. The same brow. The same pale violet eyes, though Daemon's were lighter, nearly silver on bright days, while Aerion's retained a deep, saturated purple in any light. The same capacity, behind the eyes, for violence and strategy and the consuming intensity that the Targaryen blood produced in its most potent expressions.

Daemon turned away. He retrieved Dark Sister from the wall, the blade whispering in its old scabbard, and settled it across his back. He walked to the door and placed his hand on the latch. He paused. Long enough that the fire popped twice in the grate and a gull cried outside.

"And Aerion." His voice came directed at the wood rather than the room. His profile visible in a sliver of grey light, the rest hidden by his silver hair. "Remember what I told you about appetites. Master them. Or they will master you. And if they master you, they will destroy you."

He opened the latch. The mechanism turned with a click that seemed, in the quiet of the room, louder than it had any right to be.

"I do not wish to have this conversation again," Daemon said.

He left. The door closed. His footsteps receded down the passage. Aerion was alone.

The fire had burned low. The embers pulsed with a dull orange. He stood by the wall, his hands clasped behind his back, and felt the weight of everything settle into his bones.

Daemon had called it appetite. As though what he felt for Valaena was a hunger, a bodily function, a thing to be sated or denied the way a man denied himself a second cup of wine before battle. The word was ridiculous in its inadequacy. It reduced the sacred to the physiological, the divine to the mundane. The bond between him and Valaena was not appetite. It was the binding of flame to flame, blood to blood, the fulfilment of everything the old gods had preordained when they put fire in both their veins. Appetite was something dogs felt. What he felt was destiny.

He looked at his unwound left hand. The thin dark line across his palm. The scar already forming. He flexed his fingers and the scab cracked and fresh blood appeared in the crease, a thin red thread that followed the line of the cut and pooled in his lifeline. Whatever Daemon did. Whatever consequences the morning's confrontation produced. What had passed between him and Valaena on the shore of the God's Eye did not answer to the calculations of princes or the patience of fathers. He rewound the strips of linen, pressed the edges of the wound together. He flexed his hand. The binding held.

He left the solar and walked toward his chambers. At the turning of the stair he stopped. He stood in the cold stone passage and felt, through the walls and the floors and the iron-banded doors and the accumulated weight of centuries of Valyrian masonry, the pull that connected him to Valaena. Two floors above. Behind closed doors. He felt her not through the stone but through the blood.

He opened his eyes. He descended the stairs. He went to his chambers and bolted the door and sat on the edge of his bed and waited.

---

He went to her after nightfall. The decision was made somewhere in the hours between the return to his chambers and the fall of full dark. He spent those hours in his chamber, motionless on the edge of his bed. The evening meal came and went without him. He sat in the dark like a hawk on a high perch and turned the morning's confrontation over in his mind, examining each of Daemon's words for their potency, testing the walls he had built against the pressure that had been applied to it, assessing where the seams were weakest and where the supports still held.

There were things Valaena needed to know. Warnings to deliver. Instructions to give before the morning brought new scrutiny. Daemon's eyes were on them now. The quiet, calculated tolerance that had allowed them to exist together beneath the surface had been replaced by something closer and more active. The invisible surveillance had become vigilance. 

The household went to bed. He listened to the sounds through the stone. Jace's voice in the corridor, speaking to Luke. Rhaena's light step passing his door. Daemon's tread on the stairs, ascending toward Rhaenyra's apartments. The castle settling. He waited until the silence had held for the better part of an hour. Then he rose and crossed to the door and stood there for a moment, feeling the cold of the iron latch through the linen on his palm. The risk was considerable. The household was alert. Guards would be more vigilant. Servants lighter sleepers. Rhaenyra might well be lying awake.

He took it anyway. The corridors of the Sea Dragon Tower were dark and cold. He moved through them keeping to the edges where the stone was worn smooth, timing his steps to coincide with the gusts of wind that moaned through the carved gargoyles. No cloak, no blade. A loose shirt and breeches. If discovered, the absence of anything beyond sleeping clothes supported the fiction of a man who had missed the evening meal, was now unable to sleep for it, and was heading to the kitchens for a plate of bread and cheese.

He knocked on her door. Three taps. He waited ten seconds. After fifteen, he heard the soft pad of her bare feet on stone. The scrape of the latch. The door opened a crack and a sliver of candlelight fell across the dark passage.

Valaena looked at him through the gap. Half her face was illuminated: one eye and one cheek and the corner of her mouth. Her hair was loose and damp from the bath, falling over the shoulder of a white linen shift. The visible eye was heavy-lidded, carrying the rawness of someone who has been woken. She had been asleep. He could see the crease of the pillow on her cheek. She said nothing. She opened the door wider and stepped aside and he entered and she closed it behind him and shot the bolt. The choreography of his nocturnal visits had been established months ago and refined through repetition into a sequence so familiar it required no thought.

Her chamber was warm. The fire had been banked but not extinguished, the coals glowing behind the iron grate. A single candle burned on the nightstand. The bedsheets were thrown back on one side, the pillow still bearing the impression of her head. She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them and looked at him.

"I didn't think you'd come. Not tonight."

"We need to talk." He remained standing. He kept his distance from the bed, leaning against the far wall with his arms folded. "Daemon suspects."

Her face went still. Not the stillness of composure but of threat being processed, the information passing through the surface layer of exhaustion and arriving at the deeper place where fear lived. Her arms tightened around her knees.

"Suspects what?"

"What do you think?" He kept his voice level. Clinical. "He suspects us. More than suspects, he knows. He saw the cut on my hand. He asked what it was and I told him it was from the rites, which is true. Then he asked whether you carried a matching wound."

The colour left her face. It drained from her cheeks and her lips in a rapid recession. She looked down at her own left hand, the sleeve pulled over the palm.

"What did you say?"

"That I could not account for injuries you might have acquired during the hours you were alone."

"And he believed that?"

"No. He does not believe any of it. He told me that whatever passed between us at the God's Eye, we are not to speak of it to Rhaenyra. We are not to speak of it to anyone."

Quiet. The embers pulsed. The candle trembled.

"He is protecting us. Why?" 

"He is protecting Rhaenyra." His voice carried the correction lightly but left no room for appeal. "If we are found out, the damage is to her cause. He is not protecting us. He is containing the truth. And we benefit from that only so long as he believes that it can be contained."

She absorbed this. She chewed her lower lip and her fingers tightened around her knees, and he recognised the posture, the inward folding of a woman calculating consequences and not liking the arithmetic.

"The cut on your hand," he said. "Guard it until it heals. A week, ten days at most. Keep your sleeves down. Wear gloves if you must. If anyone asks, you cut yourself on the dragonglass that grows in Silverwing's cave. It is thin but it will hold if delivered with conviction."

She nodded. Small and tired.

"Has Rhaenyra spoken with you further?"

The change in her face was immediate. The drawn, anxious pallor lightened. Her mouth softened. Something entered her eyes that he was not expecting.

"She came to see me before I went to sleep," Valaena said. "She was softer. She told me she understood the confinement had been difficult. She said she had been too harsh." A pause. The corner of her mouth curved, tentative. "She has given me permission to fly to Driftmark. To see Baela. She thinks some time away from Dragonstone will do me good."

Aerion felt the cold settle behind his eyes. The brightness of her expression grated against the tension he was still carrying from the interrogation from Daemon. It darkened his mood immediately. Her voice carried an upward inflection of relief, the relief of a girl whose mother had forgiven her and whose punishment had been exchanged for a gift. The gift of flying away from Dragonstone. From the island. From him. And Valaena, who had stood on the shore of the lake and chosen him with a ferocity that shattered every doubt he had ever carried was now looking pleased about the prospect of going. As though what they had done was a storm that had passed through and left the landscape unchanged. As though the rite that had fused their blood and their souls into a single flame before the gods of Old Valyria was a fever that had broken and from which she was now pleasantly recovering.

He felt the anger rise in his chest unbidden. He had promised her, on the shore of the God's Eye, that the rite was permanent. That it could not be undone by any authority short of death itself. He had believed she had heard him, that she had understood. Now it seemed she had simply heard the words the way she heard the Valyrian prayers he had taught her as a child, when she had repeated the sounds without fully grasping what they committed her to. It seemed to him now that perhaps her conviction had been carried along by the intensity of the moment and the beauty of the ritual and the heat of the fire. That she had failed to comprehend, truly, that the fire did not go out when the night ended.

"Some time away from Dragonstone," he said. His voice was even. Controlled. "Or some time away from me?"

The brightness in her face faltered. The smile flickered, like a candle flame touched by a draught. Her hazel eyes searched his face, looking for the thing behind the words. Searching for something, anything, that would indicate if he was being playful or serious. 

She found it, and it told her he was serious.

"It isn't like that. Rhaenyra's anger has burned itself out," she said carefully. "The visit is a peace offering. That is all."

"And you seem eager to accept it."

Quiet. She was adjusting, her body contracting on the bed, knees drawing closer, arms tightening.

"It is only for a few days. Baela will be happy to see me. Besides, I have not seen my grandmother in some time."

The word grandmother landed in his lap like a gift of his own.

"Baela has been gone less than two nights," he said. "And Rhaenys is not your grandmother."

The quiet that followed was the silence of a wound opening. Something tearing inside a person, something soft and vulnerable that had been protected by trust. Her face crumpled. Folding inward the way paper curls when heat reaches it, progressive and irreversible. Her mouth opened slightly. Her chin dropped. Her eyes, which had been searching his face for the joke, for the take-it-back, found neither.

She was sensitive about the rumours. Everyone knew this. The whispered questions about the parentage of Rhaenyra's dark-haired children had shadowed Valaena since birth. Princess Rhaenys Targaryen loved her grandchildren without reservation, without the slightest public acknowledgment that the blood they carried might not be the blood their names proclaimed. She had held Valaena as an infant and named her beautiful and insisted, time and again, that Rhaenyra's Velaryon children were her blood.

And Aerion had reminded her of the falsehood. Had taken one of the most tender relationships in her life outside of the one she shared with her mother and siblings and held it up to the light and reminded her of the shadow that fell across it. Because Rhaenys was not her grandmother. That was the truth. The woman loved her under false pretences, the love founded on a lie that everyone knew and no one openly spoke of and that Valaena clung to with a desperation that was, to Aerion, both pitiable and baffling. And in this moment, with the anger rising in him at the flippancy of her announcing her departure for Driftmark, that lie was a perfect weapon. One he was happy to use. 

She was not a Velaryon. She was a Targaryen by blood, sired by a Strong. More importantly, however, since last night, she was bound to him by a rite older than any surname and truer than any genealogy. He had expected the illusions to finally fall away. For her to stand on the ground that was actually beneath her feet rather than the ground she imagined was there. She had not, the conviction she had shown at the God's Eye had yielded to the first touch of pressure applied to it. An offer of a trip to Driftmark, away. 

"Why would you say such a thing?" Her voice was a whisper. It wavered.

"Because it is the truth."

The words came out flat. Final. He was irritated. He was replaying the brightness in her face from moments ago, and getting more irritated for it. She was upset with him for what he had said, but the upset would, eventually, give way to the grudging acknowledgment that he was right, because he was always right about these things. And right now, he was upset with her in turn. 

"That makes it no less of a wicked thing to say to me, Aerion."

Her voice had steadied. The waver was gone, replaced by something quieter and harder. She was looking at him with bright, wet eyes that held disappointment. Not in his statement. In its target. She had believed, perhaps, that the blade he carried for everyone else would always remain sheathed in her presence. He did not answer. The silence was heavy. The fire's embers pulsed.

She stood up and folded her arms. A closing, a withdrawal. She turned away from him, angling her body toward the window, presenting her back to him. The narrow plane of her shoulders through the white linen. The dark hair falling in damp waves down her spine. The silver streak catching the candlelight.

"I am tired. It has been a long day. You should go."

She was dismissing him. Another slight, another blow to his patience that was already wearing dangerously thin for what this exchange had descended into. Turning her back and sending him away like a servant who had lingered past his welcome. What they had done was not yet a full day old and she was already treating it like an episode rather than a covenant. Already pulling away, reaching for the familiar comforts of Rhaenyra's approval and Baela's company and Rhaenys's love, the whole soft, comfortable, mendacious world she had been raised in, the world he had spent years patiently dismantling in her mind to make room for the truth.

He did not leave. She felt his stillness. He watched the awareness travel through her body, the stiffening of her spine, the fractional lift of her head. She turned just enough to see him from the corner of her eye.

"Did you hear me? I asked you to leave."

He pushed off the wall and crossed the room in three strides. The air compressed and heated. He took her face in his hands, both hands, the wounded and the whole, his fingers spreading across her jaw and her temples, tilting her face up to his. She resisted. Her palms pressed flat against his sternum and pushed, genuine strength. He did not move. Her strength was insufficient and they both knew it. He kissed her. Hard and sudden, his lips pressed against hers with a force that drove her head back against the pressure of his hands. She made a sound against his mouth that he felt through his fingertips where they rested against the hinge of her jaw.

She pushed at his chest again, harder. Her fingers curled into fists against his shirt. The irritation that had been building inside him broke. He bit her. His teeth closed on the full curve of her lower lip and applied pressure that went beyond playful and into genuine pain. He felt the flesh compress and give, the thin skin parting, and the taste of her blood entered his mouth. She gasped and pulled away, and he allowed it this time. Her hand came to her mouth and she looked at the blood on her fingers. Then she looked back up at him, her eyes wide and dark in the candlelight.

"What has gotten into you?" She hissed.

"You." He closed the distance again, his hands went back to her face, thumbs on her cheekbones, fingers threaded into the damp hair at her temples. His grip was firm. Absolute. "You have gotten into me. Into my very blood."

A week ago the words would have been a metaphor. Now they were the unadorned truth. She was in his blood. He had opened his palm and mingled his blood with hers in a rite older than the Citadel and the Faith. He knew it to be as real and as binding as any force in the natural world. She needed to understand this. What they had done on the shore was not a moment. Not a rebellion to be filed alongside the night in the city, the excursion through the tunnels and every encounter they had had before and after. It was permanent. He had told her this before the rite and he was telling her again now, his hands on her face and her blood on both their lips, his eyes holding hers with an intensity that permitted no evasion.

She was looking at him with the blood shining on her lower lip and her hazel eyes wide and bright and full of the mixture of emotions that only he produced in her. Fear and want and anger and the deep, stubborn, immoveable love she carried for him like a wound she could not stop pressing on.

He kissed her again. She let him this time. The resistance dissolved in the space between one heartbeat and the next, the barriers falling with the quiet, exhausted surrender of a woman who had fought the same fight too many times and had arrived at the same conclusion: that fighting him and fighting herself were the same thing, and the fight was unwinnable because the enemy and the objective were one and the same.

He lifted her. His hands left her face and found her waist and picked her up and set her on the writing desk beside them. Inkpots and quills slid and scattered, a quill rolling to the edge and falling to the stone floor. The cool hard edge of the desk pressed against the backs of her thighs and his body pressed against her front, and she was suspended between the wood and the heat of him.

He pulled the shift over her head with one hand. The fabric caught on her hair and freed itself and she was bare beneath, the candlelight finding her skin, painting it in shades of gold and the luminous white that lived in the hollows of her throat and the undersides of her arms. The cut on her left palm was visible, the binding slightly displaced, dark with dried blood. He took her wounded hand and brought it to his mouth and kissed the binding and felt the warmth of the wound through the cloth. She hissed as he pressed his thumb to it, too hard for the newly formed edges of the developing scar to hold. He watched the cloth bloom with fresh red blood.

She pulled her hand away and reached for him. Her hands found the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head. Skin to skin in the candlelight, the heat between them was charged, potent, as though the ritual at the God's Eye had kindled something that burned independently of desire, two flames leaning toward each other, seeking to merge.

He unlaced himself and entered her without the slow preamble of the God's Eye. There was no pausing, no checking. He pushed into her and felt her gasp, her fingers locking on his shoulders, nails biting into the muscle. The desk shifted, its legs scraping on the stone floor. An inkpot toppled and the ink spread across the wood in a dark bloom. He held her hips and moved with a force and speed that was not the careful, worshipful pace of the lakeshore but something driven by a deeper need.

A need to remind. To remind her as well as himself. A re-inscription of the bond that he felt was under threat from her willingness to leave, from her brightness at the prospect of Driftmark, from the settled softness he had seen in her face when she spoke of Rhaenyra's forgiveness. She wanted to go back to the world she had been raised in. She wanted to be the princess again, the Realm's Delight with her pressed flowers and her pearl necklaces and her grandmother who loved her. She wanted all of it back. And that wanting was a betrayal so fundamental that it defied articulation. She had chosen him. She had said the words and shed the blood and given herself to him in the oldest and most irrevocable way possible. And now, the night after, she was reaching back toward the comfortable cage she had sworn to leave, drawn by the warmth of the familiar, by the easy, painless love that asked nothing of her except the perpetuation of the role she had been performing since birth.

She could not reach back for those things, he would not allow it. She wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him deeper, and he thought of the look on her face when he had said Rhaenys is not your grandmother. How quickly the words had formed, knowing they were the ones that would hurt her most in that moment. Aerion thought about this, his capacity to hurt. Some men drank when they were taken by darkness, some fought and some wept. Aerion deployed cruelty, expertly and without remorse. He knew this about himself, and he was not bothered by it. 

Her hands on his back drew him out of his thoughts. She was not gentle. Her nails scored lines down his sides that he felt as bright threads of pain. It did not last long, his restraint and patience far too frayed by the gnawing irritation he felt. The climax took him hard and fast, pulling a sound from him that he muffled against her shoulder, his mouth pressed to her skin. He felt the contractions through his entire body, a devastating flood that left him hollowed and trembling and calmer than he had been.

The calm was not peace. It was the stillness that followed the storm, the landscape was changed, the trees were stripped, the ground was soaked. The darkness in him was sated. But it was not gone. It had simply retreated to the deeper layers where it lived, settling into its habitual dormancy.

They were still joined. She was still on the desk, her legs wrapped around him, her face pressed into the curve of his neck. He could feel her breath against his skin, warm, gradually slowing. The ink from the toppled pot was dripping onto the floor.

He pulled back. She let him go and he held her gaze as he withdrew.

"You may go to Driftmark," he said. His voice was quiet. Level. The words were a concession. She did not require his permission, not in any strict sense, he knew this. He was giving it anyway. He was stating a fact. If she was going, it was because he had decided she could go. Because the visit served a purpose. It demonstrated normalcy. It satisfied Rhaenyra's maternal instinct toward leniency without raising the suspicions that a refusal to visit would raise. Valaena on Driftmark, visiting her sister, behaving as a princess was expected to behave, was Valaena who was not examined too closely.

"But return within a few days," he added. "No longer."

She looked at him. She held his gaze for a moment that stretched and thinned and then broke.

"I will," she said. He kissed her on the forehead, a brief, dry touch. Strangely chaste after what had just occurred. 

He dressed in silence. Relacing the breeches he had not fully removed. She watched him from the desk where she still sat, her shift pooled on the floor beneath her feet, the candle throwing her shadow long across the wall. He checked the corridor through the gap in the door. Empty. Dark.

He looked back at her. She was small on the desk, small and bare and marked by him. The bite on her lip. The purpling where his hands had held her hips. The cut on her palm that matched the cut on his. She would take those to Driftmark, and be reminded of what he had promised her. Permanent. The old binding does not bend. It does not yield to anything short of death. She would carry them, and in the quiet moments between the pleasantries of her visit and the joy of seeing her stepsister, she would remember that she belonged to something older and more profound than courtesy or confinement or the comfortable lies of the world she was born into.

He left. She would bolt the door behind him. She would dress, and sit on her bed for a while in the dark, he knew. She would look at the ink stain on the wood of the desk and think about what he had said about Rhaenys. The hurt would sit inside her, working its way deeper, embedding itself in the tissue of who she was.

He felt no guilt for this. She needed the hurt. She needed it the way a body needs pain. Pain told you where the damage was. Pain prevented you from putting weight on a broken limb, from leaning on a structure that could not support you. The fictions she clung to, the comfortable lies, the pretty, false world of maiden princesses and noble men and the seven gods who watched over it all, these were broken limbs. They could not support her weight. If she leaned on them they would give way beneath her and she would fall. He was doing her the kindness of telling her the truth now, when the falling would bruise rather than kill. When there was still time to build something real to stand on. Something built on blood and fire and the truth of what they were.

He returned to his chambers by the dark corridors in silence. He entered his room and bolted the door and sat on the edge of his bed. She would be gone for a few days. And when she returned he would be here, and the binding the rite had forged would hold, and the fire in the blood would burn, and whatever Daemon intended, whatever Rhaenyra planned, whatever the world and its politics and its wars demanded of the children of the dragon, this one thing would remain. This was his. Written in a language older than any of them and sealed in a fire that no king and no queen could extinguish.

He unwound the linen on his left hand and looked at the cut in the faint grey light from the window. The thin, dark line across his palm. The scar already forming. A mark that would be permanent. Visible in strong light, invisible in dim.

it doesn't take long for you both to undress and clumsily roll the condom over him. he’s shaking—half nerves, half raw want—when you finally straddle him bare. he guides himself to your entrance with careful fingers, breath hitching when the head nudges inside.

he’s big, stretching you slow and deep until he’s fully in, hips flush against his. you both tremble at the feeling, of finally feeling each other like this. he presses his forehead to yours, breathing hard through his open mouth.

“tell me if it’s too much,” he rasps.

you shake your head. “feels good. you feel good.”

that’s all he needs.

his arms wrap around you tightly, pulling your chest flush to his. skin to skin. heartbeat to heartbeat. at first he moves slow, careful, every thrust measured and deep like he’s afraid of hurting you. his hands stay gentle on your hips, guiding you but never demanding, eyes half-lidded and locked on your face to catch every flutter, every gasp. he wants to memorize how you look when he’s inside you.

but then you moan his name—soft, breathless, “megumi”—and something inside him shatters. his grip tightens.

he starts moving harder, hips snapping up with more force, chasing the wet heat that clenches around him every time he bottoms out. the careful rhythm breaks. his thrusts turn deeper, rougher, less controlled. each stroke drags a broken sound from your throat and he drinks it in like he’s starving.

he’s getting drunk on it.

drunk on the way your body fits to him, on how perfectly you take him, on the slick sound of skin meeting skin. his hands slide down to grip your ass, fingers digging in hard enough to leave marks as he pulls you down onto him faster, rougher. the couch creaks beneath you. your nails dig into his shoulders harder and he groans, burying his face in your neck again.

“fuck… you feel—” his voice cracks, hips stuttering before he finds an even harsher pace. “so good. so fucking good.”

he was always so careful with closeness. always so afraid of wanting too much. now he can’t stop.

he fucks up into you with so much need, one arm tight around your waist to keep you pinned against him while the other tangles in your hair, tugging to tilt your head back so he can kiss at your throat. every thrust is deeper, greedier. he’s losing himself in the tight, wet drag of your body, in the way you tremble and clench around him like you never want him to stop either.

he never knew he could want someone this desperately. never knew he could let go like this. but with you naked and shaking in his lap, moaning his name between broken breaths, megumi stops holding back.

he just takes—rough, relentless, and completely addicted.