living on pure rage

A month after the Gullet, the castle still smells faintly of medicines, as though the sea itself has followed Jacaerys home and settled in the stone with him.

You have grown so accustomed to it that you hardly notice anymore.

A month ago, you would have given anything to smell it. A month ago, there had been blood. So much blood. But now there are only maesters, all the time.

Three of them stand gathered around the table right now near the window, speaking in low, serious voices while Jace sits in a carved chair looking increasingly irritated with every minute.

Sunlight spills through the narrow panes behind him, catching in his dark curls and turning the edges of them gold, softening him in a way that makes him seem almost boyish despite everything he has endured in the last couple weeks.

His injuries have faded from terrifying to merely alarming. The worst of the bruising is gone, the cuts have begun to heal, and colour has returned to his face, though not yet enough for you to relax.

Unfortunately for everyone else, so has his stubbornness.

You stand beside him with one hand resting lightly on the back of his chair, partly affection but mostly precaution if you're being honest with yourself, because the prince has developed an unfortunate habit of forgetting that nearly dying is supposed to slow a person down.

"Your Grace is recovering admirably," Grand Maester Gerardys says at last.

Jace straightens immediately, as if the words themselves have restored him. Gerardys clears his throat with the patient air of a man who has spent his life delivering unwelcome truths to the powerful. "Recovering admirably, however, does not mean recovered."

Jace slumps back with all the theatrical suffering of a man condemned to the Wall. Gerardys continues as though he has not noticed the prince's offence.

"Your ribs are still mending. The wound to your side has not fully healed. The fever has passed, but weakness remains. Any unnecessary strain could set back his recovery considerably."

Jace folds his arms. "What strain?"

The three maesters exchange a glance, and you immediately become suspicious. Jace notices it too, his brows drawing together. "What strain?" he repeats, sharper this time.

Nobody answers.

The silence stretches, and stretches, and then stretches a little further, until finally the old maester clears his throat again, looking faintly pained. "This includes physical exertion."

Jace nods at once. "Yes, I gathered that, obviously."

"Excessive physical exertion."

"Yes."

"Particularly..." Gerardys pauses, and one of the younger maesters suddenly finds the floor fascinating. "...marital exertion."

The room falls completely silent.

For a single moment Jace simply stares at them. Then his face changes all at once, horror and outrage arriving together.

"I beg your pardon?"

You turn away quickly because you can already feel laughter rising in your throat and you know if you let it out now you will never stop. Beside you, Jace looks scandalised beyond measure. "What do you mean?"

"My Prince-"

"No." The word echoes off the stone walls. "Absolutely not. This is absurd and I refuse to accept it."

Gerardys remains maddeningly calm. "It is only temporary."

"Temporary?" Jace sounds personally betrayed. "You are forbidding me from bedding my own wife."

The younger maester goes slightly red. You stare very intently at the tapestry across the room, because if you look at Jace now you will lose whatever dignity you have left. He points an accusing finger at the entire collection of healers. "I survived a naval battle."

"Indeed."

"I was shot."

"Yes."

"I nearly drowned."

"Correct."

"And your conclusion is that my greatest threat is my wife?"

The maesters look vaguely embarrassed. Jace looks outraged. And suddenly, despite the lingering ache that still lives in your chest whenever you remember the sight of him bleeding on a bed, you feel lighter, because this is familiar. This is your Jace. He's alive enough to argue and complain. Alive enough to glare dramatically at innocent old men and be stubborn.

Your hand slips from the chair to his shoulder, and immediately he covers it with his own. Gerardys notices, and his expression gentles. "My Prince," he says, "the restriction is not punishment."

Jace groans. "I would beg to differ."

A few of the maesters smile despite themselves. Gerardys gathers his papers, "It is only another month."

Jace nearly chokes. "A whole month?"

"Perhaps less, if recovery continues."

"A month."

"You survived the Gullet. Surely you can survive a few more weeks."

Jace mutters something deeply disrespectful under his breath, and you squeeze his shoulder in warning and affection both. His fingers immediately tighten around yours as he looks up at you, exhaustion and frustration playing on his features.

You smile at him, and his expression softens immediately.

Then Gerardys speaks again, and the spell breaks at once. "And separate beds may also be advisable."

Jace's head snaps around, "No."

Silence settles over the chamber. Jace's hand remains wrapped around yours, firm and warm and immovable. "I nearly died, so I am not sleeping without my wife."

They exchange glances and then, wisely, surrender. "Very well."

You lower your head to hide your smile, because truly, there are battles even the maesters cannot win.

That evening the matter should have been settled, at least in theory.

The maesters had spoken, their instructions delivered and their warnings had been repeated no fewer than six times over supper, as though saying them often enough might somehow make Jace more inclined to obey.

Instead, he is attempting to negotiate, which is perhaps exactly what you should have expected from him and yet still feels faintly absurd when he is sitting there shirtless on the edge of the bed, looking incredibly offended by the very concept of restraint.

You sit beside him with a fresh roll of linen in your lap while he holds one arm lifted so you can reach the wound along his side.

The chamber is quiet except for the crackle of the fire and the distant, steady sound of waves striking the cliffs below; night has fully settled beyond the windows, leaving only darkness on the other side of the glass and the warm gold of candlelight within.

Carefully, you peel away the old bandage, and he hisses through his teeth at the movement. You glance up at once. “You are being dramatic.”

"Three arrows pierced my body.”

“A month ago.”

“It still counts.”

You make a skeptical sound and reach for the ointment, though you cannot quite keep the corner of your mouth from twitching. For a few moments silence settles between you. You smooth the salve across healing skin, studying the angry scar that is beginning to form there, the sight still makes something twist painfully in your chest.

There are moments when you look at him and see only Jace; your husband, your best friend, the boy who once raced you through castle corridors and stole lemon cakes from the kitchens with the shameless confidence of someone who had never once been told no in his life.

Then there are moments like this, when memory comes back all at once and with it the blood, the fever, the endless waiting, the terrible certainty, however brief, that you might lose him. Your fingers pause before you can stop them.

Immediately, his hand settles over yours.

He notices. Of course he does.

You lift your eyes, and his expression softens at once. “I am all right,” he says quietly.

“Mm.”

His thumb brushes slowly across your knuckles.

Then, because Jacaerys Velaryon possesses the survival instincts of an overconfident golden retriever, he says, “I still think the maesters are being unreasonable.”

You close your eyes for a brief, weary moment. You had been wondering how long it would take.

“You are recovering from grievous injuries.”

“I am recovering exceptionally well.”

“You still tire walking up stairs.”

“Well, I dislike those stairs.”

You begin wrapping the fresh bandage around his ribs. “They are not unusual stairs, Jace.”

"They are steeper than other stairs."

Despite yourself, you laugh, and his grin appears immediately. He tilts his head, thoughtful in the way that always makes you suspicious.

“What exactly constitutes marital exertion?”

You nearly drop the bandage. “Jacaerys.”

“It is a reasonable question.”

You finish tying the linen perhaps just a little tighter than necessary, and he winces. You feel no guilt whatsoever.

“They were quite vague,” he says after a moment.

“They were not vague. They were, in fact, extraordinarily clear.”

Jace considers this with the air of a man weighing evidence in a trial he has already decided to win. “Perhaps to you.”

“To everyone.”

“Not to me.” His smile widens, and you are suddenly struck by the realisation that the maesters should perhaps have prescribed confinement in separate castles.

“They said strain,” he says, as though he's continuing a perfectly sensible conversation.

“Yes.”

“And exertion.”

“Yes.”

“So theoretically-”

“No.”

“What if-”

“Jace.”

He stops, though only because he is laughing now, actually laughing, and the sound fills the room so easily that for a moment you forget everything else.

“You are impossible,” you inform him.

“I have been told.”

He reaches for your hand, and you let him take it. His fingers close around yours with a warmth that feels almost unbearably familiar, and when he speaks again his voice has lost its teasing edge. “Another month is a very long time.”

You shake your head, smiling softly, but before he can begin constructing another ridiculous argument, you lean forward and press a kiss to his mouth.

The effect is immediate. Jace falls silent, blessedly, wonderfully silent, and when you pull back he blinks once, then twice, as though he has forgotten every thought he was having.

A second kiss lands at the corner of his mouth, then another against his cheek, and with each one his smile grows slower, softer, warmer, until by the third he has entirely abandoned his campaign against the maesters.

You feel rather proud of yourself.

He grins and reaches for you, and you allow him to pull you nearer. The blankets shift around you both as you settle beside him carefully, because he is still healing and you are both painfully aware of it.

His arm slides around your waist. Your head finds its familiar place against his shoulder.

The first week after the maesters' decree is irritating.

The second becomes ridiculous.

By the third, it's infuriating.

Jacaerys Velaryon approaches recovery the way he approaches every obstacle in his life: by refusing to accept that it is truly an obstacle at all.

If the maesters insist upon restrictions, then he will simply find exceptions.

One evening, as you sit beside him on the bed with your book open in your lap, he glances over and says, almost casually, “I stand by my opinion that their instructions were imprecise.”

You do not look up. “No.”

“They never actually provided definitions.”

You turn a page. “They are maesters, Jace, not scholars debating philosophy.”

He sighs, long-suffering and theatrical, and shifts a little closer.

Recently, he has become fond of finding excuses to sit beside you, or hold your hand, or drape an arm around your shoulders, or rest his head in your lap while insisting he is 'too weak' to move despite having spent the entire afternoon arguing in council.

“What if,” he begins. You close your eyes.

“What if,” he repeats, undeterred, “the concern is specifically overexertion?”

“It is.”

“Then surely the solution is simply avoiding overexertion.”

At last you lower the book and look at him properly. His expression brightens at once, as though he has won something merely by drawing your attention.

“Jace.”

“Yes?”

“No.”

He groans, and you return to your book.

Three nights later, he appears to have developed a new argument. You discover this when he is sprawled across the bed with his head resting against your shoulder, warm and comfortable and entirely too pleased with himself.

“What if,” he says thoughtfully.

You nearly laugh. “Again?”

“I have had several days to refine my position on the issue.”

“Gods preserve me.”

“What if I simply did not move very much? You could do all the... moving... uh, like difficult parts.”

You lower your embroidery hoop and glance down at him. He looks entirely sincere, which somehow makes it worse.

“Jacaerys.”

“I am not going to do any part because we are not going to do anything.”

He studies the ceiling for a moment, then turns his head just enough to look at you. “I think you are dismissing my proposals too quickly.”

“I think you enjoy hearing yourself talk.”

“I enjoy talking to you.”

Oh, you hate how good he is at being charming.

His arm slips around your waist. “You know,” he says quietly, “I do understand why you’re worried.”

The humour fades a little. You look at him, but his gaze remains fixed on your joined hands.

“You frightened me,” you admit.

Something flashes behind his eyes. “I know.”

Silence settles between you, gentle and sad and comfortable all at once. Then, because he is incapable of allowing a serious conversation to remain serious for too long, he lifts his head and says, “So that is still a no?”

You stare at him.

Jace immediately begins laughing, and when you throw a cushion at his face he catches it easily, looking delighted by the rejection.

Which, unfortunately, only convinces you that recovery is proceeding exceptionally well.

One morning at the beginning of the fourth week you're standing at the edge of the bedchamber, the salt-laced wind moaning through the open shutters as the last embers in the hearth crackle low.

Jacaerys is desperate today, even more than usual

He lies propped against the pillows, his bare chest rising and falling with quick, restless breaths, the angry red scars along his ribs and hip still mapped in fresh pink, but they are scars now, nonetheless.

It's been two months since the Gullet.

To the naked eye he seems fully recovered — he partakes in council meetings, goes on long walks with you along the shore, is no longer winded by those particularly steep stairs — but the maesters’ edict remains iron.

No strain, no exertion, no touch that might tear what they say has barely knit. Yet here he is, dark eyes fixed on you with shameless hunger, voice low and frayed.

“Please,” he murmurs, the words thick with frustration, his hand extended, palm up, fingers flexing as if he can already feel the shape of your waist.

“I cannot do this, I’m not some broken thing anymore. I feel you every night in my dreams, and then I wake up and you won't even let me touch you properly. I need your hand, your mouth, anything. Just… let me feel you again.”

He sits up a little straighter, a small grin finding his lips, voice dropping to a growl. “You’re aching too, I know it. Two months without feeling how wet you get for me-"

"Jacaerys, stop being so crude, you cannot possibly think-" but he continues, completely disregarding your objections.

"Gods, I’d give anything to see you under me like I used to, but I won’t move. I swear it. Just you, I'll even lie still.”

Your fingers tighten on the bedpost, because you cannot dent he's right. You do miss him, painfully so. You miss the feel of his hands on you and the stretch of him inside you, but reluctance still coils tight in your chest.

You take one hesitant step closer.

The cool stone floor beneath your bare feet gives way to the softness of the mattress as you perch carefully at his uninjured side, your fingers brushing the edge of the linen without yet touching him.

“Jacaerys,” you whisper, “I cannot, the maesters said-” But the way his hips twitch, just once, desperate and involuntary, stops the protest on your tongue.

A soft, helpless sound escapes him, and something shifts inside you, because this, in a way, is also him in pain, except this time you actually have the power to help him.

Your hand drifts over the sheet, hovering just above the bulge you can just start to see emerging beneath the linen.

“You must promise me you’ll lie perfectly still,” you remind him, the words gentle but unyielding, “There are reasons they forbid it; you could open one of the wounds.”

His dark eyes flash, jaw tightening as if he might argue, but apparently the months of forced stillness have left him too raw, too aching, and he nods once, a bead of sweat tracing down his temple.

You smile then, small and maybe a little teasing, and let your fingertips graze the linen over the head of his cock.

Slowly you peel the sheet down, then work on the laces of his breeches before pulling them down and finally revealing him fully to the firelit air.

His cock thick and flushed dark, the vein along its length pulsing visibly as you wrap your fingers around the base with deliberate lightness, still not quite sure how this is going to go.

He groans, low and broken, head tipping back against the pillows, but he holds himself rigid as promised, muscles trembling with the effort.

You lean in, breath ghosting over the sensitive head, and press the softest kiss there, tasting the salt of him while your free hand rests lightly on his uninjured hip to remind him of the boundary.

“Only on my terms tonight, dearest husband,” you whisper against his skin, stroking him once, slow and torturous, savouring the way his breath hitches and his fingers clutch the bedding instead of reaching for you.

“I will give you this, you just lay there and let me take care you.”

You tighten your grip just enough to draw another shuddering groan from him, your thumb circling the slick head of his cock in slow, deliberate strokes that make his thighs tense against the sheets.

He’s so hard it must be painful, the heavy length twitching in your fist with every pass,

The sight of your big, strong husband, normally so commanding, now reduced to biting his lip to keep from thrusting stirs something warm and aching in your chest.

It feels like the biggest relief.

You still remember every moment of the last two months, watching him wince at every breath, lying awake beside his bandaged body while fear gnawed at you both, and now here he is, flushed and leaking for you, trying so hard to obey even as his hips give one tiny, involuntary roll.

It’s adorable, that stubborn flicker of dominance surfacing in the way he grits out your name, only for it to dissolve into a whimper when you lean down and drag your tongue along the underside of his shaft.

His fingers fist the bedding harder, knuckles white, and you can see the war in his eyes, the urge to grab your hair and guide you deeper warring with the maesters’ warnings and his own fragile healing.

“Fuck… just like that,” he rasps, voice cracking with need so raw it makes your own neglected body clench.

You take him deeper into your mouth, hollowing your cheeks with a soft suck that has him arching his head back.

It's as if you're watching him heal in real-time, because he’s becoming himself again, that fierce, passionate man who once pinned you laughing to the furs.

You hum around him, savouring the salt-bitter taste of him while your free hand strokes soothing circles over his tightening stomach.

You pull off just enough to murmur against the flushed skin, teasing the slit with the tip of your tongue until his breath stutters.

“Still, Jace.”

Then you resume your rhythm, slow, twisting strokes of your hand paired with wet, deliberate licks. He trembles beneath you, every suppressed sound proof of how desperately he’s craved your touch.

You quicken your pace with deliberate mercy, not seeing a point in dragging this out any longer than you have to, lips sealed tight around him as your tongue swirls and your hand pumps in steady rhythm, feeling the way his thighs quake despite his vow to stay still.

His voice breaks on your name, half-command and half-plea, while one of his hands finds your hair and grips tight, not that you mind at all.

Finally, he spills hot and pulsing across your tongue, thick spurts you swallow with a soft moan of your own. You keep stroking him through it, gentling your touch as the last tremors fade, watching the tension drain from his battered body until he lies boneless and breathless, dark eyes glassy.

For a long moment afterward, neither of you says anything.

The chamber is quiet except for the soft crackle of the fire and the distant rhythm of the sea beyond the windows. The candles have burned lower than either of you realised, leaving the room washed in warm gold and shadow.

Jace lies beside you with that same dazed, contented smile still lingering on his mouth, as though he has not quite remembered how to put it away.

You glance at him from the corner of your eye and shake your head. “What?”

His smile only deepens. “Nothing.”

“Mhmm.”

He gives a quiet, breathless laugh and reaches for your hand where it still rests atop his stomach, threading his fingers through yours. His thumb moves over your knuckles, warm and absentminded.

The sight of him like this, softened and unguarded, makes something in your chest loosen.

You fuss over him out of habit more than necessity, fetching a washcloth, straightening the blankets around his hips and making certain he is comfortable, searching his face and posture for any sign that he has overdone himself despite every promise he made.

Jace watches the whole business with open affection, his expression growing gentler by the moment.

“My darling,” he murmurs, though there is no real complaint in it. You ignore him. “You are checking on me.”

“Someone has to.”

His teasing fades then, leaving something softer in its place. For a moment he simply watches you, and when he lifts your joined hands and presses a kiss to your knuckles, the gesture is so familiar that it catches you off guard all the same.

“Thank you,” he says quietly.

You look up at him.

The words are not playful nor triumphant, not even particularly clever. Your chest aches unexpectedly, because beneath all the bargaining and persistence and impossible shamelessness, you know what this has really been about.

Weeks of fear. Weeks of recovery. Weeks of being careful. Weeks of wondering whether life would ever feel normal again.

You squeeze his hand, and his fingers tighten around yours at once.

“You do not need to thank me.”

“I do.”

His voice is gentle. “I know I was insufferable.”

You giggle softly. “Do you now?”

Without either of you needing to say anything, Jace opens his arm toward you. You move into it at once, as naturally as breathing, as though you have done it a thousand times before. Because you have. Your head settles against his shoulder, his arm folds around your waist, and the blankets shift around you both as you settle more comfortably together.

Eventually you feel his lips brush lightly against your hair, a sleepy, lingering kiss that makes you smile before you can stop yourself.

“Tired?” you murmur.

“A little.”

“You should sleep.”

“So should you.”

The waves continue their endless song beyond the walls.

The royal box had been an exquisite torture.

All day, you had sat among the lords and ladies of the Reach, the velvet cushion beneath you doing absolutely nothing to comfort the restless ache that had taken root deep in your belly. The sun had beaten down on the tourney grounds, the air thick with the smell of trampled grass and churned earth and the distant roasting meat from the feast-fires, but you had barely noticed any of it. Your attention had been fixed entirely, hopelessly, on the black knight.

Your husband. Every time his black destrier thundered down the lists, every time his black armor caught the sunlight and gleamed like polished obsidian, every time his lance shattered against an opponent's shield in an explosion of splinters, you felt it in the pit of your stomach, a clench, a slow molten roll of heat that had nothing to do with the summer sun. Your fingers gripped the arms of your chair. Your thighs pressed together beneath your gown, shifting against the wetness that had gathered there. Your breath came shallow and quick.

He had unhorsed three men before midday. Three, and each time he rode past the royal box you could have sworn he lingered just a moment longer when his eyes found yours. Blue and brown. The gods had given him one eye the color of a summer sky and the other the rich dark of freshly turned earth, and you were absolutely certain they had done it specifically to ruin you.

You shifted in your seat for the dozenth time, squeezing your thighs together in a vain attempt to relieve the throbbing pressure that had built between them. Lady Webber, seated beside you, leaned over with concern in her broad, honest face.

"Are you quite well, Your Grace? You look rather flushed."

"Perfectly well," you managed, not looking away from the grounds. Valarr was circling his horse at the far end, preparing for another pass. The way he sat in the saddle, the way his thighs gripped the horse's flanks, thick muscle flexing beneath dark steel, the easy confidence in his posture, the way he tucked his helm under his arm and ran a gauntleted hand through his hair, that silver gold streak on the left side catching the light—

"The heat," you added, gripping the arm of your chair until your knuckles went white. "It is only the heat."

But it was not the heat. It was remembering how those thighs felt when they were gripping your hips instead of a saddle. It was knowing exactly what that controlled violence looked like when it was unleashed in your bedchamber, when he was buried deep inside you and that same focused intensity was bent entirely on drawing scream after scream from your lips. It was the way his armor hugged his body and the way you knew every inch of what lay beneath, the lean muscle and warm skin, the trail of dark hair below his navel that you loved to follow with your tongue, the scattering of scars from a lifetime of training, the way his stomach tensed and jumped when you dragged your nails across it. It was knowing exactly what that body could do, the sounds it could wring from you, the positions it could fold you into, the seemingly endless stamina that left you wrecked and trembling and begging for more. And being forced to sit in polite company, smiling and nodding and making idle conversation, while he displayed all that power and grace and leashed violence before half the Reach—

By the time the final tilt was called and the tourney began to wind down for the day, you were fairly vibrating out of your skin. Your smallclothes were soaked through. You had imagined, in vivid and increasingly creative detail, at least seven different ways you wanted him to fuck you—bent over the railing of the royal box, on your knees in the shadow of the stands, on your back in the trampled grass with the roar of the crowd still echoing in your ears—and you had reached the point where you no longer trusted yourself to speak to anyone without your voice cracking.

So when the crowds dispersed and the lords and ladies began drifting, you did not drift with them. You walked straight toward the black and red pennants that marked the Targaryen tents.

His squire was a boy of perhaps five and ten, all gangly limbs and anxious eyes, and he was already struggling with the straps of Valarr's vambraces when you swept through the canvas flap.

You did not break stride. "Out."

The boy's eyes went wide as saucers. "Your Grace, I was just—"

"Now."

He fled. The tent flap barely had time to settle before you turned to face your husband.

Valarr stood in the center of the pavilion, still armored, his helm already discarded on a nearby table. His odd eyes found you immediately, and the corner of his mouth curved into a slow, knowing smile, the smile of a man who knew exactly what he had been doing all day.

"My wife," he said. His voice was slightly hoarse from shouting commands over the din of the lists, and the roughness of it sent a shiver straight down your spine, straight to the aching place between your legs. "You dismissed my squire rather abruptly. Have I done something to offend?"

You crossed the space between you in four strides. The tent was warm, lit by a half-dozen candles that cast dancing shadows across the canvas walls. The air smelled of leather and oiled metal and the faint, clean undertone of his sweat, that particular scent of him that made you want to press your nose to the base of his throat and breathe him in until you were dizzy with it.

"You have been offending me all day," you said, stopping so close that the steel of his cuirass nearly brushed your bodice. Your voice came out low and rough, barely more than a growl. "Parading around on that horse. Riding like that. Looking like that. Do you have any idea what you put me through? Do you have any idea how many times I had to press my thighs together just to keep from moaning aloud in front of half the nobility of the Reach?"

His brows lifted slightly, but the smile did not leave his lips. It deepened, if anything, the corner of his mouth curling in a way that was positively smug. "I was competing in a tourney. It is generally what one does at a tourney."

"You know exactly what you were doing. Every time you rode past the royal box, you looked at me. You knew I was watching."

"Enlighten me," he said, his voice dropping into something darker, more dangerous. "What was I doing?"

You reached up and pressed your palms flat against his breastplate. The metal was warm from the sun and from the heat of his body beneath, and you could feel the faint vibration of his heartbeat through the steel, steady, strong, slightly faster than it should be.

"You were magnificent," you said, your voice dropping to barely a whisper. "Every pass. Every impact. When you unhorsed Lord Ashford's cousin, when that lance hit true and he went flying, I thought I might scream. Do you know what it does to a woman, watching her husband ride full tilt with a lance in his hand, fearless, perfect, everyone in the stands cheering his name? Do you know what it does to me, Valarr, watching you dominate every man who dares ride against you, knowing that same ferocity is going to be focused on me the moment we're alone?"

His mismatched eyes had gone dark, his breath had changed, grown shallower. He did not move. "Tell me."

"It makes me wet," you said, blunt and shameless, your eyes locked on his. "It makes me ache. It makes me want to drag you off that horse by your hair and have my way with you in the dirt in front of everyone. I was ready to climb over the railing and ride you right there in the royal box. In front of Lord Ashford. In front of Lady Webber. In front of the gods and every noble house of the Reach. I would have let them all watch. I was so far gone I would not have cared." His breath caught. Through his breeches, you could see the growing evidence of his arousal, the thick outline of his cock pressing against the fabric.

"You are playing a dangerous game, wife."

"I am not playing." You pressed closer, your breasts flattening against the hard steel of his cuirass, your lips nearly brushing his chin. "I have been sitting in soaked smallclothes for hours, thinking about your cock. Thinking about how it feels when you first push inside me. Thinking about how you stretch me, how you fill me so completely I forget my own name. Thinking about the sounds you make when you're close—that raw, broken groan you try to swallow. I have been thinking about it all day, Valarr. And I am done thinking."

He kissed you. It was deep, hungry and consuming, his mouth slanting over yours with a ferocity that matched everything you had been feeling all day. His tongue swept into your mouth, claiming, demanding, and you moaned into the kiss as his free hand found the small of your back and pulled you hard against him. Your body pressed flush against the unyielding plane of his armored chest, the contrast of cool steel against your heated breasts making your nipples tighten to aching peaks. You gasped into his mouth, and he swallowed the sound, his tongue sliding against yours in a rhythm that was pure filthy promise.

You fisted your hands in the collar of his gambeson, pulling him impossibly closer, and he made a sound low in his throat that vibrated through his chest and into yours. You could taste the salt of his sweat, the faint sweetness of the watered wine he must have drunk between tilts, the heat of him. Your body was on fire. Every inch of your skin felt electric, alive, aching. The slick heat between your thighs had grown almost unbearable; you could feel it on your inner thighs, could feel how ready you were for him.

"Help me," you gasped against his mouth, your fingers fumbling with the buckles at his shoulders. "The pauldrons. Get them off. Get everything off. I need to feel your skin. I need your cock inside me before I lose my mind entirely."

He pulled back just enough to look at you, his chest heaving, his lips red and slightly swollen from your kisses. His eyes were blazing with a hunger that made your knees weak.

"Tell me what you want," he said, his voice a rasp that sent heat pooling low in your belly. "Exactly. Tell me every detail, and I will give it to you."

"I want you on your back in this tent." You wrenched one pauldron free and let it drop to the ground with a heavy thud. "I want to feel every inch of you against me without this damned steel in the way." The second pauldron followed. "I want to strip you bare and put my mouth on every part of you. Your throat. Your chest. Your stomach." Your fingers moved to the buckles of his cuirass as you spoke, your voice growing breathier with each word. "I want to take your cock in my mouth and feel you get harder on my tongue. I want to taste you, Valarr. I want to taste your release when you spend down my throat. And then I want you on top of me, driving into me so hard I cannot walk tomorrow. I want to feel you come inside me, hot and deep, filling me up until I can feel it dripping down my thighs. I want you to ruin me, Valarr Targaryen, until neither of us can remember our own names."

He stared at you for a long moment, his breathing ragged, his eyes burning. The bulge in his breeches was straining against the fabric now, thick and unmistakable. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse.

"You," he said, the word barely more than a growl, "are the most infuriating, intoxicating, utterly maddening woman I have ever known."

"Less talking," you breathed, reaching for the final buckles of his cuirass. "More undressing. I want to see what I do to you. I want to see how hard you are for me."

You made quick work of the breastplate, your fingers moving with a speed born of pure, desperate need. The steel plate hit the ground with a clang that echoed through the tent, and then you were pressing yourself against his gambeson, the padded fabric still damp with his sweat, the heat of his body seeping through to meet your own. Your hands slid down his chest, over the hard planes of muscle, down his stomach, lower—

"Gods," you whispered, your forehead dropping to his chest as your palm pressed against the thick ridge of his erection through his breeches. He was hard as iron, hot even through the fabric, and he twitched against your touch. "Do you feel what you do to me? Do you have any idea how much I want you?"

His hands—still gauntleted, curse him—slid down your sides, over your hips, and settled on the curve of your backside. He pulled you flush against him, grinding his hardness against your belly, and there was no hiding what this was doing to him. The thick length of him pressed against you, and you whimpered at the feel of it, at the promise of being filled.

"I have some idea," he murmured against your hair, his voice strained. "I have been half-hard since the first tilt, watching you watch me. Do you know how difficult it is to ride with a cockstand?"

"Then why are you still wearing so many clothes?"

You dropped to your knees. His hands hovered in the air where you had been standing, and he looked down at you with an expression that was equal parts shock and raw, naked want. His cock was at eye level now, straining obscenely against his breeches, and you could see the damp spot where his arousal had already begun to leak through the fabric.

"You are kneeling in front of me." His voice was barely a whisper, rough and desperate. "In a tourney tent. Where anyone could walk in. Where anyone could hear you when I make you scream."

"Then you had better be quick about deciding what comes next." You pulled one greave free and started on the other, your fingers brushing deliberately against the inside of his thigh as you worked. He shuddered. "Though I should warn you—I'm not feeling particularly quiet tonight. And I'm not feeling particularly quick. When you finally put your cock inside me, I intend to take my time."

The second greave came off. You stayed on your knees, your hands resting on his armored thighs, your face tilted up to meet his gaze, your lips parted and your eyes heavy-lidded with want. The candles flickered. The shadows danced. And Valarr Targaryen looked down at you like you were the most terrifying, wonderful thing he had ever seen like he wanted to devour you whole.

"Stand up," he said, his voice rough as gravel.

"Make me."

He reached down and pulled you to your feet in one motion, his hands under your arms, and then his mouth was on yours again and you were being walked backward toward the cot in the corner of the tent. Your back hit the tent pole, and he pressed himself against you, one armored thigh sliding between your legs and grinding against your aching cunt through the layers of your gown. The pressure was maddening, not nearly enough, and the sound you made was absolutely shameless, a desperate, keening moan that would have been heard three tents away if anyone had been listening.

"Yes," you gasped, arching against him, rolling your hips to grind against his thigh. "Yes, please, yes, right there, gods, Valarr—"

He kissed down your throat, his teeth grazing your pulse point, his tongue soothing the sting, and you dug your fingers into his shoulders through the gambeson, your nails biting into the fabric.

"I want you," you said, the words tumbling out of you like a prayer. "I have wanted you since the first tilt. I have wanted you since I woke up this morning wet and aching from dreams of you. I want you all the time, Valarr, every moment of every day. I want your mouth on my breasts. I want your fingers inside me. I want your cock so deep I can feel you in my throat. I want you to fuck me until I cannot remember my own name, until my voice is hoarse from screaming yours, until I am so full of your seed that it takes days to stop feeling it drip out of me—"

He stopped. His mouth stilled against your collarbone. His thigh stopped its maddening pressure between your legs. His hands, which had been sliding down to the small of your back, went still.

"What—"

"My love."

The tone made you freeze. It was tender. Affectionate. Entirely too calm for a man whose cock had been pressed against your belly moments ago, hard and wanting.

You looked up. His eyes were soft now, the hunger banked, replaced by something warm and unbearably fond. And lurking in the corner of his mouth was that quirk, that maddening, insufferable little quirk that meant he was about to say something you did not want to hear.

"I am so very tired."

The words did not register at first. You blinked, your body still humming with unspent desire, your cunt still clenching around nothing, your lips still tingling from his kiss. "What?"

"The armor. You cannot imagine. I have been carrying it all day in this heat. Every muscle in my body aches. My shoulders. My back. My..." He gestured vaguely downward. "...everything."

"I will soothe your muscles. I will soothe every part of you. That is precisely what I am trying to do." You pressed your palm against the hard length of him through his breeches to emphasize your point. He was still rock hard. Still twitching at your touch. "This does not feel like a man who is too tired."

His smile widened. He was enjoying this. You could see it in his eyes, the way the blue one sparkled with mischief and the brown one warmed with suppressed laughter. He was enjoying this entirely too much.

"You are very sweet," he said, and leaned down to press a kiss, soft, chaste, utterly infuriating, to your forehead. Then he gently removed your hand from his erection, his fingers wrapping around your wrist with infuriating tenderness. "But I fear I would be poor company. I can barely keep my eyes open. A man of two and twenty is not so spry as he once was. The spirit is willing, but the flesh..." He heaved a dramatic sigh. "The flesh is very, very tired."

"You are two and twenty. And your flesh is very clearly willing."

"An old two and twenty. The joints begin to protest. It is a terrible thing. The maesters have warned me about overexertion."

"Valarr Targaryen, I swear to every god in the Seven Kingdoms, if you do not put your cock inside me right now—"

"Perhaps tomorrow, my love." He stepped back, "After a proper night's rest. When my strength has returned. Then I will be able to give you the attention you deserve." His voice dropped, his eyes sweeping over your flushed face and heaving chest and the visible stiffness of your nipples through your gown. "Every. Single. Bit. Of it. I will take my time with you. Make you scream until you cannot remember your own name—wasn't that what you wanted? But I will only do it properly when I am not about to collapse from exhaustion."

He was already moving toward the armor stand, where a simple dark tunic and breeches lay waiting. You stood frozen in place, surrounded by the pieces of his discarded armor, your body still humming with unspent desire, your soaked smallclothes clinging to your heated flesh, your lips still tingling from his kiss.

"You cannot be serious."

He pulled the tunic over his head with deliberate, unhurried movements, covering the sweat-damp linen of his gambeson. He turned back to you, looking for all the world like a man without a care, his hair still tousled and that silver streak falling roguishly across his brow. The bulge in his breeches had—through what must have been monumental effort of will—begun to subside.

"I am always serious," he said, utterly failing to keep the mirth from his voice. "I shall send for wine. Something cool, to help with the heat. You look rather flushed, my love. And your breathing is quite... irregular. Have you been sitting in the sun? Perhaps you should lie down. In the cot. Alone. To recover your strength."

Your mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

"I have not been sitting in the sun. I have been sitting in the royal box watching my husband ride like a god of war and thinking about how much I wanted him to bend me over the railing and—"

"Careful," he said, raising a finger, his expression one of mock concern. "The canvas walls, remember? And I am so very weary I might faint at the details. Think of my delicate constitution."

You picked up the nearest object—a gauntlet—and hurled it at his head.

He caught it. One handed. Without looking away from your face. The man had been trained by knights of the Kingsguard since he could walk, and he caught it like it was a ball tossed by a child. He turned the gauntlet over in his hands, his smile widening into something that was pure, unrepentant mischief.

"Tomorrow, my love," he said, his voice dropping into something lower, something that promised and teased in equal measure. His eyes swept over you, lingering on your parted lips, on the flush that extended down your throat, on the way your hands were still clenched into fists at your sides. "I give you my word. Tomorrow, I will make you forget your own name. Tomorrow, I will have you in every way you described and several you have not yet imagined. Tomorrow, you will be so thoroughly satisfied that you will not be able to look at a tourney field without blushing for the rest of your life."

"Tomorrow," you repeated, your voice flat with disbelief and frustration and—gods help you—reluctant amusement.

"Tomorrow," he confirmed. And then he was at the tent flap, lifting the canvas, pausing just long enough to look back over his shoulder. His eyes raked over you one last time, and there was a flash of heat in them—a glimpse of the hunger he was so carefully restraining, a promise that he was suffering too, that every moment of this tease was costing him as much as it was costing you.

"Dream of me," he said, his voice a low, rough murmur that sent one last shiver down your spine. "Dream of what I'm going to do to you. In detail. I want a full report in the morning." And he winked.

The canvas fell closed behind him. You stood alone in the silence of the tent, surrounded by candlesmoke and the scent of him, your body still aching and your pride still smarting and your heart still racing and your cunt still throbbing with the orgasm he had denied you.

"Tomorrow," you muttered to the empty air, already beginning to smile despite yourself—a slow, predatory smile that promised retribution. "We shall see about tomorrow, my prince. You have made a grave tactical error. You have given me an entire night to plan." And somewhere outside the tent, you could have sworn you heard him laugh.

—

You woke to heat, a deep, liquid heat that was already pooling low in your belly, already drawing your thighs apart with an urgency that bordered on involuntary, already dragging you up from the depths of a dream you couldn't quite remember, a dream full of shadows and steel and a voice murmuring promises against your skin. Your body was responding before your mind could catch up, back arching slightly off the furs, fingers twisting in the linen sheets, a soft, confused sound escaping your lips that was half whimper, half question.

And then you felt it. The slow, deliberate, devastating drag of a tongue through your most intimate folds.

Your eyes flew open with a gasp that tore from somewhere deep in your chest. The world was waking up around you, ordinary and routine and utterly indifferent to the fact that beneath the furs, between your legs, was a head of brown hair with a distinctive streak of silver gold threading back from the temple like a bolt of lightning frozen in time.

"Valarr—" His name came out as a croak, half confusion, half moan, because his tongue had just circled the sensitive bud at the apex of your sex with devastating precision and your hips bucked entirely without your permission, your thighs clamping briefly against his ears before he pressed them back open with firm, unhurried hands. "What—what are you—isn't it—oh gods—"

He did not lift his head. He did not stop. He did not even acknowledge that you had spoken beyond a low, pleased hum that vibrated against your cunt and made your eyes roll back. His tongue flattened and dragged upward through your folds with a languid, unhurried thoroughness that spoke of a man who had all the time in the world and intended to use every single moment of it to reduce you to incoherence. One of his hands was splayed across your lower belly, holding you steady, pinning you to the cot with a casual possession that made your blood sing. The other was hooked under your right thigh, fingers dimpling your flesh, keeping you spread open for his attentions with an implacable gentleness that was somehow more devastating than force.

"Good morrow," he murmured against your cunt, the words shaped directly into your slick, heated flesh, and the vibration of his voice made you gasp and clutch at the furs beneath you.

"Isn't it—" You lost the words entirely as his tongue slipped inside you, just briefly, a teasing thrust that curled upward and made your hips roll in a helpless, seeking rhythm. "Isn't it a jousting day? The—the lists—you should be—you should be preparing—"

He hummed against you, a low sound of consideration, and the vibration coupled with the slow circle his tongue was tracing around your pearl nearly made you forget your own name, let alone your question. "The jousts have been suspended."

Your mind, hazy with pleasure and sleep and the insistent, expert pressure of his mouth, struggled to process this information with anything resembling coherence. "Suspended? Why would they—oh, right there, don't stop, please don't stop—why would they suspend the jousts?"

"The Bright Prince," Valarr said, pausing just long enough to press a hot, open mouthed kiss to the inside of your thigh, his stubble rasping against your sensitive skin and leaving a trail of pleasant friction in its wake, "has demanded a trial of seven."

"Who—Aerion?" You propped yourself up on your elbows, looking down at him through the disheveled curtain of your hair. His mismatched eyes gleamed up at you from between your thighs, one the deep blue of sapphires, one the warm brown of aged whisky, both filled with a lazy, predatory satisfaction that made your stomach flip and your cunt clench around nothing. "Aerion demanded a trial of seven? Against whom? Why? What in the seven hells happened while I was asleep?"

Valarr sighed, a warm exhale against your slick, swollen folds that made you shiver from your crown to your toes. "A hedge knight. Ser Duncan the Tall. He struck Aerion to defend a puppeteer girl, and now my dear cousin demands blood and calls it justice." He pressed another kiss to your mound, the tip of his nose nudging against the thatch of curls there. "He has accused the hedge knight of assault and the knight has demanded a trial by combat. Aerion, being Aerion, has escalated it to a trial of seven."

"That's—that's absurd, Aerion is—" You gasped sharply as his tongue dipped back into you, long and slow and curling, cutting off your outrage with a wave of pleasure that made your elbows tremble. "Valarr, I'm trying to—to care about this, it's important, you must let me—"

"I am between your legs," he said, his voice muffled against your cunt, his tongue tracing idle patterns through your folds that made rational thought nearly impossible, "with my tongue inside my wife, and she is asking about my cousin."

"You cannot simply—wake me up like this and expect me not to—to have questions about a trial of seven when—oh, gods—"

He had found your pearl again, circling it with the very tip of his tongue, a feather light touch that somehow managed to be devastating in its precision. Your elbows gave out. You collapsed back against the pillows with a moan that was frankly indecent, one hand flying to his hair, your fingers threading through the brown strands and brushing against that distinctive silver streak that marked him as surely as a banner marked an army. He made a sound of deep, masculine approval against your flesh and redoubled his efforts, his tongue working you with a rhythm that was devastatingly precise, alternating between broad, flat strokes that covered your entire cunt and focused, pointed flicks against your pearl that made sparks dance behind your closed eyelids.

"I am trying," he said between strokes, his voice low and rough with satisfaction, "to apologize for yesterday. For my behavior. For my cruelty."

"You are trying," you managed, your voice breathless and trembling and utterly lacking the sharp edge you wanted it to have, "to distract me from being angry with you. You're trying to lick your way out of the trouble you caused."

He paused, just for a moment, and looked up at you with an expression of mock-innocence that was entirely undermined by the slickness glistening on his lips and chin. "Is it working?"

Your hips were rolling against his mouth now, your body chasing its pleasure without any input from your pride, without any regard for your dignity. "No. Absolutely not. I am still—I am still furious with you—"

He sucked your pearl between his lips, gentle at first and then not, a sudden increase in pressure that bordered on overwhelming, and the sound you made was absolutely humiliating, a keening, desperate cry that you would deny to your dying day.

"You sound furious," he agreed, releasing you with a wet, obscene pop, his voice dripping with satisfaction and something deeper, something hungrier.

"You left me," you gasped, your fingers tightening in his hair, pulling just hard enough to make him hiss. "You left me aching and desperate and so wet I was dripping down my own thighs, and you winked at me like it was a game, like I was a piece on a cyvasse board you'd already captured—"

"It was a game." He dragged his tongue through your folds again, slow and thorough, from your entrance all the way up to your pearl, savoring you like a man savoring the finest vintage. "A very enjoyable game. One I intend to play again."

"For you."

"For both of us." He pressed a kiss to your mound, then another just below your navel, his stubble scraping pleasantly against your skin, leaving a trail of tingling sensation. "I believe the terms of our game included a promise for tomorrow. And tomorrow, my sweet wife, has arrived. I woke before dawn thinking about this. Thinking about you. Thinking about how you looked when I left you—flushed and furious and so gods-damned beautiful I nearly turned around and took you right there on the floor of my tent."

You yanked his hair. Not hard enough to truly hurt, but hard enough to pull his mouth away from where you desperately, desperately wanted it. He looked up at you, his lips glistening with your arousal, his chin wet, his eyes dark and amused and slightly reproachful at being denied his prize.

"I have not forgiven you," you informed him, proud of how steady your voice sounded despite the fact that your thighs were trembling and your cunt was clenching around nothing and every nerve in your body was screaming for him to put his mouth back where it belonged.

"So you've said." He tried to lower his head again, but you tightened your grip, keeping him in place. A flash of something dangerous crossed his features, annoyance, yes, but also interest. He liked this. He liked you fighting back. It was, after all, why he had married you.

"You teased me," you said, and now your voice was steadier, fueled by the righteous indignation that had kept you awake half the night. "You worked me up until I was practically begging—until I was saying please and Valarr and I need you—until I would have done anything, anything you asked, just to feel you inside me. And then you patted my head like a well-behaved hound and sent me to bed alone, aching and empty and so frustrated I thought I might scream."

"I kissed your forehead."

"Worse." You glared down at him, though the effect was somewhat undermined by the fact that you were still flushed and panting and spread open beneath him, your slickness still visible on his face, your nipples peaked and visible through the thin linen of your shift. "It was a forehead kiss. The forehead kiss of a man who knows exactly what he's doing and is enjoying it far, far too much." You leaned up slightly, your grip still tight in his hair. "Do you have any idea how long I lay awake last night after you left me? Do you have any idea what I did, alone in your tent, thinking about you?"

His smile widened, slow and wolfish. "Tell me."

"Hours." You released his hair, letting your hand trail down the side of his face, tracing the sharp line of his jaw, the proud cheekbones, the slightly too full lips that were still wet with you. "Hours, Valarr. Thinking about what I was going to do to you today. Planning. Scheming. Touching myself in the dark while I imagined all the ways I would make you pay for your cruelty."

His eyes darkened further, the pupils swallowing the irises. "You touched yourself."

"I did. Twice. It wasn't enough." You let your hand drop back to the furs. "Nothing I did to myself was enough. That's what you did to me. You ruined me for my own fingers, and then you left me alone."

"Planning and scheming," he murmured, pressing a kiss to your hip bone that was almost reverent. "And touching yourself in the dark. That sounds very industrious. What did you decide? What punishment have you devised for your wicked husband?"

"I decided you need to suffer the way I suffered." You watched his face carefully, saw the flicker of interest, of anticipation. "I decided I would make you want me so badly you couldn't think straight, and then I would deny you. I decided I would tie you to this cot and touch myself in front of you and let you watch, and watch, and watch, and never once let you inside me. I decided I would make you beg the way you made me beg."

He was very still now, his breath warm against your hip, his eyes fixed on your face with an intensity that made your heart race. "That would be a cruel punishment indeed."

"You taught me cruelty. You should be proud."

"I am." He nipped at the sensitive skin just above your hip bone, hard enough to make you jump and gasp. "I am so very proud. My wife, a quick study in vengeance." His tongue soothed the sting of his teeth. "But I notice you are not tying me to the cot. You are not touching yourself. You are not denying me anything. You are lying here, spread open, wet and wanting, letting me taste you."

You smiled. It was not a sweet smile. "Where is your armor?" you asked.

Valarr blinked. The question was so incongruous, so utterly unrelated to the situation at hand, his face still wet with you, your thighs still spread, his cock visibly straining against his smallclothes, that for a moment he simply stared at you.

"What?"

"Your armor. The black plate. The gauntlets. The gorget. All of it. Where is it?"

"In the tourney tent, I imagine." He spoke slowly, warily, as if you were a strange beast that might bite him. "My squire would have cleaned and laid it out for inspection, as he does every morning before a day of—" He stopped. His eyes narrowed with suspicion and something that might have been dawning comprehension. "Why?"

You released his hair and sat up slowly, pushing yourself back against the pillows, drawing your knees together with a deliberate, pointed movement that made his eyes flick down to your thighs with undisguised regret. You looked at him with an expression you had been perfecting since last night, sweet on the surface, sharp beneath, like honey hiding a blade.

"Take me there."

"To the tourney tent?" His voice had gone very careful, very controlled.

"To the tourney tent. Where your armor is. Where your squire has laid it out so carefully."

His brows drew together, a furrow appearing between them. "You want me to stop—" he glanced meaningfully at your thighs, at the evidence of his attentions still glistening on your skin, at the obvious, aching hard on tenting his smallclothes— "this, and walk across the tourney grounds in full view of half the realm, to my tent, because you want to see my armor?"

"I want you to put it on."

The words hung in the air between you like a challenge, like a thrown gauntlet.

Something flickered in his eyes. "You want me to put on my armor."

"Not all of it." You let your voice drop into something lower, something darker, something that made his pupils dilate and his breath catch almost imperceptibly. "Just enough. Just the pieces I want."

He was silent for a long moment, studying your face, reading the intention there. Then he sat back on his heels, still kneeling between your legs, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The gesture was casual, almost lazy, but his eyes had gone very dark.

"You want me to fuck you in my armor." It was not a question.

"I want you to finish what you started yesterday." You sat up fully, drawing your knees together, letting the shift fall down over your thighs, letting him see that you were still in control of this situation despite the fact that your thighs were still slick and your heart was still racing and your cunt was still aching with the emptiness he had left. "You were in your armor yesterday. Every time I looked at you—on the field, in the tent, standing over me with your gauntlets dripping water—you were in your armor. Every fantasy I had last night, alone in this bed with my fingers between my legs, you were wearing your armor. I imagined the sound you would make when you walked toward me. I imagined the cold of the metal against my bare skin. I imagined you taking me in your armor, still sweating from the tourney, still smelling of leather and victory." She paused, watching his face, watching the way his jaw had tightened and his hands had curled into fists against his thighs. "And then you took it off piece by piece and left me standing in the wreckage of it while you walked away in a plain linen tunic like a common hedge knight."

"Like a hedge knight." His voice was flat, but there was an edge to it now, a sharpening.

"A hedge knight would have stayed and finished what he started. A hedge knight would have put his mouth to better use. A hedge knight would have fucked me until I couldn't walk straight instead of patting me on the head and sending me to bed." You raised an eyebrow at him, letting the challenge hang in the air. "So yes. I want you in your armor. I want to feel the steel against my bare skin. I want to hear it creak and clank while you move inside me. I want to remember exactly who I married—the prince who rides like a god of war and fucks like one too, not the man who is too tired and too smug and too busy playing games to bed his wife properly." You tilted your head, letting your gaze drift pointedly to the obvious bulge in his smallclothes. "Unless, of course, you are still tired. Unless yesterday's exertions were too much for you. In which case, I am sure there is a cot somewhere you can nap on while I find other, more satisfying ways to amuse myself at this trial of seven."

The threat landed exactly as intended.

His jaw tightened until you could see the muscle jumping beneath the skin. His hands flexed against his thighs, the knuckles whitening. His breath came faster, his chest rising and falling beneath the thin linen of his tunic. And when he spoke, his voice was a low, dangerous rumble that seemed to vibrate in the very air between you, a sound that sent a shiver straight to your core and made your nipples tighten to aching points.

"Get dressed."

You smiled. Sweetly. Innocently. The smile of a woman who had just won the first tilt of the day and was already planning the second.

"As my prince commands," you murmured, and swung your legs over the side of the cot with deliberate, unhurried grace.

He caught your wrist before you could stand. The movement was so fast you barely saw it—one moment he was kneeling on the bed, the next he was pressed against your back, his chest against your spine, his mouth at your ear, his fingers wrapped around your wrist like a manacle of warm, living steel. You could feel every inch of him through the thin linen of his tunic, the hard planes of his chest, the ridged muscles of his abdomen, and pressing insistently against the curve of your lower back, the hot, rigid length of his cock, still trapped in his smallclothes, still achingly hard.

"You are going to regret this," he murmured, his lips brushing the sensitive shell of your ear, his breath warm and uneven, his voice a promise and a threat and a prayer all tangled together. "When I get you in that tent, surrounded by my armor, with no one to hear you scream and nowhere to run and nothing between us but steel and need—you are going to regret every single moment of bratty defiance you have given me this morning. Every sharp word. Every wicked look. Every time you pulled my hair and stopped my tongue and denied me what is mine."

His free hand slid around your waist, palm flat against your belly, fingers splayed wide, pulling you back against him so you could feel exactly how hard he was, exactly how much he wanted you.

"I am going to bend you over my shield," he continued, his voice dropping to a whisper that was somehow more terrifying than a shout, "and fuck you until you cannot remember your own name. I am going to take you against the armor stand and let the whole camp hear you scream. I am going to put you on your knees in the middle of my war gear and use that clever mouth until tears are running down your cheeks and you are begging me—begging me, the way you made me beg with your eyes yesterday—to let you come. And I am not going to let you. Not until you have apologized. Not until you have taken back every insolent word. Not until you have admitted, out loud, that you are mine and that no one else—no hedge knight, no high lord, no god on earth or in the heavens—could ever satisfy you the way I do."

His teeth grazed your earlobe, a sharp, bright spark of sensation that made you gasp and arch against him involuntarily.

"Do you understand me?"

You turned your head just enough to meet his eyes. Blue and brown. Burning with a fire that matched your own. The dragon's eyes, you thought, and felt a thrill of something that was half fear and half desperate, aching want.

"Prove it," you said, your voice steady despite the trembling in your thighs. "Put on the armor. Show me the prince I married. And then maybe—maybe—I'll let you have what you want."

You pulled your wrist free with a sharp twist, stood, and began to dress with hands that only trembled a little. Behind you, you heard him exhale, a long, slow breath, the breath of a man steadying himself for battle.

—

Valarr walked a half-step behind you the entire way, close enough that the heat radiating from his body seeped through the thin fabric of your gown like a fever you couldn't shake, close enough that when you passed through a narrow gap between two pavilions his hand found the curve of your backside and squeezed hard enough to make you stumble mid stride, his fingers digging into the soft flesh with proprietary confidence before delivering a sharp, stinging slap that echoed in the confined space. You shot him a glare over your shoulder, heat flooding your cheeks. He smiled back, utterly unrepentant, his eyes glittering with dark promise and the kind of smug satisfaction that made you want to slap him and kiss him in equal measure.

The camp churned with the news of the trial of seven like a kicked anthill. Everywhere you looked, men and women clustered in tight knots, speaking in low, urgent voices that hummed with equal parts dread and morbid fascination. You caught fragments as you passed, snippets of conversation that floated past your ears barely registered—"Aerion Brightflame," spoken with the particular revulsion reserved for mad dogs, and "the hedge knight, seven feet if he's an inch, and the Reachmen have flocked to his banner," and "who in the Seven Hells will stand for the accuser against a prince of the blood?"—but the words washed over you like water over stone. Your focus had narrowed to a single point, a lodestone pulling you inexorably forward: the black and red pennants of the Targaryen tourney tent, snapping and twisting in the morning breeze ahead, their fabric tongues of dragonfire against the pale blue sky.

His squire was waiting outside, a gangly boy of perhaps fifteen with anxious eyes that darted about like startled sparrows and a perpetually worried expression etched into the soft planes of a face still waiting for its first proper shave. He straightened so abruptly when he saw you both approaching that he nearly tripped over his own feet, relief flickering across his features like sunlight breaking through storm clouds.

"Your Grace—"

"Leave us," Valarr said, not breaking stride, not sparing the boy so much as a glance. "Stand guard. No one enters this tent. Not the hand himself. Not the High Septon. Not the Stranger incarnate. Do you understand?"

The boy's eyes went very wide, the whites showing all around the dark irises. He swallowed audibly, his prominent Adam's apple bobbing. "Yes, my prince. No one. Absolutely no one. I will guard the tent with my life. I swear it on my mother's—"

"See that you do."

Valarr held the tent flap open for you, the heavy canvas lifted high on his forearm, and you stepped inside, the cooler shadows of the interior washing over your flushed skin like a balm.

The space within was exactly as you remembered it from yesterday, you walked to the center of the tent, the trampled grass soft beneath your slippers, and turned to face him with deliberate slowness, letting him see the curve of your smile, the arch of your brow.

"Well, my prince," you said, your voice pitched light and teasing, a silk-wrapped needle, "shall we begin?"

He was already reaching for the gambeson draped over the stand, the padded linen garment rustling as he lifted it. "You wanted to put me in my armor. Put me in my armor. Every piece. Every buckle. Every strap."

"I want you to tell me," you said, stepping close enough that the hem of your gown brushed against his boots, taking the padded garment from his hands with deliberate slowness, your fingers dragging across his knuckles, "what you're going to do to me. Every detail. Every moment. While I dress you piece by piece."

His eyes darkened, the pupils swallowing the violet and the black alike. "You want a story?"

"I want a promise." You shook out the gambeson, holding it open for him. "I want to hear exactly what's waiting for me. Consider it... motivation to survive the day."

He slid his arms into the padded sleeves, and you stepped behind him to help guide the garment over the broad expanse of his shoulders, your fingers brushing the bare, warm skin of his arms, the corded muscle that flexed beneath your touch like a living thing. The gambeson was still cool from the night air, but beneath it, his skin was furnace-hot, radiating warmth through the padded linen. You moved around to his front and began to lace the garment closed, starting at his sternum and working your way down with excruciating slowness, your knuckles pressing against his chest with every pass of the cord, feeling the steady, accelerating thunder of his heartbeat beneath your touch.

"When I have you," he began, his voice dropping to that low, rough register that vibrated in your bones, "the first thing I am going to do is put you on your knees."

You sank down before him, not in obedience but to reach for the sabatons, kneeling at his feet to fasten the articulated steel shoes around his boots. The position was not lost on him; you watched his hands flex at his sides, the tendons standing out against the skin, watched his jaw tighten as he looked down at you kneeling before him with your hair spilling over your shoulders and your face level with his hips. "On my knees," you repeated, your voice soft and feigned innocent. "And then?"

"And then I am going to watch you take my cock out of my breeches. Slowly. No rushing, no tearing at the laces like you're unwrapping a gift. I want to see your hands on me—both hands, your fingers wrapping around my length, your thumbs tracing the ridge of the head. I want to see your face when you first feel how hard I am for you, how much I've been aching for you since I opened my eyes this morning." His voice dropped to something barely above a growl. "I've been half-hard since I woke up thinking about the sounds you made last night. Since I tasted you on my tongue. Gods, I can still taste you—salt and sweet and something I can't name but can't forget. It's been driving me mad all morning."

You fastened the second sabaton, your fingers steady despite the molten heat building low in your belly, spreading outward like wine spilled on silk. You reached for the first greave, the shaped steel plate cool against your palms. "Go on," you said, and your voice emerged steadier than you felt. "Tell me more."

"Then I'm going to put my hand in your hair—" he reached down and suited the gesture to the word, his fingers threading through the hair at your crown, tightening just enough to tilt your head back, to force your gaze up to meet his, "—and guide your mouth to me. And you are going to take me as deep as you can, until your lips meet the base of my shaft and your nose presses against my belly. I want to feel the back of your throat. I want to feel you swallow around me. I want to see tears in your eyes—not from pain, but from the effort, from wanting to take all of me, from being so full of me you can barely breathe." He paused while you buckled the first greave around his shin, your fingers working the leather straps through the buckles, pulling them snug against the padded linen beneath. "But I'm not going to let you finish me that way. Not today."

"No?" You looked up at him through your lashes, your hands pausing on the second greave.

"No." The word was a growl that seemed to originate somewhere deep in his chest, rumbling through the air between you. "Today, I want to be inside you when I spend. I want to feel you come around my cock, feel you clench and pulse and cry out my name so loudly that the whole Red Keep knows who you belong to. I want to fill you up until it drips down your thighs, the way you said you wanted yesterday, the way you whispered in my ear when you thought you were being scandalous. Every word you said to me yesterday—I remember all of it. Every filthy, beautiful, desperate word. And I intend to make every single one of them come true before the sun sets."

You rose, your body humming with anticipation like a plucked harp string, and reached for the cuirass. The black steel was cool and heavy against your palms as you lifted it from the table, the three-headed dragon crest seeming to watch you with knowing ruby eyes. You pressed the breastplate into place against his chest, and he held it there while you moved around behind him to begin fastening the side buckles. His eyes tracked you in the polished reflection of the armor, never leaving your face as your fingers worked methodically down his sides, pulling each strap through its buckle, testing each fastening with a sharp tug.

"Then I'm going to bend you over the armor stand," he said, his voice a low, dark rumble that vibrated through the steel beneath your hands, through your fingertips, into the marrow of your bones. "And I'm going to push your skirts up around your waist—slowly, so I can watch the fabric slide up the backs of your thighs, so I can see the curve of your arse inch by inch before I bare you completely. And I'm going to take you from behind, standing up, with my armor still on. You'll feel the cold steel of my cuirass against your back, hard and unyielding. You'll feel the chill of my greaves against your calves. You'll smell the metal and the leather mixed with the scent of us. But inside you, I'll be hot. Hot and hard and so deep you'll feel me in your throat, in your chest, in the very core of you."

Your breath caught in your chest like a trapped bird. Your fingers fumbled on the last buckle, the leather slipping through your grasp before you caught it again, and you heard him exhale, not quite a laugh, but something darkly satisfied, something that said he knew exactly what his words were doing to you.

"Then," he continued, relentless, merciless, "when I've had my fill of watching myself disappear inside you from behind, I'm going to carry you to the cot and put you on your back. And I'm going to take off my gauntlets so I can feel your skin with my bare hands. I'm going to hold you down, one hand between your breasts, pinning you to the mattress. And I'm going to fuck you slowly. So slowly you'll feel every inch of me, every ridge, every pulse. So slowly you'll beg me to go faster. And I won't. Not until you apologize for every bratty, insolent, maddening thing you said to me this morning."

You finished the last buckle of the cuirass with hands that trembled ever so slightly—you knew he could see it, could feel it in the minute vibrations transmitted through the steel—and reached for the gorget. The throat armor was shaped to cradle his neck, to protect the vulnerable hollow where his pulse beat visibly beneath the skin. "Apologize?" you managed, your voice emerging breathier than you intended, a half-octave higher than your usual register. "For what, precisely?"

"For pulling my hair when you knew it would drive me to distraction. For denying me what we both wanted because you were enjoying the game too much to end it. For threatening to find satisfaction elsewhere." His eyes burned into yours, twin flames of violet and shadow, and his voice dropped to something barely above a whisper, something that was somehow more commanding than any shout could be. "You are going to say 'I am yours, Valarr, and no one else's. My body is yours. My pleasure is yours. Everything I am is yours.' And then, and only then, will I let you come. Not a moment before. No matter how much you plead."

You swallowed hard. Your throat was dry as parchment left in the sun. "And if I refuse? If I'm stubborn and willful and refuse to give you the satisfaction?"

His smile was slow and wolfish and altogether dangerous, the kind of smile that would have made a lesser woman run for the hills. "Then I'll keep going until you don't. I can do this all day, sweetheart. I can bring you to the edge again and again and again until you forget your own name, until you forget why you were resisting in the first place, until the only word left in your vocabulary is 'please.' And then I'll make you wait a little longer, just because I can."

The gorget was in place, the final buckle secured beneath his left ear. Only the gauntlets remained on the table, and the helm—a sculpted thing of black steel with a dragon crest sweeping back from the crown like frozen fire. You reached for the gauntlets, the articulated steel fingers clicking softly against each other, but he caught your wrists in his bare hands before you could lift them.

"Leave them," he said, his voice rough as stone dragged over gravel. "I want to feel you. I've been waiting all morning to feel you."

And then his mouth was on yours. The kiss was a conquest and surrender woven together into a single act. His hands slid into your hair, tilting your head back to expose the vulnerable column of your throat before his mouth descended. His tongue swept into your mouth with a hunger that bordered on violence, tasting of the wine he'd drunk before you arrived, tasting of want and need and barely leashed desperation. The steel of his cuirass pressed cold and unyielding against your breasts through the thin fabric of your gown, and the contrast of sensations, cold metal against your front, hot mouth against your lips, hard steel against your soft flesh, soft tongue sliding against yours, made your head spin like you'd drunk an entire flagon of the Arbor gold on the table.

You kissed him back with everything you had, with every ounce of frustration and desire and desperate wanting that had been building since yesterday, since this morning, since the moment you'd first laid eyes on him. Your hands fisted in the fabric of his gambeson where it showed above the cuirass, pulling him closer, closer, until the steel was pressed so tight against you that you could feel the steel imprinting on your skin through your dress.

"Gods," you gasped against his mouth, pulling back just far enough to drag air into your burning lungs, "I want you. I want you now. Right now."

"Then have me."

He walked you backward with the steady, unstoppable momentum of a tide, his armored body a wall of heat and steel pushing against your softness, until your spine hit the armor stand. The wooden frame rattled violently, a pauldron clattering to the trampled grass with a dull thud, a vambrace following it a moment later, and then his hands were on your hips, the heat of his bare palms searing through your gown, lifting you onto the edge of the campaign table with effortless strength. Your skirts bunched around your thighs, the fabric rucking up past your knees, past midthigh, until the cool morning air kissed skin that was already flushed and feverish. His armored body pressed between your legs, the steel of his cuirass shockingly cold against the heated, sensitive skin of your inner thighs, and you wrapped your legs around his waist with a desperation that surprised you, pulling him closer, the ridges of the armor pressing into your soft flesh in ways that would leave marks, and you didn't care, you didn't care at all.

"Tell me you want this," he said, his voice ragged, his forehead pressed against yours, his breath coming in harsh pants that mingled with your own. "Tell me you want me. I need to hear you say it. I need to know this isn't just—I need to know you want this as much as I do."

"I want you," you breathed, the words spilling out of you like water from a cracked dam, unstoppable and honest and raw. "I want you all the time, every moment of every day, until it drives me to distraction. I am yours, Valarr Targaryen. I am yours and no one else's, now and always, today and tomorrow and every day after. My body is yours. My pleasure is yours. Everything I am is yours."

He kissed you again, harder, more desperately, the careful control he'd maintained all morning finally snapping like an overwound harp string. One hand left your hip and you felt him fumbling between your bodies, working at the laces of his breeches with urgent, unsteady fingers, and then he was free, and you felt the hot, hard length of him pressing against your inner thigh, leaving a trail of slick moisture against your skin.

The first press of him against your entrance made you gasp into his mouth. You were still slick from his attentions this morning, your body still aching and empty from the interrupted promise of the night before, still desperate and ready despite—or perhaps because of—everything. And when he pushed inside you—one long, slow, relentless thrust that filled you completely, that stretched you in ways that walked the perfect line between pleasure and exquisite ache—you cried out so loudly you were certain the entire camp must have heard, certain the squire outside the tent must be blushing to the roots of his hair, certain the news would spread through the tourney grounds faster than word of the trial itself.

"Yes," you sobbed, your head falling back, your nails digging into the back of his neck hard enough to leave crescents in his skin, your inner muscles clenching around the sudden, overwhelming fullness of him. "Yes, yes, yes—"

He took you with a ferocity that drove the breath from your lungs in sharp, punched-out cries, each thrust hitting deep enough to make your vision blur at the edges. His bare hands gripped your hips, fingers digging into the soft flesh hard enough to bruise, pulling you onto him with every driving thrust, meeting your body with his own in a rhythm that was more storm than song. The armor stand rattled and creaked beneath you with the force of his movements, the remaining pieces of armor clanking against each other like discordant bells, and you had to brace one hand behind you on the table to keep from being driven backward onto the scattered steel.

The sound of it was utterly obscene, and you were past caring. The clank of steel against steel. The creak of leather straps straining. The wet, rhythmic slide of your bodies joining and parting and joining again. The raw, desperate, animal sounds tearing from your throat with every thrust, moans and gasps and half-formed words that might have been his name or might have been prayers. You wrapped your legs tighter around his waist, your ankles locking behind the small of his back, and the slight shift in angle made him hit a spot deep inside you that sent white lightning arcing up your spine, that made you scream, that made your inner muscles flutter and clench around him in involuntary spasm.

"That's it," he growled against your ear, his voice dark with satisfaction and unspent hunger. "Let them hear you. Let the whole camp hear who you belong to. Let the gods hear. I don't care. I want everyone to know."

"Valarr—Valarr—I'm going to—I'm so close, I'm going to—"

"Come for me." The command was a growl, a plea, a demand all at once. "Now. I want to feel you."

The command shattered what little control you had left. Your orgasm crashed over you like a wave in a storm, white-hot and blinding, starting somewhere deep in your core and radiating outward in pulses of pure, incandescent pleasure. You screamed his name so loudly your voice cracked and broke on the second syllable, your head thrown back, your spine arching, your body convulsing around him in rhythmic, milking pulses that drew a guttural groan from somewhere deep in his chest. The world went white at the edges, then gray, then nothing at all for a suspended moment of pure, perfect oblivion.

He followed you over the edge moments later, burying himself to the hilt inside you with a final, deep thrust, his face buried in the curve of your neck, his breath hot and ragged against your sweat-damp skin, his body shuddering with the force of his release. You felt him pulse inside you—once, twice, three times, four—felt the hot, flooding spill of his seed filling you, felt it begin to drip down your thighs even before he pulled out, a slow, warm trickle that traced paths down your trembling skin.

For a long moment, neither of you moved. The tent was filled with the sound of ragged, desperate breathing, yours, his, indistinguishable from each other, two sets of lungs working in tandem. The armor stand creaked beneath you with a final, settling groan. The fallen pauldron gleamed on the grass, its polished surface now smudged with fingerprints. Somewhere in the distance, a crier was calling something about the trial of seven, his voice high and thin and utterly irrelevant, a fly buzzing at the edge of a world that had shrunk to the space between your bodies.

Valarr lifted his head from your shoulder slowly, as if it weighed more than his helm, and looked at you with those eyes still hazy with the remnants of pleasure, still dark with hunger despite everything you'd just done, still burning with something that looked terrifyingly like devotion and his lips were kiss-swollen, and there was a mark on his neck where your nails had raked across the skin, and he was the most beautiful thing you had ever seen.

"I believe," he said, his voice hoarse and scraped-raw, the words emerging between still-labored breaths, "that I owed you a proper apology. For my behavior. For my presumption. For everything."

You laughed, a breathless, exhausted, utterly satisfied sound that bubbled up from somewhere deep in your chest and emerged as something between a giggle and a sigh. The movement made him shift inside you, still half-hard, and you gasped at the oversensitive friction. "Accepted," you managed, your own voice barely more than a whisper. "Though I should warn you—if that's how you apologize, I may need to find reasons to be cross with you more often."

—

Outside the tent, the squire stood at rigid attention, his spine so straight it was on the verge of snapping, his face the color of curdled milk, his eyes fixed on the distant treeline with the desperate intensity of a man who was trying very, very hard to be somewhere else entirely. His name was Edric, he was fifteen years old, he had been in Prince Valarr's service for exactly eight months, and he was fairly certain that nothing in his life had prepared him for this.

He had heard everything. Everything. The first moan had been bad enough, a high, breathy sound that had made his ears turn pink and his gaze drop to his boots. The second moan had been worse, drawn out and trembling, followed by a rhythmic creaking that could only be the armor stand, the armor stand, gods preserve him, the very armor stand he had polished that morning, taking a structural battering it had never been designed to withstand. And then there had been words. Words. The princess had said things—things he was fairly certain he should not repeat even under threat of torture—and the prince had responded in a voice so low and rough and possessive that Edric had actually taken three involuntary steps away from the tent flap.

Now there was screaming. Not the bad kind of screaming but the kind of screaming that made his entire body flush with heat and his throat go dry and his brain very pointedly refuse to form coherent thoughts.

He was going to die. He was going to die of embarrassment right here, outside his prince's tent, and the maesters would have to invent an entirely new category of death to explain what had happened to him.

Maybe I should have become a septon, he thought miserably. Septons don't have to stand outside tents listening to—

A particularly sharp cry rang out from within, followed by the unmistakable sound of something wooden and structural creaking in rhythmic protest. Edric squeezed his eyes shut and began mentally reciting the names of all seven aspects of the Seven. Father, Mother, Warrior, Maiden, Smith, Crone, Stranger—

The Stranger, he felt, was particularly appropriate. He was fairly certain he was about to die of embarrassment.

"VALARR—yes—right THERE—"

Edric opened his eyes and fixed them on a cloud that was drifting lazily across the morning sky. That was a nice cloud. Clouds were safe. Clouds did not make sounds that would haunt his dreams for the rest of his natural life.

He was so focused on the cloud—and on mentally reciting every prayer he knew, and on wondering whether it was possible to un-hear something through sheer force of will—that he did not notice the approach of the man until a shadow fell across him and a voice spoke from approximately two feet away.

"Where is my son's armor?"

Edric jumped approximately three feet into the air and spun around with a strangled yelp that he would deny to his dying day.

Prince Baelor Breakspear stood before him.

"Y-y-your Grace." Edric's voice cracked on every syllable, pitching upward like a boy of twelve instead of a squire of fifteen. "Prince Valarr's armor is—ah—it is—it is inside the tent. Yes. Inside. The tent. Where the armor is."

Baelor's eyes, the same deep blue as his son's left eye, narrowed slightly. "Are you quite well, lad? You look rather flushed."

"I am perfectly well, Your Grace. Perfectly. It is only the—the heat. The morning heat. Very hot this morning. Unusually hot. I was just—standing here. Guarding. As one does."

Baelor studied him for a long, uncomfortable moment, then seemed to decide that squires were simply peculiar creatures and not worth further investigation. "Good. I have need of the armor before—"

His hand was already reaching for the tent flap and Edric's soul departed his body.

"Your Grace, wait—"

Baelor stopped, his fingers an inch from the canvas. He had heard something.

A sound. A distinctly human sound. "Oh, Valarr—" The voice from within was high and breathy and unmistakably feminine, stretched taut with something between ecstasy and desperation. "Right THERE—don't stop—gods, don't you DARE stop—"

Baelor Breakspear's hand froze in midair. His fingers curled inward, retreating from the canvas as though it had suddenly burst into flame.

Edric wanted to die. He wanted the earth to open up and swallow him whole. He wanted to be anywhere else in the Seven Kingdoms—the Wall, the deserts of Dorne, the smoking ruins of Valyria itself—anywhere but standing next to his prince's father while said prince was audibly, enthusiastically, thoroughly fucking his wife twenty feet away.

"I—Your Grace, I am under—under very strict orders—" Edric's voice was barely a whisper, his face now achieving a shade of crimson that would have impressed a painter. "No one is to enter the tent. Not anyone. Not for any reason. Those were—those were Prince Valarr's exact words. His very exact words. He was quite specific."

Another sound from within, a rhythmic creaking, the unmistakable clank of steel against something wooden, a low, rough, guttural male groan that was absolutely, undeniably, catastrophically Prince Valarr's voice.

Baelor stood frozen outside his son's tent with his mouth slightly open and his cheeks slowly, inexorably turning the color of a summer rose.

"Valarr! VALARR—I'm—I'm going to—I'm—"

A scream. Female. Ecstatic. Utterly, comprehensively unmistakable. It was the kind of scream that left nothing to the imagination—the kind of scream that painted a very detailed picture of exactly what was happening inside that tent, a picture that Edric desperately, desperately did not want to be seeing in his mind's eye.

And then, as if the scream had not been damning enough:

"VALARR! YES! YES, RIGHT THERE—FILL ME UP—DON'T STOP—"

The silence that followed was deafening.

Baelor Breakspear stared at the tent flap as though it had personally insulted his entire bloodline. His hand, still raised, slowly lowered to his side. His jaw worked soundlessly for a moment—opening, closing, opening again—like a fish that had been unexpectedly yanked from the water and was still trying to process its new reality.

"I..." He cleared his throat. "I... see."

"The armor," Edric whispered miserably, staring at the ground as though it might offer him salvation, "is... occupied, Your Grace."

Baelor's voice, when he finally found it, was remarkably steady for a man who had just been forced to confront the fact that his son was, at present, engaged in activities that would make a Dornish courtesan blush. "Occupied."

"Very occupied."

"Yes—like that—exactly like that—oh, gods, I can feel you so deep—"

"Extremely occupied," Edric amended, his voice barely audible. "Thoroughly occupied. Could not be more occupied if they tried."

A long, agonizing pause. From within the tent came the unmistakable sound of bodies shifting, the creak of the cot—the cot, gods, they had moved to the cot—and a low, breathy laugh that was definitely the princess.

"Well," Baelor said, and his voice had acquired a slightly strangled quality, as though someone had their hands wrapped around his throat, "it is... it is good that they are... that the marriage is... that they are clearly very..." He paused, searching for a word that would not make this situation worse. "...compatible.""

"Harder—HARDER—I want to feel you for DAYS—"

Baelor closed his eyes. He drew a long, slow breath through his nose. He opened his eyes again and looked at the sky as though beseeching the Seven themselves for intervention.

"Right," he said, to no one in particular. "Right. Well. I suppose... I suppose I shall find armor elsewhere. Ser Humfrey Hardyng may have something suitable. He is roughly my same proportions. Give or take. Or perhaps Lord Ashford keeps spares in the armory. For... for emergencies." He paused.

"VALARR, I'M GOING TO COME AGAIN—"

Baelor turned on his heel with the rigid, mechanical dignity of a man who had decided that the only way to survive this encounter was to pretend it had never happened. His movements were stiff, precise, the movements of a soldier retreating in good order from a battle that could not be won.

"I shall go now," he announced to the world at large. He took three long strides toward the main thoroughfare of the camp.

"Your Grace!" Edric called after him, his voice cracking with desperation. "Shall I—should I—do you want me to tell Prince Valarr that you came looking for him? When he is—when he is finished with his—with the armor?"

Baelor did not break stride. He did not slow down. He did not look back. If anything, he appeared to walk faster.

"You may tell my son," he said, his voice carrying back over his shoulder with a strained composure that was honestly quite heroic under the circumstances, "that I wish him joy of his morning. That I am pleased—very pleased—that his marriage is so... vigorous. That I am profoundly, deeply, inexpressibly glad that I did not walk into that tent. And that if either of them ever—ever—speaks of this in my presence, I shall deny it happened until my dying breath."

He paused, just for a moment, and added in a tone of immense, bone-deep exhaustion: "The Seven give me strength."

And then Prince Baelor Breakspear, the finest knight of the realm, disappeared around the corner of a supply tent with the speed of a man who had suddenly remembered an urgent appointment on the other side of the known world.

Edric stood alone, staring at the spot where his prince's father had been, listening to the sounds still emerging from within the tent—a rhythmic thumping now, another rising moan, and something that sounded distressingly like the cot beginning to splinter—and wondered if it was physically possible to die of embarrassment.

It was, he concluded, probably not possible. Which meant he would have to live with this memory for the rest of his natural life.

"Oh—oh—VALARR—"